Tag Archives: Cincinnati

Ed Haley plays on WLW (1924)

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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About that time, Brandon found this teeth-rattling article while scanning through microfilm of the Lincoln Republican at the public library in Hamlin, West Virginia. It was titled “Ed Haley and Wife Play for the Radio” and dated Thursday, August 28, 1924.

The Crosley Radio Weekly, published at Cincinnati, Ohio, contains a good picture of Ed Haley and wife, the blind musicians so well known in Hamlin, with an interesting story of Mr. Haley, which we reproduce as follows:

The picture above is that of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Haley, of Ashland, Ky., blind fiddlers, who soon will entertain WLW listeners with a most interesting concert. They have the reputation of being the best old-time music makers of the mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky, making a living for themselves and their three children by playing at dances and county fairs. Mr. Haley is shown playing a fiddle connected with which there is a very interesting story of the old mountain feud days. His father was involved in the famous Brumfield-McCoy feud and was captured by the Brumfields. He was told he was to be shot to death in five minutes, during which time he calmly played his fiddle, the same one his son plays for radio listeners and which he was holding when the above picture was taken. The feudist and a friend was shot to death when the five minutes expired and both their bodies were buried in a wooden box. The fiddle, however, was kept by the Brumfields for some years and later returned to the son of the murdered man.

In Search of Ed Haley 340

21 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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I asked Ugee if Laury ever listened to the Grand Ole Opry and she said, “Yes. He got to hear it the year before he died. He got a radio. Let’s see, what is his name? George Hayes. We had Hayeses that lived down at Arnoldsburg. And he brought Dad up a little radio when Dad was down sick.”

Now, did Ed Haley ever hear the Grand Ole Opry?

“Oh, yes. He heard it down in Kentucky.”

Did he like it?

“No. He went to Cincinnati one time. They was a gonna make records — him and Ella — but they wanted to pick out the one for him to play. Nobody done him that a way. So he said, ‘I’ll pick my own.’ He went to Nashville once. I don’t know as he went to the Grand Ole Opry but he went to Nashville. Somebody drove him, took him down. But when he found out what they done, he didn’t have no use for that.”

Ugee made it clear that she had missed out on most of Ed’s wild times. She knew nothing about his running around with people like Doc White or chasing women. She did say he was bad about telling “dirty jokes.”

“Many a time he’s told me, ‘All right, Ugee. You better get in the kitchen. I’m gonna tell a dirty joke.’ And he’d tell some kind and you could hear the crowd out there just a dying over it. Ella’d say, ‘Mmm, I’ll go to the kitchen, too.'”

I asked Ugee about Ed’s drinking and she told the story again about her brother Harvey giving him drinks to play “Sweet Florena”. She sang some of it for me:

Oncest I bought your clothes, sweet Florena.

Oncest I bought your clothes, sweet Florene

Oncest I bought your clothes but now I ain’t got no dough

And I have to travel on, sweet Florene.

After finishing that verse, Ugee said, “That’s part of the song. And Ella didn’t like to hear that song. I think it reminded her of some of his old girlfriends or something. And she didn’t like for him to play ‘Buttermilk Mountain’, either. He’d throw back his head and laugh. She’d say, ‘Don’t play that thing. I don’t want to hear that thing.’ But she’d second it. She’d draw her eyes close together.”

Brandon asked Ugee about her aunt Rosie Hicks, who was Laury’s sister and a close friend to the Haley family. She said Aunt Rosie was working in Ed’s home in Catlettsburg when she met Blind Bill Day (her sixth husband) during the early years of the Depression. It was a rocky marriage, according to Rosie’s only child, Nora (Davis) Martin.

“I was gonna tell you about him hitting Aunt Rosie,” Ugee said. “He came through the house and Aunt Rosie was upstairs quilting and all at once — Nora said she was in the kitchen cooking — and she heard the awfulest noise a coming down the stairs and said, ‘Mommy had old Bill Day by the leg and was bringing him bumpety-bump down the stairs, dragging him. Got him in the kitchen. He just walked up and hit her with that left hand right in the mouth. She just jerked his britches off of him and started to sit his bare hind-end on the cook stove — and it red hot.’ And Nora said, ‘Oh, Mommy, don’t do that. You’ll kill him.’ She said, ‘That’s what I’m a trying to do.’ And she grabbed her mother and him both and jerked them away from there.”

Ugee was more complimentary of Day’s colleague, Jean Thomas.

“I’ve got cards from her and letters and pictures,” she said. “I’ve been to her house — stayed all night with her. She was nice. She was too good to Bill Day. She spent money on him and give him the name of Jilson Setters. Sent him to England and he played for the queen over there.”

Brandon wondered if Bill Day was a very good fiddler.

“Well, I’m gonna tell ya, I stayed all night with Aunt Rosie and Bill Day one time,” Ugee said. “They lived on 45th Street in Ashland, Kentucky. My brother took me and my mom down there and he hadn’t seen Aunt Rosie for a long time. She’d married again and she lived down there in Ashland, Kentucky. And we aimed to see Ed and Ella, but they was in Cincinnati playing music. That’s who we went to see. So Harvey, he filled hisself up with beer. That’s the first time I ever seen a quart bottle of beer. Anyway, we went up there to hear Uncle Bill play. Harvey laid down on the bed like he was sick. He wasn’t sick: he wanted me just to listen to that fellow play that fiddle. He knowed I’d get sick of it. And he played that song about the Shanghai rooster. I never got so tired in my life of hearing anything as I did that. He only played three pieces. Harvey laid there, he’d say, ‘Play that again. I love it.’ And I had to sit there and listen to it, ’cause I didn’t want to embarrass him by getting up and walking out. I walked over to Harvey and I said, ‘You’re not sick and you’re not tired, so you get up.’ Said, ‘Ugee, I’ve got an awful headache. I drove all the way down here.’ I said, ‘That bottle that you drank give you the headache, so you get up and you listen to your Uncle Bill.’ He went to the toilet. I said, ‘I’m telling you right now — you’re gonna listen to Uncle Bill if I have to listen to him.’ Harvey said, ‘I’m not listening to him no longer. I’ve heard all I want to hear of Uncle Bill.’ I got Harvey up and then I run and jumped in the bed and I covered my head up with a pillow. But we stayed all night and Aunt Rosie went home with us. She told him she’s a going up to Nora’s, but she went to Calhoun with us in the car, and I reckon while she’s gone old Bill tore up the house. I don’t think they lived together very long after that ’cause it wasn’t very long till she come back home. It was home there at my dad’s.”

