Making moonshine in Iowa

WILLIAMSBURG — While researching a historical novel, Ann Hanigan Kotz learned a lot about prohibition and bootlegging.

Kotz paired that knowledge with her imagination and created a novel centered on Iowa’s bootlegging history before and during Prohibition.

Kotz talked about Iowa’s alcohol history at the Marengo and Williamsburg libraries April 2.

Born and raised in Iowa, Kotz is originally from Denison but now lives in Adel. She graduated from the University of Northern Iowa and taught English to 15- and 16-year-olds for 33 years.

“Secretly most English teachers want to write a book,” said Kotz. She wrote her first book for herself, a fictionalized tale from research about her own family who farmed in the Loess Hills.

“I had a couple of stories, and I basically fictionalized the rest of the book.”

The novel, “The Journey of Karoline Olsen,” was picked up by a publisher, and readers asked for a sequel. They wanted to know what happened to Karoline Olsen.

Kotz wrote “Sons and Daughters” to continue Olsen’s story. She’s put together a third book about the family, but it hasn’t been published yet.

While researching her novels, Kotz learned a lot about the prohibition era. “I have always been interest in bootlegging,” she said. And Carroll County, just east of Crawford County where she grew up, was “the biggest bootlegging county in Iowa.”

Kotz created a character named Frank Hogan in “Sons and Daughters.” “He’s a little bit of a shifty character,” she said. She decided to make him a bootlegger and write a novel called “Moonshine by Moonlight.”

She eventually made Frank a rum runner instead, but tales of bootlegging remain prevalent in the novel.

Yet the book is more than book about bootlegging. It became a book about why one county defied state law, said Kotz.

When writing a historical fiction you have to do research, said Kotz. “History is far more interesting than what I can imagine,” she said.

Kotz read countless newspaper articles about the temperance movement and prohibition in Iowa from the mid-19th century. She met with Keith Kerkhoff, one of the founders of Templeton Distillery and grandson of a bootlegger, to gain insight in the industry.

In 1851, Iowa's General Assembly prohibited dram shops, or bars, and in 1855 restricted the sale of alcohol. A lot of Iowans were German and Irish, said Kotz. They liked to drink, and they fought the closures.

The law was eventually overturned, but the temperance movement was growing across the United States.

In 1882, Iowa was dry again.

Voters approved a constitutional amendment that prohibited the sale, manufacture, and consumption of alcohol, making Iowa a dry state.

The law had to pass two consecutive years, said Kotz, but in the second year, it passed in a different form (1889). The “wets,” those against prohibition, said the law was illegal, and the Iowa Supreme Court agreed.

In 1906, Iowa had 1,770 saloons, said Kotz. Everyone drank beer because Iowa water was toxic, she said. Even children drank watered down beer.

The saloon was also very alive, full of cursing, not a place for decent women, said Kotz. “It was the social clubs of the day,” she said.

In 1916, Iowa again prohibited alcohol. Iowa, Ohio and Main were the only three “dry” states in the U.S.

Until 1920.

From 1920 to 1933, the manufacture, sale and transportation of alcohol were banned nationwide.

The road to prohibition was paved by the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, said Kotz.

Men would take their paychecks to saloons and come home broke and sometimes violent. Prohibiting the consumption of alcohol seemed a way to save their families.

Annie Whittenmyer, of Keokuk, held the first meeting of the Women’s Christian Temperence Union and also fought for suffrage, said Kotz.

Ida B. Wise, of Hamburg, joined WCTU in 1891. She was president of the Iowa organization in 1913 and national president in 1923. She later became an ordained minister.

Myrtle Cook was the president of the WCTU in Vinton and was leader of the Benton County Ku Klux Klan Women’s organization. The KKK hated Blacks, but it also hated Germans, Catholics and Jews, said Kotz.

Cook’s hatred extended to bootleggers. She made a list of Benton County bootleggers which newspapers printed.

On Sept. 7, 1925, Cook was shot to death through a kitchen window.

There were many names for whiskey. Iowa coined the term “white lightening,” said Kotz. Straight out of the still, whiskey is clear.

White lightening didn’t bring in as much money, but aging the whiskey was more dangerous because it had to be hidden from federal agents.

In Carroll County they’d hide jars of whiskey in corncribs and behind false walls and under false floors, said Kotz.

“The quality of the whiskey in Carroll County was legendary,” said Kotz. It was a favorite of Al Capone.

Alcohol was sold clandestinely along mail routes, at drop points in cemeteries and at speakeasies, like the Lighthouse Inn in Cedar Rapids which recently burned down.

By 1930, 49% of people in jails were bootleggers, said Kotz. Some judges were tired of this. Even law enforcement wasn’t fully behind prohibition.

Prohibition was repealed in 1933. President Franklin Roosevelt didn’t want to use resources fighting it in the middle of a depression, said Kotz.

Iowa still has bootleggers today, said Kotz. “It’s a lot cheaper than regular whiskey cause they aren’t paying taxes.”

“Moonshine by Moonlight” is available at annhkbooks.com/shop.