Category Archives: Ed Haley

In Search of Ed Haley 148

11 Sunday Aug 2013

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Ella provided most of the family entertainment.

“Pop never tried to sing any songs to us,” Lawrence said. “Mom sang songs. She had one she called ‘The Coo Coo’s Nest’. A lot of religious songs, little nonsense songs and rhymes, like ‘The Watermelon’. She had a principal, I guess, or the headmaster of the school — Dr. Huntington, or something like that — he’d come into the class and he’d have a reading session with them. Read them a story and he would read all the parts in different voices. And my Mom kinda got to using inflections a lot more than any of us would. Like, she used to read us Robin Hood from her Braille magazine.”

I wondered if Ed ever entertained the kids with stories.

“Ah, maybe a ghost story or two,” Lawrence said. “He’s telling one time about somebody a riding a… I guess it was a story he heard when he was a kid, too. Somebody was coming down Trace Fork from somewhere riding a horse way up above where Aunt Liza and them lived. Said they began to hear this rattling kind of sound, this guy did. And they said he began to speed up his horse a little bit, and this rattling kept getting louder and louder and he’s a going faster and faster. Said all at once this thing jumped right up on the horse behind him and locked its arms up around him and just stayed with him forever it seemed like. And just all at once got off. Pop could tell stories like that, now. Those stories kinda filled our lonely days, too. That was the thing that they did back in them days, I guess, was tell stories, but Aunt Liza never told any stories like that, or Uncle Peter didn’t.”

I asked Lawrence if Ed “worked on” tunes at home and he said, “Well, yeah, he’d kinda play the general outline and then maybe start working on some of the real, I guess, it would be the depth of a piece of music that he wanted to put in there. Depth or body to it. He’d add to it. But mostly he might just hear a piece of music and maybe just hit every fifth or sixth note or something just to get an outline of how he wanted to play it.”

I don’t think Lawrence realized what an important and sophisticated piece of musical insight that was. What he meant by saying that Ed hit “every fifth or six note” was that he was coming down on the big accent notes that made up the “spine” of the tune. I later wondered if Lawrence’s statement was based on observations or genetic memory or both.

I asked him about Ed playing for dances, but he said those memories had left his mind years ago.

“I was walking from Clay over to Clay Junction there that one night and there was nothing but the moon — it was a full moon — but it was a hazy… It had a big ring around the moon. It was the first time I ever noticed that. Now I can’t remember where we came from, but I know that they had their instruments with them. I guess we’s a gonna go back up on Stinson up there to Aunt Minnie’s. I think this was after the time of Laury’s death, so I guess we’s heading back that way. And if we could get to Clay Junction there, we’s supposed to get a ride or something, I think. Like I say, I can’t remember what kind of function we’d come from, and what we did after that. My recollection of that was walking down this highway — a dark night, except for a hazy, ringed moon. Now that hazy ringed moon kept that in my mind all these years. The rest of it I don’t know. So there’s a lot of stuff that you forget and you never remember.”

In Search of Ed Haley 147

09 Friday Aug 2013

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Throughout the summer of 1994, Lawrence Haley and I spoke frequently on the telephone. I was excited about some of the information I’d been getting in the mail from Brandon Kirk, the Harts genealogist. Lawrence seemed curious about it too, since Ed’s family background was something he’d never known a lot about.

“I don’t know that much about it, because you know how ignorant I was about the whole affair when I first went up there with you,” he said. “I didn’t know a heck of a lot about my dad’s people or anything. I seen their faces and heard them talked about, but I wouldn’t know them if I’d walk nose to nose with some of them. We never probably asked a lot of the questions we should have asked of Mom and Pop while they were still alive. I know my mother would have told me a heck of a lot more. They wasn’t no reason why I shouldn’t have asked her questions. It was just one of those things you accept, I guess, and don’t question.”

Lawrence paused, then said, “So we didn’t find out a lot about the history of our families. I really didn’t know that much about my mother’s people, either. I know she had some people out in Wrigley, Kentucky. We used to go up there every now and then. Go to a little self-contained train — back in them days, it was just a one-car thing; they called it the ‘Blue Goose’ — and it run on a little ol’ track up into Elliott County, and up through there. And that’s about all I knew. That’s the place where I found the ‘milk well.’ I thought this gal was bringing that milk right up out of the milk well in the yard. And I told Mom about it and she said, ‘Well, that’s the way they keep the milk cool. They stick it in a bucket or something — a lard bucket — and put the lid on it, stick it down in the well, and let it cool like that.’ Anyway, that’s the reason that I guess we just accepted things as children mostly, because they weren’t like that. We accepted it as, ‘That’s life.'”

Lawrence and I got on the subject of Ed’s mother, which led us into a whole variety of topics. I asked if he knew what year she was supposed to’ve been killed and he said, “I really couldn’t tell you that, John. If it happened that way, I imagine they’d been something in The Logan Banner or The Huntington Herald-Dispatch.”

Lawrence said he wasn’t even sure where he got the story of her death.

“No, I never heard Pop talk about it,” he said. “I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know who told who and how it got started. Between me and Mona and Jack and Patsy and Noah, I guess. Noah didn’t seem like he showed as much interest in things like that as… I know whenever he’d go up there he’d get homesick. He didn’t like it up there too much. I remember there used to be a paw paw patch we’d all go down to where Trace and Harts join there. We’d go down there and cut slips of that paw paw — eat the paw paws when they’s in season — and make whistles out of them, you know. They had a slick bark. You could skin off a chunk of bark at the right time of the year and then you’d take and plug each end of that bark and make you a nice little whistle out of it. Then take the bark and plaid it into whips and things. Just something to occupy a kid’s time that didn’t have a heck of a lot to do. We invented a lot of things like that. I guess Joe showed us a lot of that stuff.”

