Category Archives: Lincoln County Feud

In Search of Ed Haley 250

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

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A.S. Fry — the man who owned the home where Milt Haley and Green McCoy were murdered — was a former officer in the Confederate army and early businessman in Harts. According to the Fry history, “Shortly after his return home from the War, his adventurous spirit led him to Kansas and on to Texas; his family remained in Lincoln County. After his return from the West, his youngest son was born.” This son, Evermont Ward Fry, was born in 1872 and was later interviewed by Fred Lambert.

“When I was a boy, people gathered for a week’s religious meetings,” Fry told Lambert. “My father would keep from forty to fifty people. They held meetings in the summer or early fall. The people came on horseback from all directions. The preaching was at the Green Shoal School house; this was an old log building. Before it stood three or four beech trees. Preaching was under these trees. On one occasion my father’s house caught fire. He kept store and had just received an order of five or six dozen buckets. It was the nighttime, but he got out the fire buckets and the men formed a line up from the river. They put out the fire, but one end of the house was pretty badly burned.”

In subsequent years, A.S. Fry made other trips West, apparently with his son, George. George Franklin Fry was born in 1858 and was married to his first cousin, Eliza Virginia Lucas, a daughter of Charles and Lucinda (Fry) Lucas.

“Mrs. Rhoda Fry — Wear in this city and will Remain Hear for a few days,” A.S. Fry wrote to his wife from Ottawa, Franklin County, Kansas, on July 14, 1880. “Lands is from $3 to $20 dollars per acor. Thare is fine crops hear. We may By Land in this County. This is said to be the beste County in the state and thare is thousands of acors for sail heare. It is vary warm. I don’t know when I will be at home. I will wright when I will be at home and I want you and Ward to meet me at huntington. This is a nice Country. I will wright to you in 2 or 3 days what we ar a doing. We have Gist Reatch this City. The Pepel is all Kind and seemes to tak intrust in Emzy Jane. I have nothing worthey of wrighting. Give all of my frieands best Respects for me and tell BC Toney not to Rune his stones two close. So I will close by saying that we ar well. Hoping the last few Lines will find you all well. So fare well. If you Right Direct yere Letter A.S. Fry, Garnett, Anderison Co., Kansas.”

“We wrote you from Cincinnati Ohio regarding Goods,” George wrote as an attachment to the aforementioned letter. “We bough[t] a little stock — and if Will has not gone after them go at once — they are in care of J.L. Caldwell. We also sent Bills at same time. In close you will find a butiful song bough[t] on Train.”

In Search of Ed Haley 249

24 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber

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At the time of the ambush on Al and Hollena Brumfield, Henderson Dingess and his family were in no mood to see yet another one of their fold die violently. Less than a year before, on November 15, 1888, Floyd Dingess, an older son of Henderson, was murdered while working logs at the mouth of Rockhouse Fork on Harts Creek. It was a horrific deed: Floyd, whose wife was several months pregnant, was murdered by his own brother-in-law, Billy Hall. Floyd had never been popular with the Halls. He reportedly made a habit of bullying Billy. It was said that when he came home from working, his wife would clatter pots and pans in the kitchen just so her family wouldn’t hear his footsteps.

When Billy finally shot Floyd on that fateful day, some of the younger Dingess boys were fishing in the creek nearby. They raced home to tell their family what had happened, while Billy quickly returned home and received instructions to hide out in Robinson Creek, Kentucky. Meanwhile, Floyd’s pregnant wife was floated across the creek to her husband, who died in her arms. Hugh Dingess, Floyd’s brother, tracked Billy to Kiah’s Creek but lost his trail. For years, Hugh was devastated by his brother’s death. He used to get drunk and shoot the Halls’ cattle.

The Dingesses eventually learned the whereabouts of Billy Hall and prepared to fetch him by force. The Halls on Harts Creek caught wind of their plan and sent word to Billy to escape by train to Tennessee, which he did — and was never heard from again.

Surely, when Milt Haley and Green McCoy shot Hollena Brumfield less than a year later, the Dingess family was determined to execute a harsh revenge. It was, after all, the second attack on their clan in several months. We wondered then, why would Milt, Green, Runyon, and Ben Adams — knowing the fate of poor Billy Hall — want to risk their lives (and fortunes) to attack Brumfield? Surely Milt and Green — taking a cue from Billy Hall — were well aware that once they committed their heinous act, the only avenue open to them was to flee the state forever. We also wondered if Milt just abandoned Emma and Ed on Trace Fork or if there was some kind of arrangement to later meet him in Kentucky?

