17 Tuesday Jun 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Cemeteries, Culture of Honor, Lincoln County Feud, Spottswood, Timber
Tags
Ben Adams, Ben Adams Cemetery, genealogy, Harts Creek, history, Lincoln County Feud, Logan County, Trace Fork, Victoria Adams, West Virginia
Ben Adams grave, Trace Fork of Big Harts Creek, Logan County, WV, 27 March 2011
17 Tuesday Jun 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber
Tags
Allen Martin, Anthony Adams, Ben Adams, Boardtree Branch, Brandon Kirk, Charley Brumfield, crime, Ed Haley, Ewell Mullins, fiddling, Greasy George Adams, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts, Harts Creek, history, Jeff Baisden, John Hartford, Jr., Kentucky, Lincoln County Feud, Logan County, Milt Haley, moonshining, murder, music, Paris Brumfield, Peter Mullins, Sol Adams, Still Hollow, Ticky George Adams, timbering, Trace Fork, Vilas Adams, West Virginia, Will Adkins, writing
Trying to lift our spirits, we went to see Vilas Adams, who lived on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork. Vilas was a great-grandson of Ben Adams and a grandson of Ticky George Adams. He was very friendly, inviting us inside his very nice home where his wife fed us a whole mess of good food, which we ate between asking questions.
I first asked him about his memories of Ed Haley, who he said frequented Ewell Mullins’ store during the late 1930s and early forties.
“Down there at old man Ewell’s store, they’d gather in there of an evening and tell tales, old man Jeff Baisden and them,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw Ant Adams and I would walk down there and then Ed would walk down there from Uncle Peter’s. It was a quarter a mile — just a little hop and a jump I call it. Ed would come in there and fiddle for them and if they wanted a certain song, they’d give him a quarter or fifty cents. That was good money I guess back then.”
Vilas’ grandfather Anthony Adams (a brother to Greasy George) always gave Ed a quarter to hear his favorite tune.
“What was Ed like?” I asked.
Vilas implied that he was withdrawn.
“Mostly he stayed with that fiddle,” he said. “He was good.”
Like most of the other older people in Harts, Vilas knew about the Haley-McCoy killings.
“My grandpaw would tell me them tales but I wouldn’t pay no attention,” he said. “He was telling about them fellers — Sol Adams — going over there and locating them and they went back and captured them. Well, his daddy Anthony tried to waylay them and take them back through here somewhere. They thought they’d come through these hills somewhere but they missed them.”
So, Sol Adams — a 20-year-old nephew to Ben Adams who was often called “Squire Sol” because of his status as an officer of the law — “went over and located Haley and McCoy” in Kentucky after the ambush. Meanwhile, his father Anthony and uncle Ben Adams, organized a gang to recapture them as the Brumfields brought them back through Harts Creek. This seemed strange: why would Sol operate against the interests of his family? And why would he have even been compelled to even become involved since he was a Logan County justice and the crime had occurred in Lincoln County?
Brandon asked Vilas if he knew who had been in the Adams gang and he said, “No, I’ve heard my grandpaw talk but I’ve forgot some of it. They was somebody from down around Hart somewhere. He said they took them over around Green Shoal or over in there somewhere and killed them. Grandpaw said they maybe hit them with axe handles.”
Vilas said his grandfather told him something horrible had happened to most of the men who murdered Haley and McCoy.
“He said just about every one of them that was in on that, something bad happened to them,” he said. “I heard one of them’s own boy killed one of them. And one of them got drowned and my grandpaw said the river wasn’t deep. Said he fell off a horse or something right at the mouth of Hart.”
Of course, Vilas was referring to Paris Brumfield, who was killed by his son Charley in 1891, and to Will Adkins, who drowned at the mouth of Harts Creek on November 23, 1889.
Brandon asked Vilas about “old Ben Adams” and he almost immediately started talking about the old timber business.
“See, that was my great-grandpaw,” he said. “They would build splash dams. They had one right out here. They had them tied some way or the other. And they built them up on Hart there, maybe up on Hoover, and they’d work all winter and put them logs in the creek. And in the spring when them floods come, it would wash all them logs down around Hart and then they’d put them together and raft them on down to Kenova. I guess that was all they had to make a living — timber and farm.”
Ben, of course, made his living in timber. He lived at the mouth of Adams Branch, a little tributary of Trace Fork presently referred to as Still Hollow.
“Over there at what we call Still Hollow, they said he had a still-house there and he had a license to make apple brandy back then,” Vilas said. “And he would go with a wagon everywhere and get apples. They was a log house over there in the mouth of that holler — just down the road here a little ways. When I was a boy the old log house was there, but it rotted down. Just one-story as far as I can remember. The old well’s there. He had some kind of an old store or saloon right there.”
Vilas speculated very little on Ben Adams’ personality, but compared him to his son, Greasy George Adams: “always a likeable fella but seemed like trouble followed him.” He heard that after Ben’s first wife died, he lived with first one woman, then the next. He eventually got into a heap of trouble by murdering a local postman, Jim Martin.
“He killed a fella right over there at the mouth of that hollow,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw said he had some sort of an old store or saloon and he was shooting out the door. Right there in the mouth of that holler. It broke him. Lawyers. Lost everything he had.”
It was rumored that Ben’s and Martin’s trouble had something to do with a woman or a right-of-way.
12 Thursday Jun 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud
Tags
Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Bernie Adams, Brandon Kirk, Cain Adkins, Caroline Brumfield, Cecil Brumfield, Dave Dingess, Ed Haley, fiddle, French Bryant, Harriet Brumfield, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John Hartford, John W Runyon, Lillian Ray, Logan, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, Sallie Dingess, Smokehouse Fork, Tom Martin, writing
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.
30 Friday May 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor
Tags
Allen Martin, Appalachia, Atlanta, Ben Adams, Brandon Kirk, Charley Brumfield, crime, Frank Adams, Georgia, Greasy George Adams, Harts Creek, history, Huntington Herald-Advertiser, Lawrence Haley, Logan County, moonshining, murder, Ward Brumfield, West Virginia, writing
“Greasy George” Adams, a son of Ben Adams, was apparently a notorious character on Harts Creek in the early decades of the twentieth century. Lawrence Haley had mentioned his name to me on my first trip to Ashland, while Brandon said his home was the scene of Charley and Ward Brumfield’s double murder in 1926. A 1953 article from the Huntington Herald-Advertiser titled “HARTS CREEK HOME WHERE FIVE MET DEATH NOW IS OFTEN SCENE OF PRAYER MEETINGS” had this great interview with Adams.
George Adams of Harts Creek in Logan County has his rifle on the wall now and instead of a pistol in his hand he carries a prayer book. He’s given up feuding and fighting and settled down to old-time religion at his neat farm home where five persons were killed in gun fights. Almost never does the tantalizing smell of moonshine cooking in a barrel up a mountain hollow drift down to taunt the nostrils of the man who proudly states he has made thousands of gallons and the law never chopped up one of his stills. “I put ’em high up in the hills and the law got too tired before they reached them,” he said.
THE HONKING of a brood of ducks and the whining of droves of bees busy at work at his 40 honey hives are about the only sounds which disturb the silence around his 25 acres of land today. Land which he says he was able to buy through the sale of bootleg liquor. But it was not always so at George Adams’ place. Several decades ago he recalls that when he heard a rifle singing through the hills he reckoned it was a neighbor shooting at another neighbor. Open season on humans has closed in the area since, and squirrels and rabbits are about the only targets. George Adams misses the sparsity of “shine” from the hill country he loves so well, even though he says he hasn’t touched a drop since the last killing at his home. “Dang revenooers probably don’t know how good moonshine made out of tomatoes is, or they wouldn’t go around bustin’ up all the stills in the country,” he said.
