Grampy Phil relished sharing the tale of his Uncle Joe Laviolette, who was a bootlegger. Uncle Joe was my great-grandfather William’s younger brother and is the subject of Week 47 of the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge: Wrong Side of the Law.
Several of my family members were guilty of making or possessing illegal homebrew both during and before Prohibition became a nationwide law. In fact, Maine has the dubious honor of being the “home state of Prohibition” and enacted the first state law to prohibit the sale and possession of alcohol in 1851. That didn’t go over well with Mainers, as you can imagine. The hypocrisy of the man largely responsible for turning Maine into the first dry state in the nation, Portland Mayor Neal Dow, spurred citizens to revolt during the Portland Rum Riot of 1855. Dow had apparently broken his own law, as he stored alcohol for medicinal purposes at city hall but hadn’t appointed a committee to approve and oversee it. Despite peoples’ outrage and the death of a man during the riot, Prohibition held in Maine until it was repealed with the 21st Amendment in 1933. My grandfather recalls his father’s homebrewing endeavors during state and national Prohibition:
Homemade beer made from Blue Ribbon Malt (a key ingredient sold legally by grocers for the stated purpose of baked bread) was brewed in ten-gallon crocks, which were stored next to the furnace in the cellar. My dad would “check on the furnace” so often that the crock was usually emptied before he had a chance to bottle the brew.
Unlike his brother William, Uncle Joe didn’t brew beer solely for his own consumption. Joe was the youngest surviving child in his family, born on November 13, 1896 in Westbrook, Maine. He is legendary in our family for his exploits as a bootlegger. Due to his cunning and creativity, he was a damn good one too! He operated out of his home at 163 Bridge Street in Westbrook, Maine. The police knew he was brewing and transporting alcohol, but he evaded them for four, thrilling years. They tried to catch him in the act, but raids on his home turned up nothing. They even went as far as raiding his mother’s home, which ended in embarrassment for them when the feisty old woman chased them out of her basement with a broom, and they were later ordered to return and clean up the mess they made. Uncle Joe’s lair was well-hidden. Beneath his detached garage was a room that could only be accessed through a tunnel concealed behind a secret passageway in the basement. There, he hid his vats and brewing equipment. Even his basement stairs had hidden compartments where he stored bottles of alcohol.
An illegal enterprise such as Uncle Joe’s couldn’t be run alone. He had at least one partner – his cousin Joe Lavigne, who lived in Lawrence, Massachusetts. To transport alcohol between Maine and Massachusetts, Uncle Joe needed a method just as ingenious as his hidden home brewery. Much like the hidden room under his house, his car had a secret tank to hold his alcohol. He worried that officers, savvy to the creative ways rumrunners modified their vehicles, could potentially find it if they had cause to stop him… and they could certainly find cause. He was stopped for reckless driving on more than one occasion. What Uncle Joe needed was a way to hide in plain sight. He had to do something with his car that looked so innocent that even the most hardened, suspicious police officer or alcohol agent wouldn’t consider stopping him.
And that’s how these three adorable boys were unwittingly recruited into the bootlegging business as decoys. During those few years before Uncle Joe’s arrest, his two sons, Leo and Paul, and my Grampy Phil enjoyed many fun-filled weekend fishing trips down in Massachusetts. Uncle Joe loaded the boys and their fishing poles into his car, and off they’d go! After spending a couple of hours fishing, they’d stop by Joe Lavigne’s house to say hello. The boys delighted in visiting their Lavigne relatives, where they’d always get special treats in the kitchen like ice cream or root beer while Uncle Joe was busy out in the barn doing something to his car. That “something” involved emptying or loading his hidden gas tank with alcohol. After visiting a bit with their cousins, the Laviolette boys clambered back into the vehicle, and returned to Westbrook with buckets full of fish, bellies full of sweets, and the hidden gas tank either considerably lighter or fuller than when they arrived. Uncle Joe likely snickered to himself every time he passed the police on his trips back and forth. I like to imagine him giving the officers a flippant little wave, or tipping his hat, thrilled with the knowledge that he’d gotten away with it yet again. Using the boys was smart – he never was caught when they were with him. He crafted an idyllic Norman Rockwell picture of a father and his boys on a fishing trip.
All good things must eventually come to an end. Despite his cunning and creativity, Uncle Joe’s luck couldn’t hold out forever. Grampy wrote that Uncle Joe was “an eventual victim of double-crossing,” though he never mentioned who turned him in. I doubt it was his cousin, Joe Lavigne, and was most likely either a rival or someone who flipped on him in turn for a reduced sentence or immunity. In July of 1931, Uncle Joe was tricked into selling alcohol to Prohibition Agents. Federal Agents raided his home and seized 22 quarts of whiskey and 3 gallons of alcohol. He was indicted in September of that year.
On March 15, 1932, Uncle Joe was caught again – this time in a car transporting alcohol in York, Maine – a clear violation of his probation conditions. He was arrested and sentenced to 4 months in the county jail.
Although Prohibition ended in 1933 making the brewing and possession of alcohol legal once more, selling it without a license continued to be against the law. Uncle Joe was still on the radar of law enforcement, who raided his home yet again in 1935. Good fortune was on Uncle Joe’s side that time. The judge ruled in his favor, claiming there wasn’t enough evidence that he intended to sell his home brew.
After his 1935 arrest, Uncle Joe avoided further scuffles with the law and settled into life as a carpenter. He and his brother, William, continued to enjoy their now-legal hobby of home brewing. He eventually retired to his vacation property in Camp Ellis, Maine, where he passed away on August 6, 1965. Uncle Joe remains one of the most colorful and captivating characters in my family history not in spite of being on the wrong side of the law, but because of it.
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