Tag Archives: Al Brumfield

In Search of Ed Haley 329

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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

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Satisfied that we’d taken up enough of Andy’s day, we drove up Trace Fork to see Wirt Adams, an older brother to Joe Adams. Wirt was busy installing a waterbed but took a break to talk with us. “Well, come on in boys, but I’ve only got a few minutes,” he seemed to say. Inside, however, after I had pulled out my fiddle and he had grabbed a mandolin, he seemed ready to hang out with us all day.

I told Wirt that I was trying to find out about Haley’s life. He said old-timers in the neighborhood used to tell stories about Ed playing for dances on Saturday nights with Johnny Hager, a banjo-picker and fiddler. Ed eventually left Harts Creek and got married but came back to stay with his cousins every summer.

Wirt said he sometimes bumped into him in local taverns:

“It was in the forties,” he said. “About ’47, ’48, ’49, ’50 — along there somewhere. We called it Belcher’s beer garden. It was a roadhouse over on Crawley Hill. Well, I just come in there from the mines and Ed was there and he heard somebody say that I was there and he said, ‘Come on over here Wirt and play one.’ I think the fella that’d been playing with him had got drunk and passed out. Well I played one or two with him and then Charley Conley and them boys come in and Charley says, ‘C’mon over here Wirt and get in with us.’ Ed said, ‘Don’t do that, you’re playing with me.’ I really wasn’t playing with him. I had my mine clothes on. I just come in there and picked up Bernie Adams’ old guitar. If you was playing they’d sit you a beer up there — no money in it. Mostly for fun, we thought. We’d gang up on Saturday night somewhere and play a little. Sometimes they’d dance.”

Wirt felt that Ed was “a good fiddler, one of the best in that time.”

I asked him about Ed’s bowing and he said, “It didn’t look like he moved it that far over the whole thing [meaning very little bow usage] but he played tunes where he did use the long stroke. But most of it was just a lot of movement but not no distance. Just hacking, I call it. Him and Johnny Hager were the only two fellas I know who done that.”

Brandon wondered about Ed’s tunes.

“Well, he played that ‘Blackberry Blossom’ — that was one of his favorites — and then he played ‘The Old Red Rooster’ and he played ‘Raggedy Ann’ and ‘Soldiers Joy’. He had one he called ‘somethin’ in the shucks’. I forget the name of it. Anyhow, it was one of the old tunes. And ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’, I’ve heard him play that.”

I asked if Ed played “Birdie” and he said, “Yeah. Now, that’s one of Charley’s favorites. ‘Chinese Breakdown’, that was one of Ed’s. ‘Down Yonder’.”

Wirt told us more about Johnny Hager and Ed Belcher.

“Johnny Hager was a banjo player but he could play the fiddle, too. He played the old ‘overhand’ [on the banjo]. He was a good second for somebody. Now Ed Belcher was a different thing altogether. He played all kinds of stuff. He played classical, he could play hillbilly. He played a piano, he played accordion, he played a banjo, he played a guitar. He was a good violin player. He tuned pianos for a living. Well, I’d call him a professional musician. They had talent shows in Logan. He’d sponsor that. He’d be like the MC and these kids would go in and play. He was a head musician. He was good. He could do ‘Spanish Fandango’ on the guitar and make it sound good. He could play all kinds of tunes. I never could play with him but then he could take the piano and make it talk, too. He was just an all-around musician.”

Brandon asked Wirt if he knew the story about how Ed came to be blind.

“Milt Haley was Ed’s dad,” Wirt said matter-of-factly. “They said his dad was kind of a mean fella and he took Ed out when he was a little kid — held him by the heels — and ducked him in the creek. He had some kind of a fever in wintertime. I’ve heard that, now. Ed never would talk about it. I never heard him mention his dad.”

Wirt had only heard “snippets” about Milt’s death.

“It was pretty wild times,” he said. “I understand the whole thing was over timberworks. These people, they’d have a splash dam on this creek and they’d get their logs and haul them in this bottom at the mouth of Trace — this was one of them. They had a splash dam and when the water got up they’d knock that dam out and that’d carry the logs down to Hart and they had a boom and them Brumfields owned the boom. They charged so much a log. Some way over that, there was some confusion. But I’ve seen Aunt Hollene. She was supposed to been riding behind old man Al Brumfield, her husband, and they shot at him and hit her.”

After Milt was caught, he made a last request.

“They said they asked him if he wanted anything and he wanted them to bring him a fiddle,” Wirt said. “He wanted to play a tune. Now this is hearsay but I’ve heard it several times. They said he played the fiddle and they hung him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 324

20 Friday Jun 2014

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

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Sensing that Dorothy had told all she knew about Ed and knowing that she was one-quarter Dingess, we asked her about Milt Haley.

“Some terrible things went on about Ed’s daddy,” she said. “I heard about that.”

Dorothy blamed the trouble squarely on Ben Adams. She said he was a “bully” who wanted to control all the timber on Harts Creek. He hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to kill Al Brumfield but they accidentally shot Hollena.

“And them men that shot them went back in towards Kentucky somewhere and they put out a reward for them,” Dorothy said.

Haley and McCoy were soon caught and a Brumfield posse took possession of them.

Ben Adams organized a mob to free them at the mouth of Smoke House Fork but the Brumfields were warned by a spy and detoured up Buck Fork and over a mountain to Hugh Dingess’ house.

“The Adamses come a hair of catching them,” Dorothy said. “You can just imagine what kind of war would have been if they had a got them.”

