• About

Brandon Ray Kirk

~ This site is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and promotion of history and culture in my section of Appalachia.

Brandon Ray Kirk

Monthly Archives: March 2013

Ward Jarvis

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, Braxton County, fiddler, history, music, photos, Ward Jarvis, West Virginia

Ward Jarvis

Ward Jarvis, fiddler from Braxton County, WV.

In Search of Ed Haley 83

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Green Shoal, Lincoln County Feud, Spottswood

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alice Baisden, Appalachia, blind, Cas Baisden, Clifton Mullins, Clyde Haley, Dicy Baisden, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, Green Shoal, Harts Creek, Hazard, history, Imogene Haley, John Hartford, John Henry, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Liza McKenzie, Liza Mullins, Loretta Mullins, Mag Farley, Milt Haley, Perry County, Peter Mullins, Sol Bumgarner, Trace Fork, West Virginia

We found Bum on our way up the hollow and went to sit on his porch with his aunt, Liza McKenzie, two of his sisters, Alice and Dicy — and of course Shermie. As soon as Liza figured out who we were she looked at Lawrence and said he was just a small boy the last time she’d seen him.

“Yeah, I guess around 1940 or ’41 was the last time I come to this area,” Lawrence said.

Liza said, “Well, I lived in Kentucky about sixty years. Perry County, up in Hazard.”

I said to her, “Is that where Milt Haley was from?” and she said, “I don’t know but now Ed Haley was borned and raised right around here. When he was a boy, he got up on top of that house down there where Aunt Mag used to live — in that old two-story house — and rolled off in a box. Mother said, ‘Lord, Ed, are you hurt?’ He said, ‘No, God no. It’s give me eyesight.’ He said he jarred his eyesight back.”

I liked Liza right away.

I asked her if she had any pictures and she said, “Loretta’s mother had all the pictures of Ed Haley I ever did know. They used to have a picture down there at Loretta’s of Ed’s mother. She was a pretty woman.”

She looked at Clifton and said, “Clif, I believe your mother had a picture of Ed Haley that was made down there at the old home where he was born and raised. Down there where Aunt Mag used to live. I know they had them.”

Clifton remembered it.

“Yeah, they was sitting out in the yard,” he said. “They was together. She was in the chair and he was standing. He didn’t have no pants on.”

Clifton said, “Yeah, you’re right. They was a picture down there. But I looked; they was so many pictures in that box.”

     Box of pictures? I thought.

Before I could ask about them, Clifton said, “There’s one down there faded out. It’s in a big frame. I got it in another building.”

He told me, “I can show them to ya.”

About that time, Cas Baisden came up to the porch. Bum said he was Liza’s 83-year-old twin brother. I asked Cas if he remembered Ed and he said, “I knowed him, yeah. He was raised up here. Old man Peter lived down at the mouth of the holler and his boy lived up the road here and old man Ed’d go up there and he’d come down that road a running and jumping just like he could see and cut the awfulest shine that ever was.”

Lawrence joked, “That’s probably how Clyde got to be the way he was.”

Cas said, “Yeah, I guess Clyde took after him. Clyde went out here and got down in a well once and they had the awfulest time that ever was getting him out. Way back in top of a mountain.”

I asked Cas about the first time he ever saw Ed and he said, “It’s been many a year ago. He stayed down here, him and his wife and them. They’d play music and drink and fight and scratch with one another and them boys was so mean… He’d get so drunk he couldn’t walk.”

Bum knew that Ed was real “easy to get mad about music,” but said he could get him to play nearly anything he wanted because Ed liked him. He’d ask Ed to play something like “John Henry” and he’d say, “Are you sure that’s what you want me to play? You know, I was just thinking about playing that.” If Ed didn’t like someone Bum said he’d “goof around” and not play for them.

Things kinda tapered off after that. Nobody knew anything about Ed having any brothers. Cas had heard about Ed’s father, who he thought was named Green.

“You know, he got killed when I was a little fella, I guess,” Cas said. “His name was Green. They took him over yonder on Green Shoal, they said, and killed him. Walked him down here and up Smoke House and over and down Piney and across the river.”

I asked if Lawrence looked like Ed and Liza said, “Yes, he does. Ed was a bigger man than he is. Ed was a big man.”

But Lawrence looks like Ed in the face?

“Yeah, he looks like him all over.”

Cas said, “Ed was a taller man. I guess he takes after his mother. She’s a little short woman.”

Lawrence agreed: “Yeah, she was about five feet tall — not much bigger than Aunt Liza.”

Sol Bumgarner

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Lincoln County Feud, Spottswood

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, culture, Ed Haley, genealogy, Harts Creek, history, John Hartford, life, Logan County, photos, Sol Bumgarner, Trace Fork, U.S. South, West Virginia

Sol Bumgarner, 1993

Sol Bumgarner, a key source of information about Ed Haley and the history of Trace Fork of Harts Creek, Logan County, WV, 1993

In Search of Ed Haley 82

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music, Spottswood

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, Clifton Mullins, Connie Mullins, Crawley Mountain, Ed Haley, Enslow Baisden, fiddle, Harts Creek, history, Joe Mullins, John Hartford, Lawrence Haley, Logan County, Loretta Mullins, Peter Mullins, Sol Bumgarner, Trace Fork, Turley Adams, West Virginia

I told Turley that Lawrence and I needed to visit Joe Mullins, who had been gone during our last trip to Harts Creek. Turley completely deflated us: Joe, he said, had recently suffered a stroke. He now lived with his daughter Connie Mullins in a trailer just up the creek. Turley pointed the way. Driving a short distance, Lawrence and I parked our car by the creek and walked over a little narrow bridge where an army of barking dogs greeted us. At the porch, Connie introduced us to her brother, Clifton. We stepped on inside and found Joe seated in a wheelchair, surrounded by more dogs. His mind — or at least his ability to communicate a great deal — was all but gone due to the lingering effects of his stroke. Lawrence sat next to him with his hand on his arm. Almost in tears over Joe’s condition, he tried to rekindle Joe’s memories by saying, “I’m Ed Haley’s boy.”

