Tag Archives: Ed Haley

In Search of Ed Haley 335

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in African American History, Ed Haley, Music

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Meanwhile, as Brandon flushed out more information about the 1889 feud, I was on the phone with Ed’s daughter, Mona Hager. In no time, she was singing “Old Man Duff”, one of Ed’s songs:

Old Man Duff was so doggone tough

That they called him dynamite.

On a mattress filled with broken glass

He rested well each night.

He combed his hair with a garden rake

And he ate his vittles raw.

He picked his teeth with a horseshoe nail

And he shaved his beard with a saw.

Old Man Duff was mighty tough

And rough as a man could be.

He had hair on his chest

And he wore no vest a

And he looked like a chimpanzee.

Old Man Duff had a daughter fair

But she died a poor old maid.

Lots of men woulda courted her

But they were all afraid.

Once old Duff seen a fella with her.

You could hear him rave and shout:

He’d put his hand down the poor man’s throat

And he’d turn him inside out.

Old Man Duff was mighty rough

And tough as a man could be.

He ate iron nails and the bones of whales

And he drank gasoline for tea.

Old Man Duff lived a thousand years

And he died and went below.

And when old Satan looked at him

He smiled and said, “Hello.”

Now the fire was mighty hot

When they put old Duff in there,

But he layed right down and he went to sleep

And it never singed a hair.

Old Man Duff was mighty rough

And tough as a man could be.

He had hair on his chest

And he wore no vest

And he looked like a chimpanzee.

Mona also remembered Ed singing “Man of Constant Sorrow”. She said Ed sometimes sang “little ditties” like with “Sourwood Mountain”. Ella did the same thing to “Kiss Me Quick”.

Kiss me quick, kiss me runnin’.

Kiss me quick ’cause my daddy’s comin’.

Love my wife, love my baby.

Love my biscuits sopped in gravy.

Ed never called square dances but would “blurt out some of the square dance reel” while fiddling.

I told Mona that I was still very interested in the source of Ed’s music.

“Pop was around a lot of blacks, you know, up in the coalfields up in West Virginia,” she said. “I even had a black nanny up there. She babysat me sometimes for Mom and Pop. Now that was at Manuel and Nora Martin’s house on the hill there at Aracoma [near Logan]. And Pop took me up to an old color lady’s bootleg joint one time somewhere up in West Virginia. And I know he was around a lot of blacks and I know that he learned some of the black’s music. They had a lot of blind friends that made music on the street, too, and one of them was Clayton White. He played an accordion. He walked up from 15th to 16th and back, you know.”

I asked Mona how many musicians were playing on the streets of Ashland in Ed’s time and she said, “Well, there was Pop and Mom, and there was Bill Bowler, and then there was a lady named Lula Lee. Now she was an illiterate woman and a lot of people got my mom and her mixed up. Mom was a cultured lady.”

I asked Mona if she thought her mother’s education rubbed off on Ed over the years and she said, “Oh, yeah. He only got uncultured when he was drinking. He talked well educated but of course he wasn’t. He was a very intelligent man.”

Mona seemed surprised when I told her that Ed could supposedly quote the Bible.

I asked her more about Ed’s and Ella’s relationship in later years and she said, “You know about me bringing him back from Logan back to Mom after they were divorced? Well, I was up there and I persuaded Pop to come home with me and I brought Pop home and he had one of those long change purses that snapped together and he had that in his pocket. And when we got home, he sit down and he was talking to Mom and he said, ‘Ella, I’ve got this plumb full of half-dollars and if you’ll let me sit by your fire this winter, I’ll give them all to you.’ I’m glad I took him home. That was when we lived on Greenup. He stayed with her until he died. Eventually Mom stayed with Lawrence and Patricia. She didn’t do any good after Pop died. She lost her friends. She didn’t have anybody to talk to.”

So after their divorce, they had a good relationship?

“They had a better relationship than they did before the divorce,” Mona said.

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.

1st Annual Ed Haley Fiddle Contest

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Ashland, Big Sandy Valley, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

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Ed Haley Contest 1

(L-R) Peter Even, Mike Compton, Brandon Kirk, J.P. Fraley, Nancy McClellan, Paul David Smith, and John Hartford.

