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Brandon Ray Kirk

Tag Archives: Bill Duty

Harts Area Deed Index (1870-1910)

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Big Ugly Creek, Fourteen, Guyandotte River, Little Harts Creek, West Hamlin

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A.L. Smith, Aaron Adkins, Allison Ferrell, Arisba Ferrell, Big Branch, Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Blucher Lucas, Broad Branch, Climena Lucas, Elizabeth Adkins, Ellen Adkins, Evermont Ward Fry, Fourteen Mile Creek, genealogy, George W. Hill, Gilbert Topping, Guyandotte River, Harts Creek District, Heenan Smith, Henry Adkins, history, Isaiah Adkins, Jacob K. Adkins, James I. Kuhn, James Toney, John Adkins, John F. Duty, Keenan Toney, Kiahs Creek, Laurel Fork, Lena Ferrell, Limestone Creek, Lincoln County, Little Harts Creek, Lower Big Branch, Matthew Spurlock, Middle Fork, Minnie Mullins, Moses Adkins, Moses Dempsey, Mud River, N.B. Mobley, Nancy E. Fry, Overton Elkins, Parlee Hunter, Patton Thompson, Ralph Nelson, Sams Branch, Sankey Gillenwater, Sarah E. Thompson, Sarah Gillenwater, Sarah J. Nelson, Smith Ferrell, Susan Adkins, Trough Fork, U.G. Shipe, Van Donley Lambert, W.C. Smith, W.M. May, West Hamlin, West Virginia, William May

The following deed index is based on Deed Book 59 at the Lincoln County Clerk’s Office in Hamlin, WV, and relates to residents of the Harts Creek community. Most notations reflect Harts Creek citizens engaged in local land transactions; some reflect Harts Creek citizens engaged in land transactions outside of the community. These notes are meant to serve as a reference to Deed Book 59. Researchers who desire the most accurate version of this material are urged to consult the actual record book.

Aaron Adkins et ux to Moses Adkins et al     54 1/4 acres Little Harts Creek     12 March 1906     p. 481-482

Elizabeth Adkins et al to Jacob K. Adkins     1902 acres Little Harts Creek     01 September 1901     p. 272-273

Ellen Adkins to John Adkins     25 acres Lower Big Branch     22 February 1910     p. 95

Henry Adkins to Elizabeth Adkins et al     1962 acres Little Harts Creek, Fourteen Mile Creek, Trough Fork, Laurel Fork     28 June 1870     p. 269-270

Henry Adkins et ux to Ralph Nelson     20 acres Big Harts Creek     21 March 1905     p. 198-199

Isaiah Adkins et ux to John Adkins     45 acres Lower Big Branch     11 August 1906     p. 89

John Adkins Sr. et ux to K.E. Toney     30 acres mineral Big Harts Creek     27 July 1909     p. 91-92

John Adkins Sr. et ux to K.E. Toney     35 acres Big Harts Creek     25 February 1910     p. 93-94

Board of Education of Harts Creek District to John E. Fry et al     1/2 acre Big Ugly Creek     1 August 1905     p. 498

L.H. Burks et ux to Gilbert Topping     110 acres Little Harts Creek     30 March 1906     p. 5-7

Moses Dempsey to K.E. Toney     24 acres mineral Big Harts Creek     19 March 1910     p. 96-97

William Dempsey et al to Moses Dempsey     24 acres Big Branch     13 April 1908     p. 71-72

William R. Duty et ux to John F. Duty     50 acres Broad Branch     9 December 1887     p. 429-430

Allison Ferrell et ux to Sarah Gillenwater     133 acres Big Ugly Creek     26 October 1897     p. 499

Arisba Ferrell et al to Parlee Hunter     42 acres Broad Branch     15 February 1905     p. 168-169

Arrisba Ferrell et al to John F. Duty     25 acres Broad Branch     8 April 1891     p. 425-427

Lena Ferrell to Nancy E. Fry     5 acres Big Ugly     3 June 1905     p. 495

Smith Ferrell et ux to John F. Duty     55 acres Ugly Creek     5 April 1907     p. 428-429

William T. Fowler et ux to Mathew Spurlock     100 acres Sams Branch of Middle Fork of Mud River     9 January 1890     Elias Vance, JP     p. 376-377

Sarah A. Gillenwater et vir to Nancy E. Fry     133 acres Big Ugly Creek     19 February 1898     p. 496-497

George W. Hill et ux to W.M. May     30 acres Limestone Creek     3 November 1906     p. 137-138

J.I. Kuhn, attorney, to Overton Elkins     100 acres Fourteen Mile Creek     1 June 1880     p. 420-423