I hung out with Joe’s kids — Connie, Clifton and Loretta. While all were reasonably young, Clifton and Connie had Parkinson’s Disease.

“They’s four of us got it,” Clifton said. “They said it runs through the family some way another. Musta come down the tree somewhere.”

I asked him how old he was.

“38,” he said.

Clifton had just moved back to Harts.

“I got hurt in Michigan and Daddy was sick so I said, ‘Well, it’s a good chance for me to go help my daddy and my sisters.'”

Clifton’s sisters said he was the one who found Ed’s smashed fiddle years ago in the rafters of Uncle Peter’s old smokehouse.

“I was up in there — we was playing around one day — and it fell out on me,” he said. “And I just looked at it and I said, ‘Well, I’ll try to glue it together.’ I started gluing it and it wouldn’t glue so I dumped it into the creek. I didn’t know whose it was. I was about eight but all the pieces wasn’t there to it. When it hit that guy it just splintered everywhere.”

Clifton suggested that we visit Bum and his family just up the hollow. Two years earlier, Bum had told originally Lawrence and I how he had witnessed Ed smash the fiddle over a man’s head while at a tavern on Crawley Mountain. Bum lived only a short distance from Joe’s trailer, up the hollow past Uncle Peter’s old homeplace, in a house situated near Enslow Baisden’s log cabin.

In Search of Ed Haley 81

20 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Cemeteries, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music, Spottswood

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

accordion, Bernie Adams, blind, Clifford Belcher, Ed Belcher, Ed Haley, Ewell Mullins, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, history, Hoover Fork, Inez, John Adams, John Hartford, Johnny Adams, Johnny Hager, Kentucky, Liza Mullins, Milt Haley, music, Peter Mullins, Robert Martin, Turley Adams, Violet Adams, West Fork

Satisfied with our stop on West Fork, Lawrence and I said our farewells to the Kirks and went to see Turley and Violet Adams on Trace Fork. After some small talk about new developments, Turley told us about his uncle Johnny Hager and father Johnny C. Adams traveling with Ed in the early days. He said Uncle Johnny was the one who got Haley to take his music on the road, while his father just traveled around with them.

“They left here playing music together,” Turley said. “My father just helped them take care of their musical instruments — carried it around and stuff — but they done the music. He would sing with somebody but he never did sing by hisself. And Ed Belcher, I think, played with them then. He could play anything but played a guitar mostly.”

So where all did they travel to?

“They played up at Logan on the radio at one time,” Turley said. “They had a program on up there, Ed Belcher did. Oh man, that’s been back in the thirties. Maybe ’36, ’35. I was just a little bitty boy. I just heard these tales — I don’t know them for sure.”

I asked about Johnny Hager.

“I was just a great old big boy the last time I seen Johnny Hager,” Turley said. “He came to our house, stayed around a little while and left. He was kindly a small fella. My dad was, too. Ed would make two of ary one of them. He was a great big feller, Ed was. Now Ewell Mullins, they was all buddies. Now Johnny Hager and Ed could play music. I heard an old guy on television one day talking about how him and Ed used to play in front of a church somewhere together. Yeah, he called him ‘Blind Fiddling Ed Haley.’ Said he’s just a real good friend to him. But he lives in Inez, Kentucky, that feller does.”

I said, “Well, isn’t Inez where Milt is supposed to be from?”

Turley said, “Milt, now my dad just could remember him. He said he was a hard-working fellow and when he’d come in home he’d just tell them boys, ‘Right now, we got to have a fight and get everything settled and we’ll be all right.’ They liked to fight. I guess that was Ed and he had how many more — two more?”

I said, “You mean Ed had brothers?” and Turley said, “I think he did. I believe my dad said he had a brother and one of them got in a fight one time and he bit Milt’s ear off right in the yard right down there. Now, they was Milt’s boys. I guess Ed is Milt’s boy, ain’t he?”

Lawrence said he’d never heard of his father ever having any brothers or sisters, but it sure was a strange coincidence that we heard a story about “Milt’s ear” right after hearing Bob Adkins’ account of Green and “the nick.” Maybe Milt had the nick — which would’ve reversed their roles in Bob’s story of their final days.

So Ed had brothers?

“Far as I know, they was two or three more of them from the tales they told, you know,” Turley said. “Uncle Peter and Aunt Liza used to tell it. Said every time they come home — Milt and them boys — said he’d just fight with all of them at one time. Have a good time. Say, ‘Now we’re friends.’ Back then, that’s what they believed in.”

This was a major development.

“I just heard these tales,” Turley said. “I don’t know how true they are. About Milt coming home and say, ‘Now, we’ll straighten ‘er out right now and we won’t have no more problems while I’m here.’ That’s the way he run his family, you know. That old woman said, ‘I’ll agree to that. That’s the way it ought to be done.’ I don’t guess she could do anything with them boys.”