A large number of men gathered in at Hugh’s for protection, including Albert Dingess (her great-grandfather), “Short Harve” Dingess (her great-uncle), John Brumfield, and French Bryant, among others. At some point, they took Milt outside and shot a few times to scare Green into making a confession inside Hugh’s, but Milt yelled, “Don’t tell them a damn thing. I ain’t dead yet!” McCoy yelled back, “Don’t be scared. I ain’t told nothing yet!”

Dorothy said the mob eventually took Milt and Green up Bill’s Branch and down Piney where they “knocked their heads out with axes and the chickens eat their brains.”

Just before we left Dorothy, we asked if she remembered any of Ed’s family. She said his uncle Ticky George Adams (the grandfather of her late husband) was a ginseng digger who spoke with a lisp and loved to heat hog brains. This image contrasted sharply with what others around Harts Creek had said: that he was a moonshiner who’d shoot someone “at the drop of a hat.” Violet Mullins had told us earlier how Ticky George would get “fightin’ mad” if anyone called him by his nickname. The only thing Dorothy knew about Ed’s wife was, “She went in the outside toilet and then after that some woman went in there and said they was a big blacksnake a hanging. They said she went places and played music.”

In Search of Ed Haley 319

12 Thursday Jun 2014

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

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A little later, Brandon visited Lillian Ray, a seventy-something-year-old daughter of Cecil Brumfield who lived in a beautiful two-story house on the Smokehouse Fork of Harts Creek. Lilly, he discovered, had a lot of the old Dingess family photographs. To Brandon’s surprise, there were several thick-paged Victorian velvet-covered albums full of tintypes and a few boxes of sepia images on decorative cardboard squares. Only a few were labeled, but he recognized some of the faces: Al Brumfield, Henderson and Sallie Dingess, Hugh Dingess, Mrs. Charley Brumfield, Mrs. John Brumfield, and Dave Dingess. No doubt, there were pictures in the album of Ben Adams and Hollena Brumfield in their youth.

Before leaving, Brandon asked Lilly about Ed Haley. She said she remembered him coming to her father’s house when he lived in the old Henderson Dingess homeplace. He would just show up, leading himself with a cane, and stay for two or three days. Lilly hated to see him come because he was so hateful to the Brumfield children — “always running his mouth.” She described him as a “little short man” who “drank a lot” and told how he and Bernie Adams once borrowed a fiddle from her father and then pawned it off in Logan. The fiddle originally belonged to Tom Martin.

Not long after visiting Lilly, Brandon sent me a letter updating me on his research along with pictures of people we’d only imagined. As they turned up, I wondered if I were to go into a room with Al, Paris, Milt, Green, French, Cain, Runyon — without knowing who any of them were — which ones would I take to strictly on a personality basis? Which ones would I have a gut reaction to think, “Well, he’s a pretty fair good old boy,” or, “Boy, I don’t know about that feller there. Something’s just not right.” I mean, you walk in the room and, “That’s Al Brumfield?” No way. “That’s Cain Adkins?” Nope, I can’t believe that.

Pat Adkins interview in Harts, WV

09 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Later in the summer, Brandon visited his friend Pat Adkins, who lived in a little trailer just back of where the old Al Brumfield home once sat at the mouth of Harts Creek. Pat was raised in the magnificent Brumfield house and was its owner at the time of its burning. He was a first cousin to Billy Adkins.

Pat first spoke about Al and Hollena Brumfield, who he said charged people a ten-cents-per-log tax at their boom. The tax was a constant source of friction in the community. Even Al’s in-laws weren’t fond of the fee…and apparently weren’t spared from it, either.

“One time, Harvey Dingess had a big huge amount of logs out there and he said he wasn’t gonna pay no ten cents a log tax,” Pat said. “Harvey was Hollene’s brother. They all liked to drink so he come in there being jovial and friendly and brought Al and Hollene in a big special-made malt whiskey. They got a big drunken party going and finally around twelve o’clock they all got so drunk they went to bed. Harve had his men stationed over there on that hillside and when he waved a light from that porch upstairs them men come down there and cut that splash and let his logs through. The Brumfields got up the next morning — all their hangovers — and went out and looked and that splash had been cut and all of his logs had been run through and Harve was gone. He was on his way to Huntington to sell them.”

Brandon asked Pat if the log boom was the root of the 1889 troubles.

“Bill Brumfield’s wife, Aunt Tiny, told me about the famous posse ride to lynch Milt Haley and Green McCoy,” Pat said, cutting to the chase. “Runyon had a store up on Hart and that was among Hollene’s relatives up in there and she had the big timber operations down here — the splash dam, you know — and had a saloon. Runyon had a legal still where people brought their apples in and stuff to make brandy. Somebody else run one of them too up there — a Dingess. They was into it over the business. Runyon thought that if he could kill them, he could take control of the mouth of Hart. When Hollene came into business that was what she done. She killed out her enemy, or never killed him — burned him out. That was Bill Fowler. Bill Fowler was a businessman and he come into possession of the mouth of the creek. He had him a big saloon out there and she burned him out and burned his saloon and then she took it over. So, I guess Runyon got the same idea: ‘You took it. Now I’m going to get it from you.’ So he hired these guys to kill them and if he’d a killed them they’d a been out of the way and that woulda pretty well cinched him for it. He had plenty of money and he’d a rolled in here and coulda bought it. He’d been the top man then.”

According to Pat, locals quickly determined that Haley and McCoy were involved in the ambush of Al and Hollena Brumfield and formed a mob to capture them.

“They formed about sixty men,” he said. “I know Black John Adkins was in it. John was there a holding the horses. He wasn’t taking no part in it — just going along to show he was in support. I think everybody in the country around in this area and all of Hollena’s relatives were in it. Runyon, he left the country when he realized that they might be coming after him because they suspected him as hiring them.”

