Tag Archives: Eliza Fry

John Fry Family Cemetery (2015)

22 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in Cemeteries, Green Shoal

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The John Fry Family Cemetery, which I revisited on 12 June 2015, is located at the mouth of Green Shoal Creek in Lincoln County, West Virginia.

ADKINS SECTION

Row 1

Randal S. Adkins (11 July 1953-04 July 2014); s/o Samuel and Edith (Gore) Adkins

David Ray Adkins (20 August 1937-05 May 1973); s/o Samuel and Edith (Gore) Adkins

Edith Gore Adkins (31 October 1912-10 April 1975); d/o M. French and Weltha (Kirk) Gore; m. Samuel Adkins

Samuel Adkins (18 March 1914-20 March 1976); s/o Pleasant B. “Fed” and Marinda S. (Davis) Adkins

Samuel D. Adkins (24 October 1960-30 June 1984); s/o David R. and Donna L. (Adkins) Adkins

Donna Lou Adkins (17 December 1941-23 December 2005); d/o Ernest C. and Bessie (McNeely) Adkins; m. Samuel D. Adkins

Rodney David Adkins (15 November 1965-still alive); s/o David R. and Donna L. (Adkins) Adkins

Row 2

John D. Adkins (18 June 1916-01 May 1980); s/o Pleasant B. “Fed” and Marinda S. (Davis) Adkins; nicknamed “Red John;” S2 US NAVY WWII

Goldie Adkins (21 September 1918-04 February 1992); d/o Joseph and Georgia (Gartin) Brumfield; m. John D. Adkins

Row 3

Georgia Brumfield (1900-1984); d/o James A. and Chloe A. (Fry) Gartin; m. Joseph “Joe” Brumfield

BRUMFIELD SECTION

Row 1

Wayne C. Brumfield (1901-1976); s/o James S. and Letilla (Dial) Brumfield

Maggie A. Brumfield (1917-1996); d/o Richard A. and Sarah A. (Wiley) Adkins; m. Wayne C. Brumfield

(gap)

Jack Brumfield (23 June 1918-23 March 1990); s/o James S. and Letilla (Dial) Brumfield

Belva Brumfield (11 June 1922-16 March 1984); m. Jack Brumfield

A bench placed on Jack and Belva’s graves reads: Jackie G. Brumfield (17 August 1950-25 December 2011); d/o Jack and Belva (Simpkins) Brumfield

Row 2

Christopher Lee Adkins (23 March 1983-24 August 2000)

Row 3

George E. Taylor (19 May 1919-03 May 1975)

Ida P. Taylor (14 December 1914-2007); d/o James S. and Letilla (Dial) Brumfield; m. George E. Taylor

Sarabeth Shelton (19 April 1989-17 November 1993); d/o Robert and Jackie (Easterling) Shelton

Jackie Lee Easterling (16 April 1941-still alive)

Sarah Lee Easterling (11 May 1942-29 March 2005); d/o George E. and Ida P. (Brumfield) Taylor; m. Jackie Lee Easterling

Row 4

Michael E. Taylor (25 February 1949-16 January 2008); s/o George and Ida (Brumfield) Taylor; nicknamed “Mickey”

LAMBERT SECTION

Row 1

Lonnie Lambert (14 March 1901-22 July 1995); s/o Samuel and Georgia E. (Lucas) Lambert

Edna Mae Lambert (30 September 1905-19 November 1980); d/o James S. and Letilla (Dial) Brumfield; m. Lonnie Lambert

Row 2

Cecil Lambert, Jr. (27 September 1925-2014); s/o Lonnie and Edna (Brumfield) Lambert

Kathleen Ann Lambert (01 October 1926-19 February 2010)

Billy Ray Lambert (06 February 1950-16 August 1950)

Row 3

Everett Lonnie Dean (08 May 1950-29 January 1951)

FRY SECTION

Row 1

Zola Frye (07 May 1919-09 September 1964); d/o Clarence and Angaline (Mullins) Fry

Thelma P. Carter (1918-1967); d/o Clarence and Angaline (Mullins) Fry; m. Hassell Carter

Row 2

unmarked grave with rock headstone and little square footstone

C.L. Fry (Clarence Fry); born November 1886; s/o Daniel C. “Tucker” and Rachel (Lucas) Fry; died 2 March 1948

Angie Fry (Angaline Fry); born 16 December 1896; d/o Emery and Stella (Abbott) Mullins; m. Clarence Fry; died 14 September 1947

Elsie L. Mullins (16 December 1911-08 November 1959); d/o Clarence and Angaline (Mullins) Fry; m. William Mullins

William Mullins, Sr. (12 August 1894-04 February 1975)

ABBOTT SECTION

Row 1

Ottie Fry (1909-1987); s/o G. Cleveland and Betty (Fry) Fry

Row 2

Bobby Ray Abbott (02 April 1969-16 June 2001)

Brian Scott Abbott (04 October 1971-21 March 2011)

Row 3

Woodrow E. Abbott (1914-1977); PVT US ARMY WWII

Wallace Abbott (22 January 1930-30 March 1987); s/o John E. “Cricket” and S. Evona (Fry) Abbott; SP 4 US ARMY KOREA VIETNAM

Denny Hobert Abbott (15 February 1928-22 June 1996); s/o John E. “Cricket” and S. Evona (Fry) Abbott; PFC US ARMY