Brandon asked if Day ever played with Ed in Calhoun County and Ugee said, “Oh, no. If he had, Dad woulda kicked him out.”

Okay, I thought: so Laury had no tolerance for lesser fiddlers. What about Ed?

“Ed Haley, if somebody was playing a piece of music and they wasn’t hitting it right, he’d stick his hands in his pockets and say, ‘Goddamn, goddamn,'” Ugee said. “Dad’d say, ‘Boy, ain’t he good?’ Ed would cuss a blue streak. Then after the man was gone, whoever it was, Dad and Ed would go to mocking him. Dad and Ed Haley was like brothers. They loved each other. Ella and Mom, too. Jack was the baby the first time I seen Ed after he was married. They was expecting Lawrence, so they named him after my dad. Then when she had Mona, why instead of calling her Minnie, she named her after Mom.”

In Search of Ed Haley 307

18 Sunday May 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Civil War, Ed Haley, Music

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We hadn’t played long until Slim was telling me more about his background.

“I came from a line of Irish fiddlers,” he said. “My dad, his brothers, and his dad…  The old man was so good on the fiddle — he was in the Civil War — my grandfather — that the soldiers all chipped in and bought him a fiddle and he didn’t have to fight. He was from Coalton on the road to Grayson out back of Ashland.”

Slim said his dad played “The Old Lady Carried the Jug Around the Hill” and “Girl With the Blue Dress On”.

Here comes the girl with the blue dress on, the blue dress on, with the blue dress on.

Everybody’s crazy about the girl with the blue dress on…

I asked him if his father played “Catlettsburg” and he said yes, although it was not the same version as what Ed played.

“My dad played it,” Slim said. “He played ‘Birdie’, ‘Tennessee Waggoner’. He got these two fingers cut when he was working at a steel mill and his fingers stayed stiff so he had to play the rest of his life with these two fingers. I don’t remember when he played with all five ’cause I was too small. He played ‘Boatin’ Up Sandy’.”

Every now and then, Slim would tell me something about Ed.

“Every Saturday Ed would go to a county courthouse someplace,” he said. “Believe it or not, he was in Grantsville one time when I was up there, sitting on the steps up there at the courthouse. I walked over, I said, ‘Ed, aren’t you out of place?’ He said, ‘You’re liable to find me anywhere.'”

I asked Slim if he ever saw Ed drunk and he said, “I don’t think I ever saw him sober. He didn’t get too high. Seemed like it give him more pep.”

I asked Slim if he remembered Sweet Georgia Brown coming to see Ed in Ashland and he said, “He was up in Ashland at one time. We called him Brownie. Well, he wasn’t around Ed too much. Ed was a close guy. He didn’t associate with a lot of people. Now, he liked me pretty well…but most fiddle players don’t like fiddle players.”

Speaking of fiddlers, Slim said he had met a lot of them during his lifetime. I wondered if he ever met any as good as Ed and he said, “Clark Kessinger was the closest. I think Clark learned from him. See when Clark made records for Brunswick — they had a studio down in Ashland — Ed wouldn’t play on it. He wouldn’t make records. Didn’t want to. He wouldn’t play over the radio. He said they wasn’t any money in that. He wanted to be somewhere somebody could throw a nickel or dime in that cup. He was very poor. He wasn’t starving to death, but — his wife was blind, too — there was no way that they could make any money. And he had a 17- or 18-year-old boy — he was a good guitar player, but he wouldn’t play with him. I don’t remember what his name was. He was ashamed of his father and mother — to get out in public. Not for any personal reasons…just the fact he could see and they couldn’t.”

Slim began talking about his own career in music, mostly his Depression-era radio work. He mentioned working with or meeting people like Bill and Charlie Monroe and Earl Scruggs and even credited himself with bringing “Orange Blossom Special” to Charleston from Atlanta in October of 1938. He kind of caught us by surprise when he spoke of having played all through the Guyandotte Valley.

“We played personal appearances up and down through there,” Slim said. “Played schools and theaters: Godby Branch School, up on Crawley Creek — one room school — and Hugh Dingess School — it was about an eight-room red brick building — Green Shoal, Wewanta. Harts School, I guess I must have played that school fifteen times. From about ’39 on up to 50-something. Everybody turned out when we played Harts. It was supposed to be the meanest place they was on the Guyan at that time. Came across Big Ugly Creek there. See, it goes from Lincoln County over into Boone. I used to broadcast down in there. I’d say, ‘All you Big Ugly girls be sure to come out and see us now.'”

I asked Slim if he played with any local musicians and he said, “No, we went in and played the show. Once in a while, we’d have amateur contests and they’d come in. Well, we’d have fiddling conventions at big high schools.”

I asked Slim if he ever saw Ed around Harts and he said, “No, not down there. Only time I ever seen Ed was around Ashland and Logan and Chapmanville. He played at the bank in Chapmanville. Chapmanville was 12 miles from Logan.”

