Tag Archives: Al Brumfield

In Search of Ed Haley 178

29 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

After a few hours of digesting this material, I met Brandon Kirk in the hall near the copier. Brandon, a neatly groomed young man wearing a tie, was freighted down with satchels. We introduced ourselves and were soon in the study room where Brandon started fishing through his bags and pulling out letters, notebooks, folders and photo albums. Within a few minutes, the table was covered. It was as if someone had walked up with a giant garbage bag full of papers and dumped it all out in front of me.

One of the first things Brandon showed me was a small account of Milt Haley’s murder titled “The Brumfield-McCoy Feud”, which was originally published in a 1926 edition of Lambert’s Llorrac.

The Brumfield-McCoy Feud took place in the month of September, about 1888, some three miles up Hart’s Creek. Hollena Brumfield and her husband, Allen Brumfield, had been visiting Henderson Dingess, father of Mrs. Brumfield, one Sunday and were about two miles below Mr. Dingess’ on their way home. Green McCoy and Milt Haley laid in wait for them. Mr. and Mrs. Brumfield were riding down the creek, Mrs. Brumfield being on the same horse behind her husband. McCoy and Haley began shooting at them, one bullet striking Mr. Brumfield in the arm, and the other tearing away a portion of Mrs. Brumfield’s face, disfiguring her for life. Mr. Brumfield jumped from his horse and ran, and in that way escaped further injury. McCoy afterwards told that they were bribed by John Runyons with a barrel of flour and a side of bacon to McCoy, and twenty-five dollars in money to [Haley]. The murderers escaped into Kentucky but were captured a little later and brought back. Allen Brumfield supplemented the reward offered by the state with one of his own.

It seems the cause of the trouble was bad feeling between John Runyons and Al Brumfield. Runyons had a store and saloon at the mouth of Hart’s Creek. Brumfield had a store on Guyan River about a fourth of a mile below Hart, on the south side of the Guyan and sold whiskey on a houseboat. John Dingess [Mrs. Brumfield’s brother] was a bartender.

McCoy and Haley were brought back and kept over night at the house of George Fry. The next morning a number of men, presumably Brumfield’s friends came in, and the two prisoners were shot and killed.

Along with the above article was another version of “The Lincoln County Crew”, which gave George (and not Tom) Ferrell as the author.

Come all young men and ladies, come fathers, mothers, too;

I’ll relate to you the history of the Lincoln County crew.

Concerning bloody rows, and many a thieving deed,

Dear friend, pray lend attention to these few lines I say.

It was in the month of August all on a very fine day;

Allen Brumfield he got wounded they say by Milt Haley.

But Brumfield couldn’t believe it, nor hardly thought it so;

He said it was McCoy who shot that fatal blow.

They shot and killed Boney Lucas, a sober and innocent man,

And left his wife and children, to do the best they can.

They wounded Rufus Stowers, although his life was saved;

And he seemed to shun the grog shop, since he stood so near his grave.

Allen Brumfield he recovered, some weeks and months had past;

It was at the house of George Fry, these men they met at last.

Green McCoy and Milt Haley, about the yard did walk;

They seemed to be uneasy and no one wished to talk.

And then they went into the house, and sat down by the fire,

And little did they think, dear friends, they had met their final hour.

The sting of death was near them, _________________________

A few words passed between them concerning a row before.

The people some got frightened, began to rush out of the room;

When a ball from some one’s pistol laid the prisoners in the tomb.

Their friends then gathered ’round them, their wives to weep and wail;

Tom Ferrell was arrested, and soon confined to jail.

The butchers talked of lynching him, but that was all the fear;

And when the day of trial came, Tom Ferrell he came clear.

And then poor Paris Brumfield, relation to the rest,

He got three balls shot through him, they went straight through his breast.

The death of these few men have caused great trouble in our land;

Men to leave their wives and children to do the best they can.

Lincoln County’s still at war, they never, never cease;

Oh, could I only, only see my land once more in peace.

I composed this as a warning, a warning to all men;

Your pistols will cause trouble, on that you may depend.

In the bottom of the whiskey glass, the lurking devil dwells;

It burns the hearts of those who drink, and sends their soul to hell.

In Search of Ed Haley 122

02 Sunday Jun 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Allen Brumfield — the man Milt Haley supposedly ambushed — was born in March of 1860 at Harts, in what was then Logan County, Virginia. His parents were Paris and Ann B. (Toney) Brumfield. Paris was a Confederate veteran, storekeeper and local politician — and one of the most notorious figures in the early history of Harts. Ann was a red-haired orphan raised by a property-rich school-teaching aunt. In 1880, 20-year-old Al Brumfield was listed in census records as living with his cousin, W.T. “Bill” Fowler, the chief businessman in Harts. Al was recorded as a farmer but was likely watching Fowler’s business closely, learning everything he could. His father, meanwhile, a heavy-drinking violent sort, had recently moved his mistress (and her illegitimate children) near the family home.

