The Meanest Moonshiner in Tennessee
A family of moonshiners leaves a red record in Polk County, TN.
In 1900, Garrett Hedden was the most feared man in mountainous Polk County, Tennessee, a rural district in the state’s southeast corner. He was a well-known moonshiner who the local newspapers labeled a desperado and credited with killing eight men.
One killing, in particular, made citizens, marshals, and revenue men reluctant to cross the outlaw: the November 1898 shooting of his brother William, who was engaged in a drunken brawl.
The most detailed account of the incident comes from journalist and adventurer Leonidas Hubbard, Jr., in his August 1902 article in The Atlantic magazine: “The Moonshiner at Home.”
“Garret Hedden and his brothers, Riley and Bill, and half a dozen other mountaineers, were at work in one of the little valleys. They had spent the greater part of the day splitting shingles while moonshine flowed freely. Half drunk, Bill Hedden became quarrelsome. He was a hard man to get along with at his best, and now he was looking for trouble in a way that promised to end disastrously. He started to quarrel with Garrett’s best friend. Garrett told him to stop. Bill paid no attention but grabbed his opponent around the neck and drew his knife. The knife was not far from the man’s throat when Garret’s rifle cracked, and Bill dropped dead.”
Hubbard, a Michigander, happened to be involved in a forestry project at a camp on the Ocoee River near Little Frog Mountain in 1901. Having read in the newspapers about Garrett, he sought out the outlaw and interviewed him. It was a pretty gutsy endeavor, given the moonshiner’s deadly reputation. Hubbard mentioned in the article that he dressed carefully when he set out to avoid being mistaken for a revenue agent.
“Dressed one day in garments that gave no opportunity for concealing weapons and which, therefore, obviated any danger of being mistaken for a revenue official, I threw a camera across my back and started for the neighborhood.”
Moonshining was a Hedden family tradition, with all four sons, Bill, Garrett, Joe, and Riley, recognized as noted moonshiners, following in the footsteps of their father, John. For years, they ran a successful illegal distillery near Frog Mountain, protected by its distant wilderness location and Garrett’s well-known tendency to shoot holes into people he didn’t like.
Fusillade on Frog Mountain
In August 1900,the chief raiding deputy of the Knoxville Internal Revenue office, J. B. Altom, traveled to Cleveland, TN, and gathered a seven-man posse of revenue agents, lawmen, and citizens for a raid on the Hedden settlement. They had definite information about the illegal enterprise and a guide to show them the way.
The posse left Cleveland at dark in a “private conveyance,” most likely a wagon or wagons, and spent all night traveling 35 miles, arriving at the banks for the Ocoee River at 6:00 the next morning. They left their driver and teams there and proceeded “thence afoot over a rough, mountainous country until 9:00 am.
Their target was Riley Hedden’s house and a moonshine still in a hollow near a clear, cold mountain spring 200 yards away. While the moonshiners went about their routine, gathering and chopping firewood and tending the still, the raiding party was able to slip in and arrest the gang.
According to the Knoxville Journal and Tribune, a 65-gallon copper still with 3,000 gallons of beer and a good quantity of meal, mash, and whiskey were destroyed. As the raiders handcuffed the men and moved them from the still to the house, everything was going according to plan until Garrett Hedden rode up on a mule carrying his Winchester across the saddle.
The following account is from Hubbard’s 1902 Atlantic article:
“Then, the revenues jumped into the house and behind the corncrib and began to shoot at Garret,” said Gus Hedden. “They shot seven or eight shots before he moved. Then he slid off his mule and laid down behind a log.”
Riley was being restrained by Constable C. B. Cash. He pulled Cash out into the open several times, either in the hopes that Cash would release him rather than risk being shot by Garrett or hoping to escape after Garrett hit Cash. Altom leveled his gun at Riley, who then abandoned his attempts to drag Cash into the path of one of Garrett’s bullets.