In Search of Ed Haley 248

23 Sunday Feb 2014

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A little later, Brandon and Billy visited Wayne Brumfield at Douglas Branch in Ferrellsburg. Wayne was born in 1926 and is the great-grandson of Paris Brumfield. As expected, Wayne and his wife Opal knew the general story of the Haley-McCoy killings. Wayne said the whole trouble was over someone losing timber but he never heard of anyone named John Runyon or Ben Adams. He said Tucker Fry and Rome Lambert — two residents of Green Shoal who (Brandon discovered) were married to Al Brumfield’s first cousins — supposedly participated in the Brumfield mob. According to Opal, Milt or Green said to the other, “Eat plenty ’cause it’ll be our last meal.” She also remembered hearing that Stella Mullins cooked their dinner, that a pistol was used to kill them, that someone hid under a bed and that chickens pecked at their brains in the yard. Wayne said people were afraid to touch Haley and McCoy’s bodies.

In Search of Ed Haley 246

20 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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Meanwhile, Brandon was in contact with Brady Thompson of Stafford, Virginia. Brady, a grandson of Ben Adams, had also seen the Guyandotte Voice newspaper article. He was sure that his grandpa Ben hired Milt and Green to ambush Al Brumfield because his grandmother — Ben’s last wife — had told him so. They shot at Brumfield but accidentally shot his wife, who rode behind him on a mule. They were eventually captured and chopped to death with axes near the mouth of Harts Creek.

It was in the years after the feud that Ben married Brady’s grandmother.

“My grandmother was an Indian,” Brady said. “Some way she said he took them away from some Indians on Horsepen Mountain and brought them over there when she was about fifteen and when she got about eighteen or nineteen year old he married her. His wife had died. He musta been married three or four times ’cause he musta had 25 or 30 kids.”

Brady didn’t seem to think much of his Grandpa Ben, who taught his sons to be “no good.”

“All they ever done is set around and figure out how to get a big war started between the families,” he said. “They’d kill one another.”

Brady said his Grandpa Ben died at his home on main Harts Creek in 1910 and “was buried up there on Trace.”

Brandon asked if there were any pictures of Adams and he said, “I believe old Harve Adams up on Trace before he died, he had Ben’s picture.”

I gave Brady a call to ask him about Ed and he said, “I was about six or eight years old when I seen Ed Haley. They come to my father’s place, my Uncle George’s place. The kids had brought Ed and his wife in that evening on two mules. A bunch of us kids all slept on the floor and they all drunk and played music all night long. I waked up early that morning — a big frost on — and they was still playing music. I thought that was the best music though I ever heard.”

Ed played a lot with Brady’s banjo-picking uncle George Baisden and occasionally at Ewell Mullins’ store on Trace.

Back in Harts, Brandon and Billy drove up Hoover Fork to see Brady’s younger brother, Alvie Thompson. Alvie was a very dedicated Mormon who’d just moved back to Harts Creek from out West.

“Grandpa Ben Adams was a big, tall ruffian — a rough villain,” Alvie said. “He’d beat his wife with a switch when she’d run off.” Ben lived in the head of Trace and operated a dam on Harts Creek.

Alvie remembered Ed Haley as a short, heavy-set man who visited his Uncle George Baisden as late as 1949-50. Gladys Williamson, Alvie’s 78-year-old sister, said Ed brought two of his sons there and he and Uncle George played music out on the porch or under walnut trees near the barn. Alvie’s father Herbert Thompson sometimes joined in with his banjo as did Ella, who played the guitar and banjo. Alvie recalled Ed playing standard tunes like “Arkansas Traveler”, “Sourwood Mountain” and “Sally Goodin”.

In Search of Ed Haley 235

07 Friday Feb 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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The Lincoln County Courthouse — which holds deed records, vital statistics, and criminal records for the Harts Creek District — burned on November 19, 1909, taking with it whatever records might have existed pertaining to the 1889 feud. Thanks to a now-forgotten arsonist reportedly hired by a gas company to eliminate locals’ claims to mineral rights, we can locate little information in the courthouse on Milt Haley’s death or Brumfield family antics. However, somehow, we do have access to Lincoln County land records since 1867 and they reveal quite a bit about the happenings at the mouth of Harts Creek in the late 1880s. (The Logan County Courthouse, which holds similar records on Ed Haley and his family, has fared little better: it was burned by Yankee soldiers during the Civil War.)