Upon reaching manhood, Brumfield was relatively tall with sandy-colored hair. He was a Democrat in politics. He married Hollena Dingess around 1881, presumably in Lincoln County. Hollena was the daughter of Henderson and Sarah (Adams) Dingess, somewhat wealthy residents of the Smoke House Fork of Big Harts Creek. Al and Hollena had six known children: Henry Beecher Ward Brumfield (born April 1883), Grover Cleveland Brumfield (born January 1884), Hendrix Brumfield (born November 29, 1886), George Brumfield (born c.1888), Belle Brumfield (born January 19, 1892), and Shirley Brumfield (born May 1, 1894).

Soon after marrying, Al built a small, boxed house on the bank of the Guyandotte River at the Shoals just below Harts. Nearby, he ran a whiskey boat. He and his wife were equally ambitious in their desire to accumulate wealth and political power. In a bold move to corner the timber market in Harts, Brumfield constructed a boom at the Narrows on Harts Creek to catch all logs coming out of the creek. Each logger was assessed a ten-cent per log tax. In a short time, he was on his way to amassing a small fortune.

In the early 1890s, he forced his cousin Bill Fowler to sell him his important property at the mouth of Harts Creek, where he began construction of a beautiful two-story white home. It was completed in two years and was a real mansion in its day. Illuminated with carbide lighting at a time when few people in the valley had the monetary power to afford such a luxury, it was dubbed “The Light House” by loggers who plied the river.

Throughout the 1890s, Brumfield was the business kingpin in Harts. He complemented his timber business by operating a store, saloon, ferry, sawmill and gristmill — and protected his entire business interest by serving as leader of the local vigilante group. In 1899, he successfully petitioned the government to reinstate the Harts post office, which had been discontinued in 1894, and served as its postmaster from 1900 until 1905.

“There is a postoffice in Hart’s creek now, and Al Brumfield is the postmaster,” wrote The Cabell Record on Thursday, April 5, 1900.

Almost simultaneous with Brumfield’s successes were his personal tragedies. On November 3, 1891, his brother Charley murdered his father, which had numerous implications within the family. In that same time frame, Al took on a mistress who bore him two illegitimate children and caused a great deal of spousal grief. And poor Hollena — who had already been shot in the face — was severely crippled when a steam-operated gristmill exploded with her inside, throwing her sixty feet into the air and breaking her hip. A little later, around 1900, Brumfield’s son George died of stomach trouble. And on July 4, 1900, his brother John was murdered by Charley Conley at a Fourth of July celebration in Chapmanville.

Just after the turn of the century, Al began to suffer from some debilitating disease, which eventually caused him to go blind. “Al Brumfield, of Hart, recently returned from Cincinnati, where he had his eyes treated, says that his sight is better,” according to The Cabell Record of Thursday, May 2, 1901. “He was almost blind.” Hollena hired George Ward, a local Negro, to care for him. In 1904, perhaps sensing that he might not survive the sickness, he deeded much of his property to his wife.

In Search of Ed Haley 80

15 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 79

10 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now where did this shooting take place?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 68

19 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The next day, Al and his posse headed for Hugh Dingess’ “great old big house” on Harts Creek. Bob’s mother Brooke Dingess was a witness to events that followed.

“They stayed all night there and they wanted to be awful sure that they were right, you know,” Bob said. “See, they didn’t want to kill somebody that was innocent. Well they took Haley outside and put handcuffs behind him and gagged him so he couldn’t make a noise and stuck a gun in his back and told him if he made any noise they’d shoot him, see? And a funny thing happened out there, though. He broke loose from them and pretty near got away.

“And then they told McCoy that they had taken Milton down there to hang in the orchard, and if he had anything to say he had better be saying it, see? He broke down and cried and he told them the truth about it. And he told them that they pulled straws on which one would do the shooting and it fell on Green and he got sick — vomited — and he just couldn’t do it. So Haley said, ‘You ain’t got no nerve. Give me the gun and I’ll do it.’ And he claimed Haley was the one that shot. He didn’t do it.”

As if to prove his story, Green then said something to the effect of, “You go down there and check at that sinkhole and you’ll see a pile of shavings that I whittled with my long razor.”

Bob said, “Well, Haley came out and cursed McCoy and told him he didn’t have any nerve and said everything to him. Said that fellow just cried and said, ‘Now, you know I’m telling every bit the truth.'”

Bob said the mob was convinced by McCoy’s confession, but I felt it had a few holes in it. First of all, what if Green skewed the truth by blaming everything on Milt — who he thought was dead — in the hopes of saving his own life? Second of all, why would he and Milt have only had one gun between them for their ambush? Of course, maybe these details were worked out by subsequent confessions not remembered by any living person today. In any case, the mob was apparently satisfied.

Bob said, “They didn’t do anything to them there. They weren’t nobody’s fool, now. They didn’t want any murder going on around their home; then it would be too easy to pin it on them. They’d go to somebody else’s home.”

Bob said his aunt Catherine Fry — an eyewitness to subsequent events — told him the rest of the story about Milt’s murder. He said she was nineteen years old at the time and lived at the mouth of Green Shoal on the Guyandotte River. She said a mob arrived at her home during the night and woke her from her sleep.