THE MOUNTAIN folk in the Harts Creek area will tell you that there’s many a home along the small stream which flows into the Guyandotte River that’s seen a shooting or a killing. But George Adams’ home is slightly above par for the area — five people have met violent deaths there. As “Greasy George,” which his neighbors call him, puts it: “No trouble for a man to get in trouble but it’s hell to get out!” And he’s a man who should know about trouble. His legs are a little wobbly now because of carrying his six foot of height and weight around for 72 years, and he gets a little short of breath when working too hard, but when he starts talking about his shooting scrapes, he has all the enthusiasm of a country boy walking a country mile to a country house to date a country girl for the first time.
“I FUST got into trouble when I was nineteen. Mail carrier undertook to kill Dad and I went after him. Somebody got him,” he said, hastily adding: “Weren’t too nice a way to treat a man who delivers letters.” George related that his Dad got shot four times in the exchange of lead and “we both went to jail.” A trial in Logan County lasted for three days and he said, “Dad nearly went broke paying off lawyers,” before a verdict of self defense was brought in. That shooting affair took place less than a mile from George’s present home but several years later his kitchen was the scene of a battle where he said “guns were going off like popcorn.” Three participants emptied their guns at each other after George said one of them knocked him down and out of the way. Three burials took place afterwards. Before George built his present frame house over a log cabin, the logs were speckled with the bullets which went wild. The house today is probably the only frame house in the nation which has a cement roof on it three inches thick. “Ran out of lumber and got concrete real cheap,” George said. “While the house is plenty warm in winter time it sure is hot in summer,” he added.
ADAMS recalls that except for getting a year in jail for fighting during the kitchen shooting affair, the only time he strayed from the Harts area was when he went on a three-year vacation in Atlanta, Ga., courtesy of the federal government. Things were peaceful at his house for a while until a relative “up and chased his wife over here,” he said. The relative, according to George, fired and hit the wife with a blast from a 16-gauge shot gun. The next and last time a shooting occurred in the old homestead, Frank Adams, George’s son, lost his life. He said the affair was due to drinking and “since then I haven’t touched a drop unless somebody put it in my food unbeknowst to me.” “My boys were singing a lot of old fool songs and I told ’em to shut up. My son got up and slapped me down. While I was knocked out somebody shot Frank.”
GEORGE SAID he had 18 children. Three are living at home with him now and the rest are in other parts of the state. He says he can’t recall all their names “but they are in the Bible.” During recent years his home which saw so much violence is now the scene of many a religious meeting. He has even constructed benches in his yard to seat the neighbors who come from miles around to hear the services. He’s not filled full of the brine and vinegar he had when he was younger and as he says: “Me and other folks have quit this tomfoolery.” But nevertheless, George remarked that he would “sorta like to git in ‘nuther shakedown if I wasn’t too old.” And on the wall overhanging his bed is his rifle. “Keep it so’s if a man keeps coming in the house at night when I say stop I can stop him,” he said.
28 Wednesday May 2014
Posted in Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud
Tags
Al Brumfield, Ann Brumfield, Appalachia, Ben Adams, Bob Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Burl Adams, Cain Adkins, crime, Daisy Ross, Ed Haley, Green McCoy, Guyandotte River, Harts, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history, Howard Dalton, Imogene Haley, Joe Adams, John Frock Adams, John Hartford, John W Runyon, Lawrence Haley, Lawrence Kirk, Lincoln County, Logan County, Major Adkins, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, Peter McCoy, Sallie Dingess, Trace Fork, West Virginia, writing
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.”
23 Friday May 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music
Tags
Andy Mullins, Ashland, banjo, Ben Adams, Bernie Adams, Bill Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Buck Fork, Claude Martin, Clyde Haley, Devil Anse Hatfield, Devil's Dream, Dingess, Drunkard's Hell, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddling, George Baisden, George Mullins, Greasy George Adams, Harts, Harts Creek, Henderson Branch, history, Hoover Fork, John Frock Adams, Johnny Canub Adams, Kentucky, Lincoln County, Logan County, Mona Haley, music, Ralph Haley, Roxie Mullins, Sally Goodin, Soldiers Joy, Ticky George Adams, Trace Fork, Weddie Mullins, West Virginia, Wilson Mullins, writing
Throughout the winter 1996, Brandon kept busy interviewing folks around Harts for new Ed Haley-Milt Haley leads. In March, he wrote me about recent developments, including the death of Bill Adkins, Sr. — the old fiddler in Harts. At Bill’s wake, Brandon met Andy Mullins, who had recently moved back to Harts Creek after settling in Michigan in 1952. He was the son of Roxie Mullins.
Andy said, when he was a child, Ed Haley spent summers with his parents. Ed also stayed with George Mullins on Buck Fork, George Baisden (a banjo player) in the head of Hoover Fork, “old John Adams” on main Harts Creek, and Johnny Adams (Ticky George’s son) on Trace Fork. Ed had a big, fat belly. Sometimes, he came with his wife, a quiet woman who would eat dinner and then sing for an hour or so while playing the mandolin. Their daughter “Mona Mae” traveled with them, as did her husband, Wilson Mullins.
Andy didn’t remember much about Ed’s other children. He said Clyde stayed six months at a time on Harts Creek and “wouldn’t work a lick” and “couldn’t stay out of trouble.” He heard that Ralph used to hang upside down from a bridge in Ashland.
When Ed was young, Andy said, he supposedly played a lot of music with George Baisden. Later, he played with Bernie Adams and Claude Martin. Andy remembered that Ed didn’t saw the fiddle — he played smooth — and he was a good singer. His voice was like a bell. When he played music with Bernie and Claude, people gathered in and brought food and booze. Andy never saw Ed drunk, although he would get pretty high. Ed and Bernie were hateful. Somebody might request a tune and Ed would say, “What do you think I am, a steam engine?” — then play it five minutes later. Andy remembered Ed playing “Devil’s Dream”, “Drunkard’s Hell,” “Soldiers Joy” and “Sally Goodin”.
Andy was familiar with Ben Adams, who he said operated a mill-dam at Greasy George’s place on main Harts Creek. Ben used this dam to back the creek all the way up to Henderson Branch. Before turning it loose, he would go and tell people to get out of their homes. His nephew, “old John Adams” (a.k.a. “Long John” or “John Frock”), was the one who went to Dingess and killed the man who had shot Ed’s uncle, Weddie Mullins. Andy said the doctor had this man on a table working on him when John showed up and “wasted” him. John Frock let Ed cut his fingernails one time and he cut them up so badly that his fingers bled. (Mona had told me a similar story, except she thought that Ed had cut Devil Anse Hatfield’s nails.)
24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud
Tags
Al Brumfield, Albert Dingess, Ben Adams, Brandon Kirk, Charlie Dingess, crime, Dave "Dealer Dave" Dingess, Dave Dingess, feud, fiddler, fiddling, French Bryant, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Harve Dingess, Harvey "Long Harve" Dingess, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Maude Dingess, Millard Dingess, Milt Haley, Thompson Branch, writing
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.”
23 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber
Tags
Al Brumfield, Albert Dingess, Ben Adams, Billy Hall, Brandon Kirk, Burl Farley, Charlie Dingess, crime, Dave Dingess, feud, Floyd Dingess, Harts Creek, Harve Dingess, Harvey "Long Harve" Dingess, Henderson Dingess, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John W Runyon, Logan County, Maude Dingess, Milt Haley, Rockhouse Fork, Sallie Dingess, timbering, West Virginia
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.