Pat said Mrs. Brumfield believed that her husband Bill was too young to have participated in the killings but would have “been in on it if he’d a been old enough.” Pat didn’t think his Grandpa Fed Adkins was in the mob either, but then said, “He might have been — probably was. You know, the killing took place there, I think, about where Lon Lambert’s house is, down under that riverbank. Black John said when Paris came out from under that bank he was just as bloody as he could be where he had stabbed on them men. Said, Paris Brumfield was bloody as a hog. Said, he just took a knife and cut them to pieces and I think they gave Paris the honor of killing them because it was a vengeance killing. They dared anybody to ever touch their bodies. I think they laid about nine days and got to smelling so bad they finally give them permission to bury them.”

In Pat’s view, those who participated in the killing of Milt and Green were not typically violent men. Haley’s and McCoy’s apparent guilt in ambushing Al Brumfield provided a justification for their bloody murders in the eyes of locals and ensured that the “peace-keeping” reputations of the vigilantes would endure as stories about the feud were handed down to later generations. For instance, despite the dangerous reputation of Paris Brumfield, Pat said, “Other than the killing of Haley and McCoy, he was really not a mean person. That was understandable that he helped kill Haley and McCoy if somebody was trying to kill your son. I never heard that he was a mean person. I don’t think he deliberately went around plotting up mean things to do. And I don’t think he was a cruel person.”

Just before Brandon left Pat, he asked him about growing up in Al Brumfield’s house. Pat said when he was young he often hid behind some large framed Brumfield family photographs stacked in an upstairs room. There was one in particular that he remembered: a picture of Al Brumfield — worn and blind, sitting in a chair on a porch.

Vergia Rooney recalls the “murder house”

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

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

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In the early summer of 1996, Brandon made contact with Vergia Rooney, a daughter of Jim Brumfield and granddaughter of Paris Brumfield. Vergia was born in 1899 (making her the oldest person interviewed in this project) and was raised on Green Shoal. She was an older sister to Ida Taylor, with whom we had spoken in 1995. She had lived in Texas since 1930.

Vergia said Al Brumfield practically raised her father, who was young when his parents died. Later, when Vergia was about five years old, she went with her father to visit Al at his beautiful two-story white house in Harts. As far as she remembered, Al was well-dressed, clean-shaven, and had dark hair. He was blind, so he wore dark glasses and kept a cane near him. “He was suffering from a progressive illness he had which terminated to him being blind,” Vergia said. For much of the visit, Al sat in the first story front room facing the river, what he called the “sitting room.” He eventually adjourned to the kitchen where he sat at the table and had coffee and a piece of cake.

Vergia said Al’s home was nice and had a store built next to it so close that the two buildings almost touched each other. The whole place was busy with workers, all of whom were supervised by Aunt Hollena Brumfield. Vergia didn’t remember Al having a gristmill but he did have a large barn just up the creek in a bottom. A little further, behind Mae Brumfield’s present-day house, was his log boom, which had in earlier years been the scene of a lot of trouble.

This “earlier trouble,” of course, was the 1889 feud, which Vergia said started when some “McCoy outlaws” became jealous over the Brumfield boom and ambushed Al and Hollena as they rode a single horse down the creek. It was never proven, but Milt Haley and Green McCoy were accused of committing the ambush. They were taken to a two-story, log house at the mouth of Green Shoal and beaten to death by a Brumfield mob.

Vergia’s grandmother Cat Fry hid under a bed during the killings.

The morning after Milt and Green’s murder, Vergia’s mother spotted their bodies on her way to school.

“It was an awful sight,” Vergia said. “They were draped on the front steps and yard. One of them lay across the doorstep going into the house.”

There was never a trial because people like Cat Fry, who knew a lot about the killings, seldom discussed it. Vergia didn’t hear anyone mention the names of the participants when she lived in Harts because many of the people involved were still alive in the community.

Vergia said the murders occurred at the present-day Lon Lambert place at the mouth of Green Shoal. It was vacant when she first remembered it and was in terrible condition. At that time, it faced upriver and had a front and back door, which she remembered swinging open at times, with two steps leading into each of the two doorways. There were windows in the front and back of the house. It had, at most, two rooms on the bottom floor. The upstairs was used as a “drying room” for apples and peaches. Around 1905, Al Davis moved in and remodeled it. He tore the downriver side (back) away, which had pretty much collapsed, and boxed in the old door on the front of the house. A new front door was constructed to face the railroad tracks.

Vergia’s memories of Al Davis living in and remodeling the old Fry home were interesting in that he never owned the property. From 1902 until 1915, the property was in the hands of J.L. Caldwell, who likely rented it to Davis and perhaps others. Watson Lucas bought it in 1919 from Arena Ferrell.

“I am unable to remember in detail about the house as I never was inside the home until Watson Lucas brought the property,” Vergia later wrote Brandon. “I was there twice but several times after the Lamberts purchased the property from Watson Lucas. There were 2 BR, 1 LR-Kitchen, DR and bath room downstairs and I believe, there was a ladder [inside the house] utilized to [get] upstairs for awhile. I was never upstairs, but I think there [were] two rooms upstairs later on.”

Watson’s daughter-in-law Mabel Lucas remembered the home when she moved to Harts in 1939-40 as having four rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs. There was no staircase in the house; to get upstairs, one had to climb a set of steps built outside against the upriver side of the building. So far as Mabel knew, the place was a frame house (not log), insinuating that the old Fry home had been torn down in previous years.