“Well, Cat said the first thing she knew she was sitting in the living room — the front room, you know,” Bob said. “They had whiskey there. A lot of drinking going on and a whole bunch of them… Must have been ten to fifteen maybe. The Brumfields and Dingesses all mixed up, you know. Haley and McCoy were back in the bedroom under guard. They had them both in bed.”

Milt continued to verbally abuse Green for admitting their guilt.

“Around ten o’clock, somebody shot the lamp out and Cat run and jumped behind a flour barrel over in the kitchen corner until the fracas was over.”

Milt and Green were shot in bed then pulled out in the yard where the mob “took an axe and cut their heads open and shot them all up — shot them all to pieces.”

I asked Bob what happened next and he said, “They got on their horses and left — walked off and left them. Al Brumfield was one of the head fellows who was there and he was a first cousin of Dad’s. Evidently somebody else took his horse. He came down to Grandfather’s house, which was his uncle by marriage and he told Grandpaw what they had done. Grandpaw told him to go on upstairs and go to bed. No, he did not want to do that because he was afraid those McCoy and Haley people might come in on him, friends or something, [and trap him in the house]. He slept up in the hollow under a beech tree up there. It was summertime, you know. I bet he didn’t sleep good and if he did he shouldn’t have. And the next morning he got out and he ate his breakfast with Grandpaw and then he went on to Harts — home, you know?”

In the next few days, someone hauled Milt and Green’s bodies to the West Fork of Harts Creek and buried them in a single, unmarked grave.

Bob gave us directions to the grave, which he’d last seen as a boy.

“You go up main Harts Creek. It’s not over a mile, I don’t think. It’s the first big creek that turns off to your left. You turn to the left there across the creek and go up that road about a mile or a mile and a quarter and they’s a little hollow there and they’s a house right in there. It’s been a good while since I been up there. If you’ll ask some of them people there, they’ll tell you right where it is.”

Lawrence and I planned to go to Harts in a few days and find it.

Bob said, “We lived there in a house right down below there for one year before we came down here. We sold our old farm up there and we had no where to go and we moved over there on an uncle of mine’s farm. And I farmed one summer right down below there. I went up there and saw that. Had just a little stone. Two of them there. They was buried in the same grave. Them stones may be torn down and gone now. We left there in 1919 or ’20.”

Bob Adkins Interview, Part 2 (1993)

18 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by in Breeden, Ed Haley, Guyandotte River, Hamlin, Harts, John Hartford, Lincoln County Feud

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Wow. So what about Al Brumfield, the guy who got into the feud with Milt?

“Well, he was a little more tamer fellow than old Paris but he was kind of a rough character — mean as a snake,” Bob said. “All those Brumfields were, you know. They was a tough outfit, all of them was.”

Al and his wife Hollena lived in a large white house at the mouth of Harts Creek, which Bob said had recently burned. They had a store and log boom nearby and kept a boat tied up at the riverbank for easy access across the Guyandotte. Things were going great for them until John Runyon (who Bob called “the root of all evil”) moved in from Kentucky.

“That fellow Runyon, he had a saloon and a store right across the creek there at the mouth of Harts, you know — a shebang,” Bob said. “And Aunt Hollene and Al Brumfield, they had a big store over there on the other side of the creek, over on the lower side of the creek. They was competitors in a way, you know. This fellow Runyon hired these two thugs to kill them, so as to get rid of their competition. And he hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to kill them. They got a side of bacon and a can of lard and five dollars to do that…each. And these fellows, Milt Haley and Green McCoy, were two characters. I don’t know why they ever took a chance on that. Them boys got into that before they knew what they was into. Them Brumfields was mean as the devil up there.”

Bob spun out the details of Milt and Green’s ambush of Al Brumfield.

“Every Sunday, Al and Hollene would get on their horse and they’d ride up to the Forks of Big Hart about ten miles to visit her father. He was old Henderson Dingess, my great-grandfather. Al had a fine riding horse and he’d get on the horse and she’d ride behind him, see? And they’d been up there on a pretty summer day, and they’d done had dinner with her father.”

Haley and McCoy, meanwhile, laid in wait for them in a sinkhole at Thompson Branch with a .30/.30 Winchester.

“And Al and Hollene came along about three or four o’clock in the evening and those thugs laywaid them on the side of the hill up there as they came back down Harts Creek. They shot at Al’s head. That horse jumped and that bullet missed his head and hit Hollene right in the face right there and the bullet knocked her teeth out and came out this side here. It knocked her off of the horse.”

Al was carried on down the creek by his horse, which “sprang and run” so Milt and Green came off the hill toward his wife.

“They aimed to shoot Aunt Hollene again — and she a laying there in the road, her eyes full of blood. She couldn’t see hardly who it was. But she begged them not to shoot her anymore, because she figured they’d already killed her. She told them she was dying and begged them out of it.”

At that point, Al came back up along the creek bed shooting toward them “and they got scared and they run.”

Bob said, “Well, the Brumfields didn’t know who it was so they watched all around to see who it was. They watched Runyon like a hawk but he changed his name and walked right off. He left his store, his saloon and his family and went back to Kentucky. They hunted for years for him but they never did find him. He never poked his head around there anymore, not even to contact his family.”

Milt and Green also disappeared from the neighborhood — which caused locals to assume that they were guilty of some role in the trouble.

