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John B. Wilkinson of Logan, WV (1928)

05 Monday Dec 2022

Posted by in Logan, Wayne

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From West Virginians, published by the West Virginia Biographical Association in 1928, comes this profile of Judge John B. Wilkinson of Logan, WV:

The Honorable John B. Wilkinson, who died August 12, 1919, at Logan, where he had long been a foremost citizen, held rank among the best known and most successful lawyers and jurists in West Virginia. In business likewise Judge Wilkinson enjoyed a distinguished success. One of the leaders in the early development of the coal industry in the Guyan Valley, his position at the time of his death was among the great figures in business and industry. He was treasurer of the Guyan Coal Company, the Mona Coal Company, the Robertson Consolidated Land Company and the Alderson-Wilkinson Land Company. He was president of the Big Huff Coal Company and a director of the Robertson Grocery Company. He was originally a director of the Guyan Valley Bank, but later disposed of his holdings in that institution. Throughout the state at large, however, his fame was earned chiefly by his work as a jurist. During twelve years on the bench of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, he was noted for his fairness, accuracy and knowledge of the law. The press of the whole state reported his passing at great length and with sincere regret that so valuable a personality had been lost to the community. Judge Wilkinson was born in Logan County, W.Va., February 13, 1860, the son of David Wilkinson, who had come from Carroll County, Va. He lived on a farm and attended school in that part of Logan County which afterward became Mingo County, coming to the then village of Logan Court House to attend a teachers’ institute and take an examination for a teacher’s certificate. He taught two or three local normal schools here and at Wayne. His legal career began in 1882, when he was admitted to the bar. He continued in the legal profession until his death in 1919. In 1884 he was elected prosecuting attorney of Logan County, which office he filled continuously till 1896. After an interval of four years he again assumed that office, in 1900, and served till January 1, 1905. Having been elected Judge of the Seventh Judicial Circuit, he resigned as prosecutor and took his place on the circuit bench on the first of January, 1905, and remained as judge until failing health induced him to resign twelve years later. Several times Judge Wilkinson was urged to become his party’s candidate for Governor of the State, although he preferred not to accept that honor. In the summer of 1916 he was nominated for Judge of the Supreme Court of West Virginia. After leaving the office of circuit judge, the condition of his health inclined him to give up the practice of law and close his office, but many friends had learned to depend on him for legal counsel, and at their urging he continued in active practice until his death. Judge Wilkinson was married, September 21, 1882, to Mary Belle Straton of Logan, who survives him with their four children, John B., Jr., who resides at Ashburn, Va.; Ernest Eugene, of Cincinnati; Mrs. Mona Russo, of San Diego, Calif.; and Mrs. Margaret Midyette, of Hollywood, Calif. Judge Wilkinson was for a long time a member of the First Baptist Church of Logan, and a member of its board of deacons. He was a member of the Masonic Orders—the Knights Templar and the Mystic Shrine. Hundreds of people in West Virginia and neighboring states, although not personally acquainted with Judge Wilkinson, knew of his work as a jurist and his renown as a civic leader in general, so that at the time of his death, his passing elicited the sincere feeling that the state had lost one of its best and most constructive citizens.

Orville McCoy Recalls “Squirrel Huntin'” Sam McCoy (1990)

22 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by in Hatfield-McCoy Feud

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On July 24, 1990, scholar Rebecca Bailey interviewed Orville McCoy (b.1922) of Raccoon Creek, Kentucky. What follows here is an excerpt of Mr. McCoy’s memories of his grandfather “Squirrel Huntin'” Sam McCoy and his book.

RB: Okay. What kind of stories did you hear about the feud when you were growing up?

OM: Well, about such materials you’ll find in my book. I recorded just about everything I knew about it.

RB: Do you know how your grandfather came to write his manuscript?

OM: Yes, he wrote in the year, I believe it was, 1931 while he was in St. Louis, Missouri. We all also got that information recorded in the book.

RB: How come him to be in St. Louis? Do you know?

OM: Well, he went west in the year about nineteen and ten and I think he first went to California and then back to Kansas and…and then to St. Louis.

RB: Did he take his wife and children with him?

OM: Yes. He took his whole family except my dad. He was the only one stayed here at Racoon.

RB: Was he the oldest? Is that why he stayed?

OM: No, he wasn’t the oldest. Yeah. I guess he was the oldest. He was the only child by him and his first wife, America Goff.

RB: Did she die or did they divorce?

OM: Well, yeah. She died young.

RB: How old was your father when his father left to go out west?

OM: That would be pretty hard for me to figure, I don’t bet. You could go to my book and deduct and subtract a little there and come up with an answer.

RB: He was probably a young man, though, because he had twelve children by the time you were born so he was probably a young man and married.

OM: Yeah. I’d say he should have been around thirty, something like that.