17 Monday Mar 2014
Tags
Ben Adams, Billy Adkins, Bob Mullins Cemetery, Brandon Kirk, Cat Fry, Chapmanville, Eunice Mullins, Ewell Mullins, Greasy George Adams, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Hell Up Coal Hollow, history, Hugh Dingess, Imogene Haley, John Frock Adams, John Hartford, Johnny Hager, Little Harts Creek, Louie Mullins, Milt Haley, Oris Vance, Peter Mullins, Sherman McCoy, Sol Bumgarner, Spicie McCoy, Ticky George Adams, Turley Adams, writing
Back in the car, I mentioned to Brandon and Billy that we hadn’t made any real progress on learning what happened to Emma Haley. Billy suggested trying to locate her grave in the old Bob Mullins Cemetery at the mouth of Ticky George Hollow on Harts Creek. He said it was one of the largest and oldest cemeteries in the area. I told him that I was all but sure that Emma was buried in one of the “lost” graves on the hill behind Turley Adams’ house but wouldn’t mind checking it out anyway.
We drove out of Smoke House and up main Harts Creek to the Bob Mullins Cemetery, which was huge and very visible from the road. We parked the car and walked up a steep bank into a large number of gravestones. Some were modern and easily legible but most were of the eroded sandstone vintage with faded writing or completely unmarked. I located one stone with crude writing which read “E MULL BOR 69 FEB ?8 DEC 1 OCT 1899.” It could have easily been Emma Haley — who was born around 1868 and died before 1900. However, Brandon read it as “E MULL19 SEP 188?-1? OCT 1891.” We couldn’t agree on the markings well enough to satisfy ourselves.
As we stood at the “E MULL” grave, Brandon pointed across Harts Creek.
“Greasy George lived over there where that yellow house is,” he said.
He then pointed across Ticky George Hollow to Louie Mullins’ house, saying, “That’s where ‘John Frock’ Adams lived.”
John Frock was Ed Haley’s uncle and a suspect in the Al Brumfield ambush at Thompson Branch.
“Ticky George lived on up in the hollow,” Brandon said.
We walked down the hill to speak with Louie but learned from his wife Eunice Mullins that he’d passed away several years ago. Eunice was a daughter of Greasy George Adams. She said Ed used to play music at her father’s home. She also confirmed that Ewell Mullins, her father-in-law, bought Ed’s property on Trace. He lived there for years and was a storekeeper before moving to the site of her present home, where he operated yet another store. Ed played a few times at this latter location before it was torn down around 1950.
From Eunice’s, we went to Trace Fork to take a closer look at Ed’s old property. Along the way, as we drove by Uncle Peter’s place, we bumped into Sol Bumgarner walking near the road. He invited us up to his house, where we hung out for about half an hour on the porch. I played a few fiddle tunes and asked about people like Uncle Peter, Ben Adams, and Johnny Hager.
Bum said Uncle Peter Mullins lived at the present-day location of a tree and swing near the mouth of the hollow in a home that was part-log. Ben Adams, he said, lived further up Trace and hauled timber out of the creek with six yoke of cattle. He remembered Ed’s friend Johnny Hager standing on his hands and walking all over Trace.
I reminded Bum of an earlier story he told about Ed splintering his fiddle over someone’s head at Belcher’s tavern on Crawley Creek. He really liked that story — which he re-told — before mentioning that Ed composed the tune “Hell Up Coal Hollow” and named it after the Cole Branch of Harts Creek. Cole Branch, Brandon said, was the home of his great-great-grandfather Bill Brumfield who kept the hollow exciting around the turn of the century.
After an hour or so on Trace Fork, we decided to see Oris Vance, an old gentleman on Little Harts Creek who Billy said was knowledgeable about early events in Harts. We drove out of Harts Creek to Route 10, then turned a few minutes later onto Little Harts Creek Road. As we progressed up the creek on a narrow paved road past trailers, chicken coops, and old garages, I noticed how the place quickly opened up into some beautiful scenery with nice two-story brick homes.
In the head of Little Harts Creek, near the Wayne County line, we found Oris walking around outside in his yard. He was a slender, somewhat tall fellow, well-dressed, and obviously intelligent. His grandfather Moses Toney was a brother-in-law to Paris Brumfield. Toney and his family had fled the mouth of Harts Creek due to Brumfield sometime before the 1889 feud.
Oris told us the basic story of Milt Haley’s and Green McCoy’s murders as we knew it up to their incarceration at Green Shoal. He said Hugh Dingess, a grandson to the “old” Hugh Dingess, was his source for the tale. At Green Shoal, one of the prisoners begged the Brumfield gang not to kill him so that he could see his children, but the mob gave no mercy and blew Milt’s and Green’s brains out.
“Cat Fry looked out of a window in the top of the house and saw out into the yard,” Oris said, apparently referencing her view of their grisly corpses.
Oris said he saw Green McCoy’s widow at a singing convention in Chapmanville in the early ’30s. She was an alto singer in a gospel quartet with her guitar-playing son. When Oris saw her, she was sitting with songbooks in her lap near a hotdog sale across the road from the old high school.
16 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber
Tags
Anthony Adams, Appalachia, Ben Adams, Burl Farley, Cabell County, Carolyn Johnnie Farley, culture, Ed Haley, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Hattie Farley, history, Imogene Haley, James Pig Hall, John Frock Adams, Lewis Farley, life, Logan County, Milt Haley, moonshine, Roach, timbering, West Virginia, writing
After the Milt Haley murder, Burl Farley was involved in several other feuds on Harts Creek. Around 1910, he and his brother-in-law Anthony Adams “had it out” over a “mix-up” of logs.
“The Adamses were mean,” Johnnie said. “They’d kill each other.”
Burl also beat up a neighbor named Pig Hall and dared him to ever frequent his property again.
Eventually, Burl left Harts Creek. He timbered briefly at Bluewater in Wayne County then sold his property on Brown’s Run to Johnnie’s father in 1918. He settled at Roach, near Salt Rock, in Cabell County.
Burl’s involvement in Milt Haley’s death apparently haunted him in his later life. Johnnie remembered him being drunk and talking about it.
“I believe it bothered his mind,” she said. “When you do something dirty, it usually hurts your mind. And the cancers eat his face up and killed him. It eat him completely — his ears off, nose off.”
We asked Johnnie if she ever heard what happened to Ed’s mother and she said, “I always thought from what I heard that she stayed with some people around in the Harts Creek area until she died. Before she died and after he died, she was able to work some and she’d go out and work for the neighbors to keep herself up and not ask nobody for nothing. She was an independent person. Don’t know where she’s buried nor nothing.”
Billy wondered if maybe Emma had remarried and Johnnie said, “Well, I’d say — going by some experiences I’ve saw — my dad died when my mother was 48 years old — you can’t call that old — and she never married nor never looked at a man and she lived to be 75 years old on the day she was buried.”
Was there a chance that Ed’s mother might have shacked up with someone?
“No, I don’t believe so,” Johnnie said. “The old women back then was different from the women today. I’ll just put it like I believe it: they were not sex crazy and they lived their life decent. They believed the Bible. They believed one man to one woman and when death parted them…stay single. I’d say my mother was happily married — she had twelve children and to have twelve children she musta loved him or she wouldn’t a stayed with him, would she? My dad, he drank a lot and he abused her a lot, but you know what? When he died and was put in the ground, my mother made a statement. She says, ‘I’ll never be married again.’ She said, ‘There goes my first love and that’s it.’ I’ve saw men ask my mother if she was ready to get married. She said, ‘I wouldn’t look at a man.’ She had the opportunity to marry into some good families, but she wouldn’t do it. And Mom raised nine of us children by herself and buddy she worked hard to raise us. She taught school.”