Row 4

Luther W. Abbott (09 February 1917-02 March 1963); s/o John E. “Cricket” and S. Evona (Fry) Abbott; WV PFC CO E 16 INF WWII P4

John E. Abbott (1892-1966); s/o John H. and Caroline (Fry) Abbott

Evona Abbott (1892-1983); d/o Daniel C. “Tucker” and Rachel (Lucas) Fry; m. John E. Abbott

Row 5

John “Duke” Abbott, Jr. (08 August 1924-03 July 1992); s/o John E. and S. Evona (Fry) Abbott

(gap)

Michael Roy Fry (19 February 1944-20 February 1944); s/o Curtis and Birdie (Bryant) Fry

Row 6

tall rectangular rock headstone and rock footstone

Delphia Adams Bryant (the date of August 22 and an illegible year appears on a small cinderblock); m. Marshall “Bud” Bryant/Mullins

(gap)

perhaps another grave marked by a flat rock that has fallen over

MIDSECTION

Row 1

Wealthy Hatfield (01 May 1904-27 December 1928); d/o Samuel and Georgia E. (Lucas) Lambert; m. Bruce Hatfield

Kenneth Hatfield (05 October 1924-10 October 1925); s/o Bruce and Wealthy (Lambert) Hatfield

unmarked grave with rock headstone and footstone

unmarked grave with rock headstone and footstone

broken baby headstone with rock footstone

Row 2

Katie A. Hunter (died 11 August 1895, aged 13 years, 11 months, 27 days); d/o John E. and Parlee (Ferrell) Hunter

unmarked grave with rock footstone

unmarked grave with rock headstone

UPPER SECTION

Row 1

Rinda Fry (26 January 1826-29 July 1887); d/o Reuben and Clarissa (Perry) Steele; m1. James Davis; m2. ___ Walker; m3. Baptist “Nab” Fry

Baptist Fry (26 November 1824-15 June 1881); s/o John and Catherine (Snodgrass) Fry

(large gap)

Michael George Brumfield (29 January 1948-01 February 1948); s/o Wayne C. and Maggie (Adkins) Brumfield

unmarked grave with rock headstone and footstone (baby)

Cleo Lambert (born and died 18 August 1924); Lonnie C. and Edna (Brumfield) Lambert

Lottie Brumfield (1904-1907); d/o James S. and Letilla (Dial) Brumfield

Bird Brumfield (1850-1905); s/o William R. and Mary A. (Elkins) Brumfield

Sarah A. Brumfield (1853-1932); d/o Charles and Lucinda (Fry) Lucas; m1. William Bird Brumfield; m2. Josephus Irvin Workman

unmarked grave with rock headstone (fallen over) and footstone

Letilla Brumfield (1881-1947); d/o Elisha and Catherine (Fry) Dial; m. James S. Brumfield

Row 2

unmarked grave with small footstone

Julia Ann Dean (born and died 13 June 1948)

Row 3

unmarked grave with rock footstone above Albert Abbott grave

unmarked grave above Lucinda Lucas grave — small rock headstone and footstone

“K.L.” — square rock headstone and footstone above Charles Lucas grave

unmarked grave with sharp rock headstone and footstone above Eliza Fry grave

(large gap)

W.W.A. (29? May 1917-10? June 1917)

Wetzel Brumfield (1910-1932); s/o James S. and Letilla (Dial) Brumfield

unmarked grave with rock headstone and footstone

H.C. Fry painted on a rock (possibly Harvey Fry, son of Baptist Fry)

Row 4

John Fry (10 March 1794-20 October 1883); s/o George and Keziah (Adkins) Fry; PVT CAPT SHIELD CO 7 VA MILITIA WAR OF 1812

“Wilson Abbott, died M.11.92” carved on rock

Albert Abbott (no dates); born 11 July 1824; s/o John A. and Elizabeth (Scott) Abbott; CAPTAIN CARTER’S CO. 129 VA MIL CSA; died before 1900

Druzilla Fry Abbott (11 January 1826-27 September 1889); d/o John and Catherine (Snodgrass) Fry; m. Albert Abbott

L.L. (Lucinda Lucas); born 27 September 1819; d/o John and Catherine (Snodgrass) Fry; m. Charles Lucas; died before 1900

Charles Lucas (2 September 1818-24 November 1904); s/o John and Mary (Fry) Lucas

E.F. (Eliza Virginia Fry); born November 1865; d/o Charles and Lucinda (Fry) Lucas; m. George F. Fry; died c.1902

NOTE 1: Some John Fry descendants are POSITIVE that John Fry died and was buried on Fourteen Mile Creek in Lincoln County. His tombstone was placed at Green Shoal in the 1990s based on a WPA cemetery map.

NOTE 2: I know of other persons buried in this cemetery but cannot identify their exact location. There are also some family members who I suppose to be buried here but have no proof.

In Search of Ed Haley 301

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud

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Brandon asked Daisy about Paris Brumfield.

“Well, he had a band of people. They went around and killed a lot of people, they said. They called them a mob. Mommy said they had a mob and if they didn’t like somebody they’d kill them. The Brumfields was rough. The Brumfields first killed Grandpa’s son-in-law, Boney Lucas, and when Mom married Green McCoy they said they had another one they was gonna kill.”

Daisy told us an incredible story about Green whipping Paris in a fight.

“All I know, they was into a racket beforehand and Green McCoy got him down and pulled his eyes all out and said, ‘Go back.’ He said they was just like rubber — he’d pull his eyeballs out and they’d go back. Said you couldn’t pull