Hoping for clues about Ed’s “brothers,” I asked if any of the old gravestones in the cemetery behind Turley’s had any writing on them. Unfortunately, Violet said all the markers had rolled down the hill in recent years and the land had leveled out to where it didn’t even resemble a cemetery. All she knew about the cemetery was that there was a “big grave” in it at one time that belonged to a woman with the last name of Priest (she was the only person buried there who her mother-in-law had actually known).

Turley said he last heard Ed play the fiddle at Clifford Belcher’s tavern on Harts Creek where he played for money and drinks. Violet remembered him playing music all night at her father’s home on Hoover Fork with Robert Martin (her great-uncle) and Bernie Adams. She described Bernie as a “real skinny” bachelor who sang “a little bit but not much” and who “was a real good guitar player, but he never would hardly play.”

“He’d get to drinking and he’d play but if he wasn’t drinking he wouldn’t play,” she said.

Turley said Bernie could also play the banjo, harmonica, fiddle and accordion.

French Carpenter

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Clay County, Ed Haley, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, Clay County, culture, fiddler, French Carpenter, history, music, photos, West Virginia

French Carpenter

French Carpenter, fiddler in Clay County, WV.

In Search of Ed Haley 81

18 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Belle Fowler, creative nonfiction, crime, feud, history, Iris Williams, John Fowler, John Hartford, Lawrence Haley, Lincoln County, Milt Haley, Shelby Kirk, writing

Back at Iris Williams’, we met another of her brothers, Shelby Kirk. We told Shelby a little of what we’d heard about Milt’s death from Roxie Mullins, who he said had recently died, then listened to his version of the trouble.

“They brought them in there sometime that night and they said they was killed at the edge of daylight,” he said. “There was a boy John Fowler told me once, he said, ‘I’ve heard my aunt Belle Fowler tell about that.’ Said she was there, a little girl. Said in one of them rooms they had apples picked off of a tree and had them stored, poured out you know, up there in a room. And said she got in that pile of apples and covered her head up with them apples to keep from hearing that when they was getting ready to kill them. They said they was a crying and a begging, wanting not to be killed away from their families and their children but they went right on and did it anyhow. They said they led them out the back door one at a time and as they come out that back door they was a fellow hit them with a double-headed axe — sideways, top of the head.”

I asked Shelby where the killing took place and he said it occurred on the Green Shoal side of the river, opposite where Mr. Kirk had showed us.

“The old house is still standing right there,” he said. “It’s just got some weather-boarding on it. An old log house.”

Shelby tried to describe the way law and order worked around Harts in Milt Haley’s day.

“Boy, they used to have mobs,” he said. “Used to have an outfit called the Night Riders down in here. If they got it in for me or you one — if we’d done something, you know — why, they’d pull straws to see who was gonna do the killing.”

In Search of Ed Haley 80

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Al Brumfield, Appalachia, feud, Harts Creek, Hollene Brumfield, John Hartford, Lawrence Haley, Lawrence Kirk, Peter Mullins, timbering, West Virginia, writers, writing

     Mr. Kirk hopped in the car with Lawrence Haley and I and guided us to “Presto’s garden,” a small corn patch located just off of the hill from the Haley-McCoy grave. It was late afternoon: the air was clear and the remains of the sun slanted through the trees on the hillside. Lawrence Haley chose to stay at the garden due to his heart condition, but I made the steep climb toward the grave with Mr. Kirk just behind me. A few minutes later, we stopped at an indentation — a round shallow crater about seven feet in diameter. It had a little pile of stones on each end and was just as Bob Adkins had said it would be. We walked back and forth studying the “bowl” and the markers and I took some pictures.

     At the bottom of the hill, we got back in the car and rode up Low Gap Road to the site of Milt Haley’s murder. On the way, I told Mr. Kirk what we’d heard about Ed’s mother Emma Jean Mullins being shot in the face.

     “See, I hadn’t heard that part of it,” he said. “Well now, you know them Adamses and Mullinses up there on Hart married back and forth for generations. That’s quite possible. Of course, them Brumfields and them Adamses had trouble over that log boom they had had there at the mouth of Hart. It’d catch water and hold it back like a dam. They’d float them logs all out of Harts Creek back in yonder, then when the backwater come up in the spring of the year they’d make them into a raft and float them out of here and take them to the town of Guyandotte. That’s the market. They claimed the Brumfields got to sawing the ends of them logs off and re-branding them. I don’t know what the extent of their trouble was but they had some misunderstanding over that lumber and then Runyon and whiskey got involved in it down on that houseboat where they’s selling whiskey. All of them drinking, you know. They’d all go down there and get drunk and talk this shit up, you know, and get it started, get it going, down there where the booze was. Things were getting out of hand. Whiskey’s destroyed an awful lot of people in this country. A lot of my relatives.”

     Mr. Kirk said, “They’s supposed to killed them at daylight or immediately after daylight. The story that I’ve heard on it has been that they were both knocked in the head with the flat side of a double-bit axe. Killed them separately. Hit them right in the top of the head there. And I’ve heard people say they was shot up you know, and some said they were chopped up with an axe. But my grandmother, she was awful critical of the Brumfields and their conduct. She was an Adkins — part Dingess. Bill Brumfield’s widow. By her being pretty critical of them, I feel like she handed me what she had as being true. But now they was organized into kind of a posse. She said they called theirselves ‘The Night Riders.’ Vigilante group. Operated all the time at night. They were pretty sneaking in what they did.”

     They must’ve had some serious shortcomings, because Mr. Kirk said they “tried to organize themselves into the Klan, but the Klan wouldn’t have them.”