RB: Did your father remember any of the events of the feud or hear about them?

OM: No, he couldn’t remember any of the incidents, I don’t think except what was told to him.

RB: Alright. Do you have much contact with any of your McCoy cousins?

OM: Oh, yeah. I correspond with them. I got some in Kansas. Joshua Tree, California, and Tacoma, Washington, Remington, Washington, Pennsylvania.

RB: We were talking off tape. You said that a lot of McCoys didn’t stay in this area.

OM: No, they was quite a few of them went out west.

RB: Did they go looking for work or…?

OM: I guess they was seeking adventure.

RB: How did you come to have the manuscript that “Squirrel Huntin'” Sam wrote?

OM: Well, I obtained it from Sam when he was out here to pay us a visit in 1937.

RB: What kind of person was he?

OM: Oh, he was quite a tall man. About six foot or better.

RB: What do you remember about him?

OM: Well, when he visited us, he came out here to visit us about three times in the thirties. First come in ’36. ’38. Maybe ’39. He died in ’40. They shipped him back here.

RB: Do you know where he’s buried?

OM: Yeah.

RB: Where’s he buried?

OM: He’s buried in Collins Cemetery in the head of Frozen Creek.

RB: Okay. Were you always interested as a child in in your family history?

OM: Well, not in the early years. I always held on to that book though and preserved it. I guess I was around fifty-eight years when I let them publish it.

RB: Would you tell me on tape again who published it for you?

OM: Dr. Leonard Roberts of Pikeville College.

RB: Why was he interested in it? Do you know?

OM: Dr. Roberts?

RB: Un-huh.

OM: Well, he was working for the college and that’s how he… Well, it benefited the college, you know, doing Appalachian study centers, they called it. He published books and so on for them.

Jack Dempsey (1928)

02 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Sports

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The following items relating to Jack Dempsey, heavyweight champion of the world from 1919-1926, were printed in the Logan Banner of Logan, WV, in 1928:

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Jack Dempsey, 1924. Photo credit unknown.

“Fight Gene, Sure” Says Jack Dempsey

Jack Dempsey has begun light training, says a dispatch from Los Angeles, but says he is merely trying to keep fit.

“There’s nothing in the wind. I don’t want to get fat, and the only way to keep from it is to have a regular training diet,” he is quoted as having said.

“Fight Tunney again? Sure. But I’m not in the mood to do any elimination bouting to get another crack at the title.

“Of course, I might take on one or two preliminary scraps if there was a definite program in sight, but there’s absolutely nothing to report that one has been drawn up.”

Source: Logan (WV) Banner, 10 January 1928

***

DEMPSEY WINS ANOTHER TILT

Jack Dempsey came out with flying colors in court at New York City last week when a jury decided that he did not owe his former manager something like $700,000. Kearns sued Dempsey claiming that he was entitled to a certain percentage of the profits earned by Dempsey, but the jury decided in favor of Dempsey, and did not award Kearns one penny. It was a sad blow for the former manager of the former champion, who now makes a living piloting Mickie Walker, middle-weight champion.

Now that Dempsey has all the legal worries off his mind he will get down to business to pick up a little soft dough managing his twenty-two-year-old protégé, Armand Emanuel, of San Francisco. Dempsey sent word to Emanuel last Wednesday to start for New York at once, as he had a mach in view. Emanuel boarded the first train from San Francisco east.

When Emanuel arrives in New York, James J. Corbett, former heavy-weight champion, will look him over. Corbett is a graduate of the Olympic Club in San Francisco and so is Emanuel. The latter was the national amateur heavyweight title in 1925. He has been a professional since 1926. He has not lost a decision in 28 bouts. His last fight took place in San Francisco Monday night when he fought a draw with the veteran Mike McTigue, of New York City.

Source: Logan (WV) Banner, 1 May 1928

***

DEMPSEY LIVED IN CHARLESTON CLAIMS GAZETTE

Jack Dempsey, retired pugilist and former world’s champion, once spent several months in Charleston, according to several here who knew him well. He is said to have made his headquarters in the old Hauck and Schmit billiard room at Summers and Virginia streets. He is remembered as serving as “bouncer” in the place, living in a room above. He kept in the best of condition, taking long walks and engaging in boxing exhibitions that finally took him to other sections.

Now Mr. Dempsey is in New York where he went from Hollywood, Calif., to see the Tunney-Heeney fight. Estelle Taylor Dempsey, his wife, has left the Pacific coast to see Jack in New York to make a movie picture, it is stated.