In Search of Ed Haley 146

08 Thursday Aug 2013

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In 1855 Green Shoal became the first post office in the Harts area, with Burbus C. Toney acting as postmaster. At that time, the Kiah’s Creek United Baptist Church in nearby Wayne County served the religious needs of the community. Politically, the area was overwhelmingly Democratic and aligned itself with the South during the War Between the States. One study of veterans places the percentage of Harts-area Confederate veterans at 90 percent. Locals were more concerned with states’ rights than slavery; there were fewer than thirty slaves in the entire area just prior to the war. Likewise, in 1890, there were only seven Union veterans living in Harts; most had arrived after the war.

In the late 1860s, Harts residents continued their efforts to improve educational opportunities for young people by constructing a school on the West Fork of Harts Creek.

“The school started in 1865 in an old hunter’s cabin,” said Kile Topping. “The teacher had to take guns with him to school because there were wild animals in the woods. All the students studied out loud and listened to the squirrels jump off of trees on to the top of the cabin. There was no floor in the school and students would stump their toes on briers.”

In 1867 Lincoln County was formed from Cabell County and, within two years, had pulled the lower section of Harts Creek within its boundaries from Logan County and Wayne County. The formation of this new county bisected the community of Harts into halves: those who lived on the upper part of the creek — such as Jackson Mullins — were in the Chapmanville District of Logan County and those who lived along the lower portion of the creek — such as Al Brumfield — were in the Harts Creek District of Lincoln County.

Within a short time, the people of Harts were caught in the industrial wave overtaking the nation. The arrival of the timber industry changed the community forever from a stereotypical mountain agricultural-oriented place to one of small-scale commerce. Settlements with impressive store buildings and homes formed along the riverbank and at the mouth of local creeks. New people moved into the area from eastern Kentucky looking for work in timber, helping to change the genealogical make-up of the community. Flatboats, pushboats, small steamboats, ferry boats, and rafting were all themes from this era.

Things were looking up in terms of education as well. “Harts Creek Township has never had a fair opportunity to place her schools in good condition,” wrote county superintendent James Alford in 1871. “A portion of this township formerly belonged to Logan county, and a portion to Wayne county, and school affairs became considerably confused in making this township. But the citizens are manifesting great interest in their schools, and will no doubt, at no distant day, have their schools in full operation; and, with the assistance of competent teachers, make great improvement in the youth of the township.” It was worse in Logan County: “Chapmansville Township, in which I reside, has had no schools taught in it until the last year,” wrote county superintendent C.S. Stone. “The opposers of the free schools fought the thing back until last year, when the cause of education gained the ascendancy.”

In 1871, Harts area teachers were Canaan Adkins, Stephen Lambert, and William T. Fowler, and (likely) Elisha W. Vance and J.W. Gartin. All had No. 5 Certificates (the lowest) except for Lambert, who had a 4. Teachers listed in educational directories for the following year were: Caleb Headlee, Thomas P. Moore, Isaac Nelson, Henry Spears, V.B. Prince and (possibly) Elias Adkins, Philip Hager and J.B. Pullen. Moore, Prince and Spears had a No. 4 Certificate, while Nelson had a 5 and Headlee had “no grade on certificate.”

The county superintendent was full of compliments for the Harts area in his 1872 report. “Hart’s creek has also built two school houses this year,” wrote Superintendent J.W. Holt. “The buildings are of logs, but are really neatly and substantially gotten up, and reflect credit upon the contractors and the township. This township is exhibiting a very commendable spirit upon the subject of education, and in the course of another year will have her school affairs in good working order.” Attendance was low in the region. In 1872, Superintendent C.S. Stone of Logan County wrote: “It appears that the mass of the people do not take hold of the thing right; they do not appreciate properly the great benefit of a general education. They generally admit that schools are the thing they want, and that public schools are the only means that will diffuse a general education, but there is something in its operative influences not altogether right.”

In the late 1870s, an agitated superintendent Marion Vickers wrote of the educational situation: “There is a great irregularity in the attendance of our children. Is not this non-attendance too large for an enlightenend community? How can the children of our country receive the many benefits of our school system, unless they are sent to school. Should not parents consider that they are depriving their children of that which will be of more benefit to them than anything else within their power to give? While passing around and seeing so many naturally intelligent youths growing up in ignorance, with almost every possible opportunity offered for improvement, I am almost ready to say: ‘Give us a compulsory system of education.'” In that time frame, 1877-1878, the Harts teachers were: John Gore, T.H. Buckley and Canaan Adkins and (maybe) Henry Shelton. Buckley and Adkins had No. 2 Certificates.”

In Search of Ed Haley 145

30 Tuesday Jul 2013

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Within a few years, by 1827, there were more settlers: Elias Adkins at Fowler Branch on the Guyandotte River, Moses Brown at Brown’s Branch of Guyan River and Marvel Elkins on Piney Creek of West Fork. Within three years, Isaac Adkins was at Harts and John Brumfield (father of Paris) was at the mouth of Ugly Creek. The Adkins brothers — Isaac and Elias — were the only slave owners in the section. They bought land at the mouth of Harts Creek in 1833.

In the early 1830s, Joseph Fry, John Lucas, and John Fry moved to the Harts area. Joseph Fry lived at Ugly Creek; John Fry, a War of 1812 veteran, lived at the mouth of Green Shoal; and John Lucas, a Baptist preacher, lived near Big Creek. With the arrival of these and other men, a school was organized to meet the educational needs of local children. “The first school was taught in a log cabin one mile above the mouth of Big Harts creek about the year 1832,” writes Hardesty. “The first house for educational purposes was built near the mouth of Big Harts creek in 1834. It was a five-cornered building, one side being occupied by the ever-present huge fire place.”