“And these two guys just left their family and went into Kentucky and just deserted their families,” Bob said. “Then they knew who it was. And they started looking for them.”

Al Brumfield put out a $3,000 reward for their capture. Detectives were told to search in river towns, as both men had run rafts out of the Guyan River.

A detective caught Green McCoy first in a Cincinnati restaurant. He identified him by noticing a nick in one of his ears. Just before apprehending him, the detective walked up and said, “I think you’re the man I’m looking for.” Once caught, Green gave the whereabouts of Milt, who was found working a butter churn on a steamboat at the river. Both men were jailed. Al Brumfield was informed of their capture by letter.

Brumfield organized two of his brothers-in-law and perhaps one of his brothers into a posse and rode to the rendezvous point (presumably in the vicinity of Cincinnati). He posed as a sheriff, paid the reward, took possession of the two men, then headed across eastern Kentucky and up the Tug River to Williamson. He and his gang rode a train on the N&W across Twelve Pole to Breeden, where they crossed the mountain and spent a night at the home of John Dingess, Hollena’s brother. Dingess ran a large country store and saloon, Bob said, but “nothing exciting happened around there.”

Bob Adkins Interview, Part 1 (1993)

15 Friday Feb 2013

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The next day, Lawrence and I decided to go see 89-year-old Bob Adkins in Hamlin, West Virginia. In a recent Goldenseal article, Bob had given his biography, including his family’s connection to the story of Milt’s murder. Since reading his narrative, I’d been anxious to ask him about Milt, as well as to confirm or disprove my suspicion that his father’s first wife Emma Jane Hager was the same person as Ed’s mother.

To get to Bob’s house, we took Route 10 out of Huntington to Lincoln County. We turned off onto Route 3 just inside the county line at West Hamlin, then drove on for about ten minutes, crossed a hill and cruised into Hamlin — Lincoln County’s seat of government. Bob Adkins’ nice two-story house sat just past a block of small struggling businesses and through the only red light in town. We found Bob out back relaxing on a patio near a flower garden in full bloom.

After all the introductions, I mentioned my theory about Ed’s mother, which Bob shot out of the water right away. He was positive that Emma Jane Hager was not the same person as Emma Haley.

“No, Emma Jane Hager was old man Philip Hager’s daughter,” Bob said. “Dad got her from Griffithsville, 10 miles toward Charleston. Dad come down there and stole her.”

Bob knew all about Milt’s death but stressed that what he knew about it was hear-say, that he didn’t want to get sued and that we couldn’t take his word as gospel because there was “so dern many of ’em a shootin’ and a bangin’ around amongst each other” in Harts that he sometimes got his stories confused. Maybe Bob did have a foggy memory, as he claimed, but I found him to be a walking — or rather, sitting — encyclopedia of Harts Creek murders.

“I was born and raised up there until I was nineteen years old, but I was never afraid,” Bob said. “I walked all hours of the night and everything and do as I please, but I always tended to my business, you know. Kin to most of them. I never bothered nobody. Nobody never bothered me, but that doesn’t say they wouldn’t shoot you. Well, all you had to do was tend to your own business.”

Bob eased into the story of Milt’s death by giving Lawrence and I some background on the Brumfields. He knew a lot about them because Hollena Brumfield, the woman Milt supposedly shot, was his mother’s aunt and “about half way raised her.” She was a Dingess prior to marrying Al Brumfield.

“Now those Dingesses up there, I never knew of them to bother anybody much,” Bob said of his kinfolk. “Some of the older ones shot and banged around a little bit. But look out for them Brumfields. They was into it all the time. If they couldn’t get anybody else to shoot, they’d shoot theirselves — their own people.”

Al Brumfield’s father Paris was the most notorious of the old Brumfields.

“Well, one thing, he killed an old pack peddler up there at Hart, took his stuff and threw him in the river,” Bob said of the Brumfield patriarch. “And he killed another man, too. I forget the other fellow’s name. Son, he was a mean old man, I’ll tell you that. Why, he’d kill anybody. He lived about three quarters of a mile from the mouth of the creek down the river there in at the end of a bottom, see?”

Bob kind of chuckled.

“Yeah, killed that old pack peddler,” he said. “That’s what they said he did. I don’t know. He was a mean old devil. And boy, he’d killed two men.”

I wanted to know more about the Brumfields since they seemed to have been so wrapped up in the story of Milt Haley.

“What happened to Paris Brumfield?” I found myself asking.