     After surveying the site of Milt’s murder, we drove down to the mouth of Harts Creek where Mr. Kirk pointed out the site of the recently burned Al Brumfield house.

     “Except being a landmark, it wasn’t worth much,” he said. “They used to have a meal-house out there to ground meal for people. Had a store in here. That’s Al Brumfield and Aunt Hollene. He was in his fifties when he died of typhoid fever. Watson Adkins later bought his house and lived there. Had a store over here for years. Now, Runyon had a boat down yonder — great big boat — barge built in there and had a store in it. He run poker games. Selling whiskey. Had a few groceries in there. Al and his bunch trying to do the same thing over here.”

     All during our ride with Mr. Kirk, he kept pointing out spots where murders had taken place. As we made our way back up West Fork, I asked him why there’d been so many killings around Harts Creek. He didn’t hesitate in saying, “Whiskey. Whiskey’s caused it. This section of country up through here — this West Fork section — has had a few killings. It wasn’t as bad as back yonder. Whiskey involved in every bit of that.”

     Lawrence Haley agreed that whiskey was the primary cause of trouble in the old days, even mentioning how one of Uncle Peter Mullins’ boys once killed a “revenue man” around Trace Fork. He said it “it took just about everything Uncle Peter had to keep him out of jail.”

     Mr. Kirk said, “Is that the one they called ‘Reel-Footed’ Peter? Ewell’s daddy?”

     Lawrence confirmed that it was — and that it was his great-uncle — and Mr. Kirk said, “I can remember old man Peter. I believe it was his right foot that was curled in. Man, he’d work in the woods, draw a team…”

West Virginia Musicians

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Music

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Appalachia, banjo, culture, fiddle, fiddler, history, life, music, photos, Telmage Godfrey, U.S. South, West Virginia, William Bertie Lester, Wyoming County

Telmage Godfrey and William Bertie Lester of Wyoming County, 1922

Telmage Godfrey and William Bertie Lester of Wyoming County, 1922

In Search of Ed Haley 79

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Al Brumfield, Ben Walker, Burl Farley, feud, French Bryant, Green McCoy, Hollene Brumfield, Lawrence Kirk, Melvin Kirk, Milt Haley, Stella Abbott, timbering, Victor Shelton, writing

Mr. Kirk had heard a lot about Milt Haley’s trouble with the Brumfields. His version of events, along with that of Roxie Mullins, Bob Adkins and the Goldenseal article, comprised the bulk of what I knew of Milt’s death.

“I feel like that I’ve got pretty much the base of what happened, but there’ve been add-ons and deletions and so on along the way,” he said. “It was a tragic thing.”

The whole trouble had nothing to do with John Runyon, as we’d previously heard.

“The real thing behind it, them Adamses over in yonder and the Brumfields, they got into it over the timber,” Mr. Kirk said. “What they’d do, them people’d cut that big timber and put it in them creeks. Then they’d get spring floods and float them out. Brumfield had what they called a boom in down there to catch that timber. Then they’d make them into rafts and raft them down the river to the town of Guyandotte. There was a log market there. And Al got to stealing their logs.”

That was an interesting new development in the story, I thought. I mean, maybe Al Brumfield wasn’t completely innocent in the trouble. And maybe Milt was, in the eyes of at least some locals, justified in ambushing him.

“Word of mouth that’s come down to me from my mother and grandmother, some of the Adamses was supposed to hired McCoy and Haley to shoot Aunt Hollene, old man Al Brumfield’s wife. I remember her well. She had a hole in her jaw there. When she’d eat or talk, spit would work up in it. Or if she would eat candy or something, you could see the candy. She was a tough old lady. She’d been blowed up in a sawmill and had a short leg — walked with a cane. Cussed like a sailor every time she made a step. But they shot her.”

Now where did this shooting take place?

“The shooting was supposed to took place up on Big Hart there at the mouth of Thompson Branch,” Mr. Kirk said. “They was coming down the creek. They’d been up there visiting Hollene’s parents. She was one of them Dingesses from up there.”

Mr. Kirk said Al was shot in the arm and fell from his horse, while his wife was shot in the face.

Surprisingly, there were rumors of Milt and Green’s innocence, but Mr. Kirk “never did hear that expounded on.”

“I’ve heard it said a time or two, ‘Well, I doubt them being the ones that did it.’ I never would get into a discussion ’cause — not that it mattered either way to me in one sense — but I was convinced that they did it.”

Once Milt and Green were captured in Kentucky, a lynch mob formed in Harts consisting of Hugh Dingess (Hollena’s brother), French Bryant and several Brumfields. They joined up with Victor Shelton, a local lawman.

“You see, old man Victor Shelton was a constable or JP down here and he was a friend to them Brumfields,” Mr. Kirk said. “He went over there to Kentucky with them and they turned them over to Victor Shelton. When he come back across the river into West Virginia he just turned them over to the Brumfields and he come on back. They had horse roads all through these mountains and creeks everywhere. He probably left them over in there around Twelve Pole somewhere and went on back down in here around Ranger someplace where he lived. But that’s the way they got in charge of them.”

After taking possession of Milt and Green, the mob re-crossed the Tug River at the present-day town of Kermit in Mingo County and went up Jenny’s Creek (or possibly Marrowbone Creek) to Twelve Pole Creek. They entered Harts Creek at the head of Henderson Branch and made their way to Hugh Dingess’ home on Smoke House. At that location, they ate a big meal and spent the night. The next day, they headed up Bill’s Branch and crossed a mountain onto Piney Creek. They rode down Piney to the West Fork (just above Iris Williams’ home), went a short distance up Workman Fork, turned up Frank Fleming Hollow and dropped down off of the ridge to a home near the Guyandotte River. (Mr. Kirk was very adamant about this home being on the west side of the river, not at the mouth of Green Shoal where Bob Adkins had said.) By that time, “Dealer Dave” Dingess, Charley Brumfield, Burl Farley, Will Adkins and “Black John” Adkins had joined the gang.

