Not gonna be much help I’m afraid. I was pre-teen back when we hunted around Laurel Branch and other Holman Lumber Company properties before they leased it all to hunting clubs and quit issuing their individual permits. Maybe it was during his early phase of cross dressing, but my recollection is he’d blend in with the country woman in long gingham dress and bonnet. A time or two he and Daddy would pull up alongside in trucks on a country lane and exchange the time of day, so I couldn’t see much. But no makeup or anything, just looked like a man with a bonnet. “D. C.”, Daddy would say afterward. They knew several mutual acquaintances since we owned B. Creek Fishing Camp and my Uncle C. R. ran the camp. Don’t know if he fronted any of Uncle C.'s associates or not, but there was a local family who kept a Jon boat on the creek and would leave after dark and head down the river. As kids we’d see them sometimes, but never their return trips- guess we were long asleep by then, LOL. Uncle C. told me later in my college years that they were making shine. Also told me of a liquor running murder under the Fosters Ferry bridge on a Greene County haul. Rough days.

MAGIC MAN AND CHRISTOPHER https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=9&v=nGZqjliAZws&t=42s&fbclid=IwAR3Sd6DBcuo9FKYDSp9pz99ys400e1bofvUOI6p77PyMrlyx_AdvJ9g8rJ0

This is an appeal to my Tuscaloosa friends to help me gather stories about a cross dressing Tuscaloosa County moonshiner who lived from the turn of the century until the 1980s. If you gotta story, YOU KNOW WHO I'M TALKIN' ABOUT and you know his COMMUNITY.(as most of you know, you don't wanna RILE his kinfolks so we'll keep "HER" name our secret) All I know is what I've heard and it is STRANGE. So here's what was told to me...I've heard like everybody else that he started wearing dresses and putting on makeup in order to elude the law. When the cops knocked on the door, "SHE" would greet them and tell 'em that her husband, Mr. C., was not at home. "She" made a business out of OUTFITTING moonshiners. "She" 'd supply the land, the water source, the sugar, the jars and probably in the Fifties, the propane. The moonshiners provided the corn, the weak mind and the strong back. "She" also acted as a middle "man" wholesaling liquor to the B'ham Italians and the Greene County car thieves who had ghetto connections up North. Story goes that not only did "she" kiss KISSIN' JIM FOLSOM on the courthouse steps but that Kissin' Jim gave "her" some of Governor Bibb's furniture from either the Governor's mansion or the Archives and History. A buddy of mine asked "her", "Mr. C., I hope you won't be offended but why do you dress like a woman?" Mr. C. said,"Boy, when I'm in my overalls I'm just another ignorant hick but when I put on my OUTFIT, nobody's gettin' NUTTIN' outta me!" "She" started spending more and more money on dresses and started shopping in Mountain Brook and also had her hair done there. One day "she" was in a Mountain Brook beauty parlor and had to go to the bathroom. When "she" returned to her chair, another woman went to the bathroom and ran back into the room hollering, "There's a man in here! Somebody left the lid up on the toilet!" "She" loved telling that story on "herself". I truly believe this would be a terrific short story about the liquor business in Tuscaloosa County before 1956 plus it's BEYOND THE BIZARRE!

Dee Cunningham  Sometimes he would take us further up the road, past the area where the Tierce mill had been, to a red dirt road that led past a fire tower. Down this road lived the Cunningham family, cross dressers, confidants of famous gospel singers and politicians. We would pass the house and look hard for suspicious looking females. Trip and I don’t remember ever seeing anyone, but Daddy had actually met Dee. Dee Cunningham tended to wear women’s clothing. It was said that he began the habit to avoid revenuers during Prohibition. Daddy said Dee called at Pinehurst several times in a dress. He remembers him playing the piano in the parlor. Granddaddy must have wanted to expose us to as much as he could. http://tierce.us/1816_tierce.htm

W. D. Register, Pvt. Co. D 1st Al, Tn. Ms. Inf. is listed as being buried in the Oak Woods Cemetery, Confederate Mound, Died 7/13/1862 in Camp Douglas, Ill.

Hope this is of some help, after there capture at Island # 10, most were sent to Camp Douglas, Ill and there were somemore sent to Camp Randall, Madison, Wi.