In the mid-1830s, Joseph Adams and Peter Mullins — both great-grandfathers to Ed Haley — arrived in the headwaters of Harts Creek. In 1838, Adams was granted 100 acres between the Forks of Harts Creek and the Rockhouse Branch. He became the patriarch of most Adamses in Harts, including Anthony and Ben Adams — key players in the Haley-McCoy trouble. In the early 1840s, Mullins was granted land on Hoover Fork and Trace Fork. He was a grandfather to Emma Haley.

At that time, in 1840, there were roughly 23 families in Harts. In the head of Harts Creek were Stephen Lambert, Moses Workman, Alexander Tomblin, and James Tomblin. Henry Conley and William Thompson were somewhere on the creek. Richard Elkins was at Thompson Branch and Isaac Adkins, Jr. was at Big Branch. Abner Vance was on West Fork. Isaac Adkins, Sr. and James Toney were at Harts. Moses Brown and Archibald Elkins were just below there. Harvey Elkins and Price Lucas were on or near Little Harts Creek. Above Harts was Elias Adkins and Squire Toney. At Ugly Creek were John Brumfield, Joseph Fry, and John Rowe. Charles Lucas and John Fry were at Green Shoal. John Dolen was somewhere in the area.

At that early date, folks were beginning to explore timber as a means of industry. “Isaac Elkins built the first saw mill in 1847 or 1848,” Hardesty writes. “It was constructed on the old sash-saw plan, and had a capacity for cutting from 800 to 1,000 feet per day.” To assist in the transport of timber and coal from the valley, locks and dams were constructed in the lower section of the Guyan and steamboats made a brief appearance in the valley during the 1850s, although they did not travel so far upriver as to reach Harts. There was some excitement, too, when Thomas Dunn English — a famous Northeastern writer — arrived in nearby Logan (then called Aracoma) and became mayor.

In Search of Ed Haley 144

29 Monday Jul 2013

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As far as can be ascertained, Harts — the place of Ed Haley’s birth — first appeared in written history as “Heart Creek” on a John Wood map sketched some time between 1809 and 1824. Reportedly, the creek was named for Stephen Hart — an early settler — or perhaps for his father, who was reportedly scalped by Indians at the mouth of Little Harts Creek. Stephen Hart first appeared in Logan County records in the late 1830s, settling on Crawley Creek, near Harts. Some claim that he lived at the mouth of Harts Creek on a hill in a rock cave, while others say he lived in Dock Bottom near the mouth of Smoke House Fork. More than likely, he had shanties constructed along various creeks at different times used for hunting camps. All historians agree that the Smoke House Fork of Harts Creek was so named because it contained Hart’s smoke house.

“At the forks of Hart’s Creek, where Henderson Dingess now lives, Stephen Hart had a cabin,” writes Henry Clay Ragland in his 1896 Logan County history. “He cared nothing for the soil, but put in his time hunting the deer which were so abundant on the creek. On the left-hand fork, a short distance from his cabin, he built a house in which to cure his venison, in order to take it to the settlement whenever an opportunity would offer itself.”

According to written record, the first settler of present-day Harts was Richard Elkins, a hunter, farmer and ginseng digger. Elkins migrated to the mouth of the creek from “The Islands of Guyandotte” (Logan) in 1809 or 1815, some fifteen years after the last Indian had roamed the valley. At that time, Harts Creek was in Cabell County, Virginia. Jacob Stollings, who was granted 185 acres in the lower section of the creek by the State of Virginia in 1812, soon joined Elkins. Other neighbors along the Guyan River were William W. Brumfield, who lived at the mouth of Ugly Creek, and Squire Toney, who lived in the bottoms above Douglas Branch. Brumfield was the grandfather of Paris Brumfield.

“At the coming of white men, this region was a wilderness inhabited only by wild animals,” wrote Fred B. Lambert, an early local historian. “There was a buffalo trail extending in the general direction from the Guyan Valley to Mud River and buffalo passed up the valleys in the summer. Wild game was plentiful — deer, turkey, bear and also such animals as panthers, wild cats, and wolves. The otter and beaver were found on Guyan River at an early day. Wild hogs roamed the woods. At times in the early morning the air would be darkened by pigeons. There were elk in this region, but they were exterminated as early as 1815.”

During the later teens, Peter Dingess, Garland Conley, Charles Spurlock, Abner Vance, and Richard Vance settled in the vicinity of Harts Creek. These men were the ancestors of many persons involved in the Milt Haley story.

“The first settlers to find homes in Hart’s District were from the counties of northern Virginia,” according to Kile Topping, an early historian. “Many of these settlers belonged to the hardy class of hunters and ginseng diggers, who later gave up this occupation to become timbermen. They came here from Virginia through the mountains on foot, or down the Kanawha Valley in covered wagons. Some came in push boats from nearby counties and Ohio. Most of the traveling was done on horseback. There was no salt here and the old settlers dug their ‘seng’ and carried it on horses to the Salt Licks of the great Kanawha River, where they exchanged it for salt and other merchandise.”

During the early 1820s, there were minor improvements locally. James White built the first grist mill around 1821. “It was a small tub-wheel mill, water being the propelling power,” according to Hardesty’s History of Lincoln County, West Virginia (c.1884). In 1823, a Methodist minister named William West preached the first sermon in Harts (and became the namesake for West Fork). In 1824, Harts was incorporated into the new county of Logan. By that time, William Thompson lived in the head of West Fork, Isham Tomblin lived on Harts Creek, Joseph Gore (Ed Haley’s great-great-grandfather) lived on West Fork and Isaac Brown lived across the Guyandotte River from Green Shoal. Moses Workman and John Abbott were perhaps in the area as well, the latter located near Isaac Brown.