At this home, the mob questioned Milt and Green separately and tried to secure a confession. As one was led out the door, he hollered to his friend, “Don’t tell ’em a damn thing!” — but his partner told it all, thus deciding their guilt in the eyes of the mob. (Based on what we’d heard from Bob Adkins, I figured that it was Green McCoy who made the confession.)

A host of young local ladies, including Stella Abbott, cooked a chicken supper as Milt and Green’s last meal. Either Milt or Green (undoubtedly an emotional wreck) said he wasn’t hungry, so his partner replied, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow ye may die.” Supposedly, a Brumfield nearby them then said, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow ye shall die.”

Mr. Kirk said French Bryant supposedly killed Milt and Green, although he’d also heard that Burl Farley, a timber boss from Harts Creek who was connected to the Dingess family, “gave the order” to shoot them.

“Old man French Bryant was a big old mountaineer-type fellow,” Mr. Kirk said. “Rough talking, grouchy. Most people liked him pretty good. French Bryant was married three times, I reckon. Yeah, that old man, I went to his funeral. He’s buried right at the head of Piney there.”

There was a lot of confusion over the murders. Word was spread through the community that Haley and McCoy were killed by a mob who’d taken them from the Brumfield posse. Mr. Kirk dismissed that notion, saying, “The ones who got them in Kentucky were the ones who killed them.” He was certainly a good source for that statement considering his family connection to the Brumfields.

Lawrence and I hung onto Mr. Kirk’s every word as he described Milt Haley’s burial, which he said occurred the day following the murders.

“The next morning, Melvin Kirk, who was my father’s father, and several other people — I don’t know who else — went with Ben Walker and got them either in a sled or an old wagon and hauled them around there,” he said. “My grandfather helped them take them around there and clean them up. Back then they didn’t take them to a funeral home — they just wrapped them and made a rough burial preparation. I think they made a coffin for them and buried them on the old man Walker’s property. Of course, there was a preacher at the burial because old man Ben Walker was an ordained preacher. He’s the one that married my father and mother in 1911.”

Mr. Kirk turned our attention toward a mountain across the creek.

“See that gap yonder in the hill? Right over there, they call that the Walker Branch. That’s where old man Ben Walker lived. He was an old preacher. He owned all of this land in here. You can go right over there and turn right and go up that side of the river right over to where they were killed.”

I asked Mr. Kirk whose decision it was to bury Milt and Green at that location and he said, “The old man Ben Walker decided where to put them. I never did go to their grave. A lot of people thinks it’s down in the lower end of that garden. There are some graves down there, but that’s not it.”

He wasn’t sure why they chose to bury them in a single grave.

“I guess it was just maybe the work involved. I think they’ve been quite a little bit of that done here where there was multiple deaths. Whenever I was young, my daddy and I would ride down that creek. He’d tell me, ‘Right up on that hill is where Haley and McCoy’s buried.’ He called his daddy ‘Paw.’ Said, ‘Paw and Ben Walker took them up there and buried them.’ Just got a rock for a marker.”

Pistol 2

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Culture of Honor, Whirlwind

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, culture, genealogy, Harts Creek, history, Logan County, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia, Whirlwind

Couple from Whirlwind, West Virginia, 1895-1920

Couple from Whirlwind, West Virginia, 1890-1915

Continue reading →

In Search of Ed Haley 78

07 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Bernie Adams, blind, Ed Belcher, Harts Creek, history, Iris Williams, John Hartford, Lawrence Haley, Lawrence Kirk, Lincoln County, Logan, Milt Haley, music, West Virginia, writing

The next day, Lawrence and I went to find Milt Haley’s grave on the West Fork of Harts Creek. It had been two years since our initial trip up the Guyandotte Valley and I was excited to once again plant my feet on the grounds of Ed Haley’s childhood. We followed Bob Adkins’ directions to the West Fork of Harts Creek, where we found a confusing sign labeled “East Fork Road” pointing us across a stone bridge and past a somewhat large red brick church. Lower West Fork was very much different from my memories of main Harts Creek — more sparsely settled. It was surprisingly beautiful farm country with a view of an almost-forgotten agrarian way of life. There were old barns, cattle and tiny farms all along the nice little road.

Not surprisingly, Lawrence and I were unable to find the Milt Haley grave, which we figured was located in a thicket on top of one of the surrounding mountains. Hoping for the best, we decided to ask for directions at a nice-looking house. We chose a neat little white home, where an older lady came out and showed almost complete confusion as we asked about Ed Haley, Milt Haley and a grave. Once she figured out what we were talking about, though, she introduced herself as Iris Williams, said she was part-Brumfield and pointed toward the grave just down the road and to the right on a hill. She said her older brother Lawrence Kirk would know all about it. She went back inside and called Lawrence, who said he’d come right over and tell us what he knew about Ed Haley and the Haley-McCoy murders.

It wasn’t long until Lawrence Kirk pulled into the driveway and popped out of his car. He was a short stocky 70-something-year-old fellow with thinning hair and glasses. He made his way toward the porch, grinning and waving a newspaper. He said he had seen me on TV and unraveled the paper, which featured a front-page story about our recent visit to see Lynn Davis in Huntington.