Source: Logan (WV) Banner, 3 August 1928

Recollections of McKinley Grimmett of Bruno, WV 3 (1984)

06 Thursday Sep 2018

Posted by in Coal, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Logan, Timber, World War I

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McKinley Grimmett was born on November 30, 1896 to Henderson and Nancy (Hatfield) Grimmett at Sand Lick, Logan County, WV. On May 14, 1916, Mr. Grimmett married a Ms. Plymale, who soon died, in Logan County. One child named Alva died on June 21, 1919 of whooping cough, aged fourteen months. His World War I draft registration card dated September 12, 1918 identifies him as having blue eyes and light-colored hair. He was employed by Mallory Coal Company at Mallory, WV. On November 13, 1919, he married Matilda “Tilda” Hatfield, daughter of Thomas Hatfield, in Logan County. He identified himself as a farmer in both of his marriage records. During the 1920s, he served as a deputy under Sheriff Tennis Hatfield.

The following interview of Mr. Grimmett was conducted at his home on July 17, 1984. In this part of the interview, he recalls his occupations. Tennis Hatfield, Cap Hatfield, Joe Hatfield, Willis Hatfield, pushboats, Logan, World War I, coal, and blacksmithing are featured.

***

What about Tennis and Joe Hatfield?

But now they come out, they paid all their debts and everything and stuff like that. They was honest, as far as I know. I think both of ‘em went broke, they was so good to the people. They had all kinds of things… Tennis had a five thousand dollar ring and he pawned it to the First National Bank and somebody got the ring. I don’t know who did. Tennis didn’t get it back. They both lost everything they had. And not just only them. Osey Richey, he was assessor and J.G. Hunter was assessor, and they lost all they had. People just, after they got elected and everything, thought that they had to furnish ‘em whether they had it or whether they didn’t.

Tennis and Joe were too young to participate in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud.

Oh yeah. That happened before I got big enough, Cap and them. Cap was chief deputy, though, while I was on. I can remember some of it. Just hear-says. I don’t know nothing about it. Ellison Toler was related to them someway and he stayed at my daddy’s and they kept him up for killing somebody over there at Welch and they hung him there at Welch yard on a tree. I remember getting into my daddy’s papers and reading the letters after I was just learning in school about such stuff like that. And I thought that was the awfulest thing ever was, writing to him and telling about it.

What changed in the county for the Hatfields between the feud and the 1920s?

Mostly, they died out to tell you the truth. Joe and Tennis died out and nobody else had guts enough to take it, you see? Now, Willis, he was the youngest brother. Elba, now he was JP and after he got out as JP he pulled out and went to California. And Willis, he died here about a year ago up on Rum Creek. And Tennis and Joe both died. And that was all of ‘em. All of the old people. Harvey Howes married their sister, and they’re all dead.

Did you ever talk to Cap or Willis?

Oh yeah. Willis, they’d hang after me all the time. They knowed I was half-Hatfield, you know. Tennis and Joe would, too. They was awful good to me ever way. Now Cap, I never – Cap just had one word for a person. If he wanted to talk with you, he’d say, well let’s talk a while, and if he didn’t, he’d say, get the hell away from here. That was the way Cap was. Devil Anse, he used to kill a beef and roast it every Christmas, you know. I’ve went there and eat with him a lot. They tell me they wouldn’t know that place now. They’ve cleaned the graveyard up, you know. I ain’t been up there in… Be five years in January since I got down and I ain’t been away … Only one takes me anyplace is my daughter Edith and Ralph and Edith’s working all the time and Ralph’s all the time busy and Ralph takes me to the doctor every month and Edith took me to the store back and forth and Ralph took me last Saturday.

How has Downtown Logan changed since you were young?

Oh, it’s changed a big lot. Built more buildings in it and everything. Used to be you had about three or four policeman and that was it. Now I can remember back whenever they had a wooden courthouse. A boxed building. I was just a big boy then. Daddy followed rafting and pushboating. You know what pushboating is? Well, they had a big long boat. He had two. And one of ‘em was about eight feet wide and about 46 feet long. Other one was about twelve feet wide. And they had to catch water to get that big boat. And sixteen foot wide. And they’d take a pair of mules or horses, whichever they had, and they’d go to Logan and buy groceries. He had a store and he boated most of his stuff. They’d kill hogs and take chickens and catch fish and take it down to Logan and sell it and they’d bring groceries back.

And they’d make these trips how often?

He went every week. It would take two days to make it, very best. You had from daylight to dark.

Tell me more about your work history.