V.D. Lambert et ux to Sarah J. Nelson     20 acres West Side Guyan River     13 April 1906     p. 289

Blucher N. Lucas to Climena Lucas     50 acres Fourteen Mile Creek     1 July 1910     p. 308-309

N.B. Mobley to Sankey Gillenwater     50 acres Limestone Creek     15 December 1909     p. 121-122

Minnie Mullins et vir to William May     30 acres Limestone Creek     29 January 1910     p. 140-141

A.L. Smith et ux to Susan Adkins     48 acres Big Harts Creek     11 July 1907     p. 225-226

A.L. Smith et ux to Ralph Nelson     2 acres Big Harts Creek     13 April 1907     p. 204-205

Heenan Smith to W.C. Smith     75 acres Guyandotte River     15 July 1902     p. 468-470

Sarah E. Thompson et vir to E.W. Fry     150 acres Guyandotte River, Laurel Hill District     12 February 1897     p. 487-488

P.T. Thompson to U.G. Shipe et al     Lots 64-65     23 February 1909     p. 329

James Toney et ux to Gilbert Toppins     35 1/4 acres Kiahs Creek     03 January 1908     p. 7-8

NOTE: I copied all of these deeds.

William R. Duty Deed to John F. Duty (1887)

28 Saturday Jul 2018

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Ugly Creek

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Appalachia, Big Deadening Branch, Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Broad Branch, C.I. Stone, Emma Duty, genealogy, Hamlin, history, Lincoln County, Middle Fork, notary public, Philip Hager, West Virginia

Bill Duty to John Duty 1

Deed Book 59, page 429, Lincoln County Clerk’s Office, Hamlin, WV.

Bill Duty to John Duty 2

Deed Book 59, page 430, Lincoln County Clerk’s Office, Hamlin, WV.

Bill Duty to John Duty 3

Deed Book 59, page 430, Lincoln County Clerk’s Office, Hamlin, WV.

Chasing John Runyon (1996)

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Cemeteries, Ed Haley, Inez, Lincoln County Feud

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Appalachia, Aquillia Porter, Bill Duty, Bill Fields, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, cemetery, Ed Haley, genealogy, Graveyard Point, Hinkle Valley Road, history, Inez, James A Garfield, Jim Webb, Joe Fannin, John W Runyon, Kentucky, Lawrence County, Leonard Porter, Martin County, Mary Runyon, Mary Runyon Fields, Mary United Baptist Church, Milo, Nat's Creek, Peach Orchard, Route 1884, Route 40, Samuel W. Porter, Stidham, Tomahawk, U.S. South, Walt Mollett, Wealthy Fry, Webb Music Store, writing

A month or so after “striking out” on the Ed Haley house, Brandon and Billy drove to Inez, Kentucky, and searched for more information about John Runyon. Venturing north of the county seat, they met Leonard Porter, who lived in a little settlement called Tomahawk. Porter remembered Mrs. Runyon staying with Mary Fields in a small house at the mouth of nearby Hall Branch and said she was likely buried in the Fields family cemetery on a point at nearby Hall Branch Road. Billy and Brandon headed up there, where they found the grave of Bill Fields (1882-1948) and Mary Fields (1888-1985), but none of John Runyon’s family. Just down the hill from the cemetery (presently a trailer court) was the old homestead of Mr. and Mrs. Fields. At one time, they later discovered, the Fieldses ran a store beside of their home. Across the road was the location of the former Mary United Baptist Church — named for Mary Runyon or Mary Fields – now converted into a house. As they stood on the hill, Billy reminded Brandon that Bill Duty’s mother-in-law was a Fields prior to her marriage.

They next tried to find the location of John Runyon’s homeplace. According to the Williamson family history, Runyon lived at the “old Stidham post office,” which they figured was located on Rockhouse Fork. Unfortunately, they found no sign of “Stidham” up the many branches of Rockhouse. There were no mailboxes labeled “RUNYON” or any signs to help them along. Many of the names of local hollows had changed since the time of the old deeds.

Feeling a little desperate, they pulled into a driveway with a mailbox labeled “HINKLE” and spoke with a very nice middle-aged man who told them the exact location of the old Stidham Post Office — actually, all three of them. The first location ran by Joe Fannin was situated at the mouth of Spence Branch near Milo. Around 1935, the office was relocated to a site on what is now called Hinkle Valley Road, just across the creek from a sign reading “Left Fork.” The final Stidham Post Office was in what is today James Webb’s Music Store. Upon viewing the sites, Billy deduced that the old Runyon homeplace had been near the second post office.