Al Brumfield, according to Brandon’s research, first settled with his wife in a small, boxed house on property owned by his mother and located just below the mouth of Harts Creek at the Shoals along the Guyandotte River. In 1888, some seven years after his marriage, he secured his first piece of property on Brown’s Branch, courtesy of his mother. More importantly, according to land records (in one of those moments where written records confuse the story by totally conflicting with oral tradition), he did not own any property at the mouth of Harts Creek at the time of the Haley-McCoy trouble. Al apparently bought land there from Bill Fowler immediately after the Haley-McCoy trouble. The earliest documented account of him owning the log boom was an 1895 deed, which partially read, “…about three hundred yards above the mouth of said creek where the log boom is now tied.”

One thing for certain: Brumfield wasted little time in eliminating his business competitors at the mouth of Harts Creek immediately following the Haley-McCoy murders. In 1889, he had four primary rivals: (1) Bill Fowler; (2) John Runyon; (3) Isham Roberts and, to a lesser extent, (4) James P. Mullins. Fowler was his cousin, Runyon was no relation, and Roberts was his brother-in-law. Mullins was located more than a mile up Harts Creek at Big Branch and operated a business that was likely past its prime.

In 1890, Brumfield acquired two tracts of land (a 95-acre tract worth 113 dollars and a 25-acre tract worth 75 dollars) from Runyon. We don’t know what price was paid for this land (thanks to the courthouse fire) but considering the circumstances it may have helped save Runyon’s life in the wake of his possible role in the Haley-McCoy fiasco. In that same year, a stubborn Bill Fowler sold two valuable lots on the west side of Guyan River totaling 165 acres to Isaac Adkins, not Al Brumfield. Fowler was apparently resisting the urge to sell out to his ambitious younger cousin who had reportedly burned his business. One tract was 75 acres and worth six dollars per acre, while the other was 90 acres and worth four dollars per acre. The property was worth 810 dollars. Meanwhile, in 1891, Brumfield’s brother-in-law, Isham Roberts, who was referenced in a circa 1884 history as a “prosperous young merchant” at the mouth of Harts Creek, sold out and moved upriver near Fowler Branch (present-day Ferrellsburg).

Not only did Fowler, Runyon and Roberts sell out — they moved away completely. Fowler took his wife and four children (Bettie, age 15, Effie, age 14, Benjamin Franklin, age 12, and George Washington, age 10) and moved to Central City in Huntington. In May of 1892, his wife bought Lot 6 Block 88 in Central City from Susan Porter and her husband. On October 19, she deeded it to Louis H. Taliaferro, who deeded it back to William Fowler, who deeded it back to Taliaferro, who deeded it back to Mrs. Fowler. The Fowlers were in Central City in 1900. According to family tradition, Roberts moved to Oklahoma because of his wife’s disapproval of the violent deeds committed by her family. Several years later, she sold her interest in her father’s estate to Charley Brumfield — the man who had murdered her father in 1891.

Aside from businessmen, the 1889 troubles drove away other important citizens from Harts. First was Cain Adkins, a doctor, lawman, preacher and schoolteacher. In 1891, Cain Adkins sold 40 acres to John H. Adkins, who thereafter claimed the remainder of the farm. Two years later, in 1893, John and his wife Sallie deeded “the Canaan Adkins Farm” (205 acres) to Salena Vance for $607.50. In 1895, Vance and others sold the farm to J.A. Chambers, who in turn deeded it to Louis R. Sweetland in 1897. Thereafter, Salena Vance acquired the property again (jointly with her children, John and Nettie Toney) and sold it to George H. Thomas and E.O. Petrie in 1913. Later that year, Petrie sold his half-interest to Thomas. In 1914, the property contained a 300-dollar building.