In one of those “strange contact moments,” I introduced him to Lawrence Haley. It was a first-ever meeting of men whose ancestors had shot it out along Harts Creek over one hundred years earlier. They seemed to like each other right away and made it clear they held no grudges over their ancestors’ troubles. This was great news — no barriers to information flow. However, I have to admit, I got a little adrenaline rush in thinking that Lawrence and I were now in “enemy territory.” In my mind, the 1889 feud was still smoldering in the hearts and minds of at least a few people.

Instead, we all sat on Mrs. Williams’ front porch with Mr. Kirk, who remembered Ed well.

“I’ve heard Ed Haley play up there at the courthouse square many of a time in Logan with Ed Belcher,” he said. “They’d get together up there sometimes and play all day. I’d be with my dad up there when I was a youngster. I kinda got acquainted with the old man, enough to speak to him. He’d always ask you who it is. ‘Yeah, I know some Kirks,’ he’d say.”

Mr. Kirk said he used to see Ed and his wife on the Logan-Williamson bus that ran between the coalfields and Huntington.

“I felt sympathetic towards them,” he said. “They were blind — handicapped — and I’d notice them. I can’t remember that well about him. I can’t remember too much how he was dressed. It bears on my mind about ever time I ever saw him he was bald-headed. I’m not sure…but he played that fiddle.”

Mr. Kirk last saw Ed play music on a Sunday just before the election of 1948 or ’50 at the Harts Tavern. His uncle Taylor Brumfield was the owner of the tavern. Ed was there with Bernie Adams, who Mr. Kirk called “a pretty good guitar player.”

“Bernie was bad to drink,” he said. “He just drunk liquor until it finally killed him, I reckon.”

Ed was “being pretty sassy” at the tavern.

“They wasn’t giving him enough money to please him, you know,” Mr. Kirk said. “They was buying him a few drinks but he felt like fellows ought to throw him in a few dollars of money along. But that bunch there, they had to have their quarters to buy some beer with.”

Ed told Bernie, “Well hell, let’s go. This tight bunch here won’t buy a man no beer. Can’t get a crowd together no how.”

Bernie said, “Now, Ed. Don’t get to talking too rough about these fellows around Harts. Some of your folks didn’t have too good a relation with these Brumfields around here.”

“Aw, to hell with these damn Brumfields,” Ed said. “There’s nobody afraid of these Brumfields.”

I almost fell off the porch laughing.

In Search of Ed Haley 77

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ashland, Cemeteries, Ed Haley, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Allie Trumbo, Appalachia, Ashland, Ashland Cemetery, Bath Avenue, Boyd County, Calvary Episcopal Church, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Clyde Haley, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, Francis M. Cooper, genealogy, history, Huntington, Jack Haley, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lawrence Haley, Lezear Funeral Home, Michigan, Minnie Hicks, Mona Haley, Morehead, Noah Haley, Ohio, Patsy Haley, South Point, William Trumbo

After Ed’s death, Ella lived with Lawrence and his family in Ashland. Every Thursday, she went to Cincinnati where she sold newspapers until Saturday. On Saturday nights, Lawrence would meet her at the bus station in Ashland and bring her home. She and Lawrence would then go into her bedroom where she would empty out her bounty from special slips Aunt Minnie had sewn into her bodice and count her money. It was somewhat of a humbling job for Ella; her own brother Allie Trumbo would call her “Penny Elly” and tease her for taking in pennies and nickels at Cincinnati. The whole experience came to a humiliating end when she “wet” on herself at the bus depot one afternoon. Apparently, no one would help her to a bathroom.

Pat said Ella took to her bed shortly afterwards and didn’t live much longer.

The day after Thanksgiving in 1954, Ella died of a stroke while staying with Jack and Patsy in Cleveland. Lawrence showed me her obituary from a Huntington newspaper:

HALEY – Funeral services for Mrs. Martha Haley, 66, 4916 Bath Avenue, who died Friday night at the home of a son, Allen Haley, at Cleveland, O., will be held today at 3:30 P.M., at the Lezear Funeral Home by the Very Rev. Francis M. Cooper, rector of the Calvary Episcopal Church.  Burial will be in Ashland Cemetery. The body is at the funeral home.

Mrs. Haley suffered a stroke while visiting her son. She was born July 14, 1888, at Morehead, Ky., a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Trumbo. 

Surviving are three other sons, Lawrence Haley, Ashland, Noah E. Haley, Cleveland, and Clyde F. Haley, Michigan; one daughter, Mrs. Mona Mae Smith, South Point, O.; a brother, Allie Trumbo, Cincinnati; and nine grandchildren.

Sensing that Ella’s death might be a sensitive subject, I just kind of left it at that.

In Search of Ed Haley 76

05 Tuesday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Ashland, blind, Charles Dickens, Cleveland, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, England, Freddie Smith, Great Expectations, Harts Creek, history, Jack Haley, James Hager, John Hartford, Kenny Smith, Kenny Smith Jr., Kentucky, Kentucky School for the Blind, Lawrence Haley, Michigan, Mona Haley, Mona Lisa Hager, Morehead Normal School, Morehead University, music, Noble Boatsman, Ohio, Pat Haley, Patsy Haley, Ralph Haley, Ralph Mullins, Raymond Willis, Robin Hood, Scott Haley, Washington DC, Wilson Mullins, writing

That evening, back at Lawrence’s, I was full of questions about Mona. She had made a real impression. As I spoke about her, I could sense a little hostility from Pat, as if there were years of family trouble between them, barely hidden away.