While in that vicinity, they talked with an elderly man named Walt Mollett who confirmed that John Runyon had been a local resident. He said Runyon was probably buried down the road in a cemetery on Graveyard Point at Stidham, basically the junction of Route 1884 and Route 40.

A few minutes later they were at the cemetery, parking beside the road in a treacherous curve and tromping through a forest of damp growth. At the center of the cemetery was a single, ancient pine tree. Near the pine, Brandon spotted the grave of Runyon’s daughter, Wealthy Fry. Just below her was Aquillia Porter. And below her was a grave with a new tombstone written as “Mary M. Runyons” and dated “January 28, 1861-January 29, 1958.” Beside of Wealthy Fry’s final resting place was an older stone originally created for “Mary Runyon” dated “January 28, 1861-January 29, 1956.” There were plenty of Williamsons in the cemetery — all relation to Mrs. Runyon — including Sam Porter’s second wife — but absolutely no sign of John Runyon’s grave.

Jim Webb, a gentle middle-aged musician and proprietor of Webb’s Music Store, told Brandon and Billy that someone had wrecked in the cemetery a few years earlier and destroyed many of the tombstones. Equally tragic, the wrecker that removed the vehicle from the cemetery had caused more damage to the stones. The community had organized a fund to restore the graves, Webb said, but it was little consolation. Brandon theorized that John was buried beside of Wealthy — that someone had used Mary’s old tombstone to “sort of” mark the spot. He didn’t rule out, though, that Runyon had been buried with his parents on nearby Nat’s Creek in Lawrence County. (The Graveyard Point cemetery was more oriented toward his wife’s family, the Williamsons.) A quick drive to Nat’s Creek, including a tour of the “town” of Peach Orchard (a virtually abandoned coal town once prominent in business affairs and the site of a General Garfield Civil War story), failed to produce any signs of a Runyon cemetery, although it did offer some of the most serene, peaceful, spooky and haunting countryside found in the locale.

Brandon felt a real frustration in not being able to positively find Runyon’s grave and thus achieve some sense of closure on that facet of the story. It was as if he and Billy, whose ancestors had supposedly spent years looking for Runyon, had also been evaded by ole John — even in his death.

In Search of Ed Haley 247

22 Saturday Feb 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Sandy Valley, Ed Haley

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Andrew Francis Messinger, Bill Duty, Blackburn Messinger, David Messinger, Fall Creek, genealogy, George T. Swain, George W. Parsley, history, James Muncy, James Parsley, John H. Messinger, Jr., Keenan Parsley, Kentucky, Lawrence County, Lincoln County, Marcum-Muncy Feud, Nellie Muncy, Nicholas Messinger, Pigeon Creek, Ryburn Parsley, Tug River, Wayne County, West Virginia, Wilson Messinger, writing

Penelope Muncy — Milt Haley’s mother — was born around 1823 to James Muncy and Mary Martha Copley. Nellie, as she was sometimes called, was probably an illegitimate child. On January 23, 1840, she married Ryburn Parsley in Lawrence County, Kentucky. In her marriage record, she gave her last name as Copley…not Muncy. According to Logan County historian George T. Swain, Nellie and her husband settled on Jenny’s Creek near the Tug Fork. They had at least four children: James Parsley (born c.1842), George W. Parsley (born c.1845), Sarah J. Parsley (born c.1848) and Martha Parsley (born c.1850). Ryburn was listed in the 1850 Logan County Census of (West) Virginia as a farmer then disappeared from local records. Swain’s history of Logan County gives a clue: “Riburn [Parsley], who married a Miss Muncey, became involved in the Muncey-Marcum feud and moved to Mississippi and became a brigadier general of the Confederate States in the Civil War.”

Strangely, Parsley left his wife and children in the Tug Valley.

In 1853, Nellie gave birth to a son named Keenan Parsley at Big Hurricane Creek near FortGay on the Big Sandy River in Wayne County. In Keenan’s birth record, no father was listed, perhaps indicating that he was an illegitimate child. Approximately three years later, Nellie gave birth to a son census records identify as Thomas P. Parsley – a.k.a. Thomas Milton Haley.

In 1860 Nellie married Wilson Messinger in Logan County. In her marriage record she gave her age as 37 years, her surname as Muncy instead of Copley or Parsley and listed her parents’ names as James and Mary Muncy. She also referred to herself, curiously enough, as a widow. At the time of the marriage, Wilson Messinger (also widowed) had five children: Mary Messinger, born about 1844; Blackburn Messinger, born about 1846; Andrew Francis Messinger, born about 1848; John H. Messinger, born about 1850; and David Messinger, born about 1855.

