Did an Evergreen man drown after being dropped into a barrel of whiskey?

I recently finished reading “Ghosts and Goosebumps: Ghost Stories, Tall Tales and Superstitions from Alabama” by Jack and Olivia Solomon and was pleasantly surprised to find a connection between Conecuh County and one of the stories in the book.

The book, originally published in 1981 by the University of Alabama Press and reprinted in 1994 by the University of Georgia Press, contains a collection of old folk stories and superstitions from central and southeastern Alabama.

“The bulk of the material was gathered in the course of field investigations made between 1958 and 1962 by Troy State University students enrolled in an introductory folklore course,” the book’s forward reads. “The volume also includes folk tales and selections from the Alabama Slave Narratives gathered in Alabama by field workers in the National Writers’ Project: Folklore Division, of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as some findings reported by students in folklore classes at Alexander City State Junior College, 1972-1977. Excerpts from the Alabama Slave Narratives were made from the original manuscripts deposited in the Alabama State Department of Archives and History in Montgomery; the WPA folk tale selections were chosen from the manuscripts housed in the Library of Congress.”

In selections from the Alabama WPA Folklore collection, readers will find a story titled “The Strange Demise of John Q.A. Warren,” as told by Annie Dee Dean of Evergreen.

According to that humorous tall tale, John Q.A. Warren was a short man and weighed 200 pounds or more. Because Warren was so short and fat – he kept two servants with him at all times. Wherever Warren went, his servants followed, mostly to place him on and off his horse. When he wasn’t on horseback, Warren usually couldn’t do much but just sit around because his legs were too unsteady to hold him up.

After years and years of drinking, he couldn’t get satisfied on a reasonable amount of his favorite beverage. He eventually got so desperate that he ordered and paid for two tremendous barrels full of whiskey from Mobile, reportedly the finest whiskey that was in the Port City.

When the barrels arrived, according to this tale, Warren stripped off his clothes and made his servants drop him into one of the barrels of liquor. Once inside the barrel, Warren had his servant pour the contents of the other barrel in around him.

And “jes’ as long as his goozle could run up en down,” Warren kept swallowing and swallowing while his servants continued to pour the whiskey into the barrel. Eventually, Warren just “lopped over” dead and died right there in the whiskey.

While “Ghosts and Goosebumps” is full of dozens of stories just like the one above, I didn’t run across any others with such an obvious connection with Evergreen.

In the end, I enjoyed the book and found it very similar to the book,” 13 Alabama Ghosts and Jeffery” by Kathryn Tucker Windham and Margaret Gillis Figh. Any of you in the reading audience, who have read that Alabama folklore classic, will probably enjoy “Ghosts and Goosebumps.”