“Mona was married to Wilson Mullins,” Pat said. “He was from Harts. Mona was fourteen, I guess, when she married and he was 23 years older than her. She had one boy by Wilson Mullins — Ralph Andrew, who was named after Ralph Andrew Haley. When I came over here in 1949, Mona was divorced from Wilson and she was married to a Kenny Smith. She had two boys by Kenny Smith. Freddie lives in Michigan and Kenny Jr. lives in Ohio. Kenny Sr. is dead. Had a heart attack in Cleveland.”

After a brief marriage to Raymond Willis, a railroad engineer in Ashland, Mona married James Hager.

Pat said, “We met him once. I think they lived in Ohio.”

Mona had a daughter by Mr. Hager named Mona Lisa.

Pat seemed to think the most of Lawrence’s brother, Jack.

“Jack was a very devoted husband and father and had a beautiful home,” she said. “He worked very hard. Larry and Jack were very, very close. Jack was five years older than Lawrence.”

Jack’s wife Patsy had done a lot of family research “but found nothing beyond Uncle Peter and Aunt Liza.”

I asked if Patsy had any pictures of Ed and Pat said, “No more than what we have, because when Rounder Records came to Larry and we was getting pictures for them we went up to Pat’s and Larry got records from them. Jack had four or five records left and their son Scott brought those to Washington and whatever pictures they had.”

Pat promised to ask Patsy if she had anything.

Later that night, Lawrence told me more about his mother. He said Ella was a very small person, only about five feet tall. As a young woman, she attended the Kentucky School for the Blind at Louisville and earned a piano teaching certificate at the Morehead Normal School (now Morehead University).

“Mom was very refined,” Pat said. “No matter where she went, you could always tell she was an educated lady. Mom had very good manners. She was very good at speaking. And when you saw her and Pop together, and listening to both of them, you could tell there was a vast difference in the way they were raised.”

“Mom would read Dickens to us,” Lawrence said. “Robin Hood, Great Expectations — all them classical stories that came out of England and places at that time.”

When young, Ella was proficient at playing the piano and organ. After marrying Ed, she learned to play the mandolin and banjo-mandolin so that she could play “his type of music.”

“She used to sing more of the old English-type music,” Lawrence said. “Little nonsense stuff. We’d ask for it a lot of times ’cause we didn’t have anything else but the radio. I remember her singing one that had to do with a sea captain and it went something like this:

There was a noble boatsman.

Noble he did well.

He had a lovin’ wife

But she loved the tailor well.

And then it went on to state that the sea captain had to take his boat and go on a trip and he left his house and kissed his wife and started out. And the local tailor came in. And it just so happened the captain had forgot his sea chest so he came back and when he knocked on the door the wife was trying to find a place for him to hide. Guess where he hid? In the sea chest. And what happened to the tailor, he got chucked into the sea sometime or another on that cruise.”

Johnny Hager

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, banjo, Boone County, Ed Haley, fiddler, genealogy, history, Johnny Hager, Logan County, music, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia

Johnny Hager, about 1900-1930

Johnny Hager (1876-1955), a banjo player and fiddler who lived in Boone County, West Virginia

In Search of Ed Haley 75

04 Monday Mar 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Appalachia, banjo, Big Rock Candy Mountain, bowing, Calhoun County Blues, Carroll County Blues, Ed Haley, fiddler, fiddling, Ghost Riders in the Sky, Hell Among the Yearlings, history, John Hartford, Mona Haley, music, Pretty Polly, Soutwood Mountain, Sweet Betsy from Pike, Ugee Postalwait

Talking about Ed’s records caused me to ask Mona about his technique and tunes. She said her father was a long bower – that he used “one end of the bow to the other,” except on songs requiring short, quick strokes. Interestingly, she had no recollection of him ever “rocking” the fiddle while playing (as is so fondly remembered by some eyewitnesses) and said he patted his foot softly in half-time (never picking up his whole foot and stomping). He didn’t keep a chin rest on his fiddle because “it got in his way.”

Mona said Ed knew “millions” of pieces, including “Hell Among the Yearlings” (her favorite), “Big Rock Candy Mountain” and “Sourwood Mountain”. She recognized “Carroll County Blues” (what Ugee Postalwait called “Calhoun County Blues”) as a Haley tune when I played it for her. She said Ed played “Pretty Polly” and “Sweet Betsy from Pike” drop-thumb style on the banjo (no fingerpicks). He loved “Ghost Riders in the Sky” — which he never could learn — and would say of the tune, “Lord god almighty, would you listen to that?” When Ed thought about or heard a tune he liked, Mona said he would pat his hands together.

Feud Poll 1

If you had lived in the Harts Creek community during the 1880s, to which faction of feudists might you have given your loyalty?