“I tell you, old Paris, he got what was coming to him,” Bob said. “He was as mean as a snake and he would beat up on his wife every time he got drunk. And Paris’ wife got loose from him and she came down to her son Charley’s for protection. Charley was a grown man and was married and had a family and he lived down the road a quarter of a mile. Charley told her to come on in the house and there’d be nobody to bother her there and he told her to stay back in the room and he would take care of it. Old Paris, he was drunk and he didn’t get exactly where she was and he finally figured out where she was and old Paris come down there to get his wife. When he come down, Charley, his son, was setting on the porch with a Winchester across his lap. A Winchester is a high-powered gun, you know? And that day and time, they had steps that came up on this side of the fence and a platform at the top of the fence and you walked across the platform and down the steps again. That kept the gates shut so that the cattle and stuff couldn’t come into the yard. Well, he got up on that fence and Charley was setting on the porch with that Winchester. He said, ‘Now, Paw don’t you step across that fence. If you step across that fence, I’m going to kill you.’ And Paris quarreled and he fussed and he cussed and he carried on. That was his wife and if he wanted to whip her, he could whip her. He could do as he pleased. He was going to take his wife home. Charley said, ‘Now, Paw. You have beat up on my mother your last time. You’re not going to bother Mother anymore. If you cross that step, I am going to kill you.’ And he kept that up for a good little while there. ‘Ah, you wouldn’t shoot your own father.’ Drunk, you know? And Charley said, ‘You step your foot over that fence, I will.’ Paris was a little shaky of it even if he was drunk. Well, after a while he said, ‘I am coming to get her,’ and when he stepped over that fence, old Charley shot him dead as a doornail.”

You mean he killed his own father?

“His own father,” Bob said. “He killed him. That got rid of that old rascal. And that ended that story. They never did even get indicted for that or nothing. Everybody kept their mouth shut and nobody didn’t blame Charley for it because old Paris had beat up on his mother, you know? Everyone was glad to get rid of him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 46

05 Saturday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

     Several months later, I spotted a follow-up article about Milt Haley’s murder in the Spring 1992 edition of Goldenseal titled “Settling Family Differences.” It was based on an interview with Bob Adkins, a Lincoln County gas driller born just after the turn of the century at Ferrellsburg, West Virginia. It was rough country in there during his childhood.

     “I know of 18 murders within ten miles of where I grew up,” Bob said. “Never knew of anyone to kill a stranger. They were settling their own family differences. People lived by the gun. Never saw but one fistfight. I made it a point to tend to my own business.”

     Bob’s great-grandfather Henderson Dingess was the father of the Hollena Brumfield (spelled “Haline” in the article) shot in the face by Milt Haley and Green McCoy. Henderson and his wife Sally (Adams) Dingess lived on the Smoke House Fork of Harts Creek in what was then Lincoln County (but is today Logan County).

     “The Dingesses made part of their living floating logs downstream,” Bob said. “They also had an orchard and a federal licensed brandy making operation.”

     Al and Hollena Brumfield were wealthy businessmen at the mouth of Harts Creek on the Guyandotte River. Al’s father Paris Brumfield “lived half a mile below there on good bottom land,” Bob said. Al and Hollena “built a boom across [Harts] Creek to catch logs that were floated into the Guyan in the spring. Al charged by the log and prospered. They built an eight-room house and put in a store. Haline ran the store and offered food and lodging to travelers.”

     There was a picture of the Brumfield home in the article — it was the same place where Lawrence had said his grandmother was shot in a feud.

     Bob gave a great account of Milt’s murder, expounding on what I already knew while opening up a few new leads.

A fellow named Runyan [spelled “Runyon” in other sources] came in from Kentucky and put in a store and saloon and made competition for Haline and Al Brumfield. Well, when that fellow came and put in a store it was believed that he would like to get rid of Al.

Every Sunday Al and Haline rode up the hollow to Harts Creek to see her daddy, Henderson Dingess. They both rode on one horse. Runyan gave some men a side of bacon and a barrel of flour to kill them. They got in a sinkhole and shot at Al on the way back. Al jumped off, but they hit Haline in the cheek and the bullet went out the other cheek. Al ran and got away and then came back for Haline. She knew there were two men but she didn’t know who they were. Thought it was Burl Adams but became convinced it wasn’t him.

The men got away, but when it was found out that Milt Haley and Green McCoy had disappeared suddenly that night everyone agreed that they had been hired by Runyan to kill Al Brumfield. Runyan also left Harts that night. Runyan just left, and they looked for him the rest of their lives.  Then they missed Milt Haley and Green McCoy. They just left their families and disappeared. Figured it was by steamboat on the Ohio.

News got to Cincinnati that $1,500 was offered for Haley, Runyan, and McCoy. A detective there found [Haley and McCoy] and when Al heard they had his men he went down posing as sheriff, paid the reward, got them on the N&W train to Wayne County by Kenova, then up Twelve Pole Creek to Tug River. Breeden was a railroad stop and they walked from there to Harts by Left Fork of Twelve Pole.

Haline’s brother, John Dingess, had a saloon at Dingess on the way. They stayed there and stayed the next night at Grandpa’s [Hugh Dingess]. His daughter Brooke was 14 at the time. That night they took Milt Haley out, told McCoy they had hanged him, then McCoy told the whole story. Haley was held and made to listen to McCoy. Then they brought Haley in and he called McCoy yellow and still denied all of it.

Next day they went along West Fork of Harts to Fry. Stayed at Aunt Catherine Fry Adkins’s house at Fry. She was in the kitchen with the two men tied together, everyone drinking. Someone shot the lamp out over her head. Then they shot the men and took axes to their heads. This wasn’t much strange. They took the law into their own hands but made sure it was the right people.