We asked Johnnie if she’d heard anything about Ben Adams hiring Milt and Green to ambush Al Brumfield.
“I never could get the full details on who was the ringleader behind it,” she said. “They always got to be a leader, and he’s the one that agitates and gets them out and gives them the whisky that gets them drunk. I’m gonna tell you something. Old Ben Adams was mean as a snake, honey. He didn’t care. And old man John Adams was just as mean. Ben was a brother to Grandpaw Anthony.”
Times were pretty wild on Harts Creek in those days.
“They’d go have associations and campaign rallies and they’d kill all kinds of hogs and sheep and stuff you know and have a big dinner set out for them,” Johnnie said. “And buddy they’d just go there and campaign and fight like dogs and cats. Get drunk. I remember in elections and stuff about what they’d do to my dad. They’d get him drunk and he’d walk up and take a knife and just cut a man’s tie off’n his neck as though it wasn’t nothing. Everybody with a big half a gallon of moonshine under his arm. Pistol in his pocket. Now that went on around here, honey. In the sixties, they stopped.”
I asked Johnnie where the old association grounds were and she said, “Well, they’d have one here at Grandpa Burl’s farm and then they’d go on down in Lincoln County and post another’n and they’d ride mules and horses and run them to death.”
Johnnie figured Ed played at the association grounds “because he liked to drink and he was where the action was. He played wherever he could find him a drink.”
01 Saturday Mar 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Music
Tags
Ben Adams, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Cas Baisden, Clyde Haley, crime, Dingess, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, Ewell Mullins, genealogy, Greasy George Adams, Harriet Baisden, Harts Creek, history, Jeff Baisden, John Frock Adams, Johnny Hager, Maggie Mullins, murder, music, Peter Mullins, Ticky George Adams, Weddie Mullins, West Virginia, writing
One fall day, Brandon and Billy drove to see 80-something-year-old Cas Baisden, a son of Jeff and Harriet (Jonas) Baisden. Cas lived on a farm near the mouth of Smoke House with a relative of Uncle Peter Mullins. He had been mostly raised by Uncle Peter and had vivid memories of watching Ed Haley play in his yard, as well as in the house. He said Ed didn’t usually have a very big crowd around him. “People didn’t care a bit, even though he was about as good as they was,” Cas said. He said Ed and his wife could play anything. “He was real skinny and would drink anything he could get his hands on.” He added that Ed knew all the roads and trails up around the creek and could walk them as well as a sighted person.
Ed’s uncle Weddie Mullins married Cas’ aunt, Maggie Jonas. Cas said Weddie went to Dingess to get some booze one time and was killed in a shooting scrape. The man who shot him was laid up in bed when Weddie’s half-brother John Adams came in and asked, “Do you think he’ll make it?” Someone said he might live so Adams pulled out his gun and said, “I know he won’t,” and opened fire on him. Later, in unrelated events, Adams “blew his wife’s head off.”
Cas said Ed’s uncle Ticky George Adams was harmless. He was a small man, short and chubby, who dug ginseng a lot on Big Creek. George was a brother-in-law to Ed’s friend Johnny Hager, who came from the North Fork of Big Creek and stayed a lot with Ewell Mullins and others around Harts. Johnny was a good fellow, a musician and a non-drinker.
Cas knew that Ed sold his homeplace on Trace to Uncle Peter’s son, Ewell Mullins. It was a plank building with two long rooms. In the rear of the eating room there was a flat-rock chimney with a long fireplace. The other room was used for sleeping. Later, an old store building was pushed up against the sleeping room to make a kitchen. The house had no porch.
Cas said Ed’s son Clyde Haley was “like a monkey” when it came to climbing trees; one time, he climbed 40 feet up into a tree and all the other kids ran away because they didn’t want to see him fall.
Cas remembered sketches about Ben Adams but didn’t know if he had been involved in the 1889 feud. At one time, he operated a store on main Harts Creek below the mouth of Smoke House. Across the creek, he had a saloon made entirely of rock. Later, he lived on Trace. Cas said part of his old mill-dam could be seen in the creek at the Greasy George Adams place.
24 Monday Feb 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber
Tags
Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Billy Hall, crime, Ed Haley, Eveline Dingess, feud, Floyd Dingess, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Imogene Haley, John W Runyon, Kentucky, Kiahs Creek, Robinson Creek, West Virginia, writing
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?
20 Thursday Feb 2014
Posted in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud
Tags
Alvie Thompson, Ben Adams, Brady Thompson, Brandon Kirk, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, Ewell Mullins, George Baisden, Gladys Williamson, Greasy George Adams, Guyandotte Voice, Harve Adams, Herbert Thompson, history, Horsepen Mountain, John Hartford, Susan Adams, writing
Meanwhile, Brandon was in contact with Brady Thompson of Stafford, Virginia. Brady, a grandson of Ben Adams, had also seen the Guyandotte Voice newspaper article. He was sure that his grandpa Ben hired Milt and Green to ambush Al Brumfield because his grandmother — Ben’s last wife — had told him so. They shot at Brumfield but accidentally shot his wife, who rode behind him on a mule. They were eventually captured and chopped to death with axes near the mouth of Harts Creek.
It was in the years after the feud that Ben married Brady’s grandmother.
“My grandmother was an Indian,” Brady said. “Some way she said he took them away from some Indians on Horsepen Mountain and brought them over there when she was about fifteen and when she got about eighteen or nineteen year old he married her. His wife had died. He musta been married three or four times ’cause he musta had 25 or 30 kids.”
Brady didn’t seem to think much of his Grandpa Ben, who taught his sons to be “no good.”
“All they ever done is set around and figure out how to get a big war started between the families,” he said. “They’d kill one another.”
Brady said his Grandpa Ben died at his home on main Harts Creek in 1910 and “was buried up there on Trace.”
Brandon asked if there were any pictures of Adams and he said, “I believe old Harve Adams up on Trace before he died, he had Ben’s picture.”
I gave Brady a call to ask him about Ed and he said, “I was about six or eight years old when I seen Ed Haley. They come to my father’s place, my Uncle George’s place. The kids had brought Ed and his wife in that evening on two mules. A bunch of us kids all slept on the floor and they all drunk and played music all night long. I waked up early that morning — a big frost on — and they was still playing music. I thought that was the best music though I ever heard.”
Ed played a lot with Brady’s banjo-picking uncle George Baisden and occasionally at Ewell Mullins’ store on Trace.
Back in Harts, Brandon and Billy drove up Hoover Fork to see Brady’s younger brother, Alvie Thompson. Alvie was a very dedicated Mormon who’d just moved back to Harts Creek from out West.
“Grandpa Ben Adams was a big, tall ruffian — a rough villain,” Alvie said. “He’d beat his wife with a switch when she’d run off.” Ben lived in the head of Trace and operated a dam on Harts Creek.
Alvie remembered Ed Haley as a short, heavy-set man who visited his Uncle George Baisden as late as 1949-50. Gladys Williamson, Alvie’s 78-year-old sister, said Ed brought two of his sons there and he and Uncle George played music out on the porch or under walnut trees near the barn. Alvie’s father Herbert Thompson sometimes joined in with his banjo as did Ella, who played the guitar and banjo. Alvie recalled Ed playing standard tunes like “Arkansas Traveler”, “Sourwood Mountain” and “Sally Goodin”.