In addition to Preacher Cain, John H. Napier, a doctor and in-law to Adkins, seems to have fled the community around 1890. According to Hardesty’s History of Lincoln County, West Virginia (c.1884), Napier settled near the mouth of Harts Creek in 1879. His wife, Julia Ann Ross, was a niece to Cain Adkins. Her older sister married Cain Adkins’ brother-in-law, Addison Vance, of Piney. John was listed in the 1880 census as a thirty-seven-year-old physician with a wife (age 30) and five children, as well as a nephew. He did not own property locally, although his occupation as a doctor and businessman might have made him particularly threatening to an ambitious person like Al Brumfield. “Mr. Napier is a prosperous merchant in Hart Creek district, with business headquarters at the mouth of the creek,” Hardesty wrote.

In Search of Ed Haley 234

06 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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In the months following my trip to Harts, Brandon finished his undergraduate work at college and moved into a three-room house at Ferrellsburg. He spent his mornings and afternoons teaching in the local schools and his evenings hanging out with Billy Adkins. One night, he interviewed Billy’s father, Bill, Sr. — that colorful old fiddler laid up with Alzheimer’s. As Billy asked his father questions, Brandon crouched in the doorway prepared to write down his answers. At first they weren’t even sure if Bill was awake. Then, his eyes still closed, he began to tell a little bit of what he knew about the Brumfields and their 1889 troubles.

Al Brumfield, Bill said, put in a four-log-wide boom at the mouth of Harts Creek and charged a tax on all logs passing through it. John Runyon arrived on the scene just as Brumfield was making a small fortune and put in a rival business. “John Runyon was against the Brumfields,” Bill said. He bought twelve Winchester rifles and armed several men to protect his property, then hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to kill Brumfield. In the ambush, Al was shot in the arm and his wife was shot in the mouth. Haley and McCoy immediately left the area but were soon caught on Tug Fork and jailed in Kentucky. A Brumfield posse got the necessary legal papers and brought the two back to Harts through the Twelve Pole Creek region.

They were on their way down Harts Creek when a spy warned them of an ambush organized by “old man Cain Adkins” at the mouth of Big Branch. Thereafter, the Brumfields went over a mountain to the Guyandotte River and crossed it in boats. They took Haley and McCoy to an old log house later owned by Tucker Fry where they were killed by a mob that included Bill’s uncles Will Adkins and Mac Adkins.

Bill said his uncle Will Adkins died just after the Haley-McCoy killings on November 23, 1889.

“He got drowned in the backwater over here,” he said. “They had a boom across the creek four logs wide. He fell off in the backwater there and drowned hisself. I think Dad was the cause of it. Him and old Bill Abbott was in a row with each other. Uncle Will come along and heard them. He started across there to see what was wrong, to help Dad out if he needed any help. Of course, he fell in that water and drowned himself. He’s buried up on the hill at Ferrellsburg. Old Bill Fowler bought his tombstone. Boy, she’s a big’n. I bet it cost him right smart of money. Uncle Will was named after old Bill Fowler. He was kin through marriage. He married Granddad Aaron’s sister.”

Bill said John Runyon’s attack on Brumfield was one of several violent attempts to secure the property at the mouth of Harts Creek. A little later, Paris Brumfield feuded with Bill Fowler, a local merchant, miller, farmer, and a saloon operator. Fowler was a highly successful businessman; unfortunately, he built his interests on land that Brumfield desperately wanted. Finally, presumably after some trouble, the Brumfields “burned Bill Fowler out”. Bill’s father, Fed Adkins, said he stood at the riverbank watching barrels of alcohol explode straight into the sky as Fowler’s store and saloon burned away.

“The whiskey run into the river,” one Fowler descendant later told Brandon. “They said he had big costly horses and it burned them, too.”

In 1890, after intense pressure from the Brumfields, Fowler sold his property at the mouth of Harts Creek (two tracts of land totaling 165 five acres on the west side of the river) to Isaac Adkins. One tract, according to land records at the Lincoln County Courthouse, was 75 acres and worth six dollars per acre, while the other was 90 acres worth four dollars per acre. Fowler left Harts and settled at Central City in present-day Huntington. Al Brumfield, meanwhile, acquired the Fowler property and employed Ras Fowler, a son of Bill, to work his store. The younger Fowler was a schoolteacher and postmaster. Actually, he was postmaster at the time of the Haley-McCoy trouble.

Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy (2014)

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Timber

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Blood in WV

In June of 2014, Pelican Publishing Company will release my book detailing the true story of the Lincoln County feud.