Later that night, Brandon and I found some more family photographs in a box at Pat Haley’s. One was of Ella, while others were of Margaret Arms. Margaret was a real “mystery lady”: nobody seemed clear on her relationship to the Haley family. Lawrence Haley had remembered her as a cousin to either Ed or Ella, while Mona called her “Margaret Thomas” and said she lived in Cincinnati.

In Search of Ed Haley 277

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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I said, “Now when they played, would they play at the same time?”

“Oh yeah,” Ugee said. “Sometimes they played at the same time. Then one time maybe one would be a playing and the other would be a listening. Say, ‘Oh, you pulled that bow the wrong way.’ ‘Now that didn’t sound right to me. Go back over that again.’ They’d sit maybe not for ten minutes but for hours at a time when I was a growing up. Trying to out-beat the other. Which could make the best runs and which could do this. They never was mad at each other or anything like that, but they’d argue about it. ‘I know I beat you on it.’ ‘Well, you put that run in it at the wrong place.’ But Ed Haley is the only man I ever heard in my life second the fiddle. Dad’d play the fiddle and he’d second his with the fiddle. Like if you’re playing the ‘fine,’ why he might be playing the bass. That’s the prettiest stuff ever you heard. I heard Dad try to do it but Dad never got that good on it.”

I asked her if Ed ever played “Flannery’s Dream” and she said, “Oh, yeah. I’ve heard that.”

When I played “Wild Hog in the Red Brush”, she said Ed definitely played it, although she didn’t remember it having that title.

Just before I played another tune, Ugee said, “This is my birthday gift. My birthday’s the 19th. I’ll be 88 years old. Oh, I do pretty good, I reckon, for the shape I’m in. I remember pretty good but I’ve got trouble on this here voice box.”

“You remember pretty good, like your mother,” Harold said. “She was a hundred years old and she remembered when every kid was borned in that part of the country.”

Ugee said, “Mom delivered over five hundred children. She knowed every one of them and their name.”

Harold said, “And where they come from and up what hollow she had to walk and everything else. She never forgot nothing, that woman.”

Ugee said, “I don’t want to be that old. It’s all right if you can walk and get around. But if you’re down sick in the nursing home, let the good Lord take me away. I don’t wanna be there. My dad had leukemia and cancer of the stomach when he died. And it’s hard to see someone suffer like that.”

I told Ugee what Wilson Douglas had said about people gathering at her father’s home and listening to music on the porch and she said, “Sure, you ought to have seen my home. We had one porch run plumb across the front of the house. Ed and Dad just sat right along behind the railing.”

She pointed to the picture of John Hicks’ house and said, “Our house was even bigger than that. It was plank. But I remember when they all come over there and they’d gang around on that porch. Everybody. When Ed Haley was in the country, they come from miles around to our house. Word would get out that Ed was there or Ed was gonna be there a certain day.”

Inspired by Ugee’s memories, I got some paper from Harold and tried to sketch the Laury Hicks place. Ugee said things like, “It didn’t have no fireplace — we had gas then. And over on this end the steps went plumb down the hill to the road. That’s after they put the paved road down there, you see. Our house sat almost in a curve. Garage is down there at the road.”

I said, “So people gathered in front of the porch to hear all the music?” and Harold said, “They didn’t have much room. The yard only went out there maybe thirty or forty feet and then it dropped off down to the road. A pretty steep bluff — fifteen-, eighteen-, twenty-foot drop. On this side of the house was the garden spot and out the other end the yard didn’t go very far.”

Were there shade trees around the house?

“Yeah, three or four big oak trees over to one side and then we had apple trees on the other side,” Ugee said.

I asked if the crowds came at day or night or only on weekends and Ugee said, “They’d come through the day and Dad and Ed would play music all day and half the night. Weekends, why, it was always a big crowd. I’ve studied about them so much, about how good a friends Ed and Dad was. And always was that way. And they’d have the most fun together.”

Ugee said Ed never put a cup out for money.

“I never seen him put a cup out in my life. Maybe they’d be somebody to come around and put a cigar box to the side and everybody would go through and put money in it. Course when he was playing in the city — Cincinnati or some place like that — why he’d make quite a bit of money there. Whenever he played them religious songs, the hair’d stand on your neck. You’d look at two blind people sitting and singing.”

I interrupted, “Did he play Cincinnati a lot?”

Ugee said, “He played Cincinnati a lot. He went to Cincinnati to make records one time, too. That’d a been in the thirties. He fell out with them. They wanted to pick the tunes. Ain’t nobody picked tunes for Ed — Ed picked his own tunes. When he found out what they was trying to hook him on, he quit right then. Ed went down to Nashville once. I don’t know that he went to the Grand Ole Opry but he went to Nashville. When he found out what they done, he didn’t have no use for that.”

In Search of Ed Haley 250

25 Tuesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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A.S. Fry — the man who owned the home where Milt Haley and Green McCoy were murdered — was a former officer in the Confederate army and early businessman in Harts. According to the Fry history, “Shortly after his return home from the War, his adventurous spirit led him to Kansas and on to Texas; his family remained in Lincoln County. After his return from the West, his youngest son was born.” This son, Evermont Ward Fry, was born in 1872 and was later interviewed by Fred Lambert.

“When I was a boy, people gathered for a week’s religious meetings,” Fry told Lambert. “My father would keep from forty to fifty people. They held meetings in the summer or early fall. The people came on horseback from all directions. The preaching was at the Green Shoal School house; this was an old log building. Before it stood three or four beech trees. Preaching was under these trees. On one occasion my father’s house caught fire. He kept store and had just received an order of five or six dozen buckets. It was the nighttime, but he got out the fire buckets and the men formed a line up from the river. They put out the fire, but one end of the house was pretty badly burned.”