24 Friday Jan 2014
Posted in Ed Haley
Tags
Andrew D. Robinson, Ben Adams, Boney Lucas, Chloe Mullins, Ed Haley, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history, Imogene Haley, Jackson Mullins, Logan County Banner, logging, McCloud & Company, Paris Brumfield, Peter Mullins, timbering, Turley Adams, Van Prince, Warren, Weddie Mullins, West Virginia, writing
Ed Haley was born in 1885 at Warren, a small post office established the previous year five miles up Harts Creek just below the mouth of Smoke House Fork. It was a place of 300 to 500 people chiefly led in its daily affairs by Henderson Dingess, Andrew Robinson, Anthony Adams, Ben Adams, and Burl Farley — all connected genealogically through the Adams family. At Warren, in 1884, the primary business was a general store called McCloud & Company. Henderson Dingess, father to Hollena and the patriarch of the clan, was a distiller and storekeeper. Ben Adams, a brother-in-law to Dingess, was a general store operator. Andrew Robinson was the local postmaster. Van Prince was a physician, perhaps assisting in Ed Haley’s birth or in the treatment of his measles.
Henderson Dingess, a prominent personality from that era, was the son of pioneer parents, born in 1829 to John and Chloe (Farley) Dingess. His wife, Sarah Adams (1833-1920), was a daughter of Joseph and Dicie (Mullins) Adams, who settled on Harts Creek from Floyd County, Kentucky, in the late 1830s. Henderson and Sarah lived in a two-story log house on land partly granted to him by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1856. There, at the mouth of Hog Pen Branch, they raised eleven children, many of whom were active in the 1889 troubles. In the late 1880s, roughly the time of Milt Haley’s murder, Henderson and Sarah owned a 93-acre tract of land on Smoke House with a building valued at $100. They also owned an additional 350 acres on main Harts Creek and a 44-acre tract on nearby Crawley Creek worth $6.00 per acre with a $20 building on it.
At that time, Harts was caught up in the regional timber boom. According to The Logan County Banner, an estimated one million dollars worth of timber went out of the area in 1889. Perhaps prompted by this capitalistic invasion of the local economy, violence became the norm in Harts. Beginning with Paris Brumfield’s murder of Boney Lucas “over logs” in the early 1880s, there were at least six area killings before the turn of the century. (The Brumfields were involved in four of them and the Dingesses in three.) It was an era when Harts lost its innocence and began to earn the rough reputation it still carries today.
More than likely, following the horrific events of 1889, little Ed Haley and his mother lived for a brief time with Jackson and Chloe Mullins on Trace Fork. This changed a little later when, in 1891, Jackson and Chloe began to deed property to their three children. On March 18, they deeded their homestead to son Peter for 25 dollars. Deed records specify the property as a 20-acre tract of land, which began somewhere around the mouth of Trace and continued up to the Jackson Mullins Branch (basically the present-day Turley Adams property). The following day, Jackson and Chloe deeded another 20-acre tract to son Weddie Mullins for 25 dollars. This tract basically included everything from Jackson Mullins Branch to Jonas Branch.
On March 19, 1891, Jackson and Chloe deeded Imogene Haley 20 acres of land on Trace Fork for 25 dollars. In the property index, Imogene’s surname was spelled as “Hauley”, while the deed referred to her as “Immagin A. Haley.” Her land began at Jonas Branch and continued on up the creek. In the original deed, it was described as follows:
Beginning at the mouth of William Jonas branch thence up the Branch with the center of the branch to a _______ tree on the right hand side of the Branch as you go up the branch near a Chestnut that ________ on the left side of said branch thence acrosf the fields to some willow bushes at the front of the hill thence up the point with the center of the point to the brow of the Mountain thence with the brow of the Mountain to Mary Mullins line thence down the mountain to a bush thence a strate line crosfing the creek to a ash thence up the hill to the back line of the parties of the first part thence down the creek with the line of the said opposite the mouth of William Jonas branch thence down the hill a strate line to the Beginning supposed to contain 20 acres more or less.
An 1891 tax book listed “Emigene Hawley’s” property as being worth $2.00 per acre and having a total worth of $40. Records do not indicate if there was a house or building located on the property. In any case, Emma died soon after: an 1892 tax book lists her property under the name of “Immogen Hailey heirs”, which would have been Ed Haley. More than likely, seven-year-old Ed remained living in the home of his grandparents, Jackson and Chloe, for several more years.
At that time, Logan County was in the middle of a timber boom, which gave employment to Ed’s family on Trace Fork. “Some of the finest timber in the State is found in Logan county,” writes The Mountain State: A Description of the Natural Resources of West Virginia (1893). “Magnificent forests of oak, poplar, ash, lynn, maples, beech, birch, pines, hickory and other varieties still cover the greater part of the county in their primitive state. For thirty years timber men have been at work, destroying the forests and still in all this time not over a fourth of the timber has been removed. As an estimate of the value of the timber still standing in Logan county, three million dollars will not be far amise.”
22 Wednesday Jan 2014
Posted in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud
Tags
Ben Adams, Bert Dingess, Billy Adkins, Cat Fry, crime, Ferrellsburg, feud, Fisher B. Adkins, Garnet Adkins, Green McCoy, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Johnny Golden Adkins, Milt Haley, writing
As we stood at Runyon’s Branch staring at weeds and trying to imagine John Runyon’s 1889 spread, Billy said Garnet Adkins and her son Johnny lived nearby. Garnet was a granddaughter of Hugh Dingess and had been raised at Huey Fowler Hollow just off the hill from the Haley-McCoy grave. Perhaps more interesting, her son Johnny had told Billy recently that his grandfather Adkins used to talk about John Runyon being his neighbor.
We quickly drove to Garnet’s where Billy spotted Johnny working with a mule in the yard. In no time, we were in the living room listening to Garnet talk about the Haley-McCoy murders.
“Well, I’ve heard Mommy talk about it, but it’s been so long ago I’ve about forgot about it,” she said. “She said her and Cat Adkins got in there and got in under the bed — or behind the bed or something — when they was a doing that.”
Your mother was there?
“Yeah, she was just a young’n, though,” Garnet said. “She said one of them said to the other… One had the headache and he said, ‘I can’t eat no supper.’ And he said, ‘You better eat your supper. This’ll be the last supper you’ll ever eat.’ And they just took them out there and killed them. I guess they shot them, I don’t know.”
I asked Garnet if she thought the mob might have shot Milt and Green at the table right after they ate and she said, “No, they took them outside, I think. I’ve heard Mommy talk about it. See Cat lived there in that house where Mommy was at. That’s where they killed them at.”
Garnet said she had seen the house.
“Yeah, I’ve saw it,” she said. “It’s up here across from Fry.”
Wait a minute. That was the same side of the river as what Lawrence Kirk had shown me in 1993.
Milt and Green were killed on the other side of the river, right?
“No,” Garnet said.
Her son Johnny, however, agreed with the popular notion that the killings took place at the Fry house on Green Shoal.
“That’s what Granddad Aaron said,” Johnny said. “An old hued log house is what Granddad said. He said it sat there at Fry. There where Lon Lambert lives.”
Garnet insisted otherwise: “It was on this side of the river, just an old flat house.”
Perhaps sensing that we were not going to agree on the location of the murders, Garnet changed the direction of the conversation.
“You know, that was a mighty cruel thing to take them men out and kill them,” she said. “They claimed my granddaddy Hugh Dingess was in on that but I don’t believe he was. Course Aunt Hollene was his sister, you know. Aunt Hollene came up there to his house one Sunday and lord it scared me to death when I seen her face. I run off and hid. She was mean as a hound dog. She carried a pistol and a watch and pocketbook and all kinds of stuff in a big apron pocket swinging down on her.”
