Franklin Roosevelt talking with Georgia farmers in “The Cove” in Meriwether County.

It's known that President Franklin D. Roosevelt liked to serve liquor at the Little White House in Warm Springs and it's believed he got much of his moonshine in "The Cove" on the Flint River.

Moonshine was illegal even after Repeal. It was unaged corn whisky made in hidden spots along the Flint River. One such still was forever after referred to as ‘Roosevelt’s still,’ because, according to legend at least, he occasionally drove there with a Secret Service agent to chat and pick up the supplies for a party.

This criminal behavior, if it did indeed occur, was not routine procedure for stocking the liquor cabinet at the Little White House. More often, the illicit corn was brought over by a friend like Henry Toombs, who preferred it to commercial liquor, as did many Georgians. This traffic was also criminal, technically, but the county sheriff was not feared, since he was an occasional supplier to the President himself. Or so the historians believe.

From The Squire of Warm Springs by Theo Lippman, Jr.

Tagged with: People in Georgia

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Franklin Roosevelt at Warm Springs

Between 1924 and 1946, Franklin Roosevelt visited Warm Springs and Georgia forty-one times. He sought relief at the warm springs in Meriwether County. After being elected as the thirty-second president of the United States in 1932, he used his new home at Warm Springs, "The Little White House," as a retreat from the rigors of leading a nation. Between therapeutic sessions in the warm springs pools, Roosevelt would fish the waters of the Flint River, drive the countryside between Manchester, Greenville and Gay, visit the Cove for bootlegged whiskey and fiddle playing, and spend hours on Dowdell Knob just thinking as he looked out over the great river valley below him.

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