In Search of Ed Haley 230

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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As we stood at Runyon’s Branch staring at weeds and trying to imagine John Runyon’s 1889 spread, Billy said Garnet Adkins and her son Johnny lived nearby. Garnet was a granddaughter of Hugh Dingess and had been raised at Huey Fowler Hollow just off the hill from the Haley-McCoy grave. Perhaps more interesting, her son Johnny had told Billy recently that his grandfather Adkins used to talk about John Runyon being his neighbor.

We quickly drove to Garnet’s where Billy spotted Johnny working with a mule in the yard. In no time, we were in the living room listening to Garnet talk about the Haley-McCoy murders.

“Well, I’ve heard Mommy talk about it, but it’s been so long ago I’ve about forgot about it,” she said. “She said her and Cat Adkins got in there and got in under the bed — or behind the bed or something — when they was a doing that.”

Your mother was there?

“Yeah, she was just a young’n, though,” Garnet said. “She said one of them said to the other… One had the headache and he said, ‘I can’t eat no supper.’ And he said, ‘You better eat your supper. This’ll be the last supper you’ll ever eat.’ And they just took them out there and killed them. I guess they shot them, I don’t know.”

I asked Garnet if she thought the mob might have shot Milt and Green at the table right after they ate and she said, “No, they took them outside, I think. I’ve heard Mommy talk about it. See Cat lived there in that house where Mommy was at. That’s where they killed them at.”

Garnet said she had seen the house.

“Yeah, I’ve saw it,” she said. “It’s up here across from Fry.”

Wait a minute. That was the same side of the river as what Lawrence Kirk had shown me in 1993.

Milt and Green were killed on the other side of the river, right?

“No,” Garnet said.

Her son Johnny, however, agreed with the popular notion that the killings took place at the Fry house on Green Shoal.

“That’s what Granddad Aaron said,” Johnny said. “An old hued log house is what Granddad said. He said it sat there at Fry. There where Lon Lambert lives.”

Garnet insisted otherwise: “It was on this side of the river, just an old flat house.”

Perhaps sensing that we were not going to agree on the location of the murders, Garnet changed the direction of the conversation.

“You know, that was a mighty cruel thing to take them men out and kill them,” she said. “They claimed my granddaddy Hugh Dingess was in on that but I don’t believe he was. Course Aunt Hollene was his sister, you know. Aunt Hollene came up there to his house one Sunday and lord it scared me to death when I seen her face. I run off and hid. She was mean as a hound dog. She carried a pistol and a watch and pocketbook and all kinds of stuff in a big apron pocket swinging down on her.”

Billy said to Johnny, “Down here on this end of the creek, we’d never heard about Ben Adams a being in on it, had we?”

Johnny answered, “Yeah, oh yeah. Well he knowed them Adamses. That’s the reason they brought them in this other way ’cause they was supposed to been, Granddad told me, men a waiting to take them away from them fellers when they brought them back in here. But they come this other way — the back way — on horses. Come back in through Chapmansville and down this a way. They thought they’d be a coming down Harts Creek but they didn’t come that way. They brought them down around the river way.”

Garnet said Milt and Green’s grave wasn’t marked when she was a little girl.

“They just threw them in a hole really,” she said. “Somebody said Ben Walker buried them.”

Johnny said, “Well now Mother. didn’t they come over there and visit that grave after you was a great big girl?”

“Yeah, I was a young woman,” she said. “Now I don’t know where she was from. I just heard them talk about their uncle living over there in Fisher’s place where Irv Workman lives. They went up that hill a crying and carrying on and I didn’t know what to think. I was just an old big young’n there with the young’ns. Mommy and Poppy both was gone. And I’d think, ‘Lord, who in the world is that coming up through there carrying on like that?’ And I kept seeing them motioning over there across the creek to where Fisher’s place was talking about…  Seems to me the man’s name was Ben. Ben Adkins.”

To get an idea of when it was that people used to come to the grave I asked Garnet what year she was born.

“I was born in 1909,” she said. “June 26th. I was born up here at Ferrellsburg.”

In Search of Ed Haley 219

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Green Shoal, Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Music, Toney

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Back at Billy’s, the subject of the “murder table” came up again. Supposedly, the table upon which Milt and Green had eaten their last meal somehow eventually ended up in the possession of Billy’s family. He suggested visiting his aunt Don Morris, who as a child had eaten from the table many times. Taking the cue, we loaded in the car and drove up Route 10 to Don’s house. Don lived at Toney, a small residential settlement just upriver from Green Shoal.