Chasing John Runyon (1996)

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Cemeteries, Ed Haley, Inez, Lincoln County Feud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 333

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Spottswood

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That fall, Brandon and Billy drove to Trace Fork to inspect the “Ed Haley home” — or at least what we wanted to be the Ed Haley home. It was, of course, most likely the Ewell Mullins home since Mullins bought Ed’s land in 1911 and reportedly built a new house there. Billy and Brandon spoke with Von Tomblin, Ewell’s daughter who lived next to the old home. Von said she was born in the back part of the home in 1935. As far as she knew, the front part of the house was torn down years ago, but not the back. Upon inspection, the back portion of the house did appear older than the front.

Von recommended that Billy and Brandon talk to Cas Baisden about the house, since he helped tear some of it down.

They found Cas down the creek.

Baisden said he helped push Ewell’s store against the front of the house when he was a boy. Later, they tore the entire home down, then built an almost-exact replica on the same spot.

Before Brandon and Billy left, Cas told them that Ewell Mullins had three stores in his life. The first one was built when Cas was a small boy near Ewell’s home. The second one was built around 1940 near the original one. The third one was built at the mouth of Ticky George Hollow just prior to Ewell’s passing.

Cas also remembered Ed Haley and his family well. He said Ed had the meanest boys he’d ever seen and probably drank himself to death.

Later that night, Billy and Brandon visited Pete and Gaie Adams near the mouth of Trace Fork. Gaie, who is a niece to Bob Dingess, had a lot of old photographs and said she remembered Ed and Ella spending weekends with her grandma, Alice Dingess. There was a little more confusion about the Ed Haley place: Gaie thought Ewell’s house had been completely torn down, while her husband said the back part was original. Oh boy.

In Search of Ed Haley 331

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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About an hour later, Brandon showed up at Pat’s, followed by various members of the Haley clan: Noah, Clyde, and a bunch of children and grandchildren. The house was soon full of people — talking and eating. It was a bittersweet moment due to Lawrence’s absence, although his spirit was everywhere. I watched the Haleys — Ed’s children and grandchildren — business executives, gamblers, bar owners — mix with one another. Conversation was friendly between them, although there seemed to be an estrangement — especially among the younger ones. Basically, they were raised up separate from each other (the “Kentucky Haleys” vs. the “Ohio Haleys”); to be honest, it was as if they really didn’t know each other that well.

I realized that the binding force in Ed’s family — the glue that held all of them together — was the music…or at least the memory of it. Children who had never met before were sitting in the floor together or running through the house and yard — some hearing about Ed for the first time. I kept thinking about how one of them might some day pick up a fiddle and naturally crank out some of those “Haley licks.”

Brandon and I sat in the living room with Noah, Clyde, and Mona. Clyde immediately started talking about Ed.

“I used to hate him — hate that man — the way he treated Mom,” he said.

“Evidently, Mom cared for him or she wouldn’t a let it go on,” Noah said.

“I learnt as I got older and got a little tolerance in my mind I learned to forgive my hate for my dad to something else,” Clyde said. “I give it to God or whatever you want to call it.”

“I think the reason you didn’t like him Clyde was because when we stole them ducks there at Keyser Creek, he took each one in a room by ourself and he took a strap and he held us by the arm and he beat the hell out of us,” Noah said, laughing.

“That was Mr. Runyon’s ducks,” Clyde said. “Yeah, he beat us with the buckle part of that belt.”

“Yeah, and I think that’s why you didn’t like him,” Noah said. “I remember that beating we got.”

Clyde said, “Oh, we got a good one, didn’t we?”

I asked where Ed lived when that happened and Clyde said, “That was a four-room house. Ralph, our oldest brother, he had made a trapdoor in that floor and he used to bootleg moonshine through that trapdoor.”

“Clyde, you remember the cow he stole and kept it under the porch?” Noah asked.

Clyde said, “Yeah, Ralph did that. That wasn’t a cow. That was a calf. Our house stood up on stilts and Ralph or somebody had fenced that all in to keep that calf in. Got that while he was in the CCCs.”

Noah said, “And he built a trapdoor so he could go down through the floor…”

“In the bedroom,” Mona added.

Clyde laughed and said, “Ralph got that calf in the house and he was trying to put that calf up in Mom’s lap and it done something all over Mom.”

Jackson Mullins military record, 1862-1863

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Civil War, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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A J Mullins military record 1

Jackson Mullins military record, Company D, 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 1862-1863

 

A J Mullins military record 2

Jackson Mullins military record, Company D, 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 1862-1863

 

A J Mullins military record 3

Jackson Mullins military record, Company D, 34th Battalion Virginia Cavalry, 1862-1863

 

In Search of Ed Haley 329

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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

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Satisfied that we’d taken up enough of Andy’s day, we drove up Trace Fork to see Wirt Adams, an older brother to Joe Adams. Wirt was busy installing a waterbed but took a break to talk with us. “Well, come on in boys, but I’ve only got a few minutes,” he seemed to say. Inside, however, after I had pulled out my fiddle and he had grabbed a mandolin, he seemed ready to hang out with us all day.

