The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-02-06
enAvDpop NORRIS r.lnDoNpD.
A Remarkable Criminal Who Will spend
 His Ninety Ninth Birthday at Homo.

(From the Atlanta Constltution.)
 Montgomery, Ala, Jan. 1S.-President Cleveland wired a New Years present in the shape of pardon to William Norris, the Nestor of counterfeiters- perhaps the senior of all offenders against Uncle Sam. The old veteran was released on the 1st, and went to his home, high up among the hills of De Kalb couaty. where he will spend his ninety-ninth birthday. surrounded by his friends and neighbors.
 "Grandpop" Norris, as his jail friends and the Federal court officials have for several years known him, is 8 charac~ ter with as unique history behind him as has anybody hereabout In his century of existence he has seen about as many sides of life as ever fell to one mans lot. He has occupied every rela- ton from a religious evangelist to counterfeiter, from a clock manufactur- CT to a maker of ''moonshine" whiskey, from the proprietor of a gold mine to owner alone of a rough hut high on a mountain peak.
 If the old man would talk he could tell a great deal, but he is disposed to be reticent. He says one thing he has learned in the past ninety-nine years Is to use his head rather than his mouth. However, from acquaintances inside the jail and out, enough of his history has been learned to make it ev- ident that his life has been one of ad- Wantl1rn rd pf lyo1o ;o octc
 He was born three years before the nineteenth century came into existence in the Greenville district, South Caroli- na. His father was a good man and a patriot, having been killed in an en- gagement at sea in the war of 1912.
 Young Norris received as good an ed ucation as the condition around him admitted of, and soon after he, reached his maturity he married one of the first young women of his district Five children were born to them, most of whom have raised large families in the Greenville district and gone to their re- ward beyond Norris was engaged in the manufacture and repair of clocks and watches and was taking a promi- nent stand in the business world, it is stated, when his wife, to whom he was very devoted, died. His grief was so acute that he became demoralized and allowed his business to go to wreck He finally abandoned it, and entered the ministry as a travelling evangelist. He moved about from place to place and finally located in De Kalb county, Ga, where he married, after a while, a Miss Nation, who is also said to have been an estimable woman. Norris re- suned his jewelry and clock work and was on the road to success again, when his second wife died, leaving no chill dren.
 Upon her death Norris promptly for sock his bench and resumed his minis terial functions He journeyed to the far west as a preacher of the gospel and remained in that new and wild country for about twenty-five years. Wonderful stories are told about him while in the west. Much that is rela- ted perhaps lacks foundation in fact. There appears to be little doubt, how ever, that he lived every minute of those twenty-five years, and played at various times in the role of preacher, soldier, trapper, mine proprietor, saloon keeper and all-round artist
 About the time of the close of the civ il war he came back to De Kalb county, Georgia He was then almost seventy years old, but he did not look nor feel more than forty and it took him but a very short while to arrange another marriags-this time with Miss Fitts- of Cherokee county. Two years later he removed to De Kalb county, Alaba- ma, and built home among it's noun tains, where he has since resided Five children were the result of his last un- ion, all of whom are now living in De Kalb.
 Norris is and has always been a me- chanical genius. With the rudest of tools he fashions the most delicate of instruments. He appears to have in herited absolute nastership of the me- chanical arts. It is said that he can take a trace chain or a ploughshare and a cows horn and make a knife or a razor that would make either Mr. Wos- tenholm or MT. Rogers ashamed of him. self. He can scarcely see a foot in front of him, and yet he can accom- plish mechanical feats that are as- founding.
 Living, as he has been for thirty years, in a community of counterfeit CTS and Illicit distillers, and being of a kindly, accommodating nature, it was not surprising that he should, in his leisure moments, have turned his tal- ents into service for his friends and neighbors. It is said that to his inge- nuity is due the invention of the 'washtub still," which for so long a time deluded the United States mar shals. This was a miniature distilling apparatus, just large enough to fill up a big washtub. It was an inexpensive affair, and almost any countrymar could afford several of them. When ever the revenues" approached it was an easy matter to turn the tubs upside down and the officers would ride on with the impression that the industri. ous housewife had been washing the family 1inen-or rather homespun. It was a great improvement on the cum bersome mountain stills, with their great pillars of smoke pointing the off, cers to their whereabouts. The wash tub still was cinch until a particular ly argus-eyed officer caught on, after which their use was abandoned.
 For several years past counterfeit