Don was a pleasant lady — very eager to help — and was aged probably in her seventies. After all the introductions, I asked her about the table. She said her grandfather Irvin Workman must have gotten it soon after the 1889 troubles. “He had it way back when he was raising his family,” Don said. “Then my dad, Bud Workman, when he moved out with my mother, they took the table with them.”

I asked, “Who told you that table was the Haley-McCoy table?” and she said, “My dad. It was in his father’s house before it was in his.”

“And you said that people would come by to see it?” I asked. “Who would come to see it?”

Don said, “I imagine it was relatives of the people that was involved in it.”

Don seemed to remember the table well, so I asked her for some paper so I could try to sketch it based on her memories. I started out asking about the length of the table, the style of its legs, and so forth…estimating everything by comparing it to Don’s current table. It was like doing a police sketch. After I had a rough drawing of the table, I asked her about the size and angle of the bullet holes.

Satisfied, I asked Don if she’d heard anything about Milt and Green’s death.

“It was pretty complicated,” she said. “Well, they got those men in and fed them. They knew they was gonna kill them all the time and they let them eat first. I can’t remember too much about the actual thing, because they didn’t talk too much about it in the family. Grandpa did sometimes. Well, I understood they shot them around the table after they ate. But it was execution style. Now, I couldn’t swear to it.”

Don figured the only light in the room was a kerosene lamp in the middle of the table. There was a story, Brandon said, that Hugh Dingess “shot out the lights” just before the murders — which presumably meant this lamp. While this may have occurred (perhaps so no one could witness the subsequent murders and thus testify in a future trial), it seemed unlikely. I mean, the room was probably really crowded if only half the people supposedly there were actually there and shooting in the room would have seemed dangerous. Of course, shooting a kerosene lamp could have set the whole house on fire.

“Well, I have heard they did, and I’ve heard they didn’t, so I couldn’t say which is true,” Don said of the lights. “I don’t think they could have without burning down the table.”

Brandon asked, “Was one of the men supposed to have played music before they killed him?” and she said, “He sang, didn’t he? It seems to me he played the banjo and sang a song. I guess they thought since they was going out anyway they might as well go out in style.”

I said, “Now, I heard that the wives went down there to try to plead for their lives and they turned them away. Have you ever heard that?”

Don answered, “Yes, I’ve heard that, but whether or not it’s true I’m not sure. My husband’s mother Bell Morris was related to the McCoys.”

I said, “Just for the record, what happened to that old house?” and she said, “I bet it burned.”

Don wondered why I was so interested in Milt Haley and I explained that I was researching the story of his son, Ed Haley, of which he was a very important part. I asked if she ever heard Ed play and she said, “I’m not sure, seems that maybe I did a long time ago. I think Haley played with Dave Dick. Dave played banjo. He was blind.” Brandon said Charley Davis had described Dick as a “pretty good” banjo-picker who mostly played “little ditties” like “Bumble Bee”. He lived downriver around Ranger but stayed in Harts for a week or so at a time with different families, sometimes playing for dances. Kids used to imitate him by bumping into things.

After mentioning Ed’s name to Don our conversation dwindled off to me asking if she knew people like Peter Mullins, Greasy George, or Hollena Brumfield. She gave answers like, “Well, I used to know a Peter Mullins. His foot was turned back. I remember watching him go up the hill there at the house.” As for Hollena Brumfield: “I knew one down here at this big old house at Hart. They put in a restaurant and you know it didn’t do too well. She said, ‘We got hotdogs on ice.’ Yeah, I knew those people.”

In Search of Ed Haley 208

07 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Lincoln County Feud

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On November 7, 1889, The Banner printed a Huntington story titled “Two More Victims To the Endless Hatfield-McCoy Feud/Prisoners Belonging to the Latter Faction Lynched.” This article was extremely difficult to read — some of its words were completely gone, which probably didn’t really matter since it was so error-ridden.