I told Wirt that I was trying to find out about Haley’s life. He said old-timers in the neighborhood used to tell stories about Ed playing for dances on Saturday nights with Johnny Hager, a banjo-picker and fiddler. Ed eventually left Harts Creek and got married but came back to stay with his cousins every summer.

Wirt said he sometimes bumped into him in local taverns:

“It was in the forties,” he said. “About ’47, ’48, ’49, ’50 — along there somewhere. We called it Belcher’s beer garden. It was a roadhouse over on Crawley Hill. Well, I just come in there from the mines and Ed was there and he heard somebody say that I was there and he said, ‘Come on over here Wirt and play one.’ I think the fella that’d been playing with him had got drunk and passed out. Well I played one or two with him and then Charley Conley and them boys come in and Charley says, ‘C’mon over here Wirt and get in with us.’ Ed said, ‘Don’t do that, you’re playing with me.’ I really wasn’t playing with him. I had my mine clothes on. I just come in there and picked up Bernie Adams’ old guitar. If you was playing they’d sit you a beer up there — no money in it. Mostly for fun, we thought. We’d gang up on Saturday night somewhere and play a little. Sometimes they’d dance.”

Wirt felt that Ed was “a good fiddler, one of the best in that time.”

I asked him about Ed’s bowing and he said, “It didn’t look like he moved it that far over the whole thing [meaning very little bow usage] but he played tunes where he did use the long stroke. But most of it was just a lot of movement but not no distance. Just hacking, I call it. Him and Johnny Hager were the only two fellas I know who done that.”

Brandon wondered about Ed’s tunes.

“Well, he played that ‘Blackberry Blossom’ — that was one of his favorites — and then he played ‘The Old Red Rooster’ and he played ‘Raggedy Ann’ and ‘Soldiers Joy’. He had one he called ‘somethin’ in the shucks’. I forget the name of it. Anyhow, it was one of the old tunes. And ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’, I’ve heard him play that.”

I asked if Ed played “Birdie” and he said, “Yeah. Now, that’s one of Charley’s favorites. ‘Chinese Breakdown’, that was one of Ed’s. ‘Down Yonder’.”

Wirt told us more about Johnny Hager and Ed Belcher.

“Johnny Hager was a banjo player but he could play the fiddle, too. He played the old ‘overhand’ [on the banjo]. He was a good second for somebody. Now Ed Belcher was a different thing altogether. He played all kinds of stuff. He played classical, he could play hillbilly. He played a piano, he played accordion, he played a banjo, he played a guitar. He was a good violin player. He tuned pianos for a living. Well, I’d call him a professional musician. They had talent shows in Logan. He’d sponsor that. He’d be like the MC and these kids would go in and play. He was a head musician. He was good. He could do ‘Spanish Fandango’ on the guitar and make it sound good. He could play all kinds of tunes. I never could play with him but then he could take the piano and make it talk, too. He was just an all-around musician.”

Brandon asked Wirt if he knew the story about how Ed came to be blind.

“Milt Haley was Ed’s dad,” Wirt said matter-of-factly. “They said his dad was kind of a mean fella and he took Ed out when he was a little kid — held him by the heels — and ducked him in the creek. He had some kind of a fever in wintertime. I’ve heard that, now. Ed never would talk about it. I never heard him mention his dad.”

Wirt had only heard “snippets” about Milt’s death.

“It was pretty wild times,” he said. “I understand the whole thing was over timberworks. These people, they’d have a splash dam on this creek and they’d get their logs and haul them in this bottom at the mouth of Trace — this was one of them. They had a splash dam and when the water got up they’d knock that dam out and that’d carry the logs down to Hart and they had a boom and them Brumfields owned the boom. They charged so much a log. Some way over that, there was some confusion. But I’ve seen Aunt Hollene. She was supposed to been riding behind old man Al Brumfield, her husband, and they shot at him and hit her.”

After Milt was caught, he made a last request.

