Shining a new light on Stearns County moonshine

The childhood flashback struck documentary filmmaker Kelly Nathe as she watched HBO's Prohibition-in-New Jersey series "Boardwalk Empire" at her home in Los Angeles.

Although she grew up in Robbinsdale, Nathe's central Minnesota roots trace back to Stearns County. Her parents grew up amid the rolling farmland around New Munich and Holdingford — ground zero of a massive moonshine operation in the 1920s.

She remembered, as a girl, finding a newspaper clipping stuck deep in her grandmother's photo album. The story detailed her grandfather's arrest for making illegal whiskey during the years of Prohibition (1920-1933).

"My family being Catholic, we would never actually talk about it," said Nathe, now in her mid-40s. "I'm sure I didn't bother to ask — just tucked it back where I found it."

But the seed was planted. And it was special corn seed. She figured out her grandfather was in his 20s when booze was banned. An Internet search led her to a book called "Minnesota 13: 'Wet' Wild Prohibition Days," by longtime St. Cloud State professor Elaine Davis.

"I immediately ordered the book and tore through it when it arrived," Nathe said. "My mind was blown away to discover this high-quality moonshine from Stearns County not only had a name — Minnesota 13 — and not only was my grandfather involved, so was nearly all of the county. From Catholic priests and sheriffs on down."

Nathe shared the book with her filmmaking partner, Norah Shapiro — figuring she'd offer an objective appraisal.

"Turns out she was riveted," Nathe said. "So we had our next project."

Their movie, "Minnesota 13: From Grain to Glass," sold out both showings at its premiere at the 2016 Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival.

Shot the last two years in Stearns County, the documentary features delightful interviews with old-timers. They recall clandestine trips, pushing carts to the train station as boys, hiding moonshine jugs under mail sacks for railroad workers to smuggle down the line. When the feds would raid, one family placed a sleeping baby in a bassinet to block access to the trap door leading to a basement still.

"With their special skill set, Minnesota 13 was some of the best moonshine made," Stearns County Sheriff John Sanner says in the film, poring over hundreds of arrest records from the 1920s. Some of those folks were sentenced to a year and a day at the federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan. But local judges often looked the other way.

"These farm families were figuring out a way to put food on the table," Sanner says. "And judges were lenient because they knew these people were just trying to get through the Depression."

The story starts in the late 1800s when most believed corn wouldn't grow north of Kansas because long winters translated into too-short growing seasons. Agronomists at the University of Minnesota had been tinkering for years with corn seed, trying to develop a strain that would mature quickly.

On their 13th attempt, they came up with what became a wildly popular corn known as Minnesota 13 that could fill its husks before winter returned. The advance prompted a shift in the Upper Midwest farm economy, turning fields from wheat to corn.

When World War I ended in 1918, so did the government's willingness to buy silos full of corn to feed Allies and soldiers. A decade before the Great Depression, the corn market collapsed and left a glut of the ears overflowing corn bins. When Prohibition kicked in in 1920, innovative farmers in Stearns County realized their only chance was to turn their corn into mash for moonshine whiskey.

"We think of the Depression as starting in the '30s, but it hit farmers a decade earlier," Davis, the author and expert on Minnesota 13, said. Farmers could sell a gallon jug of their moonshine for $5 — the same price they'd fetch for a calf.

"So do the math," Davis said in a 2013 Star Tribune interview. "They let the barns sit empty, put up false walls and started cooking moon."

A few years ago, Nathe met Davis and, "We just clicked." Davis had dreamed of making her own documentary on Stearns County moonshine and even had her son film interviews. Davis shared it all with Nathe and Shapiro, becoming a co-producer in the new "Grain to Glass" film.

The movie does a good job explaining how the Polish and German Catholics who dominated Stearns County had brought their beer-drinking culture to central Minnesota. These weren't the teetotaler Lutherans populating much of the state.

"When Prohibition was passed, even the priests thought it was nonsense," Nathe said. "They told their parishioners that even though it may be illegal, it was not immoral to provide for their families the only way they could."

One great anecdote in the film explains how destitute farmers would fall behind in their church donations, so they'd pay with whiskey jugs, which the priests would sell to raise church funds.

"Stearns County is full of grand Catholic cathedrals, every town has one more ornate than the next," Nathe said. At least one of those, the Church of St. Benedict in Avon, was built in the 1920s thanks to moonshine proceeds, the filmmakers say.

After Prohibition's repeal in 1933, Stearns County farmers didn't become Jack Daniels or Jim Beam. They went back to their quiet, legal farming ways.

Nathe, Shapiro and Davis have now yanked back the curtain to give us another glimpse at this curious chapter of Minnesota history. They also detail how microdistillers are currently resurrecting the Minnesota 13 brand with a new clear whiskey made at the old Hamm's Brewery on St. Paul's East Side.

"Minnesota 13 was created by churchgoing farmers with the support of everyone in their community," Nathe said. "Farmers and priests cooking and selling moonshine right in the heart of Minnesota."



Curt Brown's tales about Minnesota's history appear each Sunday. Readers can send him ideas and suggestions at mnhistory@startribune.com. A collection of his columns is available as the e-book "Frozen in History" at startribune.com/ebooks.