HUNTINGTON, W.VA., October 25 — Information was brought [here from] Hamlin, Lincoln County, that about midnight Friday, a mob surrounded the Lincoln County jail, took two of the prisoners, Green McCoy and Milton Haley, and hung them to a tree a short distance from the [jail]. Haley and McCoy are natives of Kentucky and are allied to the McCoy faction of outlaws [feuding] with the Hatfields generally familiar by the public. McCoy was engaged in a shooting scrape with Paris Brumfield about a year ago and about a month ago he, in company with Haley, ambushed and attempted to murder Brumfield and his wife. The shooting occurred on a Sunday and both victims [were] badly wounded, Mrs. Brumfield being shot in the breast and her husband in the leg. For a time it was thought the woman would die but she recovered. McCoy and Haley escaped to Hunto, Kentucky, [but] not before they made two more attempts at assassination in the county, in ____ of _____ man named Adkins was wounded. The would be murderers were arrested at Ben Postoffice, Martin county, Kentucky, and were confined in jail there. Friday they were locked up in Lincoln county (W.Va.) Jail, and in the absence of definite information it is supposed they were lynched by some of the Hatfield sympathizers.

It wasn’t clear if the Adkins who supposedly wounded in the above account was closely related to Cain Adkins or Fed Adkins. The place names given were also questionable, since Brandon couldn’t locate Hunto or Ben Post Office in any Kentucky map books.

The Huntington story apparently had little credibility since The Banner followed it with corrections:

The above is copied from the Enquirer, and is about as reliable as you find most reports about the Hatfield-McCoy feud.  In the first place, the prisoners Haley and McCoy were not in jail.

Secondly. — No mob ever surrounded the jail, they went into Geo. Fry’s house and took them out without any resistance from the guards.

Thirdly. — They were not hung to a tree a short distance from the jail building, but were shot at Green Shoals some 25 miles from the C.H.

Fourthly. — Haley has no connection whatsoever with the McCoys of Kentucky.

Fifthly. — Mrs. Brumfield was not shot in the breast but in the face, and her husband was not shot in the leg but in one arm.

Sixthly. — McCoy and Haley never wounded Adkins, or even shot at him.

Seventhly. — Neither the Hatfields nor the Hatfield sympathizers had anything to do with the _____ing of McCoy and Haley.

It was done by the citizens of Lincoln who sympathized with the Brumfields and Dingess and by men who do not believe in the assassination of women by way laying and shooting them as they peacefully ride along the bank.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud had nothing whatever to do with the trouble, and from present appearances it is about over. Reports that some forty men _____ are armed and preparing for battle is without foundation.

For the next month, The Banner was silent about the Haley-McCoy trouble. Then, on December 12th, it gave this brief update: “Enoch Baker, of Harts Creek, was in town Monday, and reports every thing quiet, but thinks the Brumfield-McCoy feud is liable at any time to break out afresh.”

In Search of Ed Haley 206

29 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber

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Ben Adams — the man who supposedly hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to assassinate Al Brumfield — was born in 1855 to Joseph and Dicy (Mullins) Adams on Big Harts Creek in Logan County, (West) Virginia. His older sister Sarah married Henderson Dingess and was the mother of Hollena Brumfield, Hugh Dingess and several others. He was a first cousin to Jackson Mullins, Milt Haley’s father-in-law, and a brother-in-law to Chloe Mullins, Milt’s mother-in-law, by her first marriage to John Adams.

In 1870, 17-year-old Ben lived at home with his mother, where he worked as a farmer. He was illiterate, according to census records. His neighbors were Andrew Robinson and Henderson Dingess, both of whom had married his sisters (Rhoda J. and Sally). In the next year, according to tradition, he fathered an illegitimate child, William Adams, who was born to Lucinda Brumfield (niece of Paris).

In 1873, Ben married Victoria Dingess. Victoria was born in 1856 and was a first cousin to Hollena Brumfield and Hugh Dingess. The marriage made for an interesting genealogical connection: Ben was already Hugh’s uncle; now he was also his brother-in-law, as Hugh was married to Victoria’s sister, Viola (his first cousin). Ben’s daughter Sally, who was named after Hollena’s mother, later married a cousin of Spicie McCoy, Green’s wife. For all practical purposes then, Ben Adams was genealogically connected to all sides of the feud — making it a true intra-family feud from his perspective.

