Tall Tales

Big Haley Mullins was Mahalia Collins Mullins. She was born in 1824 in Hawkins County, Tennessee and became a local legend for her moonshining, her larger than life personality and size, and the number of children she had. Some say she had 13 children and others say she had 20 children. What we do know is that she outlived her husband and made a decent living on her boutique moonshine that folks came from all over to buy.

Haley’s run-ins with the law were over the fact that she just didn’t think it fair to pay taxes on her liquor since the government had unfairly denied her family their ancestral claims to the land due to the government’s failure to recognize her family as members of the Cherokee tribe.  She decided not to pay taxes, so the government issued a $1,000 reward for her capture. Despite the grand amount of the bounty, bringing Haley in was no small feat since her home was at the top of a mountain ridge and dragging her in, since she had no plans to assist, was more work than any lawman wanted to tackle.

Big Haley lived to the age of 73 years at which time she finally succumbed to the effects of her ill health due to the elephantiasis from which she’d suffered so many years. By the time of her death in 1898, the advanced state of elephantiasis made it impossible to move her far from her house and she was laid to rest just outside her front window along with her bed acting as her coffin.

Folks can visit her home that has since been moved off the mountain and down into Vardy.