U.S.S. BLOOMER https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Bloomer_(1856)

George E. Buker https://books.google.com/books/about/Blockaders_Refugees_and_Contrabands.html?id=_5w-CgAAQBAJ

These four images are clippings from the January 28, 1863 SOUTHERN ADVERTISER (Troy). The first three deal with a resolution by the citizens of Coffee County supporting Alabama Governor Shorter call for a draft to raise troops to protect the salt makers of the Gulf Coast. This alarm was produced by the Yankee raid on Geneva the month before where the steamboat Bloomer was captured and taken to East Pass (present-day Destin) to support the U.S. Navy post there that was supporting Union sympathizers, deserters and fugitive slaves. In December of the same year this front page article was published, the Yankees burned the entire town of St. Andrews and did over $3,000,000 damage to the salt works on the bay. The U.S.S. Bloomer was used in support of this U.S. Navy offensive. The fourth image in this album is from Page 2 of the same paper. It is a tax sale notice placed by my Great-Great Grandfather, Geneva's John Young Register. (My Grandpa Register was named after him. I'm named after him and my son is named after him)

Here's an edited version of George Mortimer West's description of the history of the entrance of St. Andrews Bay: "Between the time that Gauld's survey of the bay and adjacent coast was made — 1764 to 1781, and the next oldest survey, that of Williams — 1821 - 1826, marked changes occurred in the form and extent of the sand spit lying between St. Andrews Bay and the Gulf, giving evidence that one or more severe storms had swept this coast during that time, breaking through the low sand barrier and leaving three islands where there was but one in 1764. This breaking up of the sand spit resulted in the formation of what is now known as West Pass and also another opening — now closed — through Spanish Shanty Cove, and the removal of much of the material forming the spit by the storm-driven waters. No detailed account of the tropical storms visiting this section prior to 1840 has been found...

...On Williams' map, the large island at the entrance of the bay is named 'Hammock Island,' with Crooked Island to the east of it and Sand Island to the west; the latter, according to his report, lying some three miles off shore. This island, it is evident, must have been formed by the outrush of a great storm tide from the bay, which tore through the barrier at Spanish Shanty Cove, carrying out with it the sand that formed the spit and depositing it as an island at the point referred to. Sand Island could not have lasted for many years as the next map published, that of the U. S. Coast Survey — the topography of which was mapped in 1855, shows over three fathoms of water where, according to Williams, the island was situated...

...The name 'Hurricane Island' does not appear on any of the charts prior to that issued by the government, designated the 'Preliminary Chart of St. Andrew's Bay, Florida,' dated 1855. It is quite possible that the storm of 1841, or that which swept this coast ten years later, gave this island the name it bears today. Early writers stated that it was quite heavily wooded, and as late as the year 1900 there were quite a few old pines standing along the sand spit west of Land's End, the 'Seven Pines,' a prominent landmark there, having been the motif for a poem, so named, by a visiting tourist. The name 'Hammock' (Williams' map) would indicate that it was hilly, and possibly covered with trees. The sand hills on the "Hurricane Island" of the 1855 chart are laid down as very prominent objects. The 'Saddle Hills,' extending from the west of Spanish Shanty Cove, along the Gulf beach, were likewise a marked topographical feature as late as 1900...

...Preliminary chart No. 1, issued by the government, being a survey of St. Andrews Bay made between the years 1849 to 1855, a miniature copy of which can be found in Lieut. Col. Gilmore's published report on 'Ship Canals Across Florida,' 1880, the original chart being no longer in existence as shown by a search by the officials of the Coast and Geodetic Survey at Washington, gives the following names to places on St. Andrews Bay and the adjacent coast, beginning at the northwest side of the bay: Dyers Point, Buena Vista, St. Andrews, Clark — name of the post office and postmaster for the bay country, Redfish Point, and an unidentified place or point further east; thence to the lower part of the bay, commencing at the western part of the sketch map : Bear Point, Courteney's, Alligator, Big Lagoon Point, Blind Bay, Hurricane Island, East Pass, Crooked I., Bushy Sign, E. W., St. Andrews Sound, St. Andrews Point, Desert; on the south side of the peninsula: Davis Point, High Woods, Penny, Sand Bluff, Nunrod's camp, and Franklin, the latter near the head of what is now Crooked Island Sound."

from page 30 "Until Captain Loftin, in 1830, built and occupied his house, which was about a mile east along the beach from the governor's home, the Clarks had no neighbors within many miles. When Clement and Exum surveyed this portion of the country in the fall of 1831, and in 1832, they recorded in their field notes but two houses on this beach, Capt. Loftin's. about 360 feet from the start of the meander line at the south-east corner of section 6, and Governor Clark's house about 528 feet from the south west corner of this fractional section. They also noted a road running through the north line of section 5, which they marked 'road to Governor Clark's.' This was the road leading from his residence to and across Bayou George, and northerly through the Econfina settlement, to Webbville, and on into Georgia."