In Search of Ed Haley 311

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Two months later, Brandon was still digging, but in a different way. He was knee-deep in land records at the Lincoln and Logan County court houses. He was curious — based on the economic aspect of the 1889 feud — to know about property ownership for feudists, particularly those with land around the mouth of Harts Creek.

He started with the Brumfields.

In 1889, Paris Brumfield owned 771 acres of land worth $1020, while his wife owned 367 acres worth $483. Al Brumfield had 295 acres (195 acres on Brown’s Branch and 100 acres on the Guyan River) worth $642. By combining Al’s totals to that of his parents, the Brumfields owned a total of 1433 acres of land worth $2143. A little further up Harts Creek, Henderson and Sarah Dingess owned 546 acres (five tracts) worth $1234.50 with a building valued at 100 dollars.

How did these totals compare to the land holdings of their enemies?

Well, Cain Adkins owned 205 acres worth $420 (with no buildings listed for 1889), while John Runyon owned 100 acres worth $187.50. Ben Adams owned at least 340 acres in Lincoln and Logan Counties (2 tracts) worth $380. By combining Ben’s property with that of Adkins and Runyon they owned 645 acres worth $987.50 — not even half of the Brumfield family holdings.

Based on these records, we realized that it might have been the financial superiority of the Brumfields and Dingesses which caused Adams, Runyon, and/or Adkins to act out against them (through Milt and Green).

But there was also a reason for the Brumfields to feel a little threatened themselves: John Runyon, whose 100 acres of property was situated geographically closest to them near the mouth of Harts Creek, had accumulated his estate in only three years of residence in Harts. His first tract, totaling 75 acres, was worth $1.50 and was deeded by A.S. “Major” Adkins in 1887. The other tract, totaling 25 acres and worth three dollars per acre, was deeded in 1888. Neither tract contained a building, according to land records.

Al’s 100 acres near the mouth of Harts Creek, in contrast, reflected eight years of effort.

Brumfield was likely concerned that Runyon had acquired so much land at the mouth of Harts in such a short time, especially since it was property that he wanted for himself.

It was immediately clear in looking at the feud in mild economic terms that Milt Haley and Green McCoy were pawns in a larger game between local elites. While Paris Brumfield, Al Brumfield, Cain Adkins, John Runyon, and Ben Adams were leading citizens, property owners and businessmen, Milt and Green were timber laborers and musicians who owned no property whatsoever. Based on what we’d heard from Daisy Ross, it was easy to see why Green might have took a shot at Paris, but why did he attack Al? And what was Milt’s motivation for even getting involved in the whole mess? Was he pulled into the fray because of his friendship to Green, as Daisy Ross had said? Or did he have connections to Ben Adams (a possible economic dependence on the timber-boss, his residence nearby Adams on Trace, or the fact his wife was related to Ben)?

And what did either man hope to gain from the assassination of Al Brumfield? I mean, that’s a hell of a lot to risk for a side of bacon and a few dollars. I had this nagging suspicion that they were maybe innocent of the crime, but Brandon was pretty well convinced of their guilt (as had been Lawrence Haley). He did, however, leave an opening by pointing out how Bob Adkins, Howard Dalton, Joe Adams and Lawrence Kirk had all heard that they were innocent. Bob and Joe had actually mentioned other suspects: Burl Adams, a nephew to Ben Adams, and John “Frock” Adams, a half-brother to Ed’s mother (who later shot his wife’s head off with a shotgun in his front yard). There was also the testimony of Preacher McCoy, who said Milt and Green were “as innocent as Jesus Christ on the cross.”

In Search of Ed Haley 272

24 Monday Mar 2014

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

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Either way, Milt Haley and Green McCoy were paid a side of bacon and some money to eliminate Al Brumfield. Maude Dingess said Milt and Green ambushed Al and Hollena Brumfield as they rode down Harts Creek on a single horse. Hollena’s brothers, Harvey and Dave, followed behind them on separate horses.

“I guess they thought he was gonna have trouble or they wouldn’t a been doing that,” Maude said, somewhat logically.

As they made their way past Thompson Branch, Brumfield spotted two men hiding in the weeds. He ducked somehow to avoid harm, but Hollena was shot from the horse.

“Al just went on,” Maude said, while Dave and Harve “ran back up here to their mother and daddy’s house to get somebody to go down there with them.”

They later returned with a sled and hauled Hollena’s bloody body back to Smoke House.

In a short time, Milt and Green were rounded up and taken to Hugh Dingess’ home at the mouth of Bill’s Branch.

“I’d say old man Hugh got them kids and took them maybe to some of their relatives’ houses or somewhere else,” Harve Dingess said. “Maybe up to old Albert Dingess’ or somewhere like that. See, old Albert just lived on up the road a mile, mile and a half.”

Harve continued, “They said they all had a big feast there and I guess they had a lot of the corn whiskey there and all of them drinking and playing music. And they said they made the old man Haley — he was a fiddle player — they said they made him play that fiddle all night and all of them drunk a dancing. They said that they just kept telling him to keep that fiddle a going.”

I wondered where Milt got the fiddle at Hugh’s and Maude said, “They sent somebody to somebody’s house that had a fiddle I bet and brought it back. Back in them days you know a lot of households had them old instruments in them.”

I asked if Milt was considered a good fiddler and Harve said, “At that time, I think they said he was. Supposed to’ve been very good.”

Harve had never heard much talk about Green McCoy but stressed: “I know I did hear them talk about them making the old man play the fiddle all night and all of them a dancing and cooking and having a big feast there and drinking their moonshine.”

