On a January day in 1919, horses were pulling a sleigh full of barrels along a road in East Livermore when one of the barrels fell, spilling molasses all over the snow.

According to an article in the Lewiston Evening Journal, this small incident led to some impressive detective work, a frantic cross country chase, and charges from a new federal crime.

When Sheriff Fred Stevens heard about the spilled molasses, he became immediately suspicious. He asked around and discovered that a man named Fournier lived in the house to which the barrels were being delivered. Stevens suspected that either Fournier was fixing a lot of baked beans, or he was using the molasses for illegal ends.

Warrant in hand, Stevens went to the neighborhood and stopped a man along the road to ask if Fournier lived nearby. The stranger said yes; in fact, he had been working there, but had just quit. Fournier was at the house now, he said, so Stevens and two of his deputies went to investigate.

They found an old run-down house on an abandoned farm. Most of the windows were broken and most of the rooms empty. In the kitchen, the officers found a sickly looking woman and a 7-year-old girl dressed in rags. The woman was by the stove stirring a barrel full of molasses, potatoes, prunes, corn, raisins and grain. The mashed seethed and boiled as the potato yeast fermented the brew. The woman, Mary Sweeney, was making liquor.

The production, sale and consumption of liquor had been illegal in Maine since 1851, but the timing of this discovery was notable because it came in the wake of Prohibition. The federal amendment making alcohol illegal across the nation had been ratified only the day before.

In the midst of this squalid atmosphere, Stevens began asking questions and looking for Fournier. It didn’t take long to determine that the man they had talked to outside the house, the one who had just quit was Fournier himself.

Deputies Stewart and Johnson set out in urgent pursuit of the bootlegger. Following tracks in the snow, they ran for miles through farmland, swampland and forest and finally caught up with Fournier 10 miles farther in Gilbertville.

Fournier was taken by train to Portland, immediately arraigned on the charge of operating a distillery in violation of federal laws and held for $800 in bail. He claimed he had made very little liquor, but investigators found five large piles of mash in his back yard. They speculated that beneath the snow may lie dozens of jugs of illegal moonshine.

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past ten years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington, [email protected]. Additional research by UMF student David Farady.