Fort Wayne’s 5 greatest moonshiners
Life in Fort Wayne over the years has challenged many residents. A little nip gets more than a few through the week, even if imbibing wasn’t always legal or advisable. Here are five of the most infamous moonshiners in Fort Wayne history.
1. “Reverend” Cornelius Maplewood (1878-1947): The Holy Spirit Distributor
Cornelius Maplewood wasn’t technically a reverend—he just wore a clerical collar to funerals and claimed divine inspiration whenever the police came knocking. Operating out of what appeared to be a modest Lutheran church on Calhoun Street, Maplewood ran the most sophisticated theological bootlegging operation in three counties.
His signature product, “Communion Wine Plus,” was technically blessed by an actual priest (Maplewood paid Father O’Malley in cases of the stuff), which meant customers could drink themselves into oblivion while maintaining the comforting illusion of religious observance. Local legend suggests Maplewood’s operation was so convincing that the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend accidentally ordered forty cases for Easter services in 1923, resulting in the most enthusiastically attended resurrection celebration in church history.
Maplewood’s downfall came when he attempted to franchise his operation, sending recruitment letters that promised potential partners they could “spread the good word and excellent hooch.” Federal agents, who apparently could read, showed up three weeks later. He served eighteen months in Leavenworth, where he started a prison choir that suspiciously always sounded drunk.
2. Gladys “The Chemist” Burkhart (1891-1969): When Science Meets Cirrhosis
Before there were craft distilleries with exposed brick and pretentious tasting notes, there was Gladys Burkhart, who held a degree in chemistry from Purdue and an absolute contempt for Prohibition. Operating from her modest home laboratory on the city’s south side, Burkhart didn’t just make moonshine—she engineered it with the precision of a NASA launch sequence.
Her competitors produced liquor that could strip paint. Gladys produced liquor that tasted like paint stripper but at least wouldn’t make you go blind. Probably. Her secret? A proprietary filtering system involving cheesecloth, activated charcoal, and according to unverified sources, a blessed rosary from Reverend Maplewood’s operation. Professional courtesy among criminals was still a thing back then.
Burkhart’s most legendary achievement was creating “Fort Wayne Fog,” a clear liquor so potent that three Rivers Festival would later name a weather phenomenon after it (citation definitely needed). She claimed it was 190 proof. The coroner’s office claimed it was 190 proof. The difference was Gladys meant it as a selling point.
She never got caught, retiring in 1934 to write a cookbook that was absolutely, definitely just about cooking and not at all a coded manual for home distilling. The recipes for “Special Apple Juice” and “Grandma’s Medicinal Tonic” remain suspicious to this day.
3. The Klopfenstein Brothers: Germanic Efficiency Meets American Lawlessness
Friedrich, Wilhelm, and the unfortunately named Adolphus Klopfenstein emigrated from Bavaria with brewing expertise, family recipes, and absolutely no intention of respecting American legal frameworks. When Prohibition arrived, they treated it like a particularly aggressive bout of weather—unpleasant, but ultimately something to work around.
Operating from a series of barns throughout rural Allen County, the Klopfensteins ran what historians have called “the most Teutonic crime syndicate Indiana has ever produced.” They kept meticulous ledgers, filed their illegal earnings as “agricultural products” on tax forms, and once sent the IRS an apologetic letter about a mathematical error in their bootlegging income report. The agent who received it reportedly stared at it for twenty minutes, then filed it under “Too Honest To Prosecute.”
Their product, “Klopfenstein’s Korrect Kornwhiskey” (the brothers loved alliteration almost as much as they loved ignoring federal law), became the unofficial drink of Fort Wayne’s underground speakeasies. It tasted like someone had distilled a high school reunion—uncomfortable, vaguely Germanic, but ultimately memorable.
The operation ended in 1931 when Wilhelm accidentally mailed their distribution ledger to the Bureau of Prohibition instead of their accountant. The judge, impressed by their bookkeeping, gave them suspended sentences if they promised to open a legitimate brewery. They did. It closed in 1957, outlasted by their criminal enterprise by twenty-six years.
4. “Silent” Edna Kowalski (1902-1983): The Mute Moonshine Maestro
Edna Kowalski couldn’t speak—a childhood illness had taken her voice—but she communicated through the universal language of extremely illegal alcohol. Operating from a network of safe houses throughout Fort Wayne’s Polish community, Kowalski ran her empire through an elaborate system of hand signals, written notes, and occasionally just pointing at things very emphatically.
Her signature move was delivering moonshine in milk bottles to customers’ doorsteps at dawn, leading confused Fort Wayne residents to believe they’d subscribed to the world’s most effective dairy service. “I ordered cottage cheese and woke up in my neighbor’s azaleas” became a common complaint at city council meetings, though officials could never quite trace the source.
Kowalski’s operation was so quiet—literally and figuratively—that Prohibition agents suspected she was running a front for Chicago’s outfit. When they finally raided her primary location in 1929, they found seventeen stills, two hundred gallons of mash, and Edna calmly playing solitaire. She wrote them a note: “You boys want a drink?” One agent reportedly said yes. He was fired.
She beat every charge through a legal technicality: every witness testified they’d “never heard her confess to anything.” Her lawyer was either brilliant or just lucky that judges in the 1920s took words very literally.
5. Chester “Chemistry Set” Morrison (1895-1953): When Moonshining Becomes Performance Art
Chester Morrison didn’t just make moonshine—he made it a spectacle. A former carnival worker and amateur magician, Morrison treated bootlegging like dinner theater, complete with costume changes and unnecessary pyrotechnics. His speakeasy, hidden beneath a legitimate magic shop on Broadway, featured shows where Morrison would “magically produce” liquor from top hats, sawing assistants in half while drunk, and once made a federal agent disappear (he was actually just very lost in the basement).
His signature product, “Morrison’s Miraculous Elixir,” came with a warning label that read: “May cause: merriment, poor decisions, impromptu musical numbers, and temporary belief that you can fight.” The label was more accurate than most pharmaceutical disclosures today.
Morrison’s downfall was appropriately theatrical. During a 1932 raid, he attempted to escape through a trap door, got stuck halfway, and spent forty minutes entertaining the arresting officers with jokes while the fire department cut him free. He was sentenced to two years but performed at the prison talent show so effectively that his sentence was reduced for “contributions to institutional morale.”
After release, he opened a legitimate magic shop and never spoke of his moonshining days, except during every single magic show, where he would say, “And now I’ll make this rabbit disappear—much like I made evidence disappear in 1932.” The statute of limitations had expired. Chester just couldn’t resist a callback.
The Spirits That Haunt Us
These five legends of Fort Wayne’s fermenting underground remind us that even in America’s straightest-laced cities, there’s always someone willing to risk federal prosecution for the noble cause of getting their neighbors spectacularly drunk. Their legacy lives on in Fort Wayne’s craft distillery scene, though modern operators insist their similarities to these historical figures are “purely coincidental” and “please stop asking about our filtration systems.”
The city has never officially recognized these contributions to local culture, probably because memorializing felons remains politically complicated. But on quiet nights in Fort Wayne, if you listen carefully, you can almost hear the ghost of Gladys Burkhart muttering, “I should’ve patented that recipe.”