In the 1860 Logan County Census, Wilson and Nellie lived at the mouth of Pigeon Creek in the Tug Valley near Bill Duty. Wilson operated a mill and owned $250 worth of personal property. He had the following children in his household: two Parsley stepchildren (including Milt), five children, and a newborn son, Wilson Messinger, Jr., who was less than a year old.

By 1870, Nellie and Wilson had disappeared from West Virginia census records, possibly indicating their death or a move across the Tug into Kentucky. The family seems to have broken apart, as many of the Messinger children flocked to live near their wealthy grandfather Nicholas Messinger, a water mill operator in the Fall Creek area of Lincoln County.

Milt Haley apparently didn’t follow his stepsiblings to the GuyandotteValley. In 1870, he was still on Pigeon Creek in the home of Bill Duty, who was no apparent kin to him. Was it a coincidence that Duty had been a close neighbor to the Messingers in 1860?

In Search of Ed Haley 216

30 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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Bill Duty, Billy Adkins, Chloe Mullins, Durg Fry, Ed Haley, fiddlers, genealogy, Green McCoy, history, Hollena Brumfield, John Wesley Berry, Jupiter Fry, Mayme Ferrell, Milt Ferrell, Milt Haley, music, writing

I asked Mayme who her father’s favorite fiddler was and she laughed and said, “I suppose my daddy’s favorite fiddler was a man named Jupiter Fry. He married my daddy’s aunt.”

Billy asked, “Was he a brother to Durg Fry?”

“Yes,” she said. “You smart people. He went to New York one time and won a fiddling contest. He used to live down the creek here on the Laurel Fork of Big Ugly. My daddy used to go around there to Uncle Jupiter’s — they didn’t have much — and they would play poker all night long with just two or three pennies. They were very, very poor. Not many people were very well off. You wouldn’t think it by looking at this dilapidated place now but we had quite a bit. All the buildings are torn down. We had plenty — enough for us. We had some money here all the time. But Uncle Jupiter was the best fiddler in the country at one time.”

I asked Mayme if Jupiter was a right- or left-handed fiddler and she said, “Oh goodness, I don’t know. I don’t remember Uncle Jupiter. I remember Durg. He played some, too. He was right-handed. Durg would play and dance while he played. He did the hoedown. He did enjoy dancing.”

I asked Mayme if she remembered hearing any talk about Milt Haley and Green McCoy and she said, “Heavens, yes. Why didn’t I listen? Daddy talked about them. There was a great deal said but I just dismissed it from my mind. I didn’t try to remember it. Did Hollene Ferguson come in there in any way? She was a real kind person. I was there a few times. Incidentally, my mother’s daddy built that house.”

What was his name?

“John Wesley Berry. He was a riverboat captain and a carpenter from Guyandotte.”

I said, “I know Hollene put people up for the night and I’ve heard that Ed Haley had gone through there and stopped off and played the fiddle.”

“Well, Ed Haley frequented the place in this area,” Mayme said. “He’s been on this creek, too.”

She wasn’t sure if her father ever met Ed but she heard him talk about him.

Brandon figured they knew each other based on some interesting genealogical connections: one of Milt Ferrell’s uncles married Money Makin’ Sol Mullins’ granddaughter, while another uncle married a sister to Chloe Mullins (Ed’s grandmother).

I got kinda excited about Mayme confirming Ed’s trips through Big Ugly.

“Well see, we knew that he’d been to see Bill Duty a lot,” I said. “And we have found that Milt Haley, his father, was actually living in Bill Duty’s household at one time.”

“Milt Haley lived with Bill Duty before Bill Duty ever moved here, when he was still down in Logan County,” Brandon said, “and we think Milt may’ve moved up this way with Bill when he moved up here.”

“Well, I think maybe he did,” Mayme said quickly. “I think maybe he did. You’re awakening some old memories. I think he lived with them.

“Was there music in Bill Duty’s household?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that,” Mayme said. “Bill Duty married my daddy’s aunt.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I said to Mayme. “In the community back when you were a little girl did most people talk about the Haley-McCoy affair, or did they try not to talk about it for fear that somebody might hurt them or something?”

“I don’t think that there was any fear of being hurt,” she said. “They were not quite as notorious as the Hatfields and McCoys were.”

Just before we left, Mayme “made” me promise to come back and play for her in the fall.

I asked her for a favor: Could I go up into the old part of her house?

“Sure,” she said, “Just be careful.”

