Mahala Mullins
1824 - 1898
NOT
TOO BIG FOR
DEATH
Knoxville- September 24, 1898
Mahala Mullins, a noted moonshiner
of Hancock County, is dead, aged 75. She was the mother of 18
children and weighed 550 pounds. It is reported that she was
poisoned by envious makers of illicit whiskey. She had been
arrested frequently but the officers could not remove her on account of
her size and the isolated location of her home.
Naugatuck Daily
News September 19, 1898
Mahala Mullins, Moonshiner, Dead
Knoxville, Sept. 19
Mahala Mullins, a white woman
weighing 650 pounds, who for years has been the most noted moonshiner
of the Tennessee mountains, is dead. She had defied arrest for
many years as the revenue officers were not able to take her down the
mountains. She dealt in illicit whiskey in large quantities, and
openly said that it was not wrong for her to make her living in that
manner. But when the war revenure tax was imposed the woman purchased a
supply of stamps, and since that time has been affixing them regularly
to the whiskey which she sold to the mountaineers.
Mahala Mullins buried two
sons and a husband in the lot in front of her house, where she could
sit in the doorway and see the graves. She had lived alone for
the last two years.
THE MEXICAN
HERALD
September 18, 1898
-----------------------------
COULD NOT ARREST HER
----------------
Famous Moonshiner Dead. Defied Law
Officers From A Mountain Top
------------
Knoxville, Tenn Sept 17
News has just
been reached here of the death of Mahala Mullins, the famous fat woman
and moonshiner of Hancock County. Mrs Mullins weighed 500 pounds and
lived on top of a mountain, where she conducted a "still" in defiance
of the law. The officers were unable to arrest her on account of
her size, there being no way to get her down the mountain. Mrs.
Mullins is one of a tribe of Melungeons who's origins have been a
mystery to ethnological students for many years.
HOME MISSION MONTHLY
A Visit To The
Melungeons
C.H. Humble ~ 1897
"The
most noted person now among them
is Mrs. Mehala Mullens, widow of John Mullens. About twenty
children
were born to this couple, three of whom met violent deaths, ons son
being shot in the streets of Sneedville, another in her door yard, and
a third lynched in Texas.
She is over seventy years old;
weighs, it is judged, about 400 pounds; cannot walk, stand, or lie
down; but sits on her bed day and night. Beside her is a cask of
whiskey on which stand tin cups and measures. The faucet is at
her
hand that she may conveniently dispense liquor to all who want it.
She
seems to enjoy the notoriety, and when the officers came with a writ
for her arrest, she laughingly said “Execute it!" Her size, ill health,
and steep rocky roads leading to her house on Newman’s Ridge, rendered
her transportation dangerous if not impossible; so she sits and sells
in defiance of law. I asked what she was going to do with all the fruit
in the large orchard? She replied, “The boys know how to work
that
up.” I presumed into apple brandy, and she will do the rest.
She
was quite willing to have her picture taken, but wanted a copy of
it.
When Mr. Hamilton asked for her address her daughter interposed.
“You
did not tell him how many yards it takes,” and turning, said: “ It
takes twelve yards to make her a dress.” The old lady saw her
daughter’s mistake and corrected it, otherwise Mr. H. might have taken
the order.
Privately, I said, “Why do you, so near the grave, go
on selling this destructive stuff to the young men?” She replied,
“It’s the only way I can make a livin’.” She would only half
promise
to think of the evil of it. The old sentiment of the people makes
it
innocent, the notoriety makes it pleasant, and the money makes it
profitable, and habit blinds her to the curse it has brought to her own
door.
SHE SELLS
MOUNTAIN DEW
BROAD AX
SALT LAKE CITY
4/10/1897
When the revenue
Officers Come to Arrest Her She Says, “Take Me”
From the Atlanta
Constitution:
Betsy
Mullens is the largest woman in Tennessee. She lives in a little log
house on top of Newman’s Ridge, in the mountains of Hancock County,
where she earns a living by the sale of illicitly distilled whiskey in
open defiance of the government officers, who have time and again been
sent to arrest her, but have never been successful. Her avoirdupois is
about 540 pounds, and this accounts for the woman never having bee
arrested. It was in the fall of the year just passed that I visited the
Mullens home, in company with the revenue officers from Knoxville.
The
place where she lives is sixteen miles from the railroad, and by no
means easy of access. As you near the foot of the ridge where the woman
lives you can see her cabin on the top.