In Search of Ed Haley 143

16 Tuesday Jul 2013

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After talking with Ugee, I called Lawrence Haley, who’d been “laid up” since my trip to Ashland. He and I talked more about finding the photograph of Ed and Ella getting ready to play music on the street. In no time at all, he was revealing new details about his father’s “street life,” first telling how he’d get a crowd together.

“He might just bow the fiddle a little bit and get a few sweet notes out of it. Stop. And if it looked too dead to him, he’d just get up and leave. ‘There’s no use of staying here.’ Pop wouldn’t play if it wasn’t something that he knew he could make money at. He wouldn’t get out and work for nickel and dime stuff all day long. Maybe ten, twelve cents an hour, just sitting there playing music, and taking requests or something and sitting on the street. But my mother did. She’d get out… I’ve seen her go in times so cold she’d cut the fingers out of gloves so she could play the mandolin, and have a harp and I know that thing’d almost freeze to her lips in weather like that. But Pop, he wouldn’t do that. Of course, I don’t guess a violin player could do too well outside. His fingers’d get stiff as they could be.”

When Ed wasn’t playing on the street in the winter, he would go inside public buildings.

“Well, I’ve seen them inside the courthouse main lobby some,” Lawrence said of his parents. “They played in theaters. Concourses of train stations, and places like that. Anywhere where they’s a lobby big enough to they didn’t interfere… You know, they could get over out of the way of main traffic flow, of pedestrian traffic. Sometimes they’d let them play and sometimes they wouldn’t. He was pretty well known in some places, and they tolerated him — if they didn’t outright appreciate it. They tolerated it anyway, because they knew that that’s how they had to make their living.”

Lawrence gave me more information on Bake and Lula Lee, the “other” blind husband-wife team working on the streets of Ashland.

“Lula Lee was blind and Bake Lee was blind,” he said. “They lived in Catlettsburg, Lula and Bake did, as long as I can remember. They raised two or three kids. Bake Lee was the flower huckster that Pop got accused of being when he died. ‘The Flower Huckster of Winchester Avenue.’ Lula Lee went to school with my mother at the School for the Blind. She played the mandolin and the harp. She had a harmonica rack. My mother played one like that, too. She did a lot of street work like that on her own, too. Pop might be in Logan, she might be in Gallipolis, Ohio, or Ironton or Portsmouth. And Pop might be off somewhere with a bunch of his cronies learning new music up in West Virginia or Kentucky. If the need for money come up, somebody had to bring it in. We didn’t eat quite as good for a day or two or something, but none of us would ever starve.”

In Search of Ed Haley 142

09 Tuesday Jul 2013

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For the rest of the summer, I was busy on the telephone with Ugee Postalwait, Wilson Douglas and of course Lawrence Haley. I first called Ugee to tell her about peering up at the old Hicks homeplace in Calhoun County with Wilson Douglas. I also wanted to cross-check a lot of what Wilson had told me about Haley’s time in that part of the country with Ugee, who was about 20 years his senior. Together, they represented most of my research on Ed’s life in northcentral West Virginia.

“Well, it was beautiful when I was a growing up,” she said. “All them hills was clean then, but the brush has grown down to the road now. I got to go down last September and visit around. Went up on Coal River and up through there. Places I hadn’t been for 20-some years. My dad’s old home burned down in 1966 or ’67. I owned the place when it was burnt down. Then they came back about a year after that and burnt my garage down at the road. They was a burning houses down there like crazy till I got the law in on them. They even burnt barns with horses in them.”

I’d been re-reading the story in Parkersburg Landing where Haley played at Laury’s grave in 1937 (and had heard Wilson’s version), so I asked Ugee if she remembered who came there with him.

“Ed and Ella and the kids,” she said, contradicting what Wilson Douglas had said about Bernard Postalwait being there. “Well, let’s see, now. Ralph wasn’t with them. Noah and Clyde and Lawrence and the girl and I believe Jackie might’ve come with him, too.”

And what happened at the grave?

“Oh, he didn’t stay out there very long,” she said. “He played some fiddling tunes and he played some songs that he wanted. ‘Sally Goodin’ and things — old songs they liked. You know, fiddling pieces. ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’, and something like that. He didn’t play very many up there. He was tore up pretty bad over that, he really was. Him and Ella both. They thought an awful lot of my dad, and Mom and Dad thought an awful lot of them, too. It was a very sad occasion when they got there that evening, I can tell you that, for all of us.”

After Laury’s death, Ed and Ella made other trips to Calhoun County.

“They was back the next summer,” Ugee said. “I lived up at what they call Stinson up above there. I’d moved over there. They played music on the hill where I held a Sunday school. A Hardshell Baptist Church. I was the first one ever had Sunday School there and it was called the Metheny Church. The first year that I had Sunday School, they wasn’t there — they went somewhere else, I think, playing music — but he come to that Sunday School for my Children’s Day, him and Ella. You oughta seen that hill when they found out Ed and Ella was a gonna be there. They come from the head of Walker and every place around.”

I told Ugee what Wilson Douglas had said about Ed always requesting a certain banjo-picker at Laury’s named Chennison.

“Cottrells,” she said immediately. “Jenes Cottrell, the younger one, he was from over around Rosedale and he was a good banjo-picker. He made his banjos out of drums. Old Senator Cottrell, I knowed him, too. They was all good musicians. Will Jarvis, he had a thumb off at the first joint and he was a good banjo-picker, too.”

What about French Carpenter?