Categories

  • Adkins Mill
  • African American History
  • American Revolutionary War
  • Ashland
  • Atenville
  • Banco
  • Barboursville
  • Battle of Blair Mountain
  • Beech Creek
  • Big Creek
  • Big Harts Creek
  • Big Sandy Valley
  • Big Ugly Creek
  • Boone County
  • Breeden
  • Calhoun County
  • Cemeteries
  • Chapmanville
  • Civil War
  • Clay County
  • Clothier
  • Coal
  • Cove Gap
  • Crawley Creek
  • Culture of Honor
  • Dingess
  • Dollie
  • Dunlow
  • East Lynn
  • Ed Haley
  • Eden Park
  • Enslow
  • Estep
  • Ferrellsburg
  • Fourteen
  • French-Eversole Feud
  • Gilbert
  • Giles County
  • Gill
  • Green Shoal
  • Guyandotte River
  • Halcyon
  • Hamlin
  • Harts
  • Hatfield-McCoy Feud
  • Holden
  • Hungarian-American History
  • Huntington
  • Inez
  • Irish-Americans
  • Italian American History
  • Jamboree
  • Jewish History
  • John Hartford
  • Kermit
  • Kiahsville
  • Kitchen
  • Leet
  • Lincoln County Feud
  • Little Harts Creek
  • Logan
  • Man
  • Matewan
  • Meador
  • Midkiff
  • Monroe County
  • Montgomery County
  • Music
  • Native American History
  • Peach Creek
  • Pearl Adkins Diary
  • Pecks Mill
  • Peter Creek
  • Pikeville
  • Pilgrim
  • Poetry
  • Queens Ridge
  • Ranger
  • Rector
  • Roane County
  • Rowan County Feud
  • Salt Rock
  • Sand Creek
  • Shively
  • Spears
  • Sports
  • Spottswood
  • Spurlockville
  • Stiltner
  • Stone Branch
  • Tazewell County
  • Timber
  • Tom Dula
  • Toney
  • Turner-Howard Feud
  • Twelve Pole Creek
  • Uncategorized
  • Warren
  • Wayne
  • West Hamlin
  • Wewanta
  • Wharncliffe
  • Whirlwind
  • Williamson
  • Women's History
  • World War I
  • Wyoming County
  • Yantus

Feud Poll 2

Do you think Milt Haley and Green McCoy committed the ambush on Al and Hollene Brumfield in 1889?

Blogroll

  • Ancestry.com
  • Ashland (KY) Daily Independent News Article
  • Author FB page
  • Beckley (WV) Register-Herald News Article
  • Big Sandy News (KY) News Article
  • Blood in West Virginia FB
  • Blood in West Virginia order
  • Chapters TV Program
  • Facebook
  • Ghosts of Guyan
  • Herald-Dispatch News Article 1
  • Herald-Dispatch News Article 2
  • In Search of Ed Haley
  • Instagram
  • Lincoln (WV) Journal News Article
  • Lincoln (WV) Journal Thumbs Up
  • Lincoln County
  • Lincoln County Feud
  • Lincoln County Feud Lecture
  • LinkedIn
  • Logan (WV) Banner News Article
  • Lunch With Books
  • Our Overmountain Men: The Revolutionary War in Western Virginia (1775-1783)
  • Pinterest
  • Scarborough Society's Art and Lecture Series
  • Smithsonian Article
  • Spirit of Jefferson News Article
  • The Friendly Neighbor Radio Show 1
  • The Friendly Neighbor Radio Show 2
  • The Friendly Neighbor Radio Show 3
  • The Friendly Neighbor Radio Show 4
  • The New Yorker
  • The State Journal's 55 Good Things About WV
  • tumblr.
  • Twitter
  • Website
  • Weirton (WV) Daily Times Article
  • Wheeling (WV) Intelligencer News Article 1
  • Wheeling (WV) Intelligencer News Article 2
  • WOWK TV
  • Writers Can Read Open Mic Night

Feud Poll 3

Who do you think organized the ambush of Al and Hollene Brumfield in 1889?

Recent Posts

  • Sheriff Joe D. Hatfield, Son of Devil Anse (1962)
  • The C&O Shops at Peach Creek, WV (1974)
  • Map: Southwestern West Virginia (1918-1919)

Ed Haley Poll 1

What do you think caused Ed Haley to lose his sight when he was three years old?

Top Posts & Pages

  • The Smoke House Restaurant in Logan, WV (1927)
  • About
  • History for Boone County, WV (1928)
  • Tom Chafin Recalls Story of Ellison Hatfield's Killing (1989)
  • "Holly Creek" John Mullins Grave in Clintwood, VA (2018)

Copyright

© Brandon Ray Kirk and brandonraykirk.wordpress.com, 1987-2021. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Brandon Ray Kirk and brandonraykirk.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Archives

  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • February 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 2,750 other subscribers

Tags

Appalachia Ashland Big Creek Big Ugly Creek Blood in West Virginia Brandon Kirk Cabell County cemeteries Chapmanville Charleston civil war coal Confederate Army crime culture Ed Haley Ella Haley Ferrellsburg feud fiddler fiddling genealogy Green McCoy Guyandotte River Harts Harts Creek Hatfield-McCoy Feud history Huntington John Hartford Kentucky Lawrence Haley life Lincoln County Lincoln County Feud Logan Logan Banner Logan County Milt Haley Mingo County music Ohio photos timbering U.S. South Virginia Wayne County West Virginia Whirlwind writing

Blogs I Follow

  • OtterTales
  • Our Appalachia: A Blog Created by Students of Southern West Virginia CTC
  • Piedmont Trails
  • Truman Capote
  • Appalachian Diaspora

BLOOD IN WEST VIRGINIA is now available for order at Amazon!

Blog at WordPress.com.

OtterTales

Writings from my travels and experiences. High and fine literature is wine, and mine is only water; but everybody likes water. Mark Twain

Our Appalachia: A Blog Created by Students of Southern West Virginia CTC

This site is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and promotion of history and culture in Appalachia.

Piedmont Trails

Genealogy and History in North Carolina and Beyond

Truman Capote

A site about one of the most beautiful, interesting, tallented, outrageous and colorful personalities of the 20th Century

Appalachian Diaspora

  • Follow Following
    • Brandon Ray Kirk
    • Join 752 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Brandon Ray Kirk
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...