A conveyance cannot
wend its way to the home, and those who wish to see the largest woman
in Tennessee, and one who has caused more talk than any other woman in
the state, have to leave their conveyance behind and make it on foot up
the steep mountain side. Approaching the house, the first thing out of
the ordinary which attracted my attention were four mounds in the back
yard, which, upon inquiry, I learned, were the graves of her husband
and three sons, the latter having given up their lives in mountain
fights and had been buried in the yard, where the mother could turn
from her bed in the little house and gaze at the spots which contained
beneath their grassy sod all that was mortal of those who were so near
and dear to her.
For years the woman has been bedridden. Not
that she is sick, but her immense size is such that she is unable to
walk or move around like other people. Her husband was for years an
invalid, and the family was without visible means of support until
Betsy conceived the idea of selling whisky. There are any number of
illicit stills in the mountains near by, and just across the line in
Kentucky, and with their operators Betsy made arrangements for her
supply of “mountain dew.” It is brought to her in stone jugs, and from
her bedside she can reach down and pour out any amount of whisky which
the patrons of her place may desire. In open defiance of the law has
Mrs. Mullens carried on this method of liquor selling for years.
The
federal grand jury has indicted her time after time, and officers have
been sent to arrest her, but that was all. They would come to her
bedside and serve the papers, but could not take her to court or to
jail. Her size baffled them. It would take half a dozen strong men to
carry her out of the house and when the outside was reached they would
not be able to get her to the road at the bottom of the ridge, as it is
impossible to get a wagon to the top, where her cabin is located. Every
time the officers call at the house she simply laughs and says, “Take
me if you can.” The officers cannot take her and that is the end of it.
In Mrs. Mullens will be found the personifications of
ignorance. Her knowledge of the world is confined to a radius of three
miles of her home. She was born near the place where she lives, and has
never been of off the ridge. Never saw the little county town of
Tazewell, the county seat of Tazewwell county, and has never seen a
railway train, although she is at present nearing the fiftieth
milestone of her monotonous life. She delights in having visitors call
to see her and talks interestingly. During all the years that Mrs.
Mullens has been confined to her bed she has seen her three sons and
husband pass to the beyond.
She could not attend the funeral
services at the little church, which is situated several miles from her
home, and the funeral services if such they might be called were held
in the rooms where the mother and wife lay on the bed, and their bodies
were laid to rest just outside the door in the back yard, where she
could witness the interment. The woman takes her misfortune good
naturedly, and says that she will continue the sale of whisky until her
time to die has come, and then she too expects to be laid to rest
beside the bodies of her husband and sons in the little plot in the
back yard, known as the family burying ground of the Mullens family.
The Most Famous
Melungeon
Mahala Mullins
Massilion Independent
10/21/1897
HER FAT IS HER FORTUNE
Why Mary Mullins Sells Moonshine
Whisky With Impunity
Once again Mary Mullins is
driving the revenue officers of Tennessee to desperation. She is making
moonshine whisky and selling the same and doing both openly and
defiantly. A dozen warrants have been issued for her arrest. A dozen
revenue officers have started out to serve them and conduct Mary in
triumph to jail. Mary invariably has received warrants and officers in
person and with hospitable welcome. “The warrants are correct.” she
invariably says “I am guilty as charge. I am yours. Take me.”
And not an officer yet has
been found who was capable of taking her at her word or taking her in
any other way. For the fact is Mary tips the beam at 690 pounds, and,
furthermore, she has so outgrown the width of any door in the house in
which she lives that to get her out of doors would involve a technical
tearing down of the house over head. This the revenue officers have no
authority to do. So they merely walk around Mary in dumb despair. They
are absolutely helpless to enforce the law. Mary’s fat cheeks quiver
with the husky chuckles which with her pass for a laugh and urges the
minions of the law to do was the law directs.
“Why don’t you do your duty?”
she asks in her fat, wheezy voice. “I’ve been selling moonshine right
along. Goin to do it ag’in too, soon’s you uns gits out er sight. Why
don’t yon take me: I’m all yourn–about 700 pounds of me. Take me along
with you now.”
Thus does Mary tantalize
Uncle Sam’s excise men until they go off in despair, leaving Mrs
Mullins mistress of the situation.
It is on a lonely mountain in
Hancock County, Tenn., that Mrs. Mullins has her abode. She has lived
there all her life, and never has seen even so much as a village.