“They said they asked him if he wanted anything and he wanted them to bring him a fiddle,” Wirt said. “He wanted to play a tune. Now this is hearsay but I’ve heard it several times. They said he played the fiddle and they hung him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 328

26 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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From Naaman’s, we drove out of Trace and on up Harts Creek to see Andy Mullins, who Brandon had met a few months earlier at Bill Adkins’ wake. Andy had just relocated to Harts after years of living away in Michigan; he had constructed a new house in the head of Ticky George Hollow. Andy was a son to Roxie Mullins, the woman who inspired my fascination with Harts Creek. Andy, who we found sitting in his yard with his younger brother Dobie, was very friendly. He treated us as if we had known him for years.

“I was just catting when you fellas come up through there,” Andy said to us. “One of the girls lost a cat down there over the bank last night — a kitten. This morning I went down there and it was up in that rock cliff and I took its mother down there and it whooped the mother. And I took one of the kittens down there and it whooped the kitten. The old tomcat, he come down there and he whooped it. It went back up under that damn rock.”

I liked Andy right away.

We all took seats in lawn chairs in the front yard where Andy told about Ed Haley coming to see his parents every summer when he was a boy, usually with his wife. He described him as having a “big, fat belly” and weighing about 200 pounds.

“He wasn’t much taller than Dobie but he was fat,” Andy said. “I can remember his eyes more than the rest of him because his eyes was like they had a heavy puss over them or something. It was real thick-like. Not like they were clouded or anything.”

Even though Ed was blind, he could get around all over Harts Creek and even thread a needle.

Andy had heard that Milt caused Ed’s blindness.

“They said that Ed got a fever of some kind when he was a baby and Milt went out and cut a hole in the ice and stuck him under the ice in the creek to break the fever,” he said.

Andy knew very little about Milt.

“Just that Milt got killed, that was it, over shooting the old lady down at the shoal below Bob Dingess’ at the mouth of Smokehouse,” he said.

“All the old-timers that knows anything about his daddy is probably dead,” Dobie said.

Brandon said we’d heard rumors that Milt and Green were innocent of shooting Hollena Brumfield and Andy quickly answered, “That’s what my father-in-law told me.”

Changing the conversation back to Ed, Andy said, “Ed used to go up on Buck Fork to George Mullins’ to stay a lot and up to Grover Mullins’. He lived just above George’s place — the old chimney is the only thing still standing.”

He also went up in the head of Hoover to see George Baisden, a banjo-picker who’d hoboed with him in his younger days. The two of them had a lot of adventures, like the time Ed caught a train at Dingess and rode it over to Williamson to play for a dance or at a tavern. Just before they rolled into town, George pushed him off the train then jumped off himself. It made Ed so mad that George had to hide from him for the rest of the night.

I asked Andy if Ed ever told those kind of stories on himself and he said, “He told big tales, I’d call them, but I don’t remember what they were. Well, he set and talked with my grandmother and grandfather all the time he was here, and Mom. I never paid any attention to what they talked about really. I guess, man, I run these hills. I was like a goat. Hindsight is 20/20.”

Not long into our visit with Andy, he got out his guitar and showed me what he remembered about Bernie Adams’ guitar style. From there, he took off on Bill Monroe tunes, old lonesome songs, or honky-tonk music, remarking that he could only remember Ed’s tunes in “sketches.”

I asked, “Do you reckon Ed would sing anything like ‘Little Joe’?” and he said, “I don’t know. It’s awful old. I heard him sing ‘The Maple on the Hill’. He played and sang the ‘Black Sheep’.”

“He played loud, Ed did,” Dobie said.

“And sang louder,” Andy said immediately. “He’d rare back and sing, man.”

The tune he best remembered Ed singing was “The Drunkard’s Hell”.

I wanted to know the time frame of Andy’s memories.

“1944, ’45,” he said. “I was thirteen year old at that time. Now in ’46, we lived across the creek up here at Millard’s. Him and Mona Mae and Wilson — they wasn’t married at the time — went somewhere and got some homebrew and they all got pretty looped. That was up on Buck Fork some place. Ed got mad at Wilson and her about something that night and that’s the reason they didn’t play music — him and Claude Martin and Bernie Adams.”

I asked Andy about Ed’s drinking and he said, “Just whatever was there, Ed’d drink. He didn’t have to see it. He smelled it. Ed could sniff it out.”

Brandon wondered if Ed ever played at the old jockey grounds at the mouth of Buck Fork. Andy doubted it, although it sure seemed to me like the kind of place for him to go. There was moonshine everywhere and men playing maybe ten card games at once.

“They’d get drunk and run a horse right over top of you if you didn’t watch,” Andy said. “It was like a rodeo.”

The last jockey ground held at the mouth of Buck Fork was in 1948.