“The revenues threatened to kill us if we didn’t go out and get Garret to go away,” Gus continued. “We told ’em we couldn’t do nothing with Garret. So we all laid there behind the house, and Garret laid behind his log with his Winchester, scaring the revenues powerful nigh into fits. When it got too dark to see, they took us and sneaked out.”
The Knoxville newspaper article mentions Garrett firing on Deputy J. A. Pierce at close range and Pierce returning fire from inside the house with a double-barreled shotgun. It goes on to describe Garrett’s escape, saying:
“Garrett then made off up the mountain and indulged in the worst forms of blasphemy ever listened to. He cursed and swore at the officers and vowed the most horrible forms of vengeance on them.”
The party and its five prisoners traveled back to the wagons and teams beside the river and arrived back in Cleveland shortly before midnight Wednesday. The skirmish further burnished Garrett’s reputation as an outlaw to be feared.
Riley was sent to the penitentiary for one year; Gus got four months in jail because it was his first offense.
A Vow of Vengeance from the Edge of Death
In March of 1903, the Hedden family saga took an unexpected and dramatic turn, putting them in newspapers nationwide. Headlines included Story of the Mountains is Written in Blood from the Knoxville Journal and Tribune; Brother Kills Brother from the Biddeford, Maine, Daily Journal; Outlaw Stabbed by His Brother from the Birmingham Age-Herald; and Notorious Moonshiner Killed from the Butte, Montana, Tribune-Review.
Garrett and Riley Hedden had traveled through the town of Reliance, TN. After leaving there, they went to George Parks’ store on Greasy Creek and bought a lunch of canned goods. The Journal and Tribune suggested that they both had consumed plenty of whiskey.
After eating their lunch, they started riding down Greasy Creek, where they became involved in a quarrel about Garrett killing his older brother, Bill, five years ago. Riley rode up beside Garrett, drew a long knife, and plunged it through Garrett’s body. The knife entered the right side of his chest and came out under the right shoulder blade. Garrett was still alive when the story went to press, but the article stated: “It is believed there is no chance for his recovery.”
There was speculation that Riley was afraid that the argument would end with Garrett shooting him just as he had shot Bill. Deciphering the motives of crimes committed by drunk men is not an exact science. Shocking as this turn of events was, it appears that the next part of the story was what caused its widespread circulation.
Garrett was taken home, and with his family gathered around him, he gave his eldest son, 10-year-old Charles Hedden, his revolver and made him swear to kill his uncle Riley as soon as he was old enough and big enough to complete the task.
Fortunately, Garrett’s unexpected recovery lifted that burden from young Charles’ shoulders. On March 26, the Knoxville Sentinel carried the news that Garrett Hedden was still alive, recovering from his wound, and he had a new goal: murder. From the paper:
“He is said to have made the statement to his physician, Dr. Nuchols, that he hoped to get well so he could kill his brother.”
Like the library scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, you can almost hear the Canceled Stamp slam down on Riley Hedden’s life insurance policy. Somehow, Riley was able to stay out of rifle range over the next few years.
“Bring a Coffin”
On Friday night, January 3, 1908, Polk County Sheriff Burch E. Biggs and his deputies boarded the L & N train at Benton and traveled to Etowah, where they met Sheriff Pryor Watson of Monroe County and his deputies. The six-man posse was on its way to arrest Garrett Hedden for the murder of Bill Hedden 10 years earlier and to locate and destroy the illegal distillery he had been operating on Lost Creek about three miles north of Reliance for several years.
Over the years, Tennessee newspapers noted that officers seemed reluctant to confront Garrett. Sheriff Biggs appeared to be the exception. The Chattanooga Daily Times reported that the sheriff was determined to arrest the moonshiner before his term in office expired.
An article in the January 9 Knoxville Sentinel claimed that Garrett had warned the sheriff against attempting to arrest him.
“According to report, Hedden had more than once sent word to Sherriff Biggs of Polk County that if the officer should ever come after him, ‘he better bring along a coffin.’”
It was raining that Saturday morning, soaking the leaves and underbrush around Lost Creek, greatly reducing the noise made by the raiding party as they closed in on the still. Fortunately, they had a guide to lead them to the illegal distillery.