“Yeah, I knowed about French Carpenter. He lived over towards — oh, I expect about fifteen miles. Maybe more than that. And there was another one too named Frank Santy. They both played the fiddle. Frank was a left-handed fiddle player. I used to know about every thing that went in that country — them old people playing music — ’cause they always come to Dad’s and sit on that porch and played music. And if Ed was in the country they’d just come from miles around to hear Dad and him play. I hate to say this, but Nashville down there ought to have some of the players that’s been in that country.”

I told Ugee a little bit about learning that Ed may have had a sister and brother named Josie Cline and Mont Spaulding in the Tug Valley.

“I don’t know of Ed a having any brother,” she said, “but it’s just like a dream that I heard him say something about having a sister. I believe he did say he had a sister.”

Ugee could tell I had been fishing for new details in Ed’s background.

“Ed wasn’t blind when he was born,” she said. “Neither was Ella. She got sore eyes, Ella did, when she was a baby. And the old people washed their eyes with blue vitteral and that ate her eyeballs out. Ed, he had the measles that put him blind when he was a baby.”

Just before we hung up, I mentioned that Ed supposedly learned some of French Carpenter’s tunes.

“Well, I don’t think he got that many tunes from him,” Ugee said. “I have an idea he got more tunes from Ed than Ed ever got from him, if you want to know the truth about it. But you know, when Ed went back through the country — the only way they got out of that country was going to Ivydale and catch a train and they’d walk and go and maybe they’d stay a night or two a going, so they might’ve stayed over at French Carpenter’s and might’ve got some music.”

I guess French’s house was on the way to the station.

In Search of Ed Haley 141

08 Monday Jul 2013

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Ella Trumbo — Ed Haley’s future wife — was born in February of 1888, roughly a year after the feud’s conclusion. She was born with “runny eyes” but went blind after a doctor prescribed “bad medicine.” When the drops were put into Ella’s eyes, the family ignored her crying because they thought she was acting out with what Pat Haley called “the Trumbo temper.” Thereafter, she fell on two separate occasions, losing an eye each time. Mona said her eyes actually “burst one at a time,” leaving her face with empty sockets. Ella told Mona that all she remembered seeing was “the light of day.” Supposedly, Jesse James once stopped at her father’s vegetable stand in Morehead and gave her money because she was a little blind girl.

Some time between 1893 and 1899, Laura Belle Trumbo died, leaving a great void in Ella’s life. The situation was complicated when her father remarried to a woman named Nannie around 1899. Nannie, or Nan, as she was called, was born in April of 1878 — making her barely older than William’s oldest child, Zora. Ella did not like her stepmother, Pat said, because she was really close to her father. She found comfort among her friends at the Kentucky School for the Blind, which she attended from the age of about four years until she was nineteen or twenty years old.

In 1900, the Trumbos were listed as renters in the 1900 Rowan County Census (Morehead Precinct): William was a thirty-eight-year-old farmer, Nannie was twenty-two, Zora was twenty-one, Texas Anna was fifteen, Ella was twelve, Allie was nine and Luther was several months old. Zora worked as a day laborer, while Texas Anna and Ella attended school. All could read and write except the youngest two children.

Thomas Trumbo — Ella’s grandfather — died in October of 1909 and was buried on Triplett Creek.

“Thomas Trumbo was buried on a point overlooking his property, a place he had chosen because it was where the morning light first struck,” according to one local history.

A year later, in 1910, William Trumbo was listed in the Rowan County census (Morehead Precinct #1). William was a fifty-eight-year-old farmer, Nannie was thirty-two years old, Ella was a twenty-one-year-old blind music teacher, Allie W. was an 18-year-old working at odd jobs, and Luther was sixteen years old. William’s mother, Celia, was listed in the home as seventy-two years old, with five of her seven children alive. Willie A. Campbell, a forty-six year old widow, was listed in the home as a ward. All could read and write. Celia died four years later on January 13 or 14, 1914 and was buried beside of her husband on Triplett Creek.

By 1920, William had left Morehead and settled at Clyffeside Park in Ashland, where he was listed in a city directory as an employee of the Vansant-Kitchen Company. “In the timber-boom era of the 1880s to the early 1900s, Ashland and the immediate vicinity had several saw mills, among them the famous Vansant-Kitchen Mill,” wrote one early history. “Located at Keyes Creek, this mill depended principally on the river for bringing the timber from the forests to Ashland. It made use in the early days also of the splash-dam system of floating logs down Keyes Creek, but as the timber in that area became harder to reach, the system no longer worked well and a narrow-gauge railway was built up the creek to haul the timber from the jobs far up the hollows.”

Following William’s death, Nan remarried to a Brewer.

In Search of Ed Haley 140

06 Saturday Jul 2013

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William M. Trumbo — Ella Haley’s father — was born in October of 1861 to Thomas Isaac and Celia Ann (Oxley) Trumbo of Morehead, Kentucky. Thomas Isaac was a son of John L. and Sarah (Manley) Trumbo of Bath or Fleming County, Kentucky, while Celia Ann was the daughter of Prior and Isabel (Neal) Oxley. She was born in Kentucky or Ohio or Indiana (it varies in each census record). Thomas and Celia lived in Morehead across Triplett Creek from Dr. Raine’s Cottage Hotel. In 1870, Thomas was listed in the Rowan County Census as the county jailor. There were six children living in his home, aged newborn to 13 years, including son, William, who was 11. Daughter Lucy was living at Pine Grove with her new husband, John Martin — later a key participant in the Martin-Tolliver feud. The Thomas Trumbo home survived until at least 1984, according to one local history. (“The Thomas Isaac Trumbo House stands across Triplett Creek from the Raine Hotel. Dr. Raine’s Cottage Hotel was the site of many feud incidents.”)

