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United States Department of the Interior National( 4 #8 Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section number- . s___ Page 2 During the mid 1930s Mack Rigsbee and his family lived in the vicinities of Henderson , Oxford , and Durham . Mack Rigsbee , sometime car dealer and filling station operator , was charged and convicted in September , 1935 of illegal possession of whiskey . Law enforcement officers had stopped him driving through •Durham , NC , . with his grown sons , Wallace and Warren . They found three one half - gallon jars of illegal whiskey . He was convicted and sentenced to eighteen months on the Durham County Jail road gang . Three months later , in December , law enforcement officials found twelve half - gallon jars of whiskey hidden in the attic of the Rigsbee ' s Granville County home . Court records frequently mention that two new Ford V - 8s were parked in the yard . The couple was tried and convicted of illegal possession ' and - transportation of whiskey and Mack was sentenced to twelve months on the Granville County Jail road gang . One witness testi .fied;; . that he had known Mrs . Rigsbee . !& for ten years and , ,. that , she, . . had. a bad reputation ' for " handling - liquor " . . Another witness testified .. that 4he had known Mrs . Rigsbee since 1929 and . she4 : had once. lived " be .tweeTv Durham and Hillsborough in a rock house .* *" Other testimony - , mentioned . that 87 gallons of liquor were* found hidde in a closet . of the Rigsbee ' s home at an eWE arlier date . Both . convictions . were unsuccessfully appealed to the State "Supreme Court by Mack Rigsbee . ( State . . v . Mack Rigsbee . v 21 . 1 NC _ 128 , 189 # S . B *: 'S 181 ( 1937 ) . ) . The court records , while shedding little light on Rigsbee ' s Orange County activities , do lend credence to his generally held reputation as a bootlegger . His Tudor Revival country6 estate home near Hillsborough is not only a - well -preserved 1920s landmark but also a unique example of the lifestyle of one the area ' s better known bootleggers . Social History Context . Prohibition became law in North Carolina in 1909 and nationally in 19 20 . Bootlegging required little capital when undertaken on a modest scale and in many North - Carolina counties it served to offset the financial travails of the depression . Orange County was considered one of the staters " premier moonshining counties . " The illicit manufacture and sale of whiskey continued to be common practice for many years even after the 1933 repeal of Prohibition . ( Parramore , pp . 15 - 16 ) . Although bootlegging was a widespread illegal activity in the 1920s , and , on a smaller scale , until the recent past , the Rock House is the first site associated with it which has been documented by the North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office .