We next looked at Logan County census records, where Milt Haley appeared in 1870 as “T. Milton Haley,” aged 13, living with a Bill Duty on Rich Creek in the Tug Valley. Duty’s home in Hardee District was relatively far away from the Harts area. Ten years later, in 1880, there was no trace of Milt or Duty anywhere in West Virginia, indicating that they may have lived outside the state at that time.

Had they moved together across the Tug into Kentucky?

We got back in the Lambert Collection for help…and found a circa-1934 interview with Jeff Duty, Bill Duty’s son.

At the time of the interview, Jeff was living at Dollie, a now extinct post office on Big Ugly Creek just upriver and over Green Shoal Mountain from Harts. He didn’t mention Milt Haley but gave a great account of his family story:

Grandfathers both came from Russell County, Virginia. Grandfather Geo. Duty came to Pigeon Creek in what is now Mingo County, before the Civil War. Grandfather James Ferrell settled on Big Creek, Logan County before the Civil War. Grandmother Duty was a Jackson and Grandmother Ferrell was a Fields.

Father was born in what is now Mingo County, and volunteered in 1861 as a Confederate. My father, William Duty, was in Gettysburg and Fort Donelson battles. They fought here seven days and seven nights. He was twice wounded. Father Wm. Duty lived in Mingo until fifty-one years ago, when he moved to Big Ugly, Lincoln County [around 1883]. When we moved to Big Ugly there were only three houses from Broad Branch, which is about one-half the length of Big Ugly to the head of Big Ugly, and now there are about two hundred. Big Ugly is nineteen miles long. There were plenty of deer, wild cats, coons, &c. when my father came. Wolves were here for about fifteen years after we came. Tom Ferrell killed the last deer killed about here about forty-five years ago.

My father was a rather big farmer for this part of the country, raising 1,000 bushels of corn a year, and always raising wheat. He had the first “chaff Piler” threshing machine brought in. It took about twelve horses to pull it. When it came on the first trip, my mother had about twenty geese in the yard, and when they heard it they took to the woods and did not come back for three or four days. My father had six children: John lived on Broad Branch, Lincoln County; Jeff here at Dollie; Phidelia Vernatter-Chapman lives in Boone County; Annie Steele lives in Logan County; George lives within three miles of Hurricane, Putnam County; Martha lives in Logan; she married Queen. My father, Wm. Duty, was the man who rode a $150.00 horse to death to save Tom Ferrell, who was in jail, in Hamlin, about 1889, for killing a man named Butcher, from a mob of Butcher relatives. Tom Ferrell is my cousin.

I am sixty-seven. I have eleven children, of whom three are dead: Alva, Lula, Stonewall, Solomon, Vernonda, Thos. Jefferson, Lee, Musco, Ira, Doska, Maggie. Mrs. Duty was Betty Pauley; her people came from Virginia. “Tiger Bill” Pauley was her father.