In Search of Ed Haley 327

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

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After talking with Luster, we drove to see Naaman Adams on Trace Fork. We talked in the yard with Naaman, who wore a straw hat and work clothes. His mother, we knew from Billy’s records, was Imogene Mullins, a first cousin to Ed’s mother and her namesake.

Naaman said his grandfather Ben Adams had lived in an old log cabin at the mouth of Adams Branch on Trace. Ben had feuded frequently with his neighbors and once ordered sixteen rifles for protection — eight .32 Winchesters and eight .38 Winchesters. To our surprise, Naaman said he had one of those very rifles. Disappearing momentarily into his house, he returned outside with a magnificent 1873 model .38 Winchester. Pointing to a dark spot on its butt end, Naaman said it had been caused by rifle fire. Apparently, during a feud, as Ben stood in his doorway shooting at his enemies, someone fired back, striking his rifle and causing the spot. He didn’t know if this incident occurred during the 1889 troubles.

Of the old feuds, Naaman said: “People back then feuded amongst themselves but ganged up on outsiders. People’d be killed and nobody knew who did it.”

Naaman said Ben’s feud “just died out” when a lot of the participants moved away from the area. The law eventually confiscated most of his guns. Someone located one of them in the old Logan Courthouse when it was torn down in the sixties. Bob Dingess had a .32, as did Ernest Adams, while a Hall on Twelve Pole had a .38.

Just before we left, Naaman mentioned that his wife was a daughter of Ewell Mullins, Ed’s first cousin. Ewell, of course, was the man who had bought Ed’s Trace Fork property in 1911. Naaman said when his father-in-law had bought the property, it contained a one-story boxed log house, which stood near a sugar tree toward the branch. Later, Ewell moved the house further up the bottom; old-timers had told Naaman about placing logs under the house and rolling it. In the 1950s, Naaman and several other men demolished the house. They did it in stages: first, the front was removed and rebuilt, then the back was removed and rebuilt. The newer home — the one there now, which we had nicknamed the “red house” — was patterned in its design after the older one.

This was a little disheartening: there didn’t seem to be anything left from Ed’s time on Harts Creek (nor in Ashland or in Calhoun County).

In Search of Ed Haley 326

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

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From Harts proper, we headed up Harts Creek to the home of Luster Dalton, a son of Ed’s friend, Dood Dalton. Luster was born in 1924 and used to play the fiddle on weekends for free drinks at local “dives” with his brother Stump and two cousins. I asked him if he learned much from Ed and he said, “Yeah, I learned a lot from the old man Ed. He was a real fiddle player, son.”

I wondered if anybody around Harts played like Ed.

“Not as good as he could, no,” Luster said. “I’d have to say no to that. That old man really knew how to handle that job, buddy.”

Luster tried to remember some of Ed’s tunes.

“Way back in them days, they had one they called ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ and ‘Wild Horse’ and such as that on down the line,” he said.

I got my fiddle out and pointed it toward Luster, who said, “They ain’t a bit of use in me to try that. I’ve had too many bones broke.”

I tried to get him to just show me anything — but he refused.

He chose instead to talk, starting with how Ed came to visit his father on Big Branch.

“He came about onest a year and would maybe stay a month,” Luster said. “He’d maybe stay a week at Dad’s and go to some other family and stay a week and go up Logan and stay a week or so with somebody. Him and his old woman both would come and a couple three of his kids. Mona was one of them’s name. About all of them I guess has been to my dad’s. I don’t see how they raised a bunch of kids — neither one of them could see. That’s something we got to think about. They was good people. And a fella by the name of Bernie Adams used to come with them — he was a guitar picker — and they’d sit up there and sing and pick up at my dad’s till twelve o’clock and go to bed and go to sleep, get up the next morning, go into ‘er again. I went in the army in 1940, I believe it was, and I know I’ve not heard from them since then.”

Luster didn’t know if Milt Haley was a fiddler but had heard the old-timers talk about how either him or Green McCoy had shot Hollena Brumfield through the jaw at the mouth of the Rockhouse Fork on Harts Creek.

“They were murdered in a little log house,” Luster said. “They took a pole axe and beat them to death and then chopped them up.”

In Search of Ed Haley 325

21 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Logan, Music

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That night, Brandon and I congregated at Billy Adkins’ house in Harts Bottom.  In ensuing conversation, Billy told us about Marshall Kelley, an old-timer in the community who remembered Ed. He dialed Marshall up, then put me on the telephone. Marshall said he was seventy-three years old, had been born and raised about three miles up Harts Creek and was the son of a Baptist preacher. He was great: I didn’t have to prod him with questions. He just took off, beginning with a story about seeing Ed walking up toward Dood Dalton’s.