Billy said to Johnny, “Down here on this end of the creek, we’d never heard about Ben Adams a being in on it, had we?”
Johnny answered, “Yeah, oh yeah. Well he knowed them Adamses. That’s the reason they brought them in this other way ’cause they was supposed to been, Granddad told me, men a waiting to take them away from them fellers when they brought them back in here. But they come this other way — the back way — on horses. Come back in through Chapmansville and down this a way. They thought they’d be a coming down Harts Creek but they didn’t come that way. They brought them down around the river way.”
Garnet said Milt and Green’s grave wasn’t marked when she was a little girl.
“They just threw them in a hole really,” she said. “Somebody said Ben Walker buried them.”
Johnny said, “Well now Mother. didn’t they come over there and visit that grave after you was a great big girl?”
“Yeah, I was a young woman,” she said. “Now I don’t know where she was from. I just heard them talk about their uncle living over there in Fisher’s place where Irv Workman lives. They went up that hill a crying and carrying on and I didn’t know what to think. I was just an old big young’n there with the young’ns. Mommy and Poppy both was gone. And I’d think, ‘Lord, who in the world is that coming up through there carrying on like that?’ And I kept seeing them motioning over there across the creek to where Fisher’s place was talking about… Seems to me the man’s name was Ben. Ben Adkins.”
To get an idea of when it was that people used to come to the grave I asked Garnet what year she was born.
“I was born in 1909,” she said. “June 26th. I was born up here at Ferrellsburg.”
19 Sunday Jan 2014
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley
Tags
Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Billy Adkins, Bob Dingess, Burl Farley, Cat Fry, Ferrellsburg, feud, French Bryant, Green McCoy, history, Hugh Dingess, John Hartford, Milt Haley, Ross Fowler, Ward Brumfield, writing
Bob said the Brumfields left Hugh’s with Milt and Green when they heard about the existence of an Adams mob nearby.
“They took them up over the ridge and down and crossed into Ferrellsburg up at Fry,” he said.
They went to the home of Tucker Fry, who took all of the women away from the place.
“I think maybe they stayed there a day and night or something like that a trying to make them tell who hired them to do that,” Bob said. “They was a trying to get them men to tell who hired them to kill Al Brumfield. And they took one of them outside and lectured him while the other was inside. When they took him back in, they said, ‘He won’t talk.'”
Bob said the mob even took Milt and Green into different rooms trying to get a confession but they just blamed the shooting on each other. Finally, French Bryant “blew Haley’s brains out with a gun.” Burl Farley hollered and everyone shot Haley and McCoy “all to pieces.” Cat Fry, who was about ten years old at the time, hid in a corner or in the fireplace and witnessed their deaths. “It was very cruel,” Bob said.
The mob returned to their homes after killing Milt and Green and it wasn’t long until the “murder house” was burned to the ground so there’d be no evidence against them.
I asked Bob if he remembered the house and he said, “Aunt Cat, she told me it was a two-room log house. One of them old-timers, big ones. They all slept in one room. Big fireplace in the other one. I never was in that house.”
Bob said that hard feelings over the feud lingered for years, especially toward Ben Adams. “After Haley and them was killed, old man Ben Adams never done no good at timber,” he said. “He run a mountain still up there — moonshine — and he had cabins built and he had men there and ever man had a Winchester and you couldn’t do much a bothering him ’cause old man Ben was a mean man.”
So what happened to Ben, we wondered.
“Ben died in 1912,” Bob said rather undramatically, “and was buried up yonder on the hill.”
According to Bob, the 1889 feud eventually ended because most of the participants were related and ultimately wanted to see it put to rest. “Here’s the thing,” Bob said. “The Adamses and Dingesses all married through each other and the Brumfields married into the Dingess clan. Everybody was kindly keeping a steel tongue because they didn’t want no more feuding more’n what they had and they didn’t want the young people to really know anything about it — how cruel it was. Dad up here never would talk about it. Nobody talked. Years and years and years in here it was just gossip. People a talking that didn’t know a thing on earth about it. It was a rumor. Someone would tell one story and someone would tell another.”
Every now and then a bit of the story leaked out, mostly from eyewitness Cat Fry. “Aunt Cat down here, now, was a little eight-year-old girl in the same house when they was killed,” Bob said. “She would very seldom talk about it but once in a while if nobody was around sometimes she’d start off a telling me about it some. She wouldn’t hardly tell you names. Nobody wanted to hear it. They wanted to let it die down and forget all about it.”
Bob remembered French Bryant well. “He was a big 200-pound 6’4″ tall mean man,” Bob said. “He’d carry a pistol on him that hung on his hip — one of these cap ‘n balls. He lived just over the hill up yonder and he made liquor and sold it all the time up that holler. Nobody lived up there. He had two miles of a hollow there to himself and he had a big dapple gray stud horse about fourteen, fifteen hundred pounds. He’d get on that horse and go to Ferrellsburg and if the river wasn’t too big he’d swim him across that river and he’d get him a load of groceries and put them on his back and then swim that horse back.” Bob told Billy, “People didn’t fool with that old man, either. Right when you leave the mouth of Hart and come up there at the schoolhouse — just across the creek starting up West Fork — there was a big house there and old man Ross Fowler lived there. I never did know what Ross done, but old man French went there… They didn’t have no lamp oil, they had pine knots. He took a sack full of pine knots there and set them afire and burnt creation up — burnt them out of house and home. Nobody ever knowed he did it, of course. He was a mean old cuss but he didn’t bother nobody in his last days. He made a little liquor and sold it and that’s the only way the old man could make it.”
Just before we left Bob’s, he told us a very important bit of information about Ed’s relationship with Al Brumfield’s oldest son, Ward. “Like I started to say a while ago, they was a feud between the Brumfields and the McCoys,” he said. “But remember, Ward Brumfield was a very fine man. He was a handsome man. Ward was a wonderful person. He was a first cousin to me and I have to congratulate him. He’d get up and him and Ed Haley’d hug each other and they’d prance and dance on the floor and just love each other. They’d both sit down at the table to eat together. Ward and him forgot all the past. Ward and Ed Haley was good friends.”
17 Friday Jan 2014
Posted in Ed Haley
Tags
Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Bob Dingess, Brooke Dingess, Burl Farley, Cat Fry, Dave Dingess, feud, French Bryant, genealogy, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John W Runyon, Milt Haley, moonshine, Peter Mullins, timbering, writing
I asked Bob about Milt and he said, “I don’t know too much about the first Haley. I think he was a rambler and just traveled here and there and got in with them Mullinses up there making liquor and moonshine and stuff. I’ve been told that he married Peter Mullins’ sister and he stayed there among them a long time. They was two or three clans of them Mullinses. They was a bunch of horse-thieves and stealers who come out of Kentucky. Well, they run them out of Kentucky. They aimed to kill them and they got into Harts Creek in that wilderness section back in there. They was gamblers, they was moonshiners and they was always in a fight and trouble with each other. They couldn’t trust each other. The men wouldn’t work a lick and the poor old women did the work and the men just sat in the yard or played cards or drunk liquor and that was the way they done it.”
Talking about Milt got us into the story of his feud with the Brumfields.