Al Brumfield come to Grandpa [Adkins]’s that night but slept up the hollow. [They] took the bodies to West Fork of Harts and buried them in the same grave. Their relatives kept quiet.

     After repeatedly studying Bob Adkins’ story in Goldenseal, I concocted a theory about Ed’s mother that coincided somewhat with Lawrence’s story about her shooting at the Brumfield place. Bob told in the article how his father Albert Adkins met his mother Brooke Dingess while boarding at Hollena’s in the 1890s. They were married after Albert’s first wife Emma Jane Hager died of tuberculosis in 1901. Well…what if this Emma Jane Hager had been Emma Jean Haley? Had Emma Haley abandoned Ed and changed her last name so as to lose her identity as the widow of a man accused of attempted murder? Was the transportation slow enough and the memories of locals distorted enough by time to make such a transition of identity? It seemed a plausible enough theory, so I resolved to explore it by contacting Bob the next time I was in West Virginia.

In Search of Ed Haley 44

01 Tuesday Jan 2013

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Meador’s article was my first real glimpse into the story of Milt Haley’s death since talking with Roxie Mullins. I read it carefully and often.

“In 1889, around the time the Hatfields and McCoys were killing each other along the Tug River, another less known family war was occurring, not too far away, in Lincoln County. The details of the feud are sketchy today, and would be all but forgotten had its events not been recorded in a ballad known as ‘The Lincoln County Crew.’ In 1923, the text of the ballad, attributed to George Ferrell, and a brief explanation were published in The Llorrac, a Lincoln County historical journal published by the students and faculty at Carroll High School in Hamlin.”

Meador began with a somewhat interesting description of Harts at the time of Milt’s death.

“The community of Harts, isolated in southern Lincoln County near the Logan County line, was one of the places where citizens occasionally had to take the law into their own hands. Harts, on the Guyandotte River about midway between Huntington and Logan, was a convenient stopping place for travelers journeying between the two towns. Also it played host to the teams of rough-and-tumble men who rafted logs down the river to ports on the Ohio. Because of its location and because whiskey was sold there, Harts attracted more than its share of troublemakers. Differences were often settled with a gun, and killings sometimes avenged by the family of the murdered person.”

The impetus for the feud that claimed Milt’s life, according to Meador, was trouble between Allen Brumfield and John Runyon, two merchants at the mouth of Harts Creek.

“In Harts, in the latter decades of the 19th Century, lived a man by the name of Allen Brumfield. According to Irma Butcher, Brumfield lived in a large white house near the Guyandotte River bridge. The Llorrac relates that Brumfield operated a store near Harts and sold whiskey from a houseboat in the river. Allen Brumfield, according to The Llorrac, was not the only whiskey merchant in Harts. At the mouth of Harts Creek, a man by the name of John Runyons operated a store and saloon. For some reason there were hard feelings between Runyons and Brumfield, and Runyons is reported to have hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to kill Brumfield. Payment for the two men is supposed to have been a barrel of flour, a side of bacon and $25.”

Now that was a real interesting twist to the story — no mention of Milt’s wife getting shot at the Brumfield place. Milt was apparently a hired gunman. In a way, I wasn’t surprised. From the very beginning, I had the impression that Milt was a bad character. Roxie Mullins had said he was “awful bad to drink and kept a Winchester loaded and sitting right by the side of his door. A whole mob killed him. They was afraid of him because he had a pretty bad name.” Lawrence had said, “When my dad was very young he didn’t like the whiny way my dad was acting so to make him more of a man he took him out and dropped him in a rain barrel through the ice.” And then there was the poverty aspect: I mean, to kill someone for a barrel of flour, a side of bacon and twenty-five dollars?

According to Meador’s article, Milt and Green supposedly ambushed Brumfield, a very common thing to do in those days.

“The day chosen by McCoy and Haley for their grim deed was a Sunday afternoon in mid-August of 1889. Allen Brumfield and his wife, Hollena, were returning on horseback from a visit to Mrs. Brumfield’s father, Henderson Dingess, who lived on Harts Creek. Mrs. Brumfield was on the same horse, behind her husband. From ambush and without warning, McCoy and Haley fired at the couple as they rode down the river. Their aim was good but not fatal. Allen Brumfield received a bullet in his arm and his wife was shot in the face. Brumfield jumped from his horse and by running was able to make his escape. Mrs. Brumfield also survived but was disfigured for life. Irma Butcher, who knows little about the history behind the ballad, remembers as a young girl visiting in the home of Allen Brumfield’s widow, Hollena, at Harts. Mrs. Butcher relates that widow Brumfield had a hole ‘the size of a quarter’ in her nose, where she had been shot during the feud.”

After the shooting, Milt and Green fled across the Kentucky state line to escape from the law.

“Haley and McCoy fled to Martin County, Kentucky, but in mid-October of that same year were captured and lodged in the Martin County jail. Their captors were no doubt attracted by the reward offered by the state of West Virginia and supplemented by Allen Brumfield.”

A posse fetched Milt and Green and brought them to Lincoln County.

