The grey headstone looks like many others in the cemetery surrounding the old sanctuary of Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Moseley, but a few taps on this grave marker quickly demonstrates that it is hollow and made of metal.
The headstone's inscription tells you that Mrs. Sarah Burke was born in 1850 and died in 1911, but if this “stone” could talk, it would have other tales to tell.
It seems that a local bootlegger who lived near the western Chesterfield County church found Mrs. Burke's headstone to be of great commercial value during the 1920s. In the heyday of Prohibition, moonshiners devised clever ways to traffic in illegal sales of liquor. Bolted to the back of Mrs. Burke's marker is a metal plate which can be unscrewed and opened. Customers would leave money inside the headstone and later return to collect distilled spirits left by the bootlegger.
“I've heard the story ever since I was knee-high to a duck,” claims Ruth Hall, a long-time member of Mount Hermon in her late 70s. She and her family are descended from two charter members who helped constitute the congregation in 1835. Mrs. Hall takes particular delight in strolling across Genito Road from the new church (built in 2003) with anyone who wants to step back in time to see the “Bootleg Stone.”
“Of course, back then, the church was way out in the country, and these roads [Genito Road and Mount Hermon Road] were just dirt lanes,” says Hall. “People give me a hard time and ask me how come I know so much about it,” she laughs, “but I'm just telling them what's been told to me.”
No one who knows Hall would even think she was one of the bootlegger's customers. Who might have used the stone remains a mystery, but the “Bootleg Stone” is still there, right behind the cemetery maintenance shed. Folks today find it to be quite empty, but stories of its clandestine use still fill the imagination.
Lee Ellison is pastor of Mount Hermon Baptist Church in Moseley.