“I was about two or three blocks away from him,” Marshall said. “I lived in a house about 100 yards from the road and I could see the people going and coming up and down the road. And I saw a man — a little bit short — going, walking. It looked like he was carrying a guitar — might have been a mandolin — in one hand and his fiddle in the other hand. Somebody said they believed that was Ed Haley and he was being led by a young man that was just a little taller than him. In other words, this man was holding onto his arm. They were walking side by side. And he went down there and went up a hollow then about half a mile — maybe three quarters of a mile — to the home of Dood Dalton. They were acquainted with each other. Ed played the fiddle the biggest part of the afternoon.”

I asked Marshall if he remembered anything specific about Ed’s fiddling.

“I heard him play the ‘Cacklin’ Hen’ on the fiddle and made her cackle,” he said. “Buddy, he could make that sound just almost exactly like a chicken cackling. And I noticed the sound of that fiddle. And down in those little grooves — places where you could look down in the head of his fiddle — I could see some letters down in there, like a little sticker, that said, ‘Made in Germany.’ And his fiddle looked old cause it didn’t have much varnish on it. Dood made mention about putting new varnish on it and he said he didn’t want to. He said they played better — had a better sound — without any varnish on it. None of them sounded just like his fiddle and he wouldn’t change.”

Marshall said he saw Ed play at Logan and Huntington, too.

Then I heard him two or three times in Logan up around the courthouse singing and playing. One time they was a woman with him somebody said was his wife and she was also blind. I believe she was playing a mandolin. Then the next thing, I grew up a little bit and I went to Huntington. And I was a going down one of the streets and I heard a fiddle a playing. It was far enough away that I couldn’t tell what direction it was in. I stopped once and listened. And after a while, I went on down there and here was a gang of people ganged up and there was him and his wife again a playing. And I thought as I went walking down that way, ‘That sounds just like Ed Haley.’ And sure enough it was.”

Just before Marshall and I hung up, he told me what he knew about the Haley children.

“I only got acquainted with the one named Clyde,” he said. “And I saw him there at Dood Dalton’s house. Just talked with him a little bit. Me and him was approximately the same age. He got to sparking Dood’s girl and I was trying to take her away from him and whenever I seen I couldn’t make no headway I just walked away and left and then she quit him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 324

20 Friday Jun 2014

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Sensing that Dorothy had told all she knew about Ed and knowing that she was one-quarter Dingess, we asked her about Milt Haley.

“Some terrible things went on about Ed’s daddy,” she said. “I heard about that.”

Dorothy blamed the trouble squarely on Ben Adams. She said he was a “bully” who wanted to control all the timber on Harts Creek. He hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to kill Al Brumfield but they accidentally shot Hollena.

“And them men that shot them went back in towards Kentucky somewhere and they put out a reward for them,” Dorothy said.

Haley and McCoy were soon caught and a Brumfield posse took possession of them.

Ben Adams organized a mob to free them at the mouth of Smoke House Fork but the Brumfields were warned by a spy and detoured up Buck Fork and over a mountain to Hugh Dingess’ house.

“The Adamses come a hair of catching them,” Dorothy said. “You can just imagine what kind of war would have been if they had a got them.”

A large number of men gathered in at Hugh’s for protection, including Albert Dingess (her great-grandfather), “Short Harve” Dingess (her great-uncle), John Brumfield, and French Bryant, among others. At some point, they took Milt outside and shot a few times to scare Green into making a confession inside Hugh’s, but Milt yelled, “Don’t tell them a damn thing. I ain’t dead yet!” McCoy yelled back, “Don’t be scared. I ain’t told nothing yet!”

Dorothy said the mob eventually took Milt and Green up Bill’s Branch and down Piney where they “knocked their heads out with axes and the chickens eat their brains.”

Just before we left Dorothy, we asked if she remembered any of Ed’s family. She said his uncle Ticky George Adams (the grandfather of her late husband) was a ginseng digger who spoke with a lisp and loved to heat hog brains. This image contrasted sharply with what others around Harts Creek had said: that he was a moonshiner who’d shoot someone “at the drop of a hat.” Violet Mullins had told us earlier how Ticky George would get “fightin’ mad” if anyone called him by his nickname. The only thing Dorothy knew about Ed’s wife was, “She went in the outside toilet and then after that some woman went in there and said they was a big blacksnake a hanging. They said she went places and played music.”

