Bondurant Cousins

I had warmed up my vegetable soup and just pulled the cheese biscuits from the oven. As I let them cool down I popped on the Netflix and started a search for something to watch while I ate. A movie called Lawless pops up in the search. 

I view more to get an idea about this movie I have never heard of and came out in 2012. It stars Shia LaBeouf, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Guy Pearce and others. It is about the Bondurant Brothers.  I have never heard of them, nor had I read the book The Wettest County in the World by Matt Bondurant the movie was adapted from. I pass it by. After I eat I get back to ghost hunting. I am chasing the Salle family. They are my Grandmothers people. Jane Salle is my 4^th Great Grandmother. She is named after her mother Jane. Jane Bondurant. What??

                                        Bondurants

Yes it seems that those adorable, moonshining, bootlegging Bondurant Brothers are my cousins, my 5^th Cousins 2 times removed, but still my cousins. We share a Great grandfather, John Pierre Bondurant II born in 1709, my 6^th Great Grandfather. I plan to watch the movie this evening when I get home from the family dinner out.

The three brothers in the story are Andrew Jackson Bondurant, they call him Jack, James Forrest Bondurant who they call Forrest, and Benjamin Howard Bondurant who goes by Howard. The year is 1931 and Prohibition is in full swing. These boys are stilling moonshine and selling it out of their gas station and the back of a truck.  A Special Deputy for the  Virginia Commonwealth Attorney, Mason Wardell shows up and tries to manhandle them into a piece of the their moonshining and bootlegging profits. Forrest stands up to him and refuses.

                                  Jack 

A few days later while Jack, the youngest of the boys by 10 years is pirating some distilling equipment from a known associate’s home; when he is brutally beaten by the Special Deputy to send his older brothers a message.  At one point Forrest is attacked by mobsters, from Chicago who slash his throat and rape his girlfriend. Here is how this went down. During a meeting with the mobsters they harass Forrest’s girlfriend with crude remarks and suggestions. The boys are not going to let them disrespect this girlfriend so they beat them up. The mobsters return to the scene and attack them both savagely.

The murder of their friend, Cricket sends Jack over the edge and he declares war. He takes off after the Special Deputy, his brothers go in hot pursuit of their little brother and then the rest of the men who were gathered in town to discuss the “shake down” the Special Deputy has been doing jump in their trucks and go after the all the brothers. There is a standoff and a fire fight and the Special Deputy goes down in a hail of gunshot. The local police department who have also had enough of the pompous, over perfumed, glove wearing, Special Deputy decide to let the brothers have their revenge. They were witness to the evil deeds by the man. He is the one who beat up Jack. He is the one who murdered Cricket. He ordered the tarring and feathering of a cousin of the brothers. He destroyed the stills and the men who would not bow to him.

                                         Unknown Moonshiner in handcuffs

All this happened in Franklin County Virginia. Moonshine exists in West Virginia too. Nobody talks about it. Many people drink it. My granny made wine with local wild grapes and my uncle, well…. let’s just say he introduced the boys to moonshine one summer afternoon.

                               Raid on a moonshine still in Boyd County, Kentucky. c1928.

My father’s brothers and their wives are here with my mom for a Pearis Boys reunion. They do this once a year and alternate which brother and wife play hostess. At dinner the other night an aunt informs me that I have the wrong name attached to the wrong face on a couple of kin folks. Really?? YIKES!!! Please tell me which ones so I can correct it! These are on a public forum so now others also have it wrong. She just stares at me with some weird deer in the headlight version of feigned superiority. This of course disturbs me. She then directs her attention somewhere else. I speak her name loudly and ask again for her to tell me which ones. She reluctantly looks back at me and then gets the uncle to agree. Waves her hand in the air and dismisses the whole thing with an “I can’t remember it was a while back!” WHAT!!??!! So they both bloody knew it was wrong and instead of correcting the mistake by telling me they did nothing?? Who does that?? What kind of people knowingly withhold that kind of information. INTEGRITY!!! People !!!! Get some!!! These are also your kin that are now going to go through the rest of history with the wrong name to their face. The photos are also on other public websites and have been in publications and quite possibly are wrong.

 Are these some I got wrong? Well then, who are they???