“See, that all happened before I was born,” Bob said. “That happened in ’89 you see and all I know is what my mother and what Aunt Cat down at Hart told me. Now, I was told this: that Al Brumfield controlled all timber that went out of Harts Creek down there and he had an apparatus put in right above the mouth of the creek to catch the timber and not let them go in the river. All right. Ben Adams up here was a millionaire nearly at that time and had all of this big poplar timber in this creek for miles up and down here. Ben Adams had a lot of timber down there and the way I got it some logs got lost. Well, he undertook to make Al pay for the timber since Al was responsible for it and taking the ten-cents-a-log to hold it in the creek for them till they got it rafted and Al wouldn’t do it. And Al went to get a gun to kill him and Ben Adams run up Harts Creek and took the Big Branch and took that ridge on back home. He got away from Al. Well, it was always figured that Ben Adams hired these two men to kill Al so he could get that timber out of here. Now, I’ve been told that.”
I asked Bob about John Runyon and he said, “I never heard of John Runyon. But, somehow, down yonder in that curve… You see, these men had done gone there and planted themselves waiting for these people to come.”
Bob said Milt and Green were laying in ambush when Al and Hollena Brumfield came riding along. Al rode one horse, while Hollena and Bob’s father Dave rode another.
“My dad was a riding behind Aunt Hollene and Al was in front and somehow when them men started he saw the gun and he fell over on the other side of his horse and hung to the saddle till he got around that point. He put his arms around the horse’s neck and had his leg up so they couldn’t… They was two shots fired. I don’t know which one of them was shot first but they shot Aunt Hollene right through the cheek. The bullet went in right on the left side of her cheek right at her ear and come out right above her nose. Dad jumped off the horse when they shot her and throwed his hand up and they shot him through his hand then they got away. And Dad took part of his shirt and tore it up and tied it and put it around her head to keep her from bleeding to death. I don’t guess he paid too much attention to that hand as long as he got her took care of.”
I said to Bob, “So, did Al gallop off at that point?” and he answered, “As far as I know, he made a get-away. He went on down the hollow, fast speed I imagine. He knowed they was a gonna kill him.”
“Well now, what about Haley and McCoy?” I asked.
“So far as we know, they run and took the mountain,” Bob said. “They was hid in the bushes, see? But Dad recognized them and knowed who they was. Aunt Hollene did, too. They never did get along in here after that. They run them men back through that country back yonder and caught them almost at Dingess on the N&W. And they was a clan of Dingesses back in there and they headed them off for them and they caught them. Ah, they was a mean bunch of men in here, then. Of course, I knew old man French Bryant — he was a ringleader in it. Old man Burl Farley. A lot of Brumfields and Dingesses and everything else involved in it. And they brought them back to Uncle Hugh’s up here.”
14 Tuesday Jan 2014
Posted in Ed Haley
Tags
Al Brumfield, Alifair Adams, Anthony Adams, Ben Adams, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Ernest Adams, Ewell Mullins, George Mullins, Greasy George Adams, Harts Creek, history, Jay Queen, Joe Adams, John Hartford, Lewis Maynard, Mag Farley, Major Adams, Milt Haley, Mountaineer Missionary Baptist Church, Peter Mullins, rafting, writing
I asked Joe if he ever heard any stories about Milt being a fiddle player and he said, “They was having a square dance up there at Peter’s once and I heard them a talking about his father playing the fiddle but that was all. They never said what he played or how much or nothing about it. They just said he was a musician. I’ve heard talk of him but I didn’t know him personally. I know about the trouble they had up here. I heard them talking about that up at George Greasy’s. Said they followed them over yonder at Green Shoal or someplace somebody said and killed them. I heard my dad a talking about that.”
Brandon mentioned that Milt and Green had supposedly been hired by Ben Adams to kill Al Brumfield, which caused Joe to say, “Well, I don’t know whether it was Ben Adams or… Well, Al and Ben were both head strong, let’s put it that way. I don’t know what was wrong with the families back then, but they seemed like they wanted to fight each other. They didn’t want to fight no strangers. They was all fighting through each other all the time. They’d burn each other’s barn and shoot their mules and cows in the field and everything on earth. All of them first cousins. I said, ‘That don’t make no sense to me.’ But back then if somebody needed something, it didn’t matter how mean they were, people’d go help them. If somebody was sick, people’d go sit up with them.”
Talking about the old Adamses around Harts Creek caused Joe to reminisce about his grandparents, Solomon and Anthony Adams.
“Grandpaw Anthony was from Hazard, Kentucky. He cut timber and built splash dams through here. Them old Adamses — Anthony, Ben, Sol — they’d float logs down to Hart and raft them to Huntington. I heard them tell about them Robinsons down there helping them raft them. Grandpaw Anthony, he didn’t let nobody put nothing on him. Them old fellas, 90-percent of them carried a pistol all the time. Most of them had ten or twelve children. Grandpaw Anthony, he acquired that place in the Forks of Hoover and he traded that place in Hoover for this place out here. He built a little house right out here on thirty-five acres in 1908. He ran a store at one time, too. They sold riggings, shoes, groceries, plow stocks, shovels…
“I can’t remember my grandpaw Sol nor his wife Dicy nor my Grandpaw Anthony but I can remember my Grandmaw Alifair well. She was from Missouri. She’d stay a while with us and she’d go up George Mullins’ and stay a while and she’d go down to Aunt Alice’s and stay a while. All the women smoked them old stone pipes and they wore them big gingham aprons that had two big pockets on them and they carried their tobacco and pipe and stuff in their pocket. They always had these old-time fireplaces and she’d go out in the chip-yard where they made ties and stuff and she’d pick her up a bunch of splinters and she’d sit them up in the chimney corner to light her pipe with and you’d better not bother them either.”
Joe’s father was Major Adams (1885-1944), the youngest son of Anthony Adams. He was a hammer-style banjoist.
“My daddy had a .32 Smith & Wesson with a shoulder holster with red leather and he kept that a hanging on the head of the bed,” Joe said. “They had these old iron beds with big, high headboards and stuff on them. And he kept that a hanging on the head of the bed all the time fully loaded in the belt and we knowed better than to tip it. Now, you might hang something up like that and a child take it down and shoot your brains out with it.”
Joe said Trace Fork had changed quite a bit since his childhood days. In the thirties, Ewell Mullins, Ed’s first cousin, had a store on the creek, as did Ernest Adams and Joe Mullins and Lewis Maynard. At one time, there were four stores on the creek; today, there are none. In 1938, the same year that electricity arrived on Trace, the Mountaineer Missionary Baptist Church was constructed at the mouth of the creek. Now an impressive brick building, it was originally a 24′ X 20′ structure. Prior to its construction, people met at Anthony Adams’ store or at the lower Trace Fork School. Joe said he bought the creek’s first television set from Jay Queen’s Bluegrass Hardware in Chapmanville in 1955. The roads were paved on Trace about that time.
Joe said we might find out more about Ed from Ewell Mullins’ daughter, Mag Farley. Billy said she ran a store just up Harts Creek near a fire department and playground. We found Mag working behind the checkout counter. She was a granddaughter to Uncle Peter but didn’t look very much like him. She got a little excited when we showed her pictures of her family but became suspiciously quiet when we inquired about Emma Haley. All we could get out of her was that Ed’s mother never remarried after Milt’s death and died around Harts. Maybe that was so, but we felt there might be more to her story; Mag’s version was almost too dull. We gathered back toward a cooler where we talked and ate bologna sandwiches and potato chips.
12 Thursday Dec 2013
Posted in Ed Haley
Tags
Al Brumfield, Appalachia, Aracoma, Ben Adams, feud, Green McCoy, Hollena Brumfield, John W Runyon, Logan County Banner, Milt Haley, Oakland House, West Virginia, writing
Thereafter, on January 9, 1890, came this powerful bit of news in soft faded print: “John Runyon, Deputy Sheriff of Lincoln county, and Benjamin Adams, of Harts Creek, registered at the Oakland House Saturday [Jan. 4]. Mr. Runyon says that every thing is quiet on Harts Creek, and thinks that the Brumfield-McCoy war is at an end.”