William Trumbo married Laura Belle Whitt around 1878. They were the parents of five children: Zora Trumbo, born March 1879; Texas Anna Trumbo, born January 1885; Martha Ella, born February 1888; Allie W. Trumbo, born May 1891; and Luther Trumbo, born March 1893.

The Trumbos made their home in Morehead, where William was listed in the 1880 census as twenty-one years old. In 1884, Laura Belle Trumbo — William’s wife (who became pregnant in the spring of that year) — inadvertently played a key role in initiating the Martin-Tolliver Feud while at a pre-election dance in Morehead.

“During the evening Mrs. William Trumbo got tired, excused herself, and went upstairs to what she thought was her room,” writes John Edd Pearce in Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky (1994). “It was not. By mistake she got into the room of H.G. Price, a wealthy timber dealer and owner of the steamboat Gerty. When Price returned to his room, he was pleased to find on his bed what seemed to be a bonus, and he attempted to make the most of the situation. Mrs. Trumbo screamed, fled, and told her husband of her horrible experience.”

Unfortunately for Price, Mrs. Trumbo was related by marriage to the Logan and Martin families, both of whom made dangerous enemies.

“On election day Trumbo sought out Price and demanded that he apologize publicly to his wife,” writes Pearce. “Price replied — not dishonestly — that he had done nothing wrong, had found Mrs. Trumbo on his bed, and had done what any man would have done under the circumstances. A fight broke out. Friends of the men joined in, to the cheers of drunken onlookers.”

John Martin, a brother-in-law to Mrs. Trumbo, jumped in on the Trumbo side and soon got into a shooting scrape with Floyd Tolliver — which effectively ended the brawl. But tensions remained throughout the fall.

“It was a bleak day in December, 1884, following the August election in Rowan County when John Martin and his wife Lucy Trumbo and two of their small children climbed into their jolt wagon out on Christy Creek and rode into town,” writes Jean Thomas in Blue Ridge Country (1942). In no time at all, Martin bumped into Tolliver, who he shot dead before turning himself in to authorities. Not long thereafter, a mob of men shot Martin to death on a train at Farmers, a settlement about five miles from Morehead.

“When the train bearing John Martin’s bullet-torn body reached Morehead, he was carried, still breathing, into the old Central Hotel where he died that night,” writes Thomas. “In the meantime his distracted wife had sent for their children and her mother who was staying with the family on the farm on Christy Creek. An old darky who had long lived at the county seat mounted his half-blind mule and rode out along the lonely creek that cold winter night to carry the sad tidings to the Martin household. He also rode ahead of them on the journey back with the corpse of John Martin later that same night.”

Along the way, Granny Trumbo — Ella’s grandmother — warned the children gathered in the back of the wagon, “Hush! No telling who’s hid in the brush to kill us.” Years later, the children remembered how she sat “bravely erect on the board seat of the wagon beside her widowed daughter, gripped the reins and urged the weary team onward along the frozen road, keeping close behind the silent horseman ahead.”

It was the first violent acts in a three-year row that would claim twenty lives, almost destroy a town and inspire the song, “The Rowan County Crew”, supposedly written by Blind Bill Day. Ironically, this tune had the same melody and lyrical rhythms as “The Lincoln County Crew”, a song partly composed about the murder of Ed Haley’s father.

In Search of Ed Haley 139

02 Tuesday Jul 2013

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Around five o’clock that evening, Bobby Taylor drove over to Lawrence’s from Dunbar, West Virginia. Bobby was a Clark Kessinger protege and friend to Wilson Douglas. We gathered in the kitchen where Bobby got acquainted with Lawrence. He told about the first time he heard Clark Kessinger speak of Ed Haley.

“I was setting there and I was like a sixteen-year-old boy just hanging on his every word. I remember it just as well as if it was yesterday. I asked him who the best fiddler was that he ever heard in his life and he said Eck Robertson was really great on about four pieces. He said Ed Haley was the best fiddler he ever heard because Ed Haley played them all great. And Lefty Shafer’s dad, Von Shafer always thought the two fiddlers who were the best he had ever heard — and he said he wouldn’t turn his hand over for the difference — was Sam Jarvis and Ed Haley.”

Lawrence said, “Well, I’ve heard Pop talk about Jarvis.”

At that point, Bobby showed Lawrence how he thought Sam Jarvis had played — “a lot like Haley: smooth and even” — then said, “But Haley had a little bit more bow motion than Jarvis did.” He played a little bit for Lawrence, showing him what he thought were some of Ed’s “licks.” Lawrence tapped his fingers on the table a few times, then laughed and said, “John, watch him. He can teach you pretty well how my dad played.” He really liked Bobby’s fiddling, which made perfect sense. He had patterned after Kessinger, who patterned after Ed.

For the next hour or so, Bobby and I played a mess of tunes. Bobby’s favorite Haley tune was “Dunbar”, which he’d learned many years ago from the Parkersburg Landing album. For the most part, Lawrence watched us quietly, only periodically commenting on notes or bowing when something sounded or looked familiar. After I played my version of “Shortnin’ Bread”, Lawrence said it sure sounded like one of his father’s tunes. When Bobby played “Soldier’s Joy” he said, “Well, that’s about the way my dad played it. I mean, the notes.”

We seemed to be off on Ed’s bowing, because Lawrence kept reminding us, “Pop ran the bow from one end of the bow to the other.”

Bobby told him, “That’s the way I do if you catch me about two o’clock in the morning warmed up. I use the entire stroke of the bow.”

