Tag Archives: Carolyn Johnnie Farley

Interview with John Dingess 2 (1996)

11 Friday Jul 2014

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

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Al rounded up a gang of men to accompany him on his ride to fetch the prisoners in Williamson. Albert and Charlie Dingess were ringleaders of the posse, which included “Short Harve” Dingess, Hugh Dingess, John Dingess, Burl Farley, French Bryant, John Brumfield, and Charley Brumfield. Perhaps the most notorious member of the gang was French Bryant – “a bad man” who “did a lot of dirty work for the Dingesses.” On the way back from Kentucky, he tied Milt and Green by the arms and “drove them like a pair of mules on a plow line.”

“French Bryant run and drove them like a pair of horses ahead of these guys on the horses,” John said. “That’s quite a ways to let them walk. Old French, he married a Dingess. I knew old French Bryant. When he died, he was a long time dying and they said that he hollered for two or three days, ‘Get the ropes off me!’ I guess that come back to him.”

When the gang reached the headwaters of Trace Fork — what John called “Adams territory” — they sent a rider out ahead in the darkness to make sure it was safe to travel through that vicinity.

Waiting on the Brumfield posse was a mob of about 100 men hiding behind trees at Sycamore Bottom, just below the mouth of Trace Fork. This mob was led by Ben and Anthony Adams and was primarily made up of family members or people who worked timber for the Adamses, like Tom Maggard (“Ben’s right hand man”).

As the Brumfield rider approached their location, they began to click their Winchester rifles — making them “crack like firewood.” Hearing this, the rider turned back up Trace Fork, where he met the Brumfields and Dingesses at Boardtree Bottom and warned them about the danger at the mouth of Trace. They detoured safely up Buck Fork, then stopped at Hugh Dingess’ on Smokehouse where they remained for two or three days, not really sure of what to do with their prisoners. They made a “fortress” at Hugh’s by gathering about 100 men around them, fully aware that Ben Adams might make another effort to recapture Milt and Green.

While at Hugh’s, they got drunk on some of the red whiskey and apple brandy made at nearby Henderson’s. They also held a “trial” to see if Milt and Green would admit their guilt. They took one of the men outside and made him listen through the cracks between the logs of the house as his partner confessed on the inside. About then, the guy outside got loose and ran toward Bill’s Branch but was grabbed by “Short Harve” Dingess as he tried to scurry over a fence.

After this confession, the Brumfields and Dingesses considered killing Milt and Green on the spot but “got scared the Adamses was gonna take them” and headed towards Green Shoal.

John didn’t know why they chose George Fry’s home but figured Mr. Fry was a trusted acquaintance. He said they “punished” them “quite a bit there” but also got one to play a fiddle.

“These people that killed them, they made them play their last tune,” John said. “One of them would play and one guy, I think, he never would play for them.  I forgot which one, but they never could get one guy to do much. The other one’d do whatever they’d tell him to do. That’s just before they started shooting them. The tune that they played was ‘Hell Up Coal Hollow’. I don’t know what that tune is.”

After that, the mob “shot their brains out” and left them in the yard where the “chickens ate their brains.”

A neighbor took their bodies through Low Gap and buried them on West Fork.

John said there was a trial over Haley and McCoy’s murders, something we’d never heard before. Supposedly, about one hundred of the Brumfields and their friends rode horses to Hamlin and strutted into the courtroom where they sat down with guns on their laps. The judge threw the case out immediately because he knew they were fully prepared to “shoot up the place.”

This “quick trial,” of course, didn’t resolve the feud. Back on Harts Creek, Ben Adams often had to hide in the woods from the Dingesses. One time, Hugh and Charlie Dingess put kerosene-dowsed cornstalks on his porch and set them on fire, hoping to drive him out of his house where they could shoot him. When they realized he wasn’t home, they extinguished the fire because they didn’t want to harm his wife and children. Mrs. Adams didn’t live long after the feud. Ben eventually moved to Trace Fork where he lived the rest of his life. Charlie never spoke to him again.

John also said there seemed to have been a “curse” on the men who participated in the killing of Haley and McCoy. He said Albert Dingess’ “tongue dropped out,” Al Brumfield “was blind for years before he died,” and Charlie Dingess “died of lung cancer.” We had heard similar tales from Johnny Farley and Billy Adkins, who said mob members Burl Farley and Fed Adkins both had their faces eaten away by cancer. Vilas Adams told us about one of the vigilantes drowning (Will Adkins), while we also knew about the murders of Paris Brumfield, John Brumfield, Charley Brumfield, and Bill Brumfield.

Just before hanging up with John, Brandon asked if he remembered Ed Haley. John said he used to see him during his younger days on Harts Creek.

“When he was a baby, old Milt wanted to make him tough and he’d take him every morning to a cold spring and bath him,” he said. “I guess he got a cold and couldn’t open his eyes. Something grew over his eyes so Milt took a razor and cut it off. Milt said that he could take that off so he got to fooling with it with a razor and put him blind.”

