When he was a boy, Thomas Mayes Angle wrote in 1926, he was always looking for diamonds in the sand of the branches and creeks of Caswell County, North Carolina. He once found a crystal rock of about two pounds. “I felt sure for a long time," Angle said, "that my fortune was made. I had found the long looked for diamond and I never will forget how badly I felt when the discovery was made that it was only quartz.” As a grown man, Angle may have thought by operating distilleries he could discover the equivalent of that two pound diamond and make his fortune. Again he was mistaken — and paid a price.
Angle was born in June 1863 in Iredell County, North Carolina, the son of Solomon and Eleanor (Durham) Angle. His father, a Confederate war veteran, was a dentist and claimed the title “Doctor,” even to his gravestone. There may be some doubt as to his credentials since North Carolina had no dental college until 1950 and Virginia’s first such dates to 1893 when Sol, as he was known, was 70 years old.
Tom received his education in local schools and apparently early on gravitated to farming, likely having a small distillery on the property. In March 1899 he married Eva Margaret Staton, a local woman who was six years younger. In quick succession, the couple would have two boys, Montrose, born in 1900 and Solomon, 1901. A third son, Thomas S., arrived in 1907.
In the early 1900s Jack Miles, the aging owner of a distillery in Anderson Township, Caswell County, North Carolina, hearing of Angle’s abilities as a distiller, offered him the job of managing his plant. Likely feeling the need for increased income as family man, Angle agreed, moving his wife and children 120 miles west to Milton, a town adjacent to the Virginia border. There Angle established himself as a distiller and liquor dealer.
As a demonstration of his desire to put down roots, he bought a handsome home near Milton, one formerly owned by Dr. W. L. Stamps who called it Glenburnie. Set among towering trees and surrounded by farmland the house featured large windows, a wide entry way and spacious front porch. It is pictured here as it looked in the early 1900s.
As one biographer blandly put it: “It appears that the distillery business eventually caused legal difficulties for Thomas Mayes Angle.” Indeed. In a case the newspapers called “very important,” Angle and three members of the well known North Carolina Sprinkle distilling family [see my post of April 22, 2014] were charged with defrauding the government of $100,000 in whiskey taxes and hauled into Federal Court in Greensboro. Another defendant already had been convicted.
The outcome of the trial has not been recorded. It would not be a surprise to learn that it ended in a hung jury. According to a press account, after an initial jury had been selected Angle’s attorney “asked all who had formed or expressed an opinion that the defendants were guilty to retire.” Nine jurors immediately got up and left. My guess is that they did so to escape ruling on the case out of sympathy for the defendants. Local juries often tended to be partial to the accused, whom they may have known personally.
Even if he did not face punishment, Angle likely was out of work as the law allowed Federal authorities to confiscate the Milton distillery and shut it down. Before long, however, another opportunity arose only a dozen miles away across the Virginia line in the city of Danville, shown here. 
Adjacent to a grist mill owned by a Captain J. Hutch Pigg, was a whiskey-making facility known as the Dry Fork Distillery. In the photo above, the building, made of corregated steel, can be seen tucked a corner of the wooden mill. The structure shown below also is said to have been part of the complex. Despite his earlier problems with federal authorities Angle was hired as distillery manager.
The Dry Fork Distillery was in an excellent position to become prosperous and make him rich. As one observer noted about Danville: “ Distilleries have sprung up like mushrooms around this city since the recent temperance laws were adopted in North Carolina. Being only three miles from the North Carolina border line, Danville is an ideal shipping point to Greensboro, Durham, Charlotte and other ‘dry’ towns.” The production capacity of the Dry Point Distillery was about 1,200 barrels annually, amounting to between 50,000 and 60,000 gallons. Tom Angle could anticipated the fortune he had dreamed of as a boy.
Despite his earlier brush with the law the North Carolinian apparently had not yet learned his lesson. When two years of his management resulted in unusually significant growth in profitability, Federal authorities suspected that the Dry Fork Distillery was producing and shipping out large quantities of whiskey daily in excess of the amount on which tax was being paid.
At least a dozen revenue officers were stationed in and around Danville in an effort to gather evidence of fraud. Contacted by a Washington Post reporter, Angle denied any wrong-doing but admitted that agents had been shadowing his and other locations for some time. “‘Last Saturday night, six officers slept in the woods near here and in the morning following inspected the still,” he told the reporter.
The Dry Fork Distillery subsequently was raided and shut down by authorities. Angle was ordered to post a bond of $4,000 ($88,000 in today’s dollar) in order to reopen if everything was found in order. An investigative report to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue found, however, that Angle’s plant had been defrauding the government out of internal revenue taxes by means of double runs and other methods, thereby evading paying the excise of $1.10 on every gallon of spirits produced. The report further claimed that fraudulent operations had been going on for about two years. If the estimates provided by the investigating officers were correct, for nearly every gallon on which the tax had been paid another gallon had been surreptitiously manufactured.
At that point the Dry Fork Distillery was liable of being forfeited and sold by authorities, along with sixty barrels of whiskey — nearly 3,000 gallons — taken in the raid. The total value was estimated at $9,400 (almost $207,000 today). A representative of the company, likely Captain Pigg, approached the revenue officers and offered to settle the matter by paying a $7,000 penalty. The offer was rejected, the plant and liquor ordered to be sold, and Angle and others involved were prosecuted criminally.
As was common in those cases the matter dragged on for years. Although the seizure had occurred early in 1905, not until 1908 did a Federal grand jury return its indictments against the officers and directors of the company. The Wine and Spirits Journal noted: “The main prosecution will be made against T. M. Angle who was manager of the distillery.” The criminal trial did not occur until April, 1910, when Angle was found guilty on five counts. Subsequent civil suits for payment of unpaid liquor taxes against him were not decided until the following November.
Whether or not Angle ever served time or how much is unclear. He continued to live with his family at Glenburnie and was recorded in both the 1910 and 1920 census occupied in agriculture. A local newspaper obituary called him “a successful farmer and throughout his active life displayed a large interest in community affairs, being for many years a political leader.” My efforts have been unavailing in finding corroborating evidence of Angle’s community service or political endeavors.
A 1926 notice advertised the sale of two T. M. Angle farms outside Milton, one of 210 acres said to be excellent for tobacco growing or home sites and a second of 106 acres located on low grounds along the Dan River. A band concert and raffle of $100 were offered as a lure to potential buyers. Three years later Tom Angle died, the cause given as diabetes and chronic hepatitis exacerbated by the flu. He was survived by his widow, Eva, and three sons. After a funeral service in his home, he was buried in Cedars Cemetery at Milton.
After Angle’s death Eva continued to live at Glenburnie with her youngest son, Thomas. She was away in Greensboro on June 30, 1932, when about 1 a.m. the pilot of a small mail plane passing over the home noticed flames and by flying low over the area and making maximum noise alerted Thomas who was asleep in the house.
He and neighbors were able save some furniture but the house was destroyed. A photo of the burned out Glenburnie indicates the complete ruin it became from a fire believed to have originated in a frame kitchen at the rear. It was reported that there was no insurance on the structure or its contents. Not only did Tom Angle never find his two pound diamond, now his gem of a home, Glenburnie, was gone.
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