Well I was a blacksmith. Worked in electric force. They knew I was going to fire. Harvey Ferguson was superintendent. Johnny Davis was general manager. They knowed how old I was. They knowed I was going to retire. I left Christian over here. They shut down. Johnny Davis offered me a job and offered me a job and I wouldn’t take it. I met him right at the foot of the hill. He was a boss over some Elk Creek mine. Well, I went and worked about six months lacking two days for Burl Stotts over there in Campbell’s Creek, built a tipple he fell off of and got killed. I come back and Johnny had come in home that week and Johnny and Harvey Ferguson had been up here and they wanted me to come around there and talk with them on Saturday night. I went around there. They said Johnny said he wanted me to come back up and work for him. I said, well you won’t give me enough. He said, how much you getting? I told him. He said, well I’ll give you three dollars on the day more. I said, well I’ll do it. The rates was 24 dollars. Union then. He give me 27 dollars. I wasn’t getting 24 and going over there and paying board, you know. So I said, well I’ll go back over there and work next week and pay my board up. I wouldn’t walk right off the job from him. He was a good fellow. And he was good to me. And he liked me and everything. And he give me all he could give me. They said they appreciated that, Davis and Harvey Ferguson both. That I’d do a thing like that. So I went back and worked that week and paid my board and come back and went up there and stayed with him fourteen years and retired. In November 30, 1962.

Do you remember anything about your last day?

No, they give me a pair of gloves and Johnny told me that he was going to put a ten dollar gold piece in my envelope. And he did.

What about World War I?

Well I was called… I was drum runner. The superintendent come down in the drum house where I was at. The superintendent said I see you are called for service. I said, Yeah, two more weeks will be my last. You better get somebody in here and let me learn him while I can. He said, we were studying about that. Do you want to go? I said, no I don’t want to go but I guess I’ll have to go. Kaiser was his name. He said, We’ll see what we can do about it. I’ll let you know and I’ll keep you posted at all times. Well, that was on Monday morning, I believe it was. On Saturday evening, I had to work six days a week, Saturday evening he wanted me to come over to his office. That was around on Huff Creek, at Mallory 1. And I went over there. He said, I think I’ve got you retired. He said, We’ve got to have coal men as well as army men. Just don’t say anything about it to none of the boys. You’ll not have to go. And that was all of it. I never did have to go. But I registered five different times for the service. Last time I registered, they took everybody. They didn’t get too old—I registered them all. And the company put me in a little old room beside the store and furnished my eatings for that day paid me for my day’s work and the government never did pay me a cent for none of it. Five different times. Now at first start I had to take them, I had to keep a tally of how many registered, had to take them to Logan and send them out, call in to Washington and tell them how many I registered and everything. Now the last time, I didn’t have to do that. A man come and got ‘em the next day.

Who taught you how to blacksmith?

Oh, I taught myself. My daddy used to shoe horses and I used to help him in the shop. That’s the hardest job ever I got in, shoeing horses or mules. Dangerous job, too. I’ve had them kick me plumb over top of… At that time you had belluses you blow. They’d kick me plumb over top of them belluses. Almost kill me sometimes.

Were there any blacksmith shops around Logan when you were a boy?

Oh yeah. There was plenty of them. There in Logan there was a big one. A fellow named White was the blacksmith down there. Boy, he’d whip a mule. He kept big old hickory poles in there and a mule or horse that didn’t hold still or anything he’d throw its leg down and grab one of them poles—I’ve been in there and watched him—and he’d beat that mule… I swear, I’d be uneasy about it. Think he was going to kill it. It would just quiver like a leaf.

Where was his shop?

Right where the courthouse sits now. There was a wooden courthouse. Box building. Two-story high. And his blacksmith shop was right on down the street. I’d say it wasn’t quite down to the Smoke House. Not quite down that far. Over on the right hand side. It was a big old boxed building and a shed to it. He’d get dirty coal. He was too tight to buy the coal or something. And he’d have enough smoke go all over that town. Yeah, I remember all about that.

NOTE: Some names may be transcribed incorrectly.

Interview with Frank Hill of Big Creek, WV (2004) 2

20 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Banco, Big Creek, Boone County, Ed Haley, Music

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On June 2, 2004, Billy Adkins and I visited Frank Hill. Mr. Hill, a retired farmer, bus driver, and store keeper, made his home on Ellis Fork of North Fork of Big Creek in Boone County, West Virginia. Born in 1923, he was the son of Edward W. and Annie Elizabeth (Stollings) Hill. Billy and I were interested in hearing about Mr. Hill’s Fowler ancestry and anything he wanted to share about his own life. We greatly enjoyed our visit. What follows is a partial transcript of our interview:

FRANK HILL

I was born April 22, 1923 up the Ellis Fork Road. When I was born there, we had a four-room Jenny Lind house. It was an old-timer: double fireplace that burned coal and wood, you know. My mother had eleven children and I was the last one. When she saw me, she give up.

EDUCATION

I went to the Stone School, a one-room school just up Ellis Fork. My wife’s grandpa, Albert Stone, gave them land to build this school. It wasn’t a big lot – it might have been 300 feet square. We played ball there in the creek. We didn’t have much dry ground. Well, I went through the 8th grade around there. Arithmetic was my best subject. I had good handwriting, too. I thought I could go into the 9th at Chapmanville but they wouldn’t let me. They said I hadn’t took this test you were supposed to take as you left the 8th grade.