I said, “Most people that are gonna kill somebody, they don’t want to get to know them. If you have an execution, the executioner don’t want to get to know the prisoner because the more he gets to know that prisoner the harder it is for him to conduct the execution. To have two guys to play music for you before you’re fixing to kill them — that’s a good way to get to know them real quick. Boy, I don’t see how they did that.”

“I guess that’s the reason they kept old French Bryant,” Harve said. “They said he didn’t care for nothing. They said he was one of the leaders. He was a hollering, ‘Let’s go! Let’s do it!’ Pushing the thing, from what I could understand. He was a hollering, ‘Let’s kill the sons of bitches!’ That’s what I heard over the years. I even heard Millard say that one time. French was the one wanting to hang them up to the walnut tree and I think they finally decided against that.”

Brandon wondered who else was in the gang and Maude said, “Hugh and Charlie Dingess was into that. They was Grandpap’s boys — the older boys. Hugh was rough and over-bearing. Harve’s grandfather, ‘Short Harve,’ was into that. Burl Farley was into it, too.”

Maude doubted that Henderson Dingess was involved due to his advanced age (approximately 58 years), but we felt it was entirely possible since (1) men his age and older participated in the Hatfield-McCoy feud and (2) these guys had reportedly shot his daughter. Harve said he figured that his great-grandfather Albert Dingess was in on it because “he was just that kind of guy.”

“Dealer Dave” Dingess was probably involved, too, Harve said, because “them Dingesses all hung together. They was just a band of outlaws, as we would call it, that day and time.”

Harve and Maude hadn’t heard much about the story beyond that, although they knew that Milt and Green were taken away from Hugh’s when the Brumfields learned that another mob was forming to rescue them. They never confessed to committing the ambush on Al and Hollena Brumfield but everyone figured that Ben Adams was behind the trouble. As a result, Maude said the Brumfields and Dingesses were “against” Ben in following years. At one point, they tried to burn his home. Maude’s father was one of the few Dingesses who never held a grudge. He often referred to him as “poor old Uncle Ben.”

In Search of Ed Haley 271

23 Sunday Mar 2014

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

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Brandon asked Maude Dingess about her grandparents, Henderson and Sallie (Adams) Dingess. Maude said Grandpap Henderson was “kindly the leader of his family” but he had a real time keeping his older sons — Charlie, Floyd, and Hugh — in line. They ran around a lot with their uncle Ben Adams, who was Sallie Dingess’ youngest brother. Uncle Ben Adams was pretty tight with the Dingesses in the early years (he named his first three children after them) but was reportedly a bad influence on the Dingess boys. At some point, Maude said, her uncles “turned their meanness on him.”

One time, after Charlie Dingess whipped Ben in a fight, Ben came to complain to Sallie. Henderson saw him coming and told her, “Go out there and tell him to go home. We don’t want no trouble with them.” Sallie went outside and said to her brother, “Now Ben. You just go right back home. Don’t you get off here. There’s no use to quarrel at Charlie and Floyd ’cause you’ve made them what they are. You taught it to them.”

In subsequent years, Henderson tried to “distance” himself from Ben. He often made snide comments, like telling his son Dave that he was “all Adams” when he wouldn’t work.

“If I knew where the Adams vein was in your body, I’d drive a knife in it and let it run out,” Henderson would say.

Brandon asked Maude if her uncle Floyd Dingess was killed over timber in 1888.

“Floyd was tough,” she said. “Floyd was killed there at the mouth of Rock House. He had some logs there and that was his brother-in-law he was into it with, Bill Hall. They just got to quarreling over the logs, I guess. Floyd was bent down to drive the dregs in the logs and Bill Hall run up behind him and knocked him in the head with a pole axe.”

“I’ve heard Maude’s father talk about it,” Harve said. “He said when they’d be a floating the logs out of here — you know, huge water — Floyd Dingess would run them logs like a gray squirrel.”

Maude said, “He was a small man. Dad said Floyd was much of a man to be a little fella like that. He said he saw him do things a big man couldn’t do.”

As soon as we asked about Milt Haley’s death, Harve said, “It was all over timber. The Adamses around in the other creek yonder, they was all wanting to make a dollar out of timber, no doubt. Ben Adams and them had their own dam built somewhere up main Hart — splash dam. Well now, up in this fork, old Albert Dingess had a big one up there. Burl Farley had one too on up above it. They kept a huge dam there and when they’d get ready to float their logs, everybody would turn their dams out at once and let them go. When they would knock them there dams off and everybody had their timber ready to float out of here the timber would get mixed a going down. Naturally, it would. When they’d get down there at Hart — the Brumfields had the boom in there that caught the timber and hold it out of the river and then they’d make up their rafts there — and they’d have to pick through that and sort their timber out. They had their brands on it, but they’d slip and change their brands. Maude’s father, I heard him talk that they’d get down there and they’d get in the awfulest arguments ever was over whose logs were whose and whose belonged to what. I guess they had a time with it.”

In addition to all the hard feelings over people stealing logs, there was a lot of animosity toward Al Brumfield — even among his in-laws — because of the toll he charged at his boom.

“They was having to pay a toll down there at Hollene’s and they didn’t want to pay any toll,” Maude said. “And that’s what Al’s wife was shot over.”

“The Mullinses put this old guy [Milt Haley] up to doing the dirty work, I think,” Harve said. “Now, I ain’t sure on that. I’ve heard that talked a little bit.”

Brandon told Harve and Maude how Ben Adams was supposedly the one who hired Milt and Green to kill Al Brumfield and Maude confirmed, “He did. I thought it was Ben ’cause, you know, they talked that here.”