When I opened the door from the living room leading into the original cabin, I was so overwhelmed with sights and smells of the nineteenth century that it chilled me to the bone. It was dark, except for a little light streaming through a window, and everything was dilapidated, dusty, damp — and in most cases, ruined. A lot of the furniture had just rotted or collapsed to the floor and there were piles of papers everywhere at my feet. It was as if the people living there fifty years ago had just walked out, blew out the candles and never went back. Upstairs was the same. The whole experience made such an impression on me that I later began packing a picture of Mayme’s cabin in my fiddle case and eventually used it as a graphic on one of my albums.

In Search of Ed Haley 215

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Charley Brumfield, Clarence Lambert, Clinton Ferrell, Doska Adkins, Eunice Ferrell, fiddlers, fiddling, Fulton Ferrell, history, Jeff Duty, Jim Lucas, Mayme Ferrell, Milt Ferrell, Rector, writing

At Broad Branch, we found that Bill Duty’s old one-story log house was completely gone. We wanted to go to the family cemetery just across the creek and up the hill but didn’t because it was overran with giant weeds.

We were all just kinda hanging out there, crammed in the car, when Doska said, “Milt Ferrell could play a fiddle. He was a first cousin to my daddy.”

Wait a minute — another fiddler? I’d spent quite a bit of time trying to track down the names of the old fiddlers around Harts. All of a sudden, they were falling from the woodwork.

Milt Ferrell — a man related to the Dutys and with the first name of Ed’s father. I said, “Now who was he?”

“Mayme’s daddy,” Eunice said, as if that helped. “Mayme lives down there.”

“She’s bad off,” Doska added. “One of her lungs has collapsed.”

I just had to see this Mayme Ferrell, although I didn’t want to impose on her if she was in poor health.

Nonsense.

Doska and Eunice said she would love the company…and she just lived down the road.

On the way to Mayme’s someone mentioned that she lived at the old Rector Post Office, a settlement from earlier in the century. We soon turned over a little bridge and pulled up to the only structure left in “Rector proper”: Mayme’s incredible two-story log cabin. It was ancient and leaning, with an old cemetery just behind it on the hill. The whole scene was like something from a dream.

We got out of the car and walked up to a small back porch where Eunice pecked at the screen door and hollered, “Mayme? It’s Eunice.”

In no time at all, Mayme Ferrell was peeking back out at us. She was frail, half-blind and hooked to a breathing machine — and very surprised to see us all on her porch with fiddles, cameras, and notebooks.

Mayme invited us on inside where we sat down in the living room and started talking like old friends. She was well acquainted with Eunice and Doska and knew a lot about Billy and Brandon’s families. It was clear after a few minutes of interchange that her life had went beyond school teaching — she was an educated woman of the modern world, who’d spent twelve years in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She got me to play her a few tunes and the next thing I knew she was singing lyrics that she remembered from her childhood, like “Nigger looky here and nigger looky yander. The old gray goose is flirting with the gander.” Or things like: “I had a piece of pie and I had a piece of puddin’. I give it all away for to sleep with Sally Goodin.” Or this: “Old Aunt Sal, if you don’t care I’ll leave my liquor jug sitting right here. If it ain’t here when I come back we’ll raise hell in the Cumberland Gap.”

Eunice remembered “Cluck old hen, cluck and sing. Ain’t laid an egg since way last spring.” Doska said her father Jeff Duty used to play the tune.

I said to Mayme, “So your father was a fiddler? Tell me about him.”

She was immediately nostalgic.

“Daddy was named for a poet, but I don’t think his parents knew it,” she said. “John Milton Ferrell. He was a great guy. He was a wonderful person. My daddy’s people were just easy going. Most of them were musicians. My daddy, he would lead the songs in church. He was a board member for three terms and the last term he was the president of the board. They would meet over at Harts and those Brumfields — I’ll tell you what — most people were afraid to go through there. Charley Brumfield shot his daddy and killed him. His daddy was beating his mother and he made him leave, so I understand, and then when he came back — I guess he was drunk…”

Mayme looked at Brandon and said, “Those Brumfields were rough then, son. Good people. If they liked you they liked you, and if they didn’t you better leave them alone. They were ambitious people. They just got to feuding among themselves, but it wore out after a while. But my daddy was a good friend to all of them. Charley Brumfield would’ve done anything for daddy. They’d get in a poker game after they had their meeting and they’d all drink. Well daddy would come home with a pocket full of money. One time he came home drunk and he couldn’t hang his hat up. Of course, the older children laughed and I cried, but he sang, ‘Hey hey rushin’ the rabbit. Into the brush and then you’ll habit.’ Didn’t say ‘have it.’ I don’t know what they were getting in that brush. He was a very, very humble person and he was witty.”

Milt Ferrell, Mayme said, played the fiddle around election time, at weddings, at schools or on Friday at all-night dances.