I walked a mile and six-tenths to school. We’d had bad teachers. They couldn’t get no control over the students. Dad got this old fellow from Madison and he said, “Now, I’ll give you ten dollars extra on the month.” I think the board paid fifty dollars a month. Back then, young men and women went to school. Twenty, twenty-five years old. They were so mean the teachers couldn’t hardly handle them. I had an older brother that was one of them. A teacher whipped a younger brother he had one day and he said, “Old man, wait till I catch you out. I’ll give you a good one.” And he meant it, too.

JOHNNY HAGER

Little Johnny Hager was a fiddle player. He was a little man, never was married. And he never had a home. All he had was a little suitcase with a few clothes in it. He’d stay with people maybe a month or two and the way he paid his keep was he whittled out lids or fed their pigs and stuff like that. He’d stay there a month or two till he felt he’d wore out his welcome then he’d go to another house. He was a well-liked little guy. Us boys, we followed him wherever he went cause he could sure play that fiddle. He played one tune called “Hell Among the Heffers”.

DEPRESSION

We had a hard time in this world. You couldn’t buy a job then. I had a brother-in-law that worked for the Pure Oil Company in Logan that was the only man that had a public job in this whole hollow. People grew tobacco to pay their taxes and bills they had accumulated. It was terrible. I remember my daddy had a little barrel of little potatoes when spring come and this old fellow lived above us, he was a musician. His name was Carlos Clark. He’d come out of the coalfields in Logan and he lost his home. His wife was a cousin of mine. He was trying to teach me to play the guitar. I’d go there and she’d lead the singing and he’d pick the guitar and I’d try to play second. He give me eleven lessons for that barrel of potatoes.

We had two or three around here that went to work in the CCC camps. Lloyd Ellis from Whitman’s Creek was one of them and Seymour Ellis was another one from Six Mile. In his last days, that was all he wanted to talk about. They went plumb into California in the CC camps. Then war broke out and they just switched them camps over to the Army. The Army operated those camps anyhow. That’s why they was so successful. They had control over boys to teach them how to do things.

DANCES

We got just as wild as any of them. Ed Haley used to come over here and play. The Barker family had a full band. Now, they could make the rafters roar. There was an old lady lived in here married to Walter Fowler who called the dances and there wasn’t a one of us really knowed how to dance but we put on a show anyhow. They had them in people’s homes. No drinking allowed but there was always a few that did. They always had a lot of good cakes.

CHURCHES

It was mostly Church of Christ around here. The main preacher up here in these parts was Pope Dial from Huntington. I’ll tell you another one that came in here that followed him sort of was Melvin White. Vernon Mullins followed up years later when he preached in here. I remember the first sermon he ever preached was around here in the one-room Stone School. He established a lot of different churches in the country but that was the first one. He’d talk about how he started here, preached his first sermon. Every funeral he conducted on this creek, he’d tell that story.

In Search of Ed Haley 352

08 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Chapmanville, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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The next day, Brandon and I got Mona to ride around town and show us some of the places where Ed played, as well as where he’d made the home recordings on 17th Street. In the car, she tried to recount the places the family had lived since her birth at Horse Branch in 1930.

The first place she remembered was an old brown house built on a slope at Halbert Street. This was the place where Ralph built the trap door.

When Mona was seven or eight years old, the family moved to 337 37th Street.

When she was about thirteen, they moved to 105 17th Street. She lived there in 1944 when she married Wilson Mullins and moved away to Chapmanville, near Harts. After her divorce, she moved back to 17th Street. At that time, Ed was separated from Ella and living in West Virginia.

For a brief spell, the Haleys lived at 5210 45th Street. Rosie Day lived nearby in a basement apartment.

Around 1948, the family moved to 1040 Greenup Avenue. Mona lived there when she married Kenny Smith and moved to South Point, Ohio.

Around 1950, Ed, Ella, Lawrence, Pat, and little Ralph moved to 2144 Greenup Avenue. Jack and Patsy lived there for a while because Patsy — who was pregnant with twins — wanted to be near the hospital. It was there that Ed passed away in February of 1951.

Thereafter, Ella stayed intermittently with Lawrence and Pat in Ashland or with Jack and Patsy in Cleveland until her death in 1954.

Brandon and I drove Mona around town later and she pointed out the sight of the Catlettsburg stock sale, where she remembered Ed making “good money” around 1935-36. She also directed us to at least three different locations of Jean Thomas’ “Wee House in the Wood.” One was remodeled into an office building and used by the county board of education, while another was out in what seemed like the middle of nowhere on a wooden stage in a valley surrounded by tall grass. Brandon and I thought this latter location was almost surreal, like something out of a weird dream.