Occasionally, Bobby would mention old fiddlers around Charleston — Kessinger, Jarvis, Shafer. He seemed to be a big fan of Mike Humphreys, a Depression-era fiddler who turned down an offer by Bill Monroe to become a Bluegrass Boy in 1943 and spent the next twenty years competing in contests against Clark Kessinger. Lawrence said all he remembered about Ed’s trips to Charleston was that a fellow named Ruffner usually guided him around town and that Kessinger was always there watching, listening and trying to copy his father’s style. He must have been really good at it because Ugee Postalwait had said Kessinger “was as near like Ed as any fiddler I ever heard.”

Just before I headed back to Nashville, Lawrence agreed to let me borrow all of Ed’s home recordings and copy them using the latest technology. Considering how Lawrence guarded them through the years, I felt his loaning of them was an overwhelming expression of trust. In a few days, I excitedly took them to Bruce Nemerov at the Center for Popular Culture in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. As Bruce “did his thing,” Lawrence, Steve, and I talked about maybe having them cleaned up and released commercially. Lawrence liked the idea of giving any profits from such a project to the Kentucky School for the Blind.

In Search of Ed Haley 138

30 Sunday Jun 2013

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Later that evening, back in Ashland, Lawrence and I talked about Haley’s tunes. Ed told him all about “Bonaparte’s Retreat”.

“When the French first went in, they was pushing the Russians pretty hard,” Lawrence said. “The high string going in. The Russians were retreating. When they got to a certain point, the cannons started booming and the Russians started turning the tide on them. Part of the highs, I guess, was the French Napoleon troops coming out in a hurry and the Russians right behind them and then they’d be a spell of like an old dirge or something, like they was coming out defeated. They was slacking off on ’em and letting them retreat back out of there. They knew they wasn’t gonna make it on account of the weather. Just gonna let them freeze to death. Then they’d boom the cannon and push them a little bit faster. Then the dirge come up again. That’s the way Pop kinda explained it to me. He’d say, ‘Now you listen to these cannons boom. The Russians are getting ready to turn the tide on Napoleon’s troops’.”

Lawrence had no idea where Ed heard that story.

“Same way with ‘Lost Indian’,” he said. “It seemed like, the way he explained it, this old Indian would look at something and see a far off peak that he recognized and he’d be happy and hooping and hollering and trying to get over to it and then whenever he’d get over there he would find out it wasn’t the place he thought it was. And he’d sit down and kind of reminisce, I guess, and feel bad towards his self because he wasn’t where he thought he was at so he could get home. He’d stand up and look around again and maybe see another peak or familiar point as being close to his tribe and he’d go to it with a little bit of enthusiasm and glee because he thought he’s getting home and it’d turn out the same way. He wasn’t getting no where. He was still a ‘lost Indian’.”

In Search of Ed Haley 137

29 Saturday Jun 2013

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Charlotte Spaulding, Grace’s daughter, guided Lawrence, Pat, and I to see 81-year-old Babe Hale. I told him about my interest in Ed’s life and he started talking about his Aunt Josie. I showed him one picture of Ed and he said, “That looks just like her almost.” I pulled out Ed’s picture from Parkersburg Landing and he said, “Looks more like Uncle Mont.” I was pretty sure that there was some kind of family connection between Ed and Mont and Josie, especially when Babe said his brother George Hale had went by the nickname of “Milt.” Maybe Josie and Mont were somehow Milt Haley’s children by a previous marriage.

“Josie’s mom and dad are buried down here at Grey Eagle,” Babe said. “He was killed in a raft. You know, they used to take logs down the river. They’s big rafts, trees tied together. And he was killed that way. He was killed on a raft.”

Babe told me more about Josie Cline — some very peculiar details.

“Josie collected toll up there, and when I’d go across, I had to pay, too. It didn’t make any difference to her: she’s gonna get three cents some way or other. But she was really manly. She wore men’s shoes and everything.”

So she wore a long dress all the time?

“Oh yeah,” Babe said. “She was really an old-fashioned woman.”

Charlotte said, “She looked like a man, didn’t she, Babe?”

I asked Babe what tunes she and Mont played and he said, “Oh, God, ‘Sourwood Mountain’ and everything. No, they could really knock it off now, both of them.”

We went to Grace’s briefly before heading back to Ashland. I was under the impression that Grace might have confused Ed with Mont Spaulding, although she had claimed to know about Ed’s banjo-picking friend, Johnny Hager.

“Yeah, he played the banjo with her,” she had said. “He was a little man. He was with them. They was two or three people traveled with them.”

In Search of Ed Haley 136

28 Friday Jun 2013

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The next day, Lawrence, Pat, and I drove up the Tug Fork to see 80-year-old Grace Marcum in Kermit, West Virginia. I was hoping for more information on the Muncy family, who may have been connected genealogically to Haley. It was a long drive through Wayne County up the Big Sandy Valley on Route 52. There was nothing. Then we came to Fort Gay, West Virginia, an interestingly-named town at the mouth of the Tug Fork. A little further south was some of the emptiest country I have ever seen — just the Tug and occasionally the old N&W Railroad. We finally reached the village of Crum, then crossed into Mingo County and to the old railroad town of Kermit. It was completely dead, with just a shell of a strip of old businesses. Across the river was Warfield, Kentucky.

Once we located Grace, I asked her if she had ever heard of Milt Haley.

“They called him ‘Milty,’ didn’t they?” she said. “Yeah, that’s what I heard him called.”

What about Ed Haley?

“He used to play the fiddle for us down there at the square dance,” Grace said. “Daddy built a big hotel and he’d have square dances downstairs in that big dining room. He used to play the fiddle for us down there. Him and Josie Cline and her brother Mont Spaulding was awful good friends. We’d give them twenty-five dollars a night, my daddy. They played at Warfield a lot. Across the river there. Some of her people lived there, some of Josie’s people. I don’t know who it was.”