In subsequent years, A.S. Fry made other trips West, apparently with his son, George. George Franklin Fry was born in 1858 and was married to his first cousin, Eliza Virginia Lucas, a daughter of Charles and Lucinda (Fry) Lucas.

“Mrs. Rhoda Fry — Wear in this city and will Remain Hear for a few days,” A.S. Fry wrote to his wife from Ottawa, Franklin County, Kansas, on July 14, 1880. “Lands is from $3 to $20 dollars per acor. Thare is fine crops hear. We may By Land in this County. This is said to be the beste County in the state and thare is thousands of acors for sail heare. It is vary warm. I don’t know when I will be at home. I will wright when I will be at home and I want you and Ward to meet me at huntington. This is a nice Country. I will wright to you in 2 or 3 days what we ar a doing. We have Gist Reatch this City. The Pepel is all Kind and seemes to tak intrust in Emzy Jane. I have nothing worthey of wrighting. Give all of my frieands best Respects for me and tell BC Toney not to Rune his stones two close. So I will close by saying that we ar well. Hoping the last few Lines will find you all well. So fare well. If you Right Direct yere Letter A.S. Fry, Garnett, Anderison Co., Kansas.”

“We wrote you from Cincinnati Ohio regarding Goods,” George wrote as an attachment to the aforementioned letter. “We bough[t] a little stock — and if Will has not gone after them go at once — they are in care of J.L. Caldwell. We also sent Bills at same time. In close you will find a butiful song bough[t] on Train.”

In Search of Ed Haley 240

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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A few days later, I called Ugee Postalwait with a whole bunch of questions, mostly related to my recent trip to Harts. I asked her if Laury Hicks ever went to Harts Creek with Ed.

“Oh, yeah,” she said immediately. “All through them places. Dad had a car and he had a driver, and they’d go a lot of places. Anybody was willing to take Dad any place.”

“Did Doc White ever take them anywhere?” I asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Ugee said. “They’ve all run around together. He was a photographer, he could make teeth, he was a doctor, he was everything — and he learned it all in the penitentiary. He was a mid-wife. He could do anything. Played the fiddle. He was crazy about the railroad. He had a railroad steam engine and all that stuff back of his house. He was a smart man. Even my dad doctored with him.”

Ugee remembered Ed playing a tune called “Getting off the Raft” and figured her father also played it.

“I don’t remember Dad ever playing it but if Ed played it he played it, too,” she said. “Whatever one played, the other’n played. They was just that close together, John. They was just that way.”

I asked if Laury ever talked about a fiddler named Jeff Duty and she said, “Yeah, he talked about a fiddler by that name.”

What about Cain Adkins?

“Adkins. That sounds right.”

“Ought to be some people in Cincinnati to know Ed Haley real well,” Ugee said, kind of changing the direction of our conversation. “Him and Ella went down there and played music a lot. They made some money there. Whenever they’d get close and need some money they would go to Cincinnati and stay maybe for three or four days.”

U.B. Buskirk: West Virginia Timber Boss 2

30 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by in Logan, Timber

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The Peter Morgan affair, as well as subsequent related events, had a profound impact on young U.B. Buskirk, who would become Logan’s wealthiest citizen in future years, but he chose not to divulge any information about it to Fred B. Lambert, regional historian. Instead, he discussed another murder involving Dave Straton, the son of Maj. William Straton of Logan.

“Once in 1870 or 1871, 200 or 300 rafters came to Barboursville. All got drunk. There was no room in the hotels. There were many fights and a wild time generally. Scott Lusher and Dave Straton were fighting in the street. Then John Thomas Moore was killed by Dave Straton. John Thomas Moore owned the Burnet House, a two-story building, and kept a hotel and bar room. It was near the Flour Mill at the corner of Water Street and Main Street (exactly where the First Methodist Church now stands). He had rented the upstairs for a dance.”

After 1870, Urias and Louisa Buskirk divorced and young U.B. went to stay with Dr. Bedford Moss in Barboursville.

“My parents fell out and Dr. Moss of Barboursville wanted a boy so I went to live with him,” Buskirk said. “This was about 1874 (September). I remember Henry Poteet, the Thornburgs, Baileys. John Wigal was my teacher. I went there April 1874.”

Throughout the 1870s, then, Buskirk lived in Dr. Moss’ home and received a Cabell County education. His father spent the decade in and out of court over the Morgan murder, while his mother married twice: first to Thomas Buchanan, a Civil War veteran, in 1874 and then to Henry Clay Ragland, future editor of the Logan County Banner, in 1878.

In 1880, young U.B. Buskirk left Dr. Moss and returned to Logan County.

“I left there on July 2, 1880 and came back to Logan,” he said.

After his return to Logan, Buskirk took a teaching position at Pigeon Creek for one year, then used the money he saved to pursue a life in business. His father, a local businessman, may have encouraged this venture.

“In 1881 I was a merchant at Logan,” he said. “I worked at this for 25 years. I bought deer skins, even bear skins, ginseng, etc.”

By the early 1890s, Buskirk was Logan’s wealthiest citizen, with business interests in timber, coal, and real estate. In 1892, he opened the Standard Mercantile Store (later the Guyan Mercantile Company). He served on the town council and built a livery on Hudgins Street. In 1896, he began construction of a mansion at 404 Cole Street.

“I first engaged in timbering, pushing timber into the river, for C. Crane and Co., about 1897,” he told Lambert. “They bought only portable timber. They had three double band mills in Cincinnati. They were in business 25 or 30 years before that.”

In his interview with Lambert, Buskirk showed a real familiarity with the timber industry — particularly its rafting era — as it existed in the Guyandotte Valley in the late 1800s. He sprinkled his stories with memories of people and geography.

