Moonshine and Murder, A Tale of Charley and Jim Fortenberry

     I never heard anyone talk about my great-grandfather. After digging into his past, I imagine that’s because his family probably thought it best left it unsaid.

     Charles B. “Charley” Fortenberry likely was born in January 1860, if that year’s census record is correct. He was five months old when the census taker came to take his count. Charley was the firstborn child of Henry P. and Nancy Fortenberry, who were 20 and 16. The family of three got a little extra income from Peter O’Bryan, a 33-year-old Irishman, who was boarding with Henry and Nancy.

     It’s doubtful anyone could have imagined that just a year or two after Charley was born, America would be divided, and Henry would be leaving his young family behind to fight with the rebels. Charley was just two years old when his father enlisted with the Cherokee Grays.

     Charley was born and raised in Alabama, one of the first Fortenberrys to be born and die in the same state. He may have moved across the state line to Georgia for a time, but there is no information to prove it, other than a newspaper article about his son, Jim. Charley is not counted in another census record until he is 40 years old. In 1900, he and his wife, Sarah Emmaline Jiles, had already married and were living in Cherokee County with their three children. Rosa was 17. James, my grandfather, was 9. Whit, who always was referred to as Uncle Whit by my dad and his siblings, was 7. Ann Fortenberry, a 30-year-old cousin, was also living with Charley and Emma. Ann and Charley were farmers.

Life in the 1900s

     In 1900, the Industrial Revolution had introduced machines and technology, luring families and immigrants to cities for hard work and access to stores and markets, but that was not Charley’s world. The airplane had not yet been invented. There was no electricity in rural homes, and, although the first subway was built in 1900 in New York City, rural families still relied on horses and carts for travel. In Cherokee County, farming was the primary way of life. Every adult person listed on the census page with Charley and his family has the occupation of farmer.

     By 1910, Charley and Emma were living in Cherokee County with their youngest son, Whit, and his wife, Claudie. Jim, their middle son (my grandfather), was a newlywed. He lived two houses down with his first wife, Fair May Brown, and her son, Norman, 5, who had taken the last name Fortenberry. Norman is listed as Jim’s “adopted son” on the census. Just a few houses down lived the O’Bryan family: J.W. 39; Ella, 34; Craven, their son, 18; Margot, 16, their daughter, and a third daughter, Corrine, 14. There’s no mention of Peter, who would have been 83.

Fair May Brown

     You never know what causes people to make the decisions they make or what life circumstances change a man, but by 1917 Charley and Jim’s lives had spiraled downward. When the rest of America was looking grimly at the draft for World War I, Charley and Jim found themselves in a war of their own.
     Jim and Fair May had a son, my Uncle Charlie. But, if you look ahead in a couple of records, you discover a few details about Fair May’s life that could indicate a very large stress point on my grandfather during this time: Fair May had been admitted to the Alabama Hospital for the Insane in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. She died there in 1918, likely after a long committal. The hospital later became known as Bryce Hospital and was Alabama’s primary psychiatric hospital. Fair May was buried in the hospital cemetery. Sadly, there are many stories of unmarked graves or graves marked with numbers rather than names in the hospital's four cemeteries. Former patients who died there were simply placed in a hole and covered over. Many graves have been relocated over the past few decades as roadways encroached on the hospital campus. There is no marked grave for Fair May.

     Whether it was Fair May’s decline, finances, addiction or some other demon that influenced them, by 1917 Charley and Jim were farmers and moonshiners who associated with notoriously dangerous people. Father and son had taken to consorting with a fellow moonshiner, Bob Smith. Bob was just a few months older than Jim and the son of the infamous Will “Belltree” Smith.

     Other people have written about Bell Tree, I’ll let them tell that part of this story.

Belltree Smith

     The following was written by Edna Smith Stephens, a descendant of Will Smith, she and her sister, Shirley Smith Dowdy, researched their infamous ancestor.

   “Many stories have been written about Will Smith.  These stories have been

highly exaggerated…He was a good businessman and generous to people in lack of the basic necessities. When a family was in need he would provide food as well as money. He was called upon to mediate disputes between his neighbors. According to many, he had a striking appearance, he was a tall, handsome man with black hair and blue eyes.  He bothered no one.  However, when confronted with a fight he never backed down.