At that point, Lawrence said, “We used to ride the N&W out of Kenova up the Tug Fork here up to Williamson and all through there. And he’d play music at some of the hotels and at the courthouse and places like that up at Williamson. Coming back, he’d usually stop here and see these Muncys and we’d stay, maybe, overnight with them.”

Grace seemed to know exactly who Lawrence was talking about.

“That was Rush and Loosh and Old Man Sammy. Yeah, I can remember. Dad sold the store out to Uncle Sammy, and he run the business there a long time. Dad got paint poison, and we liked to lost him. Rush lived in Kenova for years, but his wife died and he come up here and stayed with Loosh. Rush was the oldest one.”

Lawrence said, “Well, that’s what my dad used to do for a living was to go around and play during court days. He might stay in Williamson as long as they had a court session a going. And then come back through here and stop and see — I didn’t know that they’s his kinfolk — the Muncys was any kin to him. I’ve heard him talk about Mont Spaulding.”

So wait a minute. Ed played music with someone named Mont Spaulding and Josie Cline?

“Yeah, well, Ed come in ever once in a while, but Ed was getting pretty old,” Grace said. “And he stayed with Josie and them. Wherever they played, he went with ’em. Pretty nice old man. Well, him and Loosh Muncy and Rush Muncy was close. Now, they didn’t only play for Dad. They played for other people. Let’s see, Thursday night and Saturday night down here, and then they’d go to Borderland and play up there on Thursday and Friday nights. They made it good. Let’s see, Mont Spaulding, and a Haley and Josie Cline. Them three was the ones that… I paid them off myself. I know.”

In Search of Ed Haley 135

27 Thursday Jun 2013

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The next morning, Lawrence and I went to see Dr. Paul Holbrook, son of Ed’s close friend, Dr. H.H. Holbrook of Greenup, Kentucky. Paul hadn’t located the silver cup Ed was supposed to have given his father for delivering Mona in 1930, but did have three very important Wilcox-Gay records his father made of Ed on a “tin machine” in Greenup. On one of the records, Ed played “Fifteen Days in Georgia” and “Wake Up Susan”. On another was Ed’s version of “Over the Waves”, with some Dinah Shore recordings on the flip side. There was also a recording of Doc playing “Ragtime Anna” on December 27, 1941 (supposedly using the fiddle Ed had given him). Paul allowed me to borrow these three records, which I found to be unbelievably scratchy.

Later that day, Lawrence told me more about his mother’s background. He said Ella came from the Trumbos, a somewhat affluent family headquartered in Morehead, Kentucky. Morehead, Lawrence reminded me, was a small college town located thirty miles west of Ashland. Ella’s father William Trumbo — who Lawrence called “Paw” — was an active participant in the early events of the famous Martin-Tolliver feud (a.k.a., the Rowan County War), while her aunt was married to one of the feud’s chief participants, John Martin.

“That’s the feud Larry always talked about until you came along,” Pat said to me. “Mom’s father and apparently her uncle was involved in that.”

Pat and Lawrence knew something about the Trumbos.

“William Trumbo was a large landowner down there on Triplett’s Creek,” Pat said. “That’s where the Trumbos are buried — on the hill behind Triplett’s Creek. We’ve been there. The graves have fallen stones for markers. It was hard for us to get down and inspect them very well to see dates and things.”

Pat told me a little something about Ella’s brother Allie, as well as Texas Anna, who Pat called “Sissy”.

“Sissy. Mom’s sister, had a son, Bill Busby,” Pat said. “I never met Bill Busby but apparently he had a speech impediment and a hearing impediment. And then she was with a man when I came over here in 1949. He was a paper hanger.”

In Search of Ed Haley 134

25 Tuesday Jun 2013

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Later that night, Lawrence, Pat and I looked through a box of family photographs. Most were “modern” pictures featuring side burns, bellbottoms, or trendy 80s sweaters, but there were a few treasures. Early in our dig, I came across an old postcard with Ed, Ella, and Ralph pictured on it. Toward the bottom of the box was a small, dark picture of Ed in between Ella and someone named Margaret Arms. Lawrence said Margaret was Ed’s cousin, originally from around Paintsville, Kentucky, “or somewhere,” who ran a barbershop on Court Street in Cincinnati. Mona later told me that Margaret used the last name of Thomas because she was married to or lived with a man by that name. Margaret used to give her jewelry.

At the bottom of the cardboard box, under the flaps, was a dark, faded picture of Ed and Ella sitting on the street with their instruments. The photo was small and blurred, but I could make out that Ed wore some kind of a billed cap and was getting ready to play a tune.

“Pop looks like he might have been getting ready to play a piece and was letting my mother know without coming right out and saying what piece of music he was gonna play,” Lawrence said of the picture. “He was maybe hitting a lick with the fiddle bow, sort of like a ‘tune-up lick’ or two.”

Lawrence pointed to his mother, who had her right arm behind the mandolin, and said, “They kept a cup on the street in front of them or some kind of place where people could put change and my mother would take that up and she would put it behind her mandolin and count the take for their piece of music. And that’s what she’s doing right there.”

In the photograph, Ed obviously had the fiddle placed against his chest, and it appeared as if he held the bow as far to the end of the frog as possible. I practiced the hold in front of the mirror in the living room, then showed it to Lawrence, who said, “That’s it. That looks right.” I could tell right away this bow hold allowed for greater leverage in playing close to the frog as well as for pulling an extremely long bow. It was very similar to a bow hold I’d learned as a boy from Gene Goforth and Benny Martin, but the emphasis was never as far back as Ed was holding it. In fact, when I first saw this picture I even thought Ed might be holding it by the “frog screw.”