“The accused gunmen were returned to West Virginia by way of Logan County, which was then a border county including what is now Mingo County. There they were turned over to a party of Lincoln County men headed by the aggrieved Brumfield himself. The group journeyed as far as Chapmanville by mid-afteroon and tried to find lodging for the night among the families there. No one would take them in, evidently because of a fear of mob violence. Still looking for overnight shelter, the party continued down the Guyandotte River. For some reason, the guard split so that a portion crossed to the other side, leaving but an officer and three men in charge of the prisoners. A few miles below Chapmanville this small company entered into Lincoln County, soon finding lodging at the house of George Frye. The Frye house was located near the mouth of Green Shoals at Ferrellsburg.”

At Green Shoal, Milt and Green were brutally murdered by a mob.

“About eight o’clock that evening, according to the Logan County Banner of October 31, 1889, an armed mob estimated at 20 or more men surrounded Frye’s house and demanded that the prisoners be turned over to them. Frye and his family were ordered into the kitchen and the guards were allowed to leave the house. The mob then rushed in, firing their guns. McCoy and Haley were dragged out into the front yard and shot several times. The angry crowd then took rocks and smashed in the skulls of the two men. Their bloody work accomplished, the mob disappeared into the darkness, leaving the neighbors to take care of the bodies.”

No one was brought to justice for the killings.

“The Logan County Banner, in relating the story of the murders of Haley and McCoy, said that there had been no arrests in connection with the killings even though it was generally well known in the area who had been involved. The paper also gave the impression that most local people were in agreement in condoning the action of the lynch mob. The paper itself seemed to justify the unlawful treatment of Haley and McCoy on the grounds that they had shot an innocent woman.”

At the end of Meador’s article was an interesting note about Paris Brumfield, father to Al, hinting at past trouble between the Brumfields and McCoy.

“Another mystery concerns a man by the name of Paris Brumfield, who is mentioned in Professor Cox’s version [of the song] as being murdered by his own son. A story quoted in the November 7, 1889, edition of the Logan County Banner, says that Paris Brumfield was engaged in a shooting scrape with Green McCoy about a year before the attack on Allen Brumfield.”

In Search of Ed Haley 43

31 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

     When I arrived back in Nashville, I set about lining up Ed’s fiddle as close as I could to how he would have wanted it. I had John Hedgcoth make a duplicate bridge, then strung it all up so that if he were to walk in the room it would suit him. After about a week, though, the neck started pulling up. I loosened the strings and called Kennie Lamb, a violin expert and craftsman in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Kennie picked the fiddle up in Nashville and hand-carried it back to Louisiana for minimal restoration.

     A few weeks later, I received a letter from him:

 John,

The Markings in Red Corrspond to the Haley Bridge. The only exception being that the D string on the Original Bridge has two notches very close together. I have Marked a D notch in Red but the unmarked D notch will line up with one of the Original notches so you can take your choice on where you believe Mr. Haley Kept the D String.

I have noticed one other interesting thing: Mr. Haley “or Some one” has played this fiddle with the bridge set Almost 1/2 inch to the rear of where it should be set. NOTe: the Markin[g]s where the feet of the bridge once stood. The bridge was in this position for Many a year: Before the neck was out of Alignment and probably before the damage and subsequent repair to the back button the Original bridge may have been tall enough to sustain the rearward Position. The Old Gentleman may have positioned it to the rear in Order to lower the strings or being blind he may not have known exactly where the bridge was supposed to stand. Of course the fiddle would off note badly in the Position but I have seen many such “And Worse” Positions. I hope I have Accomplished what you wanted.

     Around the time Kennie’s letter arrived in the mail, Stephen Green, an archivist at the Appalachian Center Sound Archive in Berea, Kentucky, sent me a Summer 1986 article from a West Virginia magazine called Goldenseal. It told all about Milt Haley’s murder and was based on a song called “The Lincoln County Crew”, as sung by Irma Butcher of Bear Creek in northwestern Lincoln County. The song was very similar to Cox’s “A West Virginia Feud-Song”.

     Butcher first heard her version around 1910 from fiddler Keenan Hunter, a friend to her banjo-picking father, Press Blankenship. In 1978, she played it for Michael M. Meador at the Vandalia Gathering, West Virginia’s annual statewide folk festival in Charleston.

Come all dear friends and people, come fathers, mothers too;

I’ll relate to you the story of the Lincoln County Crew;

Concerning bloody rowing and many a thieving deed;

Come friends and lend attention, remember how it reads.

 ‘Twas in the month of August, all on a very fine day,

Al Brumfield he was wounded, they say by Milt Haley;

The people did not believe it, nor hardly think it so,

They say it was McCoy that struck the fatal blow.

 They shot and killed Boney Lucas, a sober and innocent man,

Who leaves a wife and children to do the best they can;

They wounded poor Oak Stowers, although his life was saved,

He meant to shun the drug shop, that stood so near his grave.

Allen Brumfield he recovered, in some months to come to pass,

And at the house of George Frye, those men they met at last;

Green McCoy and Milt Haley about the yard did walk,

They seemed to be uneasy and no one wished to talk.

They went into the house and sat down by the fire,

But little did they think, dear friends, they’d met their final hour;

The sting of death was near them when a mob rushed in at the door,

And a few words passed between them concerning the row before.