The implications of this tiny find were huge. First of all, John Runyon didn’t leave the Harts area for Kentucky immediately after Milt and Green’s murders, as we had been told. Secondly, he had distanced himself enough from the trouble by January of 1890 to provide the local paper a quote concerning the status of the feud. So what had happened between November 1889 when The Ceredo Advance reported the feud as having a Brumfield faction and a Runyon faction, and January 1890 when Runyon dubbed it a “Brumfield-McCoy war?” The newspapers themselves were confused because one of them said regarding the factions at work in the feud: “if two sides [it] could be said to have…”
Obviously, by January of 1890 Runyon had found a way to separate himself from the trouble, perhaps at the expense of Ben Adams. But why would he be so bold as to register at the Oakland House (a popular meeting place for timbermen) at the same time as Adams? And what was his reaction when the newspaper reported him there with “old Ben Adams”? Surely, the Brumfields and Dingesses felt their joint occupancy at the hotel was just too suspicious — as did we. No doubt, Runyon’s statement that “every thing is quiet on Harts Creek” changed immediately.
We were also fascinated by the fact that Runyon was a Lincoln County deputy-sheriff. Previously, we had only heard that Runyon was the owner of a small “grab-a-nickel” store near the mouth of Harts Creek. How did he get to be a deputy? Wouldn’t that position have been best served by someone from a large family (meaning many votes for the sheriff) and with deep roots in the area? Maybe we had underestimated Runyon. His status as a deputy-sheriff was perhaps an indicator that he had more power and was more of a threat to local businessmen and politicians like Al Brumfield than we’d figured.
Also, as an officer of the law, Runyon should have played a prominent role in settling the 1889 troubles, first in regard to Hollena and Al’s shooting, then later in regard to Milt and Green’s murder. The fact he was a local lawman and a suspect in the crime may have explained why the Brumfields resorted to using vigilante justice in handling Milt and Green. What kind of justice could they have expected from Runyon and his friends in the county seat after all, if he was an enemy or maybe even behind the hiring of Milt and Green in the first place? We wondered, did the Brumfields ask him to accompany their posse to fetch Milt and Green in Kentucky, or was he already a suspect in the crime? Obviously, there were a lot of questions along those lines.
29 Friday Nov 2013
Posted in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber
Tags
Al Brumfield, Allen Martin, Andrew D. Robinson, Andrew Robinson, Anthony Adams, Appalachia, Ben Adams, Ben Robinson, Boardtree Branch, Chloe Gore, Chloe Mullins, crime, David Robinson, Dicy Adams, Elizabeth Abbott, genealogy, general store, Greasy George Adams, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Harvey Adams, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollena Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Jackson Mullins, John Frock Adams, John M. Adams, John Robinson, Joseph Adams, Joseph Robinson, Lincoln County Feud, Logan County, Logan County Banner, Lucinda Brumfield, May Adams, Meekin Branch, Milt Haley, Peter Carter, Rhoda Robinson, Sallie Dingess, Solomon Adams, Spicie McCoy, Susan Abbott, Ticky George Adams, timber, Trace Fork, Victoria Dingess, Viola Dingess, West Virginia, Wilson Abbott
Ben Adams — the man who supposedly hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to assassinate Al Brumfield — was born in 1855 to Joseph and Dicy (Mullins) Adams on Big Harts Creek in Logan County, (West) Virginia. His older sister Sarah married Henderson Dingess and was the mother of Hollena Brumfield, Hugh Dingess and several others. He was a first cousin to Jackson Mullins, Milt Haley’s father-in-law, and a brother-in-law to Chloe Mullins, Milt’s mother-in-law, by her first marriage to John Adams.
In 1870, 17-year-old Ben lived at home with his mother, where he worked as a farmer. He was illiterate, according to census records. His neighbors were Andrew Robinson and Henderson Dingess, both of whom had married his sisters (Rhoda J. and Sally). In the next year, according to tradition, he fathered an illegitimate child, William Adams, who was born to Lucinda Brumfield (niece of Paris).
In 1873, Ben married Victoria Dingess. Victoria was born in 1856 and was a first cousin to Hollena Brumfield and Hugh Dingess. The marriage made for an interesting genealogical connection: Ben was already Hugh’s uncle; now he was also his brother-in-law, as Hugh was married to Victoria’s sister, Viola (his first cousin). Ben’s daughter Sally, who was named after Hollena’s mother, later married a cousin of Spicie McCoy, Green’s wife. For all practical purposes then, Ben Adams was genealogically connected to all sides of the feud — making it a true intra-family feud from his perspective.
For the first decade or so of his marriage, Ben lived with his mother on family property, although he did acquire land and open a general store business. In 1880, he was listed in the Lincoln County Census with his mother Dicy, aged 63, and family. He was 26 years old, Victory was 23, Sally was six, son Charlie was four, daughter Patsy A. was two, and son Anthony was a few months old. George Greaar, age 20, was a boarder. In 1881, he purchased 25 acres on the Meekin Branch of Trace Fork. Three years later, he was listed in a business directory as the proprietor of a general store. At that same time, his brother-in-law and neighbor Henderson Dingess was a distiller.
Later in the decade, Ben fathered three more children: George “Greasy” (1885), Harvey (1886), and May (1889). In 1889, the time of Milt Haley’s ambush of Al Brumfield, Adams owned 260 acres on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork valued at $1.00 per acre in Logan County.
Anthony Adams — Ben’s brother and ally in the 1889 troubles — was a prominent timberman on Harts Creek. Anthony had been born in 1849 and was the husband of Pricie Alifair Chapman, Burl Farley’s half-sister. In 1884, Adams was listed in a business directory as a blacksmith. In 1889, he owned two 50-acre tracts of land, one valued at $3.50 per acre with a $30 building on it, the other valued at $2.00 per acre. By that time, he had three sons of fighting age who may have participated in the feud: Solomon Adams (born 1869), Horatio “Rush” Adams (born 1871), and Wayne Adams (born 1874), as well as a son-in-law, Harrrison Blair (born c.1867).
A quick examination of the Adams genealogy gives a clue as to Ben’s other 1889 allies. First there was brother “Bad John” Adams. Adams was deceased at the time of the Haley-McCoy incident, but he had been married to Chloe Gore — mother of Emma Jean (Mullins) Haley. He had three sons of fighting age in 1889: Joseph Adams (born 1859), John Frock Adams (born 1861), and Ticky George Adams (born 1865)…as well as son-in-law Sampson Thomas.
Rhoda J. Robinson was a sister to the three Adams brothers. She had several children who may have allied with Ben: David Robinson (born 1860), Ben Robinson (born 1866), John R. Robinson (born 1868), and Joseph Robinson (born 1870). There was also brother Solomon Adams, who may have offered his loyalty to Ben, along with sons John M. Adams (born 1869) and Benjamin Adams (born 1867), and sons-in-law David Robinson and Peter Carter (c.1873).
As for Ben himself, he stayed busy with timber after the feud. According to an 1896 article from the Logan County Banner: “Benj. Adams, of Hart, is hauling some fine poplar from trace fork.” In 1901, he married Venila Susan Abbott, a daughter of Wilson and Elizabeth (Workman) Abbott, and had at least eight more children (born between 1901 and 1921). Not long after his remarriage, he was accused of murdering a local postman named Jim Allen Martin — and nearly went bankrupt paying for his legal defense. He died in 1910 and was buried on the hill near the mouth of Trace Fork.
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