Later at dinner, Mona told us what happened to her records.

“I sent Clyde some records when he was in San Quentin, California but he never brought them back with him,” she said.

I told her that some guy named Junius Martin had brought Lawrence some of Ed’s recordings and she said, “Seems like Junius Martin was one of Pop’s drinking buddies. I thought his name was Julius.”

In Search of Ed Haley 351

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, John Hartford

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Early in December, Brandon and I met at Pat Haley’s. All of our excitement focused on the upcoming meeting with Owsley’s forensic team, although it wasn’t long until we were in the familiar routine of asking Pat and Mona questions. Mostly they spoke of Ralph, a key player in Ed’s story. It was Ralph who recorded Ed’s and Ella’s music. Pat said Patsy knew a lot about Ralph, so she called her in Cleveland.

Patsy said Ralph was a nice and intelligent person.

“All the kids looked up to him when they were growing up,” she said.

As far as Patsy knew, Ralph never had any contact with his real father but he did take the last name of Payne when he was older.

Around 1936, Ralph married Margaret Ryan, an eighteen- or nineteen-year-old Cincinnati girl. The newlyweds took up residence with Ed and Ella, and Ralph stopped drinking (at his wife’s insistence). Margaret remained living with the Haleys during the war, when Ralph was overseas fighting the Japanese.

During the war, Ralph had an affair with a Filipino woman named Celeste, who Pat said bore him a son. Mona thought he actually married Celeste. According to her, his plan was to “set” Margaret up after the war, divorce her and return to his Filipino bride. He had Celeste’s name tattooed on his body. When he returned home from the war, he told Margaret, when she saw his tattoo, that Celeste had been the name of his ship. Ralph and Margaret soon left Ashland and moved to Cincinnati.

It was around that time that Patsy came into the family. She said she married Jack in California on October 25, 1946 and met Ed the following Thanksgiving in Ashland. She and Jack moved in with him for three months at 105 17th Street. Mona, Wilson Mullins, and little Ralph were also living there at the time. Jack only stayed for about three months because he couldn’t find work. Patsy said they moved out near Ralph in Cincinnati. Ella’s brother Allie Trumbo lived there, as did several of her close friends. Mona and her family soon followed them there and found an apartment in the same building.

Mona said Ralph’s thoughts were with Celeste: he was in the process of getting Margaret “set up” when tragedy intervened.

One Sunday in May of 1947, Jack, Patsy, Ralph, Margaret, Mona, Wilson, and little Ralph went fishing at a park about 25 miles outside of Cincinnati. At some point, Patsy said Ralph and Mona began talking about hanging upside down in a nearby tree. Mona climbed up the tree and Patsy took her picture. Then Ralph got in the tree and fell. As he lay on the ground, he told his family that his neck was broken and requested that they put a board under him until the doctors could arrive. Ralph was taken to a hospital where he told Ella, “When I bite down on the ice it makes a musical tone in my head.”

On Thursday, May 22, 1947, Ralph died at the age of 34. The family was afraid that Ella might hear of his death over the radio. She was staying at Mona’s apartment at the time.

On May 24 — Mona’s birthday — Ralph was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery near Cincinnati. Patsy said Ed never made it to Ralph’s funeral, nor did Lawrence, who was in the service in Florida but Mona remembered that Lawrence was there on emergency leave. Someone played “Beautiful Isle of Somewhere”, Ralph’s favorite hymn.

Celeste later wrote Ella, mentioning how her son had an ear problem. When the family wrote to tell her of Ralph’s death, she figured they were making it up just so she would stop writing.

We figured that Ralph was Mona’s favorite brother since she had named her oldest son after him, but she said Jack was her favorite brother because he had taken up for her the most. She said Ella had been the one who named her son after Ralph. She also spoke highly of Noah, who contracted malaria and saw a lot of combat during World War II.

“Noah was good to send things home to Mom and Pop during the war,” Mona said. “And when he came home he laid carpet and fixed doorbells did things like that for Mom there at 17th Street.”

Noah went to Cleveland around 1950. Pat said Noah’s wife was a high-strung person. Their daughter Rosemary killed herself when she was eighteen. She wanted to get married but her mother protested, so she went into her brother’s room and shot herself in the head. In later years, Noah and Janet divorced. Pat said Noah’s son Jimmy really did a good job of looking after them. Janet died several years ago.