“We’d have barn-raisings,” she said. “After they got the roof over the barn and put the second floor in — the floor where you put your fodder and hay — they’d have a barn dancing. They’d dance all night.”

Milt played with the fiddle under his chin, as did Jeff Duty.

Mayme cried when I played one of her father’s tunes, “Over the Waves”.

She said her father’s older brothers Clinton Ferrell and Fulton Ferrell were also fiddlers. Clint was the smoothest fiddler in the family but would only occasionally pick up Milt’s fiddle and play “Mississippi Sawyer”. Their cousin Jim Lucas was also good.

“Uncle Jim was an excellent fiddler,” she said. “He didn’t jiggle. A real smooth player.”

She didn’t recall any banjos or mandolins on Big Ugly in the old days, although her brother-in-law Clarence Lambert was a great guitarist (“as good as Chet Atkins”) who played Hawaiian music and tunes like “Guitar Rag”.

In Search of Ed Haley 214

21 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Billy Adkins, blind, Doska Adkins, Ed Haley, Eunice Ferrell, fiddling, Jeff Duty, John Hartford, Milt Haley, Tom Ferrell, writing

A few days later, Brandon and I left the festival and headed toward Charleston and on to Harts via Corridor G and Boone County. We reached Harts around three in the morning and parked the bus at the local Fas Chek near a fire station and bridge. Brandon’s uncle Ron Lucas, the manager of the store, had given us permission to park there. The next morning, Billy Adkins met us at the bus and we decided to see Doska Adkins, a woman of advanced age and granddaughter of Bill Duty. Maybe Doska would know about Milt Haley living with her grandfather, who had settled on nearby Big Ugly Creek.

In no time at all, Brandon, Billy and I were charging over Green Shoal Mountain talking genealogy and well on our way to Big Ugly country.

About twenty minutes later, we turned off of the main road into Fawn Hollow and began climbing a rocky driveway toward Doska’s house. We soon spotted Doska cutting brush out near her yard. She was a small-framed woman crowned with a tuft of white hair, having every bit the appearance of “the helpless old widow” — barring the machete in her hand, of course. I could tell right away that things were about to get interesting.

We followed Doska into her home, stepping quickly past a barking dog tied up on her porch. Inside, on the living room wall we spotted a mass of more than forty bushy squirrel tales hanging together in a pattern, which she said were her hunting trophies for the season. Sensing our interest in such things, she showed us a stuffed squirrel that she herself had killed, stuffed and mounted onto a small log. Before we could really ask her anything about Milt Haley, she told us all about how to pickle squirrels for later eating, then opened a desk drawer full of snake rattlers…more trophies.

It took us a few minutes to sit down and actually focus on the reason for our visit. When I told Doska about my interest in Ed’s life, she said he used to stay with her father, Jeff Duty. It didn’t take him long to get familiar with a place, she said, and he couldn’t be fooled with paper money.

“How often would he come there to stay?” I asked.

She said, “Well, I don’t know how often. If I was around, I was real little. I don’t remember him but I’ve heard Daddy talk about him.”

Brandon asked Doska, “Did your dad and Ed play music together?” and she said, “Yeah.”

We wondered what songs Jeff Duty played.

“They was one he played on the fiddle that I thought was real pretty,” Doska said. “I think he called that the ’11th of January’ and he’d play a while and then he’d pick a piece in it. Yeah, man he used to sit on the porch of an evening down yonder where I was raised and play for us.”

Brandon asked, “Was your dad considered the best fiddler up around this part?”

Doska said, “He was pretty good and he could play a banjo, too.”

I asked if her grandfather Bill Duty ever talked about Milt Haley and she said, “No, all of my grandparents was dead before I was born. See, I was born in 1917 and I never seen nary one of my grandparents. Mommy used to have a picture of my grandpaw but I don’t know what happened to it.”

Billy asked her, “Was Ed Haley any relation to you at all?”

“No, he’d just come through here — I don’t know why — and he liked to stay at my daddy’s,” she answered. “Didn’t matter who come through this country. If they’d ask to stay all night somewhere they’d say, ‘You can go to old man Duty’s and stay all night.’”

Of course, knowing what we knew about Milt and the Dutys it seemed likely that Ed came around Jeff for reasons more than his hospitality. As Bill Duty’s son and a fiddler, he would’ve been an excellent source on Milt — the father Ed never really knew.

Doska said her grandfather Duty’s home was no longer standing on Broad Branch but I wanted to see the site anyway. (It was, after all, very possibly the place where Milt settled with the Duty family in the early 1880s.) We asked Doska to accompany us but she said she looked awful; she had been cutting brush all day, she said, and wasn’t dressed to go anywhere. After a while, though, we persuaded her to go with us.