“Rafting was rarely done beyond the mouth of Little Huff, just up above Ep Justice’s,” he said. “Most of the Justice family came to Logan. Ben lived on Main Island Creek. He moved to Huntington and died there.”

The upper Guyan Valley was difficult to navigate on rafts because of two geographical features, namely the “Roughs” and the “Betty Shoals.”

“The ‘Roughs of Guyan’ extended 14 miles from the mouth of Gilbert Creek to the forks of the river as the junction of the Clear Fork and the Guyan,” Buskirk said. “The Betty Shoals were just below the mouth of Gilbert Creek. A preacher Fontaine drowned there. His body was recovered.”

Peck’s Mill was a familiar site to raftsmen as they plied their way downriver toward the timber market in Guyandotte and Huntington.

“Peck’s Mill was built by Mr. White in the late ’60s and sold to J.E. Peck Sr. and Ed Peck,” Buskirk said. “R.W. Peck Sr. was sheriff in 1880.”

Logan County rafstmen heading toward the Ohio River usually made it to the Harts area of southern Lincoln County on their first day of travel.

“At the end of the first day’s run, raftsmen put up at Big Ugly, seven miles below Harts Creek — on the right going down,” Buskirk said. “Rafts ran 8-9 miles per hour coming down and reached Logan in 2-3 hours.”

A little further downriver, near West Hamlin, was the “Falls of Guyan,” an actual waterfall and hindrance to river traffic.

“The Falls were dangerous but were removed, as was Dusenberry Dam,” Buskirk said. “The Jordan Sands shifted. Men sometimes had to cut through the sands here and elsewhere to get pushboats through them.”

Upon reaching the town of Guyandotte, loggers sold their rafts and took their money to local saloons and hotels.

“Mrs. Carroll at Guyandotte kept 3-4 businessmen but not raftsmen,” Buskirk said.

Unfortunately, Fred Lambert’s interview ends on that note, leaving no personal record of his later life. Actually, his interview stops at the very moment when Buskirk was at a high point in his personal, economic, and political life. This makes sense considering that Lambert was probably most interested in his genealogy and connections to the timber industry, not his biography.

As a result, we must rely on local historians to briefly conclude the man’s life story.

At the end of 1897, Buskirk completed construction of a mansion at 404 Cole Street in Logan — known in later years as the Hinchman House — then promptly went to Cincinnati and married Frances “Fantine” Humphrey.

Mr. and Mrs. Buskirk settled in their Logan mansion, where they had three children: Voorheis (Buskirk) McNab, born January 2, 1899, Dr. Joseph Randolph Buskirk, born July 30, 1900, and Dr. James Humphrey Buskirk.

On May 15, 1909, Buskirk sold his home in Logan to Ettie Robinson (the wife of former sheriff and councilman, S.B. Robinson) and moved to Cincinnati. He kept in touch with his friends in Logan and died a wealthy man on March 14, 1956 at the age of 94 in Louisville, Kentucky.

In Search of Ed Haley 168

08 Sunday Sep 2013

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After getting familiar with the postcards, I called Patsy Haley to see if she could tell me any more about Ella’s young life with Ralph.

“Ralph was about five years old when Mom married Ed Haley,” Patsy said. “Ralph is not by Ed Haley. I figure that Mom and Pop must’ve got married about the end of the teens.”

I asked Patsy if Ed was very close to Allie Trumbo, who often wrote to Ella in her younger days.

“They weren’t really close or anything like that,” she said. “My husband and I moved to Cincinnati and that’s when I got acquainted with Allie and his wife. In fact, we lived right across the street from them. They really didn’t talk too much. Allie used to tell me about their father Mr. Trumbo auctioning off land and selling it for a dollar ’cause he owned quite a bit of land by that college. I think Mom had a falling out with him. Mom used to go and stay with them, like on weekends, when she’d go to Cincinnati to work. Allie had called her ‘Penny Ella’ ’cause when she paid them for staying with them she always paid them with change ’cause that’s what Mom got from selling her newspapers.”

Was Allie a musician?

“No, not that I know of,” Patsy said. “He was a fine pool player.”

Patsy didn’t remember Ralph making the records.

“No, that was just before I come in the family,” she said. “I don’t think he did any more recordings after I came into the family. You know, Mom had divorced when I come in the family and they never got remarried. But he lived in the house because the kids wanted him there. Now I can remember when I first came in the family and Mona and I talked, she was quite afraid of her father when she was a little girl because I guess he must’ve been mean. And he musta been abusive and mean to Mom or she wouldn’t a divorced him. But he was a sweet old guy when I knew him. I never ever saw Pop drunk or drinking. But I do remember one time — it was at the holidays — and Noah took his father and went up to Ferguson’s I believe for Pop to play music for them. Well, he kept them out all night ’cause I guess he got pretty loaded. But I never ever saw Pop drink. Now Pat said she had, but I never had.”

I updated Patsy on some of the things I’d found out about Ed’s past on Harts Creek and asked if she knew anything about his mother.

“He really didn’t talk about her too much,” she said. “Only thing that I understood — and he didn’t tell me this — Mom told me — that she was killed when the father was killed. There was never no bad feelings about his parents, either one.”

Patsy said she learned more about Ed’s parents on a trip to Harts in 1947.

“We went up to Harts Creek because Pop had gone up there and we went to get him back,” she said. “That was the first time I met Aunt Liza.”

Aunt Liza said Milt came from “the other side of the mountain,” and that he and his wife were buried up behind their old log cabin on Trace Fork.

“I can remember Aunt Liza pointing to where they were buried,” she said. “When she pointed up, she pointed over towards where the log cabin was.”