   Will Smith gained the nickname “Belltree” by hanging a bell with a ringing rope from the limb of a large oak tree. This was done in order to sell whiskey without the customer knowing who the seller was. The sale of whiskey was illegal in Alabama, and this protected the identity of the seller.

   The buyer would place his money down, ring the bell and leave. After a while he would return and his money would be gone. Whiskey and change were in its place. The word got around, and since the location was on his land, Will was given the nickname of “Belltree” Smith. This became so well known the method was immortalized in the song “White Lightning.”

   The whiskey sold at the bell tree was not “white lighting.”  It was bonded liquor shipped by rail from the northeastern United States where it was legal.

   Several individuals who lived during this period told their children that the Bell Tree, which also was known as a blind tiger (a term for a speakeasy) was actually run by Frances Smith Tanner (Will’s sister) as a means of supporting herself.

   Others have written that a customer was killed if he did not follow the rules of the bell tree and that Belltree Smith held card games at the tree, killing anyone who won his money.

   There is much evidence pointing to Will as a womanizer. He had two women at his home besides his wife and several women lived in cabins throughout his property. It has been said that one of the women living in his house was a servant and that the other nursed the sick. This does not, however, explain children born to them at the time.

   Will Smith had many friends and acquaintances in Rome.  Among them were Dr. Robert Battey, Dr. William Harbin, Dr. Robert Harbin and the Berry family. The doctors were said to have spent many a day, sometimes a week or two at a time, hunting on Will’s lands.

   A well-known operation performed by the Harbin brothers was accomplished on Will’s land and paid for by him. A newspaper picture showing the Harbins examining the woman can be viewed in the medical section of The Rome Area History Museum.

   Much has also been written stating that Will had killed various numbers of men. The only killing of which documentation has been found is that of Joseph Hackney, for which he was tried and acquitted. Edna remembers hearing elderly family members talk about two other men Will killed. The story goes as follows:

   An elderly African American couple lived on Belltree’s land. One day two drunken hunters came to their house. The men ordered the woman to cook them something to eat.  She told them all right but that her husband would have to go outside and get her some wood for the stove. They told her husband to go, and he did. The intruders sat down at the table and began to drink more whiskey.  The woman began to prepare to cook.

   After a while, when the husband did not come back, one of the men said, “He has gone for Belltree.”  They jumped up and went out onto the porch. At this time the husband and Belltree were approaching the house. One of the drunken men raised his shotgun and fired. Belltree drew his pistol and shot the man between the eyes. The other then started to shoot but was killed before he could.

   William Anderson “Belltree” Smith was without formal education and yet he ventured into several businesses, some generally reserved for the educated.  His charcoal pits furnished the blast furnaces in the area. He raised and sold oxen, goats, milk cows, steers and pigs. He used sharecroppers on his farm lands to raise cotton and other crops. He was a one-man loan company. He imported whiskey for the Bell Tree. His ventures supported many families who worked for him. 

   On August 16, 1908, Belltree attended an all-day singing at New Bethel Church in Borden Springs, Ala. An encounter between Belltree and the Chandler brothers ended with Belltree being shot in the head. Will Chandler owed Belltree money and was asked to pay his debt. One of the Chandler brothers hit Belltree from behind with a rock, and while he was disoriented, Will Chandler shot Belltree Smith in the head.

   Will Chandler was tried for the murder of Belltree Smith. The jury found him guilty but he never served even a day of his sentence. Gov. B. B. Comer (who was rumored to be kin to Chandler) immediately gave him a full pardon.

   The following was  extracted from the Cleburne News of September 26, 1908.

   Will Chandler was placed on trial here last Wednesday evening for the killing of Will Smith, the famous Bell Tree desperado, which occurred several days ago at Borden Springs. The jury, after having been out only a few minutes, brought in a verdict of manslaughter, and placed his sentence at one year in the penitentiary. Within 30 minutes after the jury rendered its verdict, all the jurors, solicitors and the judge had signed a petition asking the governor to grant him a pardon.”

Diabolic Crime

     Nine years after his father was killed, it was Bob Smith accused of murder, and Charley and Jim Fortenberry were suspected of conspiring with him to kill the victim, Joe Moore.

     Page 4 of the Aug. 2, 1917 edition of The Cedartown Standard gave the details in a story titled, “Diabolic Crime Joe Moore Murdered at Old Bell Tree.”