In Search of Ed Haley 323

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Holden

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About a half hour later, we drove up the Smoke House Fork of Harts Creek to see Dorothy Brumfield. Dorothy lived in a white one-story home situated on a hillside overlooking the Hugh Dingess Elementary School, just down the stream from the old Henderson Dingess homeplace. Dorothy had been born in 1929 at Louisa, Kentucky, but came to Harts when she was seventeen and soon married John Brumfield, a son of Ed’s friend, Cecil. Her father was a descendant of Albert Dingess, a member of the 1889 mob.

I started the conversation by asking Dorothy about Ed. She said she never knew him personally but heard that he lost his eyesight after his father dipped him in water. She also heard that he was a great fiddler when he got “pretty high” but was mean and eager to fight if he drank too much.

Dorothy knew the story about Ed borrowing a fiddle from her father-in-law Cecil Brumfield; her husband later acquired it. “He had come through here and borrowed a fiddle off of Paw Brumfield, him and Bernie Adams, and went up yonder to Logan and pawned it,” she said. “Paw Brumfield liked to never found it.”

Dorothy said the only time she actually saw Ed was when her husband brought him home early one Sunday morning around 1949-50.

“My husband worked at Holden, and I’d heard tell of Ed Haley but I hadn’t met him,” she said. “So John stopped at the top of Trace Mountain at this place. Back then, they called them saloons. And he was supposed to been in at one o’clock in the morning. He didn’t make it. Oh, did I get mad when four o’clock come in the morning. Here he knocked on the door and I could tell someone was with him, but I couldn’t make out that it was a blind person with him. I thought it was just somebody real drunk that had passed out. He got here in the house with him and I fixed them something to eat.”

“Why didn’t I know you all was over there and got me a babysitter and caught me a ride over there and had me a time?” Dorothy said to her husband. “What would you done if I’d walked in?”

“What, mam?” Ed said.

“All them women John had over there tonight,” she said to Ed.

“Mam, he didn’t have no women,” Ed said.

“Now sir, you told me you couldn’t see,” she said. “How do you know?”

“Well, John sit beside of me,” Ed said.

A little later, Dorothy fixed Ed a bed and she went and asked her husband, “Would you tell me who in the world you’ve brought home with you again?”

John said he’d stopped in at that saloon and found Ed playing music “and a bunch of them women dancing” and he “wouldn’t leave Ed there. When they closed, he brought him here.”

“Well, then they got up the next morning and I said, ‘Now John you help him around and show him around.’ I was already mad at John for laying out. Little bit jealous, too. We hadn’t been married long.”

Dorothy said she cooked a big breakfast for everyone.

“Mam, have you got any onions?” Ed asked her at the table.

“Yes I have but why would you want an onion for breakfast?” she said.

“Don’t you know what onions are good for?” Ed said. “Many a things.”

Dorothy said Ed seemed intelligent by the morning conversation.

After breakfast, Ed went back into the front room and played the fiddle for Dorothy’s kids in front of the fireplace. She said he held his fiddle under his chin and played “Wildwood Flower” and an extremely fast version of “Cripple Creek”.

John said, “Ed, play that there ‘Birdie’ for these children.”

“Well, he stayed around and I think they drunk all the booze up,” Dorothy said. “John, he was wanting more booze, too, so he went off with Ed to Aunt Alice’s or somewhere and got some liquor and he didn’t come back till about dark. I don’t know where all he took Ed. When he come back, he kept telling me why he brought him here. He said that he didn’t want to leave him. If something happened, he wouldn’t forgive hisself. Nobody else wouldn’t take him after all the big time was over with.”

In Search of Ed Haley 322

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Spottswood

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After spending a few hours with Vilas, we drove a short distance up main Harts Creek to see Violet Mullins. Violet still lived in her mother Roxie’s little house. I hadn’t seen her since my first visit to Harts with Lawrence Haley in 1991; the home seemed a bit empty without Roxie. Violet began to speak in a voice hauntingly reminiscent of her mother’s.

“I knew Ed well,” she said. “He used to come stay all night at our house when he was traveling through here. I know he played all kinds of music. He’d play tunes and then sing them. He’d sing ‘The Drunkard’s Hell’ and the ‘Brownlow’s Dream’, I’ve heard him play that. They’d always be a big gang with him and I never stayed around with them where they was a playing music very much. He’d drink with them every now and then. He’d get to drinking and they’d get into a racket and have him a talking every once in a while. He never was at our house too much — just come and stay all night, him and his daughter and his son. Now, his son Jack stayed with us a long time. He come here, you see, and stayed with Uncle Peter’s fellers, and with different families around here. He stayed for a year or two.”