In Search of Ed Haley 167

07 Saturday Sep 2013

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On April 10, 1916, a postcard referenced Ralph for the first time. “Florence,” of Portsmouth, wrote to Ella, who had settled at 630 Curtis Avenue in Middletown, Ohio.

“Dear Friend,” she wrote. “I got your card. Was glad to hear from you. Kiss Ralph a dozen kisses for me. Ruth gave me Ralph’s picture and is awful sweet. Tell Mrs. Trumbo I said Hello. How do you like Middletown? Let me know how you and Ralph are.”

Ella was still in Middletown in December of 1916.

By November of 1917, Ella had settled at 913 10th Street in Portsmouth, Ohio. Today, this address (just around the corner from her former Portsmouth location) is an empty lot situated in a bad section of town. Ella’s brother Luther lived nearby on Gay Street, while brother Allie was away in the Army.

“Hello Sister,” Allie wrote. “I am now on my way to the training camp. Will arrive there Some time tomorrow. It is at San Antonio Texas Camp Travis.”

On January 10, 1918, “Miss Ella Trumbo” was living in Ashland, Kentucky. She remained unmarried, based on the usage of her maiden name in the postcard.

The next postcard is dated in the early 1930s. By this time, she had married Ed Haley.

On April 17, 1934, Ralph sent Ella a postcard from Fort Knox, Kentucky. It was addressed to “Mrs. J.E. Haley” at 1030 45th Street in Ashland.

“Having a fine time, leaving for Cal. Thursday,” Ralph wrote. “Wish you could go. Tell Allie, Jane, and the children hello.”

In another card from Ralph and postmarked from Fort Knox (April 19, 1934), he wrote: “Dear Mother. Rec. your letter yesterday. Glad to hear from U. I am leaving today for San Diego Cal. down on the mexican border. Am saving stamped envelope to write to U while on the train. do not try to answer till I send address. Your affecionate Son, Ralph.”

In May of 1934, there was a card from a sister in Cincinnati, Ohio (probably Sissy), which read, “Will be at your house a Bout noon Saturday. Will stay all night at Margaret’s. we will Leve circa in the morning.”

In April 1941, Clyde sent several postcards to the family at 337 37th Street from Washington, D.C. His message for “Monnie & Lawrence Haley” was: “Hello Kids! How is school now-a-days? Fine, I hope. Wish I could see you. I’ll be seeing you. Write soon.” To Jack: “How are you? Fine, I hope. I know I am. Wish you were here. It’s a great place.” To “Mrs. J.E. Haley”: “Am getting along Fine. Hope you’re O.K. Am Sight seeing in the mountains along Skyline Drive. Your affectionate Son.”

In May, Jack received this odd note from Louisville, Kentucky: “I thought may be I would write you a few lines to let you know I got in Louisville okay. Well Jack how are you getting along. Fine I hope. Jack how is the girls out in South Ashland getting along? Well you be a good boy honey and daddy will bring you a candy sucker. Well Jack I will have to close for now. It’s getting late. Jack it is Tuesday night. I am in Bed writing this card. Love James Brown.”

Clyde sent another card home from Cincinnati, Ohio, postmarked February 16, 1943: “Dear Mom: We are all well and hope you are the same. As soon as you send me my Birth Certificate I go to work. Get it tomorrow and send it. SALARY $33.50 a week. Go down town and get it and send it soon as possible.”

There was one final card dated April of 1943 from “Pvt. Ralph A. Payne” at Camp Crowder, Missouri. The Haley family was still at 337 37th Street.

In Search of Ed Haley 163

03 Tuesday Sep 2013

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Once I returned to Nashville, I called Lawrence Haley, who was in the mood to reminisce.

“Me and Pop hitch-hiked to Cincinnati out of Portsmouth a time or two,” he said. “We took old 52. And we’d had about three rides to get there.”

I asked him if Ed took his fiddle on those trips and he said, “Yeah, if he thought he was gonna be in a little bit other than country settings, he would put it in the case. But most of the time, he’d just carry it in his hand, tucked under his arm, maybe, with the bow in his hand.”

I wondered if Ed packed any extra bags on the road and Lawrence said, “Mostly just the clothes on his back, unless he was going on an extended trip — then he’d pack him a suitcase. He’d, of course, fill it up about a third with his homemade tobacco. His own cure — apple or peach or something. He’d take him some of that with him and off he’d go.”

Lawrence Haley passed away on February 3, 1995, the 44th anniversary of his father’s death.

In Search of Ed Haley 151

15 Thursday Aug 2013

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A few weeks later, I gave Lawrence another call. I wanted to update him on Bruce Nemerov’s work with Ed’s records. I’d heard some of the cleaned-up tracks and noticed that Ella’s mandolin was extremely loud at times. I asked Lawrence if it was because she was seated closest to the microphone.

“I’m pretty sure my brother did it all on one microphone,” he said. “But I guess it was placement of the microphone. She was just there to keep a good solid beat going. It wasn’t anybody trying to hog the music someway.”

I really bragged on Ed’s “Fifteen Days in Georgia” and “Over the Waves” — two of the “new” tunes from the Holbrook records. I played Ed’s recording of “Over the Waves” for Lawrence; it was an incredible, up-tempo version with Ella seconding him on the mandolin.

“Well you see, the record I’ve got of that tune she was playing the piano, so they had to be in a studio somewhere for that,” he said, after the recording ended.

“It’s amazing how fast he played back then,” I said.

Lawrence agreed, “Yeah, yeah, it sure was. That was a waltz, and you’d have to waltz the hall if you waltzed that one.”

Lawrence stressed that I had “a lifetime of stuff to study in there.”