In Search of Ed Haley 119

28 Tuesday May 2013

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While on tour in California, I visited Clyde Haley at what he kept reminding me was his “hospital.” Clyde, I noticed, had his mother’s nose and those piercing blue eyes that Pat Haley told me about. We were allowed some privacy in a sun-drenched courtyard, where he encouraged me to “ask away” about his father. At first, his memories were fuzzy, but when I played the fiddle for him, he got very excited — “You’re playing my dad’s tunes!” — and started calling out the names of songs, places, and people. He told me quite a bit about Ed, although the historical accuracy of our conversation deteriorated fairly quickly. Clyde said his father played with the fiddle positioned at his groin — a remarkably different location than anywhere I’d seen before. He also said that when Ed played for a long time at dances, he straightened his right leg and rested his left forearm and the fiddle on his left leg, which he propped up on a chair. He held my fiddle to better show me what he meant, but it looked so bizarre that I just wasn’t sure about it.

Talking with Clyde was great in that he offered a completely different slant on Ed’s character and personality than what Lawrence gave me. He was very adamant about Ed being an angry, abusive drunk, and even went so far as to blame his failures in life on him. He said the first time he ever tasted moonshine, Ed slipped it to him at the dinner table and he got so drunk that he fell off of his stool. Ella bent over to help him up and smelled alcohol on his breath. “Moonshine whiskey,” she said to Ed. “What are you trying to do, kill him?”

In Search of Ed Haley 87

11 Thursday Apr 2013

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In January of 1994, Lawrence put me in touch with his brother Clyde Haley, an old bachelor who had spent most of his life roaming the country, working here and there and always managing to get into some kind of trouble. Lawrence called Clyde “the black sheep of the family,” while Mona laughingly dubbed him as a “rogue.” He was Ed Haley’s oldest son and some seven years older than Lawrence. Each time I went to Harts Creek, people had asked about Clyde. Apparently, he made quite an impression.

When I first called Clyde, he lived in a minimum-security nursing home in Stockton, California. Our conversation started like this:

“Hello, John!”

     Hey, Clyde.  How’re you doing?

“Well, I’m still in the hospital.”

     Well, all right. I been wanting to talk to you for two years now.

“Who is this?”

     This is John Hartford in Nashville.

“Well, I don’t know whether I know you personally, do I?”

     Well, you may not. I’m a real good friend of Lawrence and Pat’s. And I play the fiddle myself and I’m on television. I wear a little derby hat and I dance while I play the fiddle.

Clyde laughed.

     But the reason I want to talk to you is I think your father was the greatest old-time fiddler that ever lived.

“I do, too,” he said.

Apparently, Clyde spent a lot of time bragging on Ed’s music at the nursing home. I told him I would send him copies of his father’s music and he got really excited.

“Okay,” he said. “We do a lot of little dancing here in our recreation periods. I think I’ll be outta here in March. It’s not a jail or anything — it’s a hospital.”

I told him I would be touring California in June and he said, “Well, you’ve got my address. Drop by and see me. I’m in Stockton.”

In the meantime, there were a lot of things we could talk about over the telephone. I could tell early in our conversation that Clyde was sometimes right on with his stories, while at other times he was completely out to lunch. His memories were sporadic — in no particular order — like bits of broken glass in a huge pile of garbage that you have to sort through and put back together.

I knew Clyde was Lawrence’s oldest living brother, but wasn’t exactly sure of his age.

“I was born in 1921,” he said. “That’d make me about 73.”

Clyde said he went with his father on trips more than any of the other Haley children.

“When my dad wanted to leave Mom and get away from her for a change, he’d always take me as his crutch,” he said. “I was his favorite son outside of Ralph. He called me ‘Reecko’. That was his nickname for me. I used to carry the fiddle case for him. And I went with him when he’d go to Logan County and go up on Harts Creek and up in Dingess and up that way. And he’d go over around Wayne County. He knew people up there.”

I asked Clyde to describe his father and he said, “My dad, he was about 6’2″ and he had real small feet. He had feet like a dancer would have and he wore a size six shoe. I remember that because I used to wear his shoes. I never saw him with a suit on in my life.”

In Search of Ed Haley 48

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

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I asked Lawrence if he’d heard from any of his brothers or sister and he said, “I’ve got one that lives in town now. He moved back from Cleveland, Ohio. He lives in town. Noah was a little bit… You might want to talk to him, I don’t know. But Noah, he went away, I guess, in 1939. He went in the service. He was at Scoffield Barracks in Hawaii when the Japanese… He was in all that Pacific Theater. I think he was wounded a couple of times. The Japanese bayoneted him one time in a bonsai attack or something. It left Noah a little bit shell-shocked or something. He gets a pension from it. He’s not together all there, I guess. You know, in a way, if you talked to him you’d never notice it. He was married to a woman of Hungarian descent and raised a family — a boy and a girl. He had a problem with the girl, too. She was having a problem with a boyfriend or something and her boyfriend was there at the house. Well, the boy had a pistol or some sort of a gun and she went and got that pistol and said, ‘If you don’t love me,’ or something and she shot herself. She committed suicide. I think it was non-intentional. It was just a bluff.”

