01/28/2026
On January 7, 1870, Harry McCoy was born right here in Williamsport to blacksmith Elbert McCoy and Emma Ardinger. By the time he died in 1941, everyone knew him as "Snap" McCoy—Washington County's most prolific Prohibition moonshiner.
Nobody knows where the nickname came from. That part of the story died with him.
Here's what we do know:
Snap's father died of tuberculosis when he was eight, leaving his mother to raise five children alone. He grew up in Williamsport during the railroad boom—the Cumberland Valley Railroad reached town in 1872, and the Western Maryland Railroad arrived in 1873, connecting directly to the C&O Canal.
He only finished the fourth grade. But by age 30, Snap was working as a conductor for the Western Maryland Railroad out of Williamsport. A 1906 photograph shows him posing at the Williamsport train station with his friend Sam McClannahan, a train visible over their shoulders.
Then came Prohibition.
In 1920, Snap moved his wife Maude and their six children to Hagerstown. Somewhere along the way, he traded his conductor's uniform for a still.
He operated out of Four Locks, below Clear Spring, cooking corn into moonshine while Al Capone and Bugs Moran were making headlines in Chicago. Snap wasn't as famous. But he was persistent.
He was arrested in 1929. Then again in 1932—twice. The November '32 raid hit locations across the county, including Williamsport. Federal agents from Baltimore joined local officers to round up 19 people. Snap was one of them.
Prohibition ended in 1933. Snap kept making moonshine anyway. His last arrest came in February 1934.
He died August 20, 1941, at 71. He's buried at Rose Hill Cemetery with Maude.
Williamsport has produced generals, founders, and Civil War heroes. It also produced Snap McCoy. We contain multitudes.
📖 Research: Abigail Koontz, Washington County Historical Society
📸 Photo courtesy of the Washington County, MD, Historical Society
One of the young men in the back row is Harry ‘Snap’ McCoy; the other is his friend Sam McClannahan. But the information on the back of the photo, taken in 1906 at the Western Maryland Railroad station in Williamsport, doesn’t indicate which is which.