Garrett was seen exiting the still house, and when he had gotten about ten steps from it, Biggs called out for him to throw up his hands. Instead, the moonshiner turned and ran for the still house. Unwilling to chance, Garrett reaching cover and retrieving his Winchester, the posse opened fire.
From the Chattanooga Daily Times:
“Just as he entered the door, the sheriff gave the command to fire, and the whole posse fired, the volley of buckshot completely riddling the mountaineer’s body from head to heel. When later picked up, his whole back was found to be perforated with buckshot.”
Thus ended the life and career of Garrett Hedden, the meanest moonshiner in Tennessee or certainly one of the deadliest. His two remaining brothers, Riley and Joe, would also die in shootouts, one in an altercation with a deputy sheriff and the other in a fight with a family member. Both were drunk when they died.
Fates: Predictable and Otherwise
One way or another, whiskey had led to the death of all four of the Hedden brothers. None of them lived past the age of 52. Charles Hedden, Garrett’s son wounded during the 1908 raid, served in WWI and became a copper miner. He died in 1949 at the age of 55 from tubulin pulmonary silicosis.
In his article, The Moonshiner at Home, Leonidas Hubbard Jr. proved to be a pretty fair prophet when he wrote about Garrett:
“Some day, he will walk out of the cabin, never to come back. If he is the man his neighbors believe, he will die with a smoking rifle in his hands and the lust of battle in his heart.”
What Hubbard didn’t know was that all three of the Hedden boys who were alive when he penned those words would outlive him. On October 18 or 19, 1903, Hubbard died of exhaustion and starvation on an Ill-fated expedition to canoe the system Naskaupi River–Michikamau Lake in Labrador and George River in Quebec.
In 1905, his wife, Mina Hubbard, completed his mission and became the first white woman to travel and explore the backcountry of Labrador.
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(Editor’s note: Hedden was spelled multiple ways in news reports and documents, including Henden, Hadden, Headen, and Heddon. Hedden seems to be the most often used, so I went with that throughout to avoid confusion.)
Sources
The Atlantic August 1902 Issue, The Moonshiner at Home By Leonidas Hubbard Jr.
Tennessean, Nashville, Wednesday, November 09, 1898, Page 3, “Killed His Brother”
Daily Times, Chattanooga, Wednesday, November 09, 1898, Page 5, “Polk County Tragedy”
Knoxville Sentinel, Friday, November 18, 1898, Page 7, “Fratricide”
Journal and Tribune, Knoxville, Friday, August 17, 1900, Page 5, “Biggest Revenue Raid Made in Some Years”
Tennessean, Nashville, Tuesday, August 21, 1900, Page 3, “Fusillade on Frog Mountain”
Morristown Republican, TN, Saturday, August 25, 1900, Page 1 “Moonshine Raid”
Journal and Tribune, Knoxville, Wednesday, March 11, 1903, Page 1, “Story of the Mountains Is Written in Blood”
Knoxville Sentinel, Thursday, March 26, 1903, Page 8 “Kill His Brother”
Chattanooga Daily Times, Tuesday, March 26, 1907, Page 3, “Related to Moonshiners”
Chattanooga Daily Times, Sunday, January 05, 1908, Page 4, “Fratricide Meets Doom”
Atlanta Constitution, Sunday, January 05, 1908, Page 1, “Noted Outlaw Killed by Posse”
Knoxville Journal and Tribune, Sunday, January 05, 1908, Page 1, “Noted Moonshiner and Outlaw Killed”
Knoxville Sentinel, Thursday, January 09, 1908, Page 5, “Tell of Killing Garrett Hedden”
Nashville Banner, Sunday, June 15, 1924, Page 1, “Red Record of Hedden Boys”
Chattanooga News, Monday, June 16, 1924, Page 3, “Criminal Record of Hedden Family”
Knoxville Journal and Tribune, Wednesday, June 18, 1924, Page 2, “Hedden Family Famed in Crime”