John said Ed made peace with a lot of the men who’d participated in his father’s killing and was particularly good friends with Cecil Brumfield, a grandson of Paris.

In Search of Ed Haley 268

16 Sunday Mar 2014

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

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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.”

In Search of Ed Haley 267

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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

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Johnnie had also heard a lot about Milt Haley.

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

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

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

Brandon asked about the members of the mob.

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

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

Billy asked who fired the first shot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 266

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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The next day — the 106th anniversary of Milt Haley’s death – Billy Adkins suggested that we go see Carolyn “Johnnie” Farley on Brown’s Run of Smoke House Fork. She was a granddaughter to Burl Farley, one of the ringleaders of the Brumfield mob. There were other interesting connections: her grandmother was Hollena Brumfield’s sister and her mother was Ben Adams’ niece. Her ancestors, then, represented both sides of the trouble, helping to make her a great source on the 1889 feud. Billy said she was old enough to remember Ed, too. His notes showed her as being born in 1924.

Without really hesitating, we went outside through a small rain shower and boarded the car and took off up the creek. We were oblivious to the poor weather and kept pointing to spots that were probably only significant to us.

“Now that was part of the old Al Brumfield farm.”

“There’s where the old boom was.”

“Here’s where the ambush took place.”

Our fascination with all the sites continued after we turned up the Smoke House Fork.

“There’s the Hugh Dingess Elementary School.”

“There’s the old Henderson Dingess place.”

“There’s where the old Dingesses are buried.”

“There’s Cecil Brumfield’s place. Ed used to visit there.”

We finally reached Browns Run. Johnnie Farley’s white house was just up the branch on the left, accessed by a muddy driveway filled with ruts and sharp jutting rocks. We parked behind the house, where several wooly dogs and a flock of tiny chickens surrounded us — three strangers ankle-deep in mud holes.

Almost immediately, Johnnie came out the back door and spotted Billy — one of the most recognized and popular guys in Harts — and told us to come on inside. She led us through the kitchen and a hallway, past a giant photograph of her grandmother, Mary Ann Farley (Hollena’s sister), and into a very dim living room. We all sat down on furniture that was literally surrounded by papers, books and pictures. Johnnie was obviously a packrat — a woman after my own heart.

Billy began introducing Brandon and I, but Johnnie stopped him short and looked at me with her ice blue eyes and said, “Oh I know who you are. I’ve got some of your records.” Her spirit and energy were immediately apparent — she spoke as if we were old friends. Her husband sat quietly nearby in a comfortable chair. He was in poor health.

I asked Johnnie if she remembered Ed and she said, “Yes, I knowed Ed Haley. He used to come through this country and pick and play the fiddle. I knowed Uncle Ed good. That old man could stop at any man’s house and they’d take him in and keep him all night and feed him. And he’d come through and stop you know and Mom and the girls would have a meal on the table. They’d just say, ‘Uncle Ed, come on.’ And they’d help him, show him the wash-pan and stuff, let him wash his hands, and he’d just go sit right down and eat with us. Whenever he’d come through out of the Chapmanville area he’d stay with one of my uncles and aunts that lived across the hill. That was George and Rosa Mullins. He’d go across the mountain ’cause he liked drinking and they had it over there — moonshine. And he stayed there week in and week out. People was good to him. He wasn’t mistreated.”

I asked Johnnie how old she was when Ed used to come around and she said, “I was about 10, maybe 12.”

She tried to describe him.

“Well, Ed was a little bit maybe heavier than you are, ’bout as tall. I know he kinda had a great, big belly on him. He was a great big fat man. I’d say Ed weighed around 170 pound. To my recollection, Ed had slim hands and slim fingers. He wore shaded glasses and he wore an overcoat — a brown one — and he had an old brown hat. I believe he smoked a pipe. He wore real old-fashioned shoes and old yarn socks. Uncle Ed drunk a lot. He was a good person. He was humble. He didn’t bother nobody. The only harm you could say he done was to hisself and that was drinking. He was around a lot of people, but Uncle Ed didn’t talk too much. He wouldn’t confront his own feelings. He wouldn’t open up fully to nobody.”

I asked Johnnie if she ever saw Ed drunk and she said, “I never did see him drunk — really drunk, no. I’ve seen him drink but not drunk.”

What about singing?

“No. I heard him fiddle but never sing. He played old tunes. ‘Turkey in the Straw’ and just quite a lot of the old-fashioned first fiddle player’s tunes. Uncle Ed was a good fiddler. He could make a fiddle talk. Mason Conley played the guitar and he’d get with him and play. And they was an old man traveled a lot with him named Ed Belcher. They had an old tune they played called ‘Sally Goodin’.”

Now, what happened to Ed Haley?

“I believe Ed died up around Ed Belcher and them. He drinked himself to death.”