“That’s what the word was,” Harve said. “The Adamses and Mullinses around there. See, the Adamses and Mullinses was always locked in through marriage. They said that old Ben was the head of it. I just heard Maude’s brothers talking, you know, that he was a pretty ruthless man.”

Maude said, “He was awful hidden in his ways but Dad always bragged on him. Ben was his uncle.”

Brandon said, “People that live in Harts, down at the mouth of the creek, they’ve all been told that John Runyon hired those two men. People up here on the creek have always been told it was Ben Adams. What it looks like is that they both were in on it.”

Harve said, “It’s possible that they were in cahoots because now… Seems to me like, something I did hear… Somebody talked that in the past — might have been Maude’s father — that there was another person or some other people — which could have been the very people you’re talking about — tried to horn in on the Brumfields there at the mouth of the creek at one time and they had some problems with it. Like they tried to put a boom in of their own and squeeze old Hollene out.”

“I think Ben did that,” Maude said.

“Well, Ben could have been in on it with this other guy like he’s talking about,” Harve said.

In Search of Ed Haley 270

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley

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After talking with Oris, we drove back onto Smoke House Fork to locate the site of the old Hugh Dingess home. I wanted to see where Milt Haley had played his last tune. Some twenty minutes later, we parked in a driveway at Bill’s Branch and met Paul Dingess, one of Hugh’s many descendants, and a local resident. Paul gave us a walking tour of the Hugh Dingess farm, showing us what was left of the old Dingess place — a small pile of chimney stones — as well as the “hanging tree” where the mob almost hung Milt and Green. He said his grandfather Millard Dingess had inherited the property years ago. With darkness fast approaching, we thanked Paul and took off down Smoke House.

A short time later, we stopped to visit Harvey and Maude Dingess, a neat elderly couple who lived in a nice brick home just below the old Hugh Dingess homeplace. Maude, Billy said, was a niece to Hollena Brumfield and a granddaughter to Henderson Dingess. Her husband Harvey was raised on West Fork near the likes of French Bryant and others. These were incredibly close connections and I was very excited at the prospects of what they might know.

Inside, after all the proper introductions, we sat down at the kitchen table. I had Hugh Dingess’ hued log home on my mind, so I asked about it first. Harve said Hugh’s son Millard lived in it after Hugh’s death. The old-timers told all kinds of ghost stories about it.

“They said they would take pack-peddlers in there and take them upstairs and kill them and take their money and whatever they had and then take them out in the woods somewhere and just get rid of them,” he said.

I had heard similar stories about the Al Brumfield house in Harts so I had to ask if there was any truth to those kind of stories. I mean, did the Brumfields and Dingesses really murder these old pack-peddlers?

“I don’t know,” Harve said, “but it was talked. People’d swear that Hugh’s house was haunted, the upstairs part. It was pretty well dark up there. Them kids would go up there and play and they’d come running down the stairs. They’d swear it was haunted and they wouldn’t hardly go upstairs in that old house ’cause they’d told tales about it over the years, I guess. And they said Millard, back when he’d drink, he’d get down drunk and he’d swear that he could hear things up them stairs. Millard said it was all haunted up there.”

So what happened to it?

“About in the ’40s, they quit living in it for a long time,” Harve said, “and then it just kindly squashed down — the heavy snow and stuff — and it just laid there like a junk pile for a long time. They kept getting a little bit out at a time till it just got away — all but the old chimney rocks.”

In Search of Ed Haley 267

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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Johnnie had also heard a lot about Milt Haley.

“Yeah, I knowed about Milt. Well, as you know, they used to raft timber in this country. That was their work. That’s what they fed their families with. They’d cut their logs and they’d roll them in these bottoms and then they’d back up the creeks till they could get water enough to float those logs into Guyandotte. And my dad — he was a young man — they would all float them into Huntington, you know, to where they could get their pay out of them. My granddad owned everything in here and he had plenty of timber, so somebody got jealous or got mad or some way ‘nother and — if I remember right in what I’ve heard all my life — they hitched Milt and another fellow up to shoot Grandpa Burl Farley and Uncle Al Brumfield. They was together — they was like brothers.

“So they laywaid Grandpa Burl and Uncle Al and some more boys that was a rafting the timber down through there. Well, Aunt Hollene was behind Uncle Al on the horse, so whenever they aimed to shoot Uncle Al they shot Aunt Hollene. And she was Burl’s wife’s sister so they had it out. Somebody took Aunt Hollene on to get her doctor but the men took out after them and catched them. They didn’t wait. They took them down here on the creek at the mouth of Bill’s Branch to Hugh Dingess’ old big log house and they made them cook chickens. Milt Haley and Green McCoy — they were both musicians — and they played a fiddle and a banjo all night. Hugh Dingess took his family and went to his brother’s house whenever this all took place.”

I asked Johnnie who told her that Milt and Green had played music before their deaths and she said, “My grandpaw Burl told us. I was raised right under my grandpaw’s feet. They rode somewhere and got these instruments but I forgot where Grandpaw said it was. They packed instruments into this house.”

Brandon asked about the members of the mob.

“Well, from what I understand, they was my grandpaw Burl, his brother Wash, and his brother Dump, Al Brumfield, Charley Brumfield — a whole bunch of them, all together,” Johnnie said. “French Bryant was in it.”

She looked at me and said, “They tortured them, John. That was my way of looking at it. I’d call it torture. If I shoot you in the leg here and foul you up here some way to you couldn’t do nothing to me and directly take a big drink of liquor and just shoot you again somewhere I’d call that torture. Now they didn’t kill them right in the house. They took them outside to shoot them about four in the morning. They didn’t want no blood or nothing left over in their house.”