In Search of Ed Haley 321

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

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

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Trying to lift our spirits, we went to see Vilas Adams, who lived on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork. Vilas was a great-grandson of Ben Adams and a grandson of Ticky George Adams. He was very friendly, inviting us inside his very nice home where his wife fed us a whole mess of good food, which we ate between asking questions.

I first asked him about his memories of Ed Haley, who he said frequented Ewell Mullins’ store during the late 1930s and early forties.

“Down there at old man Ewell’s store, they’d gather in there of an evening and tell tales, old man Jeff Baisden and them,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw Ant Adams and I would walk down there and then Ed would walk down there from Uncle Peter’s. It was a quarter a mile — just a little hop and a jump I call it. Ed would come in there and fiddle for them and if they wanted a certain song, they’d give him a quarter or fifty cents. That was good money I guess back then.”

Vilas’ grandfather Anthony Adams (a brother to Greasy George) always gave Ed a quarter to hear his favorite tune.

“What was Ed like?” I asked.

Vilas implied that he was withdrawn.

“Mostly he stayed with that fiddle,” he said. “He was good.”

Like most of the other older people in Harts, Vilas knew about the Haley-McCoy killings.

“My grandpaw would tell me them tales but I wouldn’t pay no attention,” he said. “He was telling about them fellers — Sol Adams — going over there and locating them and they went back and captured them. Well, his daddy Anthony tried to waylay them and take them back through here somewhere. They thought they’d come through these hills somewhere but they missed them.”

So, Sol Adams — a 20-year-old nephew to Ben Adams who was often called “Squire Sol” because of his status as an officer of the law — “went over and located Haley and McCoy” in Kentucky after the ambush. Meanwhile, his father Anthony and uncle Ben Adams, organized a gang to recapture them as the Brumfields brought them back through Harts Creek. This seemed strange: why would Sol operate against the interests of his family? And why would he have even been compelled to even become involved since he was a Logan County justice and the crime had occurred in Lincoln County?

Brandon asked Vilas if he knew who had been in the Adams gang and he said, “No, I’ve heard my grandpaw talk but I’ve forgot some of it. They was somebody from down around Hart somewhere. He said they took them over around Green Shoal or over in there somewhere and killed them. Grandpaw said they maybe hit them with axe handles.”

Vilas said his grandfather told him something horrible had happened to most of the men who murdered Haley and McCoy.

“He said just about every one of them that was in on that, something bad happened to them,” he said. “I heard one of them’s own boy killed one of them. And one of them got drowned and my grandpaw said the river wasn’t deep. Said he fell off a horse or something right at the mouth of Hart.”

Of course, Vilas was referring to Paris Brumfield, who was killed by his son Charley in 1891, and to Will Adkins, who drowned at the mouth of Harts Creek on November 23, 1889.

Brandon asked Vilas about “old Ben Adams” and he almost immediately started talking about the old timber business.

“See, that was my great-grandpaw,” he said. “They would build splash dams. They had one right out here. They had them tied some way or the other. And they built them up on Hart there, maybe up on Hoover, and they’d work all winter and put them logs in the creek. And in the spring when them floods come, it would wash all them logs down around Hart and then they’d put them together and raft them on down to Kenova. I guess that was all they had to make a living — timber and farm.”

Ben, of course, made his living in timber. He lived at the mouth of Adams Branch, a little tributary of Trace Fork presently referred to as Still Hollow.

“Over there at what we call Still Hollow, they said he had a still-house there and he had a license to make apple brandy back then,” Vilas said. “And he would go with a wagon everywhere and get apples. They was a log house over there in the mouth of that holler — just down the road here a little ways. When I was a boy the old log house was there, but it rotted down. Just one-story as far as I can remember. The old well’s there. He had some kind of an old store or saloon right there.”

Vilas speculated very little on Ben Adams’ personality, but compared him to his son, Greasy George Adams: “always a likeable fella but seemed like trouble followed him.” He heard that after Ben’s first wife died, he lived with first one woman, then the next. He eventually got into a heap of trouble by murdering a local postman, Jim Martin.

“He killed a fella right over there at the mouth of that hollow,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw said he had some sort of an old store or saloon and he was shooting out the door. Right there in the mouth of that holler. It broke him. Lawyers. Lost everything he had.”

It was rumored that Ben’s and Martin’s trouble had something to do with a woman or a right-of-way.