For the first decade or so of his marriage, Ben lived with his mother on family property, although he did acquire land and open a general store business. In 1880, he was listed in the Lincoln County Census with his mother Dicy, aged 63, and family. He was 26 years old, Victory was 23, Sally was six, son Charlie was four, daughter Patsy A. was two, and son Anthony was a few months old. George Greaar, age 20, was a boarder. In 1881, he purchased 25 acres on the Meekin Branch of Trace Fork. Three years later, he was listed in a business directory as the proprietor of a general store. At that same time, his brother-in-law and neighbor Henderson Dingess was a distiller.

Later in the decade, Ben fathered three more children: George “Greasy” (1885), Harvey (1886), and May (1889). In 1889, the time of Milt Haley’s ambush of Al Brumfield, Adams owned 260 acres on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork valued at $1.00 per acre in Logan County.

Anthony Adams — Ben’s brother and ally in the 1889 troubles — was a prominent timberman on Harts Creek. Anthony had been born in 1849 and was the husband of Pricie Alifair Chapman, Burl Farley’s half-sister. In 1884, Adams was listed in a business directory as a blacksmith. In 1889, he owned two 50-acre tracts of land, one valued at $3.50 per acre with a $30 building on it, the other valued at $2.00 per acre. By that time, he had three sons of fighting age who may have participated in the feud: Solomon Adams (born 1869), Horatio “Rush” Adams (born 1871), and Wayne Adams (born 1874), as well as a son-in-law, Harrrison Blair (born c.1867).

A quick examination of the Adams genealogy gives a clue as to Ben’s other 1889 allies. First there was brother “Bad John” Adams. Adams was deceased at the time of the Haley-McCoy incident, but he had been married to Chloe Gore — mother of Emma Jean (Mullins) Haley. He had three sons of fighting age in 1889: Joseph Adams (born 1859), John Frock Adams (born 1861), and Ticky George Adams (born 1865)…as well as son-in-law Sampson Thomas.

Rhoda J. Robinson was a sister to the three Adams brothers. She had several children who may have allied with Ben: David Robinson (born 1860), Ben Robinson (born 1866), John R. Robinson (born 1868), and Joseph Robinson (born 1870). There was also brother Solomon Adams, who may have offered his loyalty to Ben, along with sons John M. Adams (born 1869) and Benjamin Adams (born 1867), and sons-in-law David Robinson and Peter Carter (c.1873).

As for Ben himself, he stayed busy with timber after the feud. According to an 1896 article from the Logan County Banner: “Benj. Adams, of Hart, is hauling some fine poplar from trace fork.” In 1901, he married Venila Susan Abbott, a daughter of Wilson and Elizabeth (Workman) Abbott, and had at least eight more children (born between 1901 and 1921). Not long after his remarriage, he was accused of murdering a local postman named Jim Allen Martin — and nearly went bankrupt paying for his legal defense. He died in 1910 and was buried on the hill near the mouth of Trace Fork.

In Search of Ed Haley 90

16 Tuesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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I asked Clyde if Ed ever talked about his early life on Harts Creek and he said, “He didn’t talk to us kids too much. My dad’s folks were from all around Logan County, West Virginia. I didn’t know who they were. I remember his Aunt Liza and Uncle Peter Mullins. ‘Club-Footed Peter’ Mullins, they called him, and ‘Reel-Footed Peter’ Mullins. That was his uncle. I remember them because I was the one that went with him when he went up that way. As a matter of fact, I went up there one time and stayed just for a whole year.”

I said, “Your grandfather Milt Haley was involved in an attempted murder…” before being cut off. “Yeah, Hollene Brumfield. I know about that. I know things about it, because I’ve been up there. He killed this guy and in the process of trying to kill this guy, he shot Hollene Brumfield in the face and mutilated her pretty bad. It was a accident. Hollene was riding behind her husband on a horse down Harts Creek. He missed him and shot Hollene — killed her. That’s the way I always got the story from my dad.”

Clyde seemed to have Milt’s story down better than any of Ed’s other kids, so I pressed him for more details about Harts Creek. I asked him about the musicians in that vicinity and he said, “They didn’t play the kind of music my dad played. There was one old fiddler up there, lived up in the head of Harts Creek. Not off on one of the branches — right straight up Harts Creek past Ewell Mullins’ store. This guy’s name was Zack Williams. Him and my dad used to fiddle together. Never went out on big sprees or anything like that, but he’d go up to Zack Williams’ house up on the top of the mountain — head of Harts Mountain — and they’d make music up there. Zack was a pretty good fiddle player.”