Billy asked who fired the first shot.

“I don’t know which one fired the first shot, whether it was Uncle Al or Grandpaw Burl,” Johnnie said. “It was one of the two.”

After Milt and Green were shot, they were hung from a walnut tree.

Johnnie said, “One of my uncles said that was the cruelest thing he ever saw and he crawled back under the bed and hid and said two or three weeks later he had to fight my grandpaw over that. That was Uncle Dump. It hurt that old man, it really did. He crawled under the bed, John. He said that they done them so cruel and mean. They musta been a knocking them around you know.”

Brandon asked why Dump had joined the mob if he had no intentions of participating in Milt’s and Green’s punishment.

“He didn’t have no idea,” Johnnie said. “He just figured they’d be a drinking. From the way he talked, he didn’t know they was a gonna do it. Whenever he’d go to talking about it, tears would just fall down his cheeks. He’d say, ‘You know, people pays for these things.’ Dump was a good man as long as you didn’t try to do something mean to him. If you did, you paid, too. He’d never back talk Grandpaw Burl cause he’d just a knocked him down. Grandpaw was a big man and Dump was a little man.”

We were kinda surprised to hear Johnnie speak so frankly about her Grandpa Burl.

“My grandpaw was wicked, John, and mean. He packed guns and he was the meanest old man I ever heard tell of. Well, anybody that crossed him they had to pay. Grandpaw was mean after women. He ‘bumped’ every woman he could get with. I’ll tell you what. They wasn’t none of us kids loved him good enough to go stay all night with him. We was afraid of him. We actually was afraid of him.”

I said, “Well now, it was talked around that Milt Haley and Green McCoy were pretty mean themselves…”

Johnnie said, “Well, they were from all accounts.”

I continued, “…so there was a kind of a feeling that the guys that killed them had kinda done the neighborhood a favor.”

Johnnie said, “Yeah, they felt that way, John.”

It also seemed as if there was a deliberate attempt for everyone to “get blood on their hands” so no one could talk.

Johnnie said many of the men who participated in Milt’s and Green’s murder hung together after the feud.

“You know, after them killings, I believe that they was afraid they’d be ganged, too, and they was people went to different states.”

Burl always kept a gang of men around him for protection.

Johnnie said, “You never met a man what didn’t have a gun. People drinking would ride horses right up on your porch. I’ve seen them do it.”

Blood in West Virginia

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Big Sandy Valley, Civil War, Culture of Honor, Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Music, Timber

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In Search of Ed Haley 262

10 Monday Mar 2014

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Just before we left, Stump let us borrow a cassette containing a 1976 interview with his father. Surely, we thought, Dood would speak a lot about fiddling and of his friendship to Ed. Instead, he told about his life in Harts. His voice was very melancholy and he spoke loudly and in spurts. Some of his earliest memories were of the timber industry in Harts and of the Cole and Crane Company, which timbered extensively in the LoganCounty area from about 1893-1908. In 1900, he said, Cole and Crane used splash dams to float logs down to the mouth of the creek “where Al Brumfield had a boom in.” The boom was located at the present-day site of the West Fork Bridge.

“And this boom caught them logs all,” Dood said. “Them logs was piled on top of one another from that boom…to the mouth of Big Branch. At that time, if you owned across the creek, you owned the creek. Al Brumfield owned the other side there and he put this boom in there and bought the Cole and Crane Company and when he bought them he kept that timber there and they gave him a contract on rafting it and running it down to Guyandotte.”

Cole and Crane Company once paid Brumfield $2800 to cut his boom loose and let timber out of the creek, he said.

Dood said he went to work cutting timber for Cole and Crane Company when he was seventeen years old. He also drove oxen and cattle and loved to hunt foxes and raccoons.

After marrying, he supported his family by farming and raising cattle, sheep and hogs at his 300-acre farm on Big Branch.

In subsequent years, he worked as a blacksmith, bricklayer and coal miner.

In 1964, he took a three-month visit to Chicago and hated it about as much as an earlier visit to Michigan. He said, “My days is short. I’ve spent 84 years here and I’m figuring on spending the rest of my life here.”

And that was basically it.

Not one reference to fiddling from a guy who had played all of his life.

Well, in spite of the tape, we were pretty sure that Haley’s good friendship to Dood Dalton was authentic and was perhaps as important as his friendship with Laury Hicks in Calhoun County. We wanted to visit more of Dood’s children, so Stump directed us to the home of his oldest brother, Jake Dalton, an old fiddler on the Big Branch of Harts Creek. Jake lived in his father’s old home — the place where Ed had visited so frequently during the last twenty years of his life.

In Search of Ed Haley 251

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

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According to the Fry history, A.S. Fry eventually moved to Guyandotte, a river town in Cabell County, “where he built and owned a hotel. The Jesse James gang, who robbed a Huntington bank, stayed in his hotel for several nights.” His son George, meanwhile, took control of the family interests at Green Shoal. He presumably lived in the family homestead, where he was located at the time of Milt and Green’s murder in 1889. Deed records refer to it “as the old A.S. Fry homestead above the mouth of Green Shoals” and describe it as follows:

BEGINNING at the mouth of Green Shoals Creek, thence up with the meanderings of said creek to a survey made by C.T. fry, thence with the line of same to a white oak corner on a point, thence up the said point with the line of Chas. Lucas to the top of the mountain, thence running with the ridge to the head of a little ravine to a dog-wood corner made by C.T. Fry, thence down the hollow with C.T. Fry’s and B.C. Toney’s lands to a walnut corner made by said C.T. Fry, thence down the hill with John Fry’s and B.C. Toney’s line to the river, thence down with meanderings of the river to the place of beginning, containing seventy-five acres, more or less.