The people all got frightened and rushed clear out of the room,

When a ball from some man’s pistol lay the prisoners in their tomb;

Their friends had gathered ’round them, their wives did weep and wail,

Tom Ferrell was arrested and soon confined in jail.

Confined in jail at Hamlin to stay there for awhile,

In the hands of Andrew Chapman to bravely stand his trial;

But many talked of lynching him, but that was just a fear,

For when the trial day came on, Tom Ferrell, he came out clear.

I suppose this is a warning, a warning to all men;

Your pistols will cause trouble, on this you can depend;

In the bottom of a whiskey glass, a lurking devil dwells;

And burns the breast of those who drink, and sends their souls to hell.

Parkersburg Landing 32

17 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

     I was elated the entire trip home. As soon as I got back in Nashville, I called Dr. Wolfe and said, “I don’t even know where to begin to start telling you everything. I’ve got records and I got leads on where the rest of the recordings are. They just took me in and everything and as I got ready to go they gave me one of his canes for a souvenir. I’ve held one of his fiddles in my hand and looked at it. Now the other thing that Lawrence let me bring back are his reel-to-reel dubs of everything the Library of Congress has. There’s a bunch of tunes on there we haven’t heard: ‘Sourwood Mountain’ and ‘Dora Dean’.

     “Yesterday we went up to Harts Creek in West Virginia, his birthplace. He’s a West Virginian; he’s not a Kentuckian. And in fact, Lawrence, because of the way his dad was treated when he was alive around Ashland, says he prefers to think of him as being a West Virginian. Lawrence, being the youngest of the five brothers, he’s kind of the keeper of the flame more or less. I think being around him I really get a flavor of what the old man was like. Even when we went up into Harts Creek, why the old-timers up there said he talked just like Ed.”

     Dr. Wolfe asked me what my intentions were and I said, “I think what it amounts to is doing everything we can to preserve the music and the history because the story is incredible.”

     I wasted little time in listening to all of Ed’s recordings on a reel-to-reel player borrowed from Doug Dillard. It was an incredible experience. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I immediately focused in on Ed’s recording of “Brownlow’s Dream”, the tune Roxie Mullins said was Milt Haley’s last tune. It was an amazing four part version of a tune I had learned from Elmer Bird called “Jimmy Johnson”. Lawrence had recalled his father singing, “Old Jimmy Johnson bring your jug around the hill. If you can’t bring your jug, bring your still if you will.” Not long after going through the reels, I took them to Bruce Nemerov at the Center for Popular Culture in Murfreesboro. I had promised Lawrence I would get him good copies.

     A few weeks later, Dr. Wolfe called me with news of an old West Virginia ballad that mentioned the name of Milt Haley. It was titled “A West-Virginia Feud Song” and published in Professor J.H. Cox’s Folk-Songs of the South (1924). T.M. Martin of Marlinton, Pocahontas County, West Virginia, informed Cox about the tune in 1916, while S.S. Workman of Seebert, West Virginia, was the source for events surrounding it.

     “The fight, out of which this song grew, occurred, as near as he could remember, in 1890, at the house of George Fries, eleven miles east of Hamlin, Lincoln County, and the trial took place at Hamlin,” Cox wrote. “The trouble between the factions was of long standing. The McCoy mentioned was a close relative of the McCoys that fought with the Hatfields. George Pack helped Mr. Workman get this song together. They never saw it in print.”

     Events chronicled in the song lyrics seemed to be about Ed’s father, who was reportedly killed with a McCoy, but the account was so confusing that I really wasn’t sure.

Come all you men and ladies, and fathers and mothers too;

I’ll relate to you the history of the Lincoln County crew;

Concerning bloody rowing, and a many a threatening deed;

Pray lend me your attention, and remember how it reads.

It was all in the month of August, all on a very fine day,

Ale Brumfield he got wounded, they say by Milt Haley;

But Brumfield he recovered; he says it was not so,

He says it was McCoy that fired that fatal shot.

Two months have come and passed, now those men have met at last,

Have met at George Fries’ house, at George Fries’ house at last;

McCoy and Milt Haley, it’s through the yard did walk,

They seemed to be uneasy, with no one wished to talk.

They went into the house, sit down by the fire,

But little did they think they had met their fatal hour.

As the mob came rushing on them, the ladies left the room;

A ball from some man’s pistol lay McCoy in his tomb.

They shot and killed Boney Lukes, a sober and innocent man,

And left his wife and children to do the best they can;

They wounded old Ran Sawyers, although his life was save[d];

He seems to shun the drugshops, since he stood so near the grave.

Tom Feril was soon arrested and confined in jail;

He was put in jail in Hamlin to bravely stand his trial;

The Butchers threatened to lynch him, and that was all his fears;

The trial day it came on, Tom Feril he came clear.

There is poor old Perries Brumfield, he died among the rest;

He got three balls shot through him, they went through his breast.

The death of poor old Parris so lately has been done,

They say it was a hired deed, it was done by his son.

So go tell the nation around you it will never, never cease;

I would give this whole world around me to reach my home in peace;

In the bottom of a whiskey glass there is a lurking devil dwells,

It burns the breath of those who drink it and sends their souls to hell.