On the way to Broad Branch, Billy suggested that we stop and see 89-year-old Eunice Ferrell. Eunice had settled on the creek years ago and married a son of the Tom Ferrell mentioned in “The Lincoln County Crew”. She was a very friendly Mormon, slumped over with age. I told her I was interested in “Blind Ed Haley,” an old fiddler from Harts Creek, and she said she didn’t know about him. Her father-in-law had been a fiddler, though. She knew something about Tom’s trouble with the Butchers.

“They said they was in a card game and this man was trying to run the horse over him,” she said. “And he killed him but he got out of it.”

We told Eunice that we were going to see the old Duty place on Broad Branch if she wanted to go and she was all for it. We helped her into the car and took off.

Along the way, I stopped the car so Doska could point out her father’s home — the place where Ed used to stay. Brandon said some “hippie-types” from a big city had moved into the place several years ago.

“Michael Tierney lives there now,” Eunice said. “He’s a lawyer. Catholic man. He’s a good neighbor.”

We were having a blast.

“I’m glad I come,” Eunice said.

In Search of Ed Haley 210

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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Albert Butcher, Andrew Chapman, Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Cecil L. Hudgins, Hamlin, history, John W Runyon, Lincoln County, Long House, Tom Ferrell, West Virginia, William T. Butcher, writing

In the end, suspect or not, Runyon may have felt safe to comment on the feud since he was a man of the badge. If so however, he learned the error of that line of thinking once the Ferrell-Butcher trouble erupted on nearby Big Ugly Creek in January of 1890. (Its events were eventually merged with those of the Haley-McCoy trouble in the song “The Lincoln County Crew”.) The Logan newspaper covered this event:

Albert Butcher, who was shot by Tom Ferrell near Deal’s grocery in Lincoln county, Dec. 31st, died Friday morning last. The latest report we have says that Butcher and Ferrell had been drinking and playing cards all day for a pair of pants, and there was a dispute over $1.50. Butcher got the pants and got on his horse and started home, when Ferrell caught his horse by the bridle and demanded his pants or $1.50. Butcher got down off of his horse and the shooting was done immediately. One report says that Butcher attacked Ferrell with his knife and cut one of his fingers and wounded him in the breast. Another report says that Butcher only made Ferrell loose his bridles. Dr. Hudgins, of this place, was called and operated on Butcher, and it appears that the ball, which was a .38-calibre, had entered the abdomen 1/2 inch to the right and 1/2 inch below the navel, making five wounds in the intestines. The abdominal wall was opened, the fecol matter and blood worked out, the wounds in the intestines entered, and every thing done to save the life of the patient. Dr. Hudgins is a skilled surgeon, but in this case no skill could save.

Not long after Butcher’s death — and this is the part that would’ve had a sobering effect on Deputy-Sheriff John Runyon — a mob of Logan County Butchers went to retrieve Ferrell at the county jail and carry out mob justice. The Lambert Collection offered a great eyewitness account of their “raid” on Hamlin:

There was a saloon, but I can’t recall whose it was. I saw many men and two women stagger out of it while we were there [in Hamlin]. The occasion of the drunk women was when the Butcher mob came down from Big Ugly to take Tom Ferrell out of the jail and hang him for the shooting of one of the Butcher family. Tom Ferrell was just a boy about 20 yrs. of age. He had a difficulty of some kind with one of the Butchers, and to protect his own life had shot the man. Ferrell then came to Hamlin and gave himself up. The jailor Andrew Chapman locked him in a cell for safe-keeping for they realized there would be plenty of future trouble. Sure enough in a day or so the mob came riding into town. The mob was led by Capt. Butcher and two women were along. All had shiny guns on their shoulder. They rode up the street past our house to the jail that stood behind the court house, but when they got to the jail the prisoner was gone.

A Mr. Duty told me that his father then lived on Big Ugly Creek where Mr. Ferrell lived and knew all the circumstances of the killing. He heard of the Butcher plan to hang young Ferrell, so he mounted his horse and started to Hamlin to warn the jailor to protect Ferrell. He rode his horse so hard that it fell dead and he got another horse and rode it hard, but got to Hamlin before the mob did. The jailor at once turned Ferrell out and told him to run to the woods for his life. The jailor’s brother, John Chapman, lived with him and helped care for the prisoners, so he told John to go too, and to run. Word, by way of wireless, was circulated that John and Ferrell struck for the woods with John taking the lead by many yards. He was running for his life, too.