I asked him if his father ever listened to the home recordings much and he said, “No, I think Mom put them up and left them up until Pop was dead and then she started dividing them out. You know, letting the kids come in and get pieces that they enjoyed. I had 45 or 50 records that I know of. One or two of them kind of got lost. I think I know who lost them for me. That’s the way things go, I guess. You can’t hold onto every little scrap of treasure all the time. It eventually goes. My mom used to have a whole library — I mean it took up quite a bit of space — ’cause these blind books, the letters had to be big enough to finger them, and they was pretty good size books. When I went into the service, they all left, and her mandolin left, and I guess her accordion went up to Aunt Minnie’s and got burnt up, and some of Pop’s stuff left. They just got rid of it, I guess, just stuff that was in the way for my brother Jack and his wife Patsy. Things like the mandolin and his fiddle I woulda kept.”

I got the impression that Lawrence was satisfied that he had told me all he could about his father, and that his father’s music would have to speak for itself. He was more in the mood to talk about his mother.

“I’m not sure, but I think they put her in school when she’s about four,” he said of Ella. “I think she come out of school when she was nineteen or 20 years old. They must’ve kept them segregated or something. You know, she was in with mostly girls. She had quite a few friends she made while she was at school. I guess they was times when she had bad times, too. Missed her family and missed her friends back at Morehead, Kentucky. She was pretty well-educated. She would read old Chaucer’s English. She’d come out with that on us every now and then when she wanted to really stress something to us. To let us know that she didn’t approve of what we was doing. I don’t know, she was just a wonderful woman to me. She’d sit down and read. You know we’d be laying in a bed in a room pitch black and she’d be a reading that story to us. It didn’t take long to put us to sleep like that. She read the whole Robin Hood stories and Jungle Boy. Stories like that she’d read to us. That was all we had for entertainment. It was a different life for the whole Haley bunch I guess from what most people would realize.”

“I know she had a bunch of friends,” Lawrence continued. “They was one — all I knew her name was was Bridget — and she come right out of school and went to a home-type thing that they had in Mt. Healthy, Ohio. Mt. Healthy is just more or less an outlying suburb of Cincinnati. When Mom would be down in Cincinnati visiting her sister or running her newsstand or something, she’d always go to Mt. Healthy to see Bridget. I think we’d ride a trolley bus or something out there. We’d spend the day out there with Bridget. It was a nice home — great big mansion-type home — plenty of grounds and things. And I’d get out in the grounds the biggest part of the time. I’d be out checking things out on the grounds — fishes in the ponds — and I’d check on Mom every now and then and find out when she wanted to leave or something. But we’d spend that day up there just about every time she went up there till I guess Bridget died.”

In Search of Ed Haley 91

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

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Clyde said Ed never said “too much” about where he learned to play the fiddle.

“Well, he was blind all his life, since he was a small boy, and he started with a cornstalk.”

Ed did talk about other fiddlers, though.

“Oh, yes,” Clyde said. “He knew Sam Vie and Asa Neal, and all those old-timers. Did you know Bill Day? Well, my dad used to play with him a lot. But Bill Day couldn’t play the fiddle as far as I’m concerned.”

Bill Day’s wife Rosie was a sister to Laury Hicks, Haley’s veterinarian friend in Calhoun County, West Virginia.

“Well, Rosie was Laury’s sister, as I remember,” Clyde said. “Rosie stayed with my mother and helped take care of Mom because my Mom didn’t like to cook in the summertime because of the flies. I got in trouble one time and I had to go stay with Laury and Aunt Minnie. And I stayed with them in my growing up years. Laury was a doctor, you know, and so was Minnie. She’d just go on a horse, travel miles and miles and miles on a horse, to go deliver a baby or something like that.”

Clyde also remembered Doc Holbrook, Ed’s friend in Greenup, Kentucky.

“Yeah, yeah,” he said. “Monnie, my sister, was named after Dr. Holbrook’s wife: M-O-N-N-I-E.”

Clyde was well aware of Ed’s suspicions toward the commercial music industry.

“My dad didn’t ever want his music recorded and it was difficult to get him to get in a position where he would let anybody record his music,” he said. “There was a guy named Bus Johnson in Cincinnati that wanted my dad — I remember — he wanted my dad to come down there to Cincinnati to WLW and get some music recorded for him but he wanted to commercialize it, you know, which I wish he had’ve now. My dad and mother would’ve had a lot better life with the money they could’ve made off the music. I always did tell my dad, ‘Pop, you ought to get those things recorded because you got money laying around in the fiddle case.'”

Talking about Ed’s refusal to make commercial records caused me to ask about his home recordings.

“Him and my mother had over six hundred records,” Clyde said. “Them old records that Ralph sent home out of the Army. He was in the Signal Corps at Camp Crowder, Missouri, and he took a lot of the equipment home — borrowed it from the Army — and my dad and my mother was in on some of the records, too, you know. And Lawrence has got all that kind of information; more than I would have because I’ve been gone from home. I’ve been a roamer, you know. And I used to drink a lot. I don’t think I’ll ever take another drink, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m in this hospital and it’s what it’s for. I had strokes. It’s not a nut-house hospital or anything. It takes care of people like me. I used to drink quite a bit myself, but I’ve made up my mind since I had the strokes that I’ll let that stuff alone when I get out of this place. I talk like it’s a jailhouse, but it’s not. It’s full of women.”

In Search of Ed Haley 77

06 Wednesday Mar 2013

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After Ed’s death, Ella lived with Lawrence and his family in Ashland. Every Thursday, she went to Cincinnati where she sold newspapers until Saturday. On Saturday nights, Lawrence would meet her at the bus station in Ashland and bring her home. She and Lawrence would then go into her bedroom where she would empty out her bounty from special slips Aunt Minnie had sewn into her bodice and count her money. It was somewhat of a humbling job for Ella; her own brother Allie Trumbo would call her “Penny Elly” and tease her for taking in pennies and nickels at Cincinnati. The whole experience came to a humiliating end when she “wet” on herself at the bus depot one afternoon. Apparently, no one would help her to a bathroom.