     The old Bell Tree, on the line between Georgia and Alabama, was the scene of a horrible tragedy Wednesday night, making a blacker blot than usual on its unsavory reputation. For many years a famous “blind tiger,” now foul murder is added to its record

     The article states that Joe Moore had just been released on bond after being in jail on a charge of “illicit distilling.”

     Thursday morning his body was found on the roadside near the Bell Tree, the head cut off and buried in a ditch several yards away, and the upper part of the chest gone. The head showed that he had first been struck with some blunt instrument, and then decapitated. Coroner J.O. Crabb was summoned and impaneled a jury, who found that he was murdered by unknown parties. It was definitely ascertained that the crime was committed on the Polk County side of the state line. The crime was one of the most cold-blooded and diabolical ever committed in this section.

     The next week’s issue of The Cedartown Standard carried a story titled “Four Arrested For the murder of Joe Moore at the Bell Tree.” It is this article that reveals that my grandfather, Jim Fortenberry, was among those charged with Joe Moore’s murder.

     Four men—Bob and Charlie Smith and Bose Hudgins, who live over the line in Alabama, and Jim Fortenberry who lives on the Polk side of the line,--are now in the County Bastile charged with the heinous crime. Bailiff E.C. Hackney and Mr. Dan Hopkins notified the first three of the warrants against them, and they gave themselves up without extradition papers, and Fortenberry was arrested by them.

     An Alabama writer gave the details of Jim’s arrest, adding that he was arrested with his father, Charley, at the Rutherford-Collins cat house while the two were, to put it delicately, enjoying themselves with the ladies who worked there when police arrived.

     Within a couple of weeks, The Cedartown Standard, in an article titled “Bound Over For the Murder of Joe Moore at the Bell Tree,” stated that Bob and Boy Smith and Bose Hudgins had their preliminary trial last week before Squire J.A. Wilson, the case being heard Friday and Saturday. There was strong evidence that Moore had expressed fear of the men accused and that he told his wife that he was afraid to go and afraid to stay when they sent for him, it is alleged, the night of his murder, to help move a still said to belong to the principal defendant, Bob Smith, together with further evidence that Smith had made threats that he was going to kill Moore that night. Squire Wilson bound the three men over for trial without bond…The commitment trial of Jim Fortenberry was held before Squire Wilson yesterday, and he was also bound over.

     I remember my daddy saying that my grandfather had spent nine months in jail charged in association with a murder. He evidently, was kept behind bars until he testified against Bob Smith.

Fiddler’s Hollow

     The Southeastern Reporter, which chronicles court proceedings, provided transcriptions of testimony given during the trial of Bob Smith. It appears that at some point Jim Fortenberry and Bose Hudgins, charged with part of a conspiracy to kill Moore, were not tried for the murder. Charles Fortenberry, my great grandfather, testified at the trial. Here are details of the trial as reported in The Southeastern Reporter:

     Joe’s body was found July 26, 1917, in Fiddler’s Hollow, lying near the edge of the road in some bushes and near Mineral Spring, close to the residence of James Fortenberry and about a mile from the home of Charley Smith. The body was horribly mutilated; the head being severed from it and partly buried about 100 steps from the body, the breast and collar bone and other parts of the body being gone. One witness by the name of Cozzart said, “The part of the head I saw…The face was gone…I found a bullet on the sheet when we were washing him.” A pool of blood was found in the middle of the road, and there was evidence that the body had been dragged form the road to near the edge of the road, where it was found.

     On the morning following the murder, wadding from a gun and a pistol ball were found by persons who washed and dressed the body. Joe Moore had told his wife that he was going the night before his body was found to Fiddler’s Hollow to hide a still owned by Bob Smith. Bose Hudgins was waiting for him. Joe told his wife he was going to meet Bob Smith, Boy Smith, Jim Fortenberry, Mr. Lewis and Mr. Hudgins. He told his wife he would come back by midnight if he lived. That night, she said she heard the sound of gunshot and a dog barking. Mr. Moore’s body was found the next morning.

Charley Fortenberry’s Chilling Testimony

     My great-grandfather, Charley "C.B." Fortenberry, the father of Jim, testified at the trial, revealing that he, too, had been arrested for moonshining:

     “I have talked with Charlie Smith, or Boy Smith, with reference to Joe Moore. I don’t remember how many days it was, but a short time before Jim Moore was killed was the last talk me and him ever had about it. The conversation was between Bob’s and Boy’s somewhere, a place known as the pine tree. We was going along the road near that pine tree, and I asked Boy what kind of luck he had. He said he had bad luck.