Although the deed was vague in giving its coordinates, it clearly proved that the “A.S. Fry homestead” — and thus the site of Milt and Green’s murder — was on the same side of the river as the railroad tracks.

By 1889, when the Brumfield gang took over the Fry house, George and his wife Eliza had a six-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Cat Fry, a niece, also lived in the home. The family was connected to various participants in the 1889 troubles. Eliza’s older brother was married to Paris Brumfield’s sister, while two of her sisters were married to Brumfield’s nephews. These marriages were perhaps complicated when Paris murdered Mrs. Fry’s brother, Boney Lucas.

Following the Haley-McCoy murders, George Fry suffered some bad luck. In 1892, his wife reportedly had an illegitimate child by John Brumfield (Al’s younger brother). Four years later, his father sold the family homestead on Green Shoal to Arena Ferrell, a local storekeeper. George’s wife died around 1902 “when her children were young” (according to one source) and was buried in the old Fry Cemetery at Green Shoal. A.S. Fry himself was murdered at his hotel in 1904. George afterwards moved to Guyandotte where he died on May 19, 1905. Control of family businesses thereafter went to his brother Evermont Ward Fry, who was still alive as late as October 1939.

As for the “murder house” itself, Arena Ferrell deeded it to her adopted son George W. Ferrell, who is credited with writing “The Lincoln County Crew” — the song about Milt’s death. In 1899, he sold it to George R. McComas, who in turn sold it to J.L. Caldwell three years later. (This was probably the same J.L. Caldwell referred to in George Fry’s 1880 letter.) It was around that time (1902-04) when the railroad came through the Guyan Valley, which apparently had a direct effect on the “murder house.”

“The railroad now runs through one side of the house as well as that of the school building,” Ward told Fred Lambert. “This school was about one fourth mile above our residence.”

In 1915, Caldwell sold the property back to Arena Ferrell. Then, in 1919, it was transferred to Watson Lucas, whose heirs sold it to the current owners, the Lamberts, in the 1960s.

In Search of Ed Haley 249

24 Monday Feb 2014

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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 236

08 Saturday Feb 2014

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By that time, according to land records, Al Brumfield was the chief businessman in Harts. In 1890, he bought 150 acres of property, including a 100-acre tract from John W. Runyon valued at 188 dollars. (For some reason, deed records imply that Hollena bought it from John Dingess and not Runyon for $525 on August 7, 1891.) The following year, he bought 272 acres on Frances Creek, probably for timbering, and improved the value of a building on his land to 200 dollars (likely a home, store or sawmill). In 1892, his recently widowed mother deeded him 100 acres on Guyan River. That same year, he bought 50 acres on Fourteen Mile Creek (presumably for timbering) and improved the value of his building to 500 dollars. In June, he acquired the old 330-acre Toney farm at the mouth of Harts Creek. He bought out all of the heirs (including his mother), then paid Bill Fowler and Isaac Adkins $1550. Thereafter, he spent three years building that beautiful white home I saw on my first trip to Harts with Lawrence Haley in 1991.

By the early 1890s, the local timber industry was in full swing. “Considerable poplar timber has been cut out of Lincoln county for the last twenty years, and all the walnut that ever was, but there still remain magnificent tracts of tens of thousands of acres of timber which have never been touched by the woodman’s axe,” according to The Mountain State: A Description of the Natural Resources of West Virginia (1893). “Fully one-half the county is yet covered with magnificent oak forests, and the greater portion of this with poplar also. There is also much ash, beech, some chestnut, a little pine, and some other timber, all of which may be easily gotten to market by means of the Guyandotte. Little timber has ever been sawed at home, it being cheaper to float the logs out and saw them closer to market. Even staves are taken out in this way, not being sawed or split till they have reached a railroad point. The northern portion of the county has been cleared and settled to a greater extent than the southern [Harts], where the greater part of the timber that is still standing is to be found.”

Cashing in on the timber boom was Al Brumfield. In the mid-1890s, however, Brumfield and his capitalistic ventures suffered a minor setback: at that time, the traditional post offices were discontinued and relocated in the backcountry away from the Guyandotte River. (Harts was discontinued in 1891 and Warren in 1894.) For a brief time, Harts residents were left with a Fourteen address, named after nearby Fourteen Mile Creek. Andrew Elkins, an old Confederate veteran, served as postmaster there from 1880 until 1898. But there was hope for Brumfield and Harts: there was talk of a railroad coming to the Guyandotte Valley, scheduled to pass smack dab through town, connecting Logan County with Cabell County towns near the Ohio River.

By 1899, Brumfield owned nine tracts of land totaling 714.5 acres worth $2,774. On his property were three buildings valued at $150, $150 and $750 — all of these figures not including the money he was making from his log boom, store, saloon, ferry, gristmill, and orchard. The next year, in 1900, he re-established the Harts Post Office and, within a few years, the local economy shifted back to the banks of the Guyan. It was a prosperous time: timber was in its hey-day and the railroad was on its way. “Allen, son of the late Paris Brumfield, who has a big lot of property at and near the mouth of Hart’s creek, says times have been good,” according to The Cabell Record of July 26, 1900. “He has a pretty home and one of the finest store-houses along the river.” Later in October, The Record reported: “Times were never in better shape along the river. Timbermen are active and saw mills are busy. The farmers are doing well, and the new railroad is giving employment to many.”

In Search of Ed Haley 235

07 Friday Feb 2014

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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.