Pat said Ella took to her bed shortly afterwards and didn’t live much longer.

The day after Thanksgiving in 1954, Ella died of a stroke while staying with Jack and Patsy in Cleveland. Lawrence showed me her obituary from a Huntington newspaper:

HALEY – Funeral services for Mrs. Martha Haley, 66, 4916 Bath Avenue, who died Friday night at the home of a son, Allen Haley, at Cleveland, O., will be held today at 3:30 P.M., at the Lezear Funeral Home by the Very Rev. Francis M. Cooper, rector of the Calvary Episcopal Church.  Burial will be in Ashland Cemetery. The body is at the funeral home.

Mrs. Haley suffered a stroke while visiting her son. She was born July 14, 1888, at Morehead, Ky., a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. William Trumbo. 

Surviving are three other sons, Lawrence Haley, Ashland, Noah E. Haley, Cleveland, and Clyde F. Haley, Michigan; one daughter, Mrs. Mona Mae Smith, South Point, O.; a brother, Allie Trumbo, Cincinnati; and nine grandchildren.

Sensing that Ella’s death might be a sensitive subject, I just kind of left it at that.

Bob Adkins Interview, Part 2 (1993)

18 Monday Feb 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 31

16 Sunday Dec 2012

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Back in Ashland, Lawrence and I told Pat all about our trip to Harts Creek. We had some great photographs — including the one of Ed’s mother — and all kinds of new information. One of the first things Lawrence did was joke Pat about seeing “that funny boy” who nearly scared her to death forty years ago. I told her about Milt Haley’s murder, the possibility of Milt having been a fiddler and about our interview with Roxie Mullins. Lawrence liked the story about his father breaking a fiddle over someone’s head, although it kind of bothered me to think he would do such a thing.

At some point during the evening, Pat suggested showing me Ella’s postcards, but Lawrence quickly dismissed the idea. I could tell there was something in those postcards he didn’t want me to see, which of course only peaked my curiosity. It was clear by his negative response, though, that the issue was closed so I didn’t mention it again.

Instead, I pelted him with very specific questions about his father. I wanted to know how Ed Haley felt about different types of music.

Did your dad like the Blues? I asked.

“I guess he liked, uh, Joplin,” Lawrence said. “He liked a lot of that ragtime. ‘Sugar Foot Rag’, he liked that.”

What about something like Hank Williams?

“No, I don’t think he cared too much for that.”

Otis Redding?

“Well, he might have liked some of it.”

How about Dixieland Jazz, somebody like Louis Armstrong?

“No, not too much of that.”

How about bluegrass?

“No, he didn’t like that.”

How about Arthur Smith?

“That was a fiddler, and he had nothing for him, I reckon.”

Clayton McMichen?

“Well, I never have heard him mention him.”

How about Georgia Slim Rutland?

“I really can’t remember him ever mentioning that guy, either.”

Did he ever know about Benny Thomasson or Major Franklin or any of those Texas fiddle players?

“John, I wouldn’t say one way or the other,” Lawrence finally said. “It’s just like you keep asking me, did he play this tune, did he play that tune? I guess my best answer whenever you started that shoulda been what didn’t he play in the way of this old-time music. And that’s the same way, who didn’t he know if they was into that and they was around this area he probably found out about them.”

Early the next morning, Lawrence and I went to see Ed and Ella’s graves in Ashland. Along the way, I asked him if he remembered all the places where his father had lived in town.

“Aw, we lived in half a dozen different places,” he said. “All we did was rent. We lived in a couple down on Greenup Avenue, 10th Street, 22nd Street. Then we lived in one on Halbert and about three different ones on 45th Street and one up on 37th Street. That’s about it.”

None of Ed’s former dwellings were still standing.

Lawrence told me about the time his brother Clyde almost got married: “That’s one of those deals where I told you he was afraid of women. He was courting a lady up in Detroit or somewhere and she told my sister-in-law, Patsy — Jack’s wife — said, ‘He run off and left me practically at the alter. We had made all the plans and everything.’ Next thing we knew, he was working on a platform out in the Gulf of Mexico out of Louisiana. I don’t know where he was when Mom passed away.”

After we got back to the house, Lawrence explained why he’d ruled out showing me his mother’s postcards the night before.

“Some of the old postcards that Mom used to receive kinda had a flavor of real broken love,” he said.

They also revealed that Ralph Haley actually belonged to Ella by a previous marriage.

“I don’t know what his name was, her first husband,” Lawrence said. “Apparently it was somebody that she met either in school or after she come out of school and went back to Morehead. I think Ralph was born around 1914, ’15, somewhere along in there, ’16. He was approximately ten years older than me, twelve at the most.”

For the first time, I thought, Lawrence was opening up about his mother. He said she used to type letters to her friends.

“She had a friend, I guess she must have been pretty well Irish. Her first name was Bridget. I don’t remember her last name. She never married. She went into a home and kept people up at Hamilton, Ohio. Every time we went to Cincinnati, Mom wanted to go see her.”

I listened quietly before saying, “I wonder what happened to your mom’s letters? I bet they would tell a lot of history.”

Pat said, “They probably would but it would mostly be my mother-in-law’s. You know, her life.”

I said, “But women invariably talk about their husbands a lot,” and Lawrence agreed.

“Women can pass along more information between them in five minutes than two men can all day long,” he said.

Still, he never offered to show the cards so I just kind of left it at that.

Just before I headed back to Nashville, Lawrence reached me his father’s walking stick. “Here’s something I think you’d like to have,” he said. He also loaned me the four Library of Congress reel-to-reel tapes, containing over 100 recordings.