Deputy U.S. Marshall J.W. Wilcox of this city made a sweet haul in Currituck County Saturday when he raided the Barnes outfit on the old Alex Willey home place on Tulls Creek and captured seven going stills, 2,200 pounds of sugar and 150 gallons of corn and rye whiskey. Marshall Wilcox conducted the raid with the aid of Virginia deputies.
Four men were captured in the raid and brought to Elizabeth City. They were S.E. Barns, 18-year-old son of J.G. Barnes, owner of the raided premises; J.M. Bateman, a son-in-law of the elder Barnes; J.F. Hall and George Henry Askey, the latter a negro. When brought before the U.S. Commissioner in Elizabeth City their bonds were fixed at $300 each. Young Barnes exhibited $1,100 in cash and put up $900 for the bonds of himself and the other two white men, leaving the negro to be jailed.
Saturday night J.G. Barnes came to Elizabeth City to furnish bond for the negro and Barnes himself was arrested and held in $1,000 bail.
There were seven stills in the Barnes outfit and heavy automobile trucks were employed in running the illicit whiskey from the stills to Norfolk, it is said. Prohibition enforcement officers have been on the trail of Barnes for months, and the raid was cleverly planed to nab the stills while in operation.
But when the officers failed to catch the elder Barnes in the raid, the son S.E. Barnes, a boy of 18 years, claimed that he was the sole owner and operator of the stills. Old man Barnes told the same story to Deputy Marshall Wilcox when he was placed under arrest, but Deputy Wilcox told him he would have a hard time working a story like that off on Judge Connor in the Federal Court. The spectacle of a father making his son the scape-goat in a case of this kind seems to be indicative of the depths of depravity to which the illicit manufacture of liquor drives men who were once upon a time moral humans.
From the front page of The Independent, Elizabeth City, N.C., March 30, 1923
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