     “We was talking about whisky, making a run. He said it was about like the other was. He said they had put some salt in it, or preserving powders, one, and that nobody but Joe Moore put it in; and he says, ‘I am going to talk to him, and he can’t live on the Smith estate. He has got to move. He won’t be here when the United States court sets; now, see if he is. I do not know when the United States court was to set; it was set after Moore was killed. I heard about the revenue officers arresting Joe Moore. He was arrested up at the branch right where I was arrested at the time. That was Bob’s still. I expect it was half a mile from Charlie’s still. Boy used Bob’s still before the revenuers made the raid.

     “Next morning, while going to the funeral, Bob had a talk with me. He asked me if I remembered hearing him tell me about taking care of his men; and I told him I did. He says, ‘I meant that;’ and he says, ‘That man that killed Joe Moore saved me the job.’ He says,’ I intended to kill him before the United States court set; and now, Charlie, if there is anything said, anything dropped out in this country that will throw suspicion on me and Boy. I will hear it, and he will go just like that damned son of a bitch went; he will be hauled off.’

     Boy is Charlie Smith. We was up there in jail, talking, and Boy asked me what did I know against him. I told him I didn’t know anything against him in this murder. I says, ‘As far as I know, my evidence, you can go back home.’ And went on and told him what I told here yesterday about this conversation and he asked me to screen him all I could, and not tell no more than I had to. I told him I had done swore this up here, and would have to answer the questions if they asked me.” 

     Mansell Moore, a son of the deceased, testified that he lived at Bob Smith’s, a brother of Charlie Smith. Charlie lived about one quarter mile back down the road from Bob. The deceased (Joe Moore) was working for Bob. He was making whisky for Bob Smith. When he left home that night, he came in the cook room and told the witness to keep his supper warm; he would be back about midnight, if he lived. There was evidence to the effect that both Charlie and Bob Smith had something on their clothes the day after the homicide which resembled blood spots. “They were tolerably clean, looked like they had been recently washed. The blood spots looked like they had tried to be washed off or something. (The Southeastern Reporter, Volumes 95-95)

Edna recounted this additional information about the trial evidence:

     After the crime, the sheriff had gone to Bob’s house to investigate.  He asked Bob’s wife if he could look around.  She answered, “Look all you want to. We have nothing to hide.” The sheriff saw Bob’s son George (age 9) out in the yard playing with an ax. He asked the child, “Where did you get the ax?”  George said, “Down at the spring.”

       The ax was said to have blood on it. Bob’s lawyers could have argued that anyone could have thrown it there and that there was no proof that the blood was even human, but they did not.

     Attorneys in the case painted Charlie Smith, Bose Hudgins and Jim Fortenberry as co-conspirators. A witness by the last name of Lewis testified that Bob had eight gallons of whiskey in his barn and that when he came back he had eight gallons of water. Bob was furious, and said, “Some g--damned rascal got it. We are going to kill Joe Moore tonight, and if you tell it we will kill you.”

Bob Smith Could Not Be Restrained

     Bob was found guilty the crime. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, according to The Southeastern Reporter:

     Bob was sent to prison in Bartow County, in 1918, where he became a barber and photographer. In 1925, Bob sent word to his wife to sell everything she could and raise as much money as possible.  The story is told that the warden was paid off, and one day Bob just walked out of the prison. He was not reported missing for days. It would have been easy for the law to find him, as he went home and stayed for a week.

     One day Bob told his wife, “I am going to Esom Hill and take a train to Texas to start a new life.  I will send for you later as soon as I am settled.” His wife Belle later said, “I gave him a wad of money big enough to choke a horse, and he left with Dan Hopkins.” The mystery of his disappearance is still talked about today. People with Dan Hopkins at the time of his death said Dan had confessed to killing Bob Smith.  Others said this was not true.  The truth may never be known.
     Bob left his family and no contact was ever again made with them. Other than rumors, his leaving was the last known of Robert “Bob” Smith.  His wife lived to the age of 96 and never gave up hope that one day he would come for her.  Belle Smith is buried at the Jackson Chapel Methodist Cemetery in Cave Spring. (The Rome News Tribune, page 3, Sunday, March 19, 2000)