When the mob rode into town, the street was soon empty, for everybody took to cover, and stayed out of sight for the two or three days that the mob hung around. They stayed at the Long House, the other hotel in Hamlin, but it was close to the Campbell House. In fact there was just an empty lot between the two, for it was on the same side of the street.

The mob made many trips up and down the street from the hotel to the saloon and then on a little farther to the jail. They always went as soldiers with their shiny guns on their shoulders. Most of them staggered after they made their first trip to the saloon, and the men always had to keep the women from falling. They stayed so drunk. After two or three days they left as suddenly as they had come, and then John and Tom Ferrell came back to the jail. Ferrell was tried in court and found innocent by way of self defense. Mr. Duty told me that Mr. Ferrell was always in fear of his life after that. He was postmaster at Dolly in Lincoln County, but he lived a miserable life, and in constant fear. They said that Mr. Ferrell was a good and honorable man, and was not to blame for the deed that left him an unhappy man.

Surely, Runyon was horrified to witness this whole fiasco. If a mob could take over the county seat and march through town sloshed and armed with weapons, how safe was he — a mere deputy-sheriff — in isolated Harts?

In Search of Ed Haley 198

16 Saturday Nov 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Billy Adkins, Ed Haley, Green McCoy, history, John E. Fry, Maude Duty, Milt Haley, Tucker Fry, writing

After visiting with Ida, Billy directed us to Maude Duty, who lived on Big Ugly Creek. Born in 1905, Maude was a daughter of John E. Fry, a longtime justice-of-the-peace in the district, and a niece to Tucker Fry, one-time occupant of the “murder house.” At the time of our visit, Maude was bed-fast, physically feeble, and near death. She hadn’t seen Billy for a few years but soon remembered him and began to whisper answers to his questions concerning the murder house and her husband’s family, the Dutys. She agreed with Billy that the murder of Milt and Green had taken place at her Uncle Tucker’s house at the mouth of Green Shoal. She didn’t know anything about Milt living with Bill Duty but remembered that Ed Haley visited him fairly often on Broad Branch. She said she used to dance to his fiddling when he came to her father’s home.

It was a small but crucial bit of information indicating a strong connection between Ed, Milt, and the Duty family that went beyond the 1870 census.

In Search of Ed Haley 194

11 Monday Nov 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, genealogy, Harts, history, Imogene Haley, John Hartford, Maude Duty, Milt Haley, Solomon Mullins, writing

I asked Billy about Bill Duty. We had found Milt living with Duty’s family in an 1870 Logan County census and knew from reading an interview with his son in the Lambert Collection that his family settled on Big Ugly Creek in the early 1880s. Billy turned us loose with his Duty notebook, where we soon located his notes on the family of “William Marshall Duty” (1838-c.1910). He said the family originally came to the area looking for work in timber. In 1900 and 1910, Bill Duty lived on the Broad Branch of Big Ugly Creek. We could find no apparent “blood connection” between him and Milt Haley but his wife Emma Ferrell was a great-granddaughter of Money Makin’ Sol Mullins (Ed’s great-great-grandfather). It was a seemingly distant family connection that might have played a part in Milt’s choice of Emma Mullins for a wife. Billy said we should talk with Maude Duty, a widow of one of Bill Duty’s grandsons, for more information along those lines.

That night, after hours of watching Billy and Brandon shuffle through genealogy books, census records and notebooks filled with handwriting, I realized just how difficult it would be to familiarize myself with all the characters and family relationships in the story of Milt Haley’s death. While I had little chance to memorize them, I made the effort to at least document them because they seemed to help explain a lot about Milt’s story. There were other things, of course, to mix into the blend, such as grudges, hatreds, and dislikes.

There was another important reason for documenting the genealogy: knowing how people were connected to each other helped me to objectively weigh in any slant in their stories (whether intentional or not). For instance, if I were talking to a nephew of “Uncle Al Brumfield,” I would probably get a somewhat complimentary account of his character; but if I were talking to someone whose family had feuded with him, comments might be less than flattering. It seemed obvious, then, that who I talked to, their genealogical connection to who they spoke of, where I talked to them, in whose company I talked to them, and what exactly they said (or didn’t say) were all important to note.

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Feud Poll 1

If you had lived in the Harts Creek community during the 1880s, to which faction of feudists might you have given your loyalty?

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Feud Poll 2

Do you think Milt Haley and Green McCoy committed the ambush on Al and Hollene Brumfield in 1889?

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Feud Poll 3

Who do you think organized the ambush of Al and Hollene Brumfield in 1889?

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Ed Haley Poll 1

What do you think caused Ed Haley to lose his sight when he was three years old?

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