I said to Lawrence, “Well now, aren’t your other brothers, they’re all kind of hard to get along with, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, a little bit odd,” he answered. “Clyde just moved out and took off and went his way, I guess. Followed the sun, I call it. We’d hear from him in Louisiana one year and the next year he might be in Montana or Upper State New York. He did hobo. Noah went to see him about ten years ago out in California and they started back and Noah was going to stop and get some gasoline. Clyde said, ‘No, don’t stop here and get gas. I’ll get your gasoline.’ He went over to this big church and told them he was on the road back to Ohio and didn’t have money to get there. I guess they give them a tank of gas and they come all the way back from California like that. Clyde was good at that. He did work and we’d get his W-2 forms. He never did turn in his income tax, I don’t think. He’d send his W-2 forms home. Some years he was out on an oil rig in Louisiana. Apparently during the time he was working for them they had rigs off the coast of Alaska.”

Hearing Lawrence speak of his brothers caused me to ask if maybe any of Milt Haley’s “stuff” — which I now presumed to be sort of bad — might’ve come down in their genetics.

“I don’t know, John,” he said. “I couldn’t say. They never met their granddad. I don’t think… My dad, if he’d been a sighted man, he’d probably been as gentle as a lamb. But he had frustrations in his own life.”

“Sometimes in a situation like that, sometimes a gene will come and it won’t get everybody,” I said, pressing Lawrence a little further. “Like it’ll skip your dad, and like skip you, but pick out a brother there and one over there.”

Lawrence totally disagreed.

“Well, I don’t think any of them… And I really don’t think my grandfather, from what I’ve heard of that tale… It was caused by hard times. I’m not trying to defend my grandpa because, hell, it don’t make any difference to me now.”

Milt in so many ways seemed like a critical character in the story: an ambiguous rogue — a key player in causing Ed’s blindness and inspiring his music, whose very genetic attributes or deficiencies might still live on strongly in his grandchildren.

I wondered if Lawrence knew where Milt came from before his settlement on Harts Creek.

“I think maybe over in Old Virginia or over in Pike County,” he said. “I understand there’s some Haleys in Pike County. I’d ask Aunt Liza, ‘Where’d Milt Haley come from?’ ‘Well, he come from over the mountain.’ Now, that’s as far as I could get from her.”

Lawrence thought his father had resolved his hard feelings toward the Brumfields in later years.

“Pop was supposed to have made the remark that if he’d had his eyesight he’d hunted down the people that killed his dad,” Lawrence said. “But afterwards, him and one of the Brumfield sons, they settled their trouble.”

I said, “Well obviously if your grandmother was at the Brumfields’ house the night she got shot, there was no animosity between her and the Brumfields.”

I was starting to understand how the tragedies of Ed’s early life, as well as the legacy of his father, had manifested itself into the pain, rage, and lonesomeness I’d been so drawn to in his music. I kept telling Lawrence, “We’re gonna have to go back up Harts Creek,” but it would be a year before we actually did so.

In Search of Ed Haley 19

06 Thursday Dec 2012

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On the way home in the car, Lawrence told a story about his father getting drunk and trying to find his way home one winter night.

“We lived on Halbert Street,” he said. “The Prices down the street took Pop off somewhere or brought him back to their house and turned him loose after he got real good and drunk. Well, he was coming home by himself. It might have been two or three city blocks. He was walking on this blacktop street but he was so drunk and it was pretty cold weather, too, and he just fell over in the ditch and went to sleep. They found him the next day at daylight. They said if he hadn’t been drunk he would’ve froze to death. That was way back I guess when I was a baby.”

A hard picture began to emerge: alcohol, music, meanness and the desolation it produces. Lawrence, however, emphasized that his father was actually a happy person who lived an eventful life.

“These people that put these jackets on these albums and things, they take a tune like ‘Man of Constant Sorrow’ and make it out like my dad should play a piece of music like that because that was his place in life: being a poor old down-and-out blind man — that he lived the life of ‘constant sorrow,'” he said. “That’s the way they make these tunes seem: that should be maybe my dad’s signature tune or something, playing a dirge like that. When really he enjoyed life and had a good time whenever it could be had. If he had somebody to carouse with, he’d carouse as long as they would and probably wear three or four people out.”

I said, “I get the feeling that as well as he played the dirges, that his favorite stuff was like ‘Cumberland Gap’ and ‘Ida Red’.”

Lawrence agreed, “Yeah, and he enjoyed people dancing. My brother Clyde, I guess he stayed around Pop a lot and he could call any of those ‘birdie in the cage’-type clogging square dance. The old hoedown square dance. He lives in California. He’s in Stockton somewhere out there, or was the last time I heard.”

I wondered if it would be okay to call him.

“Yeah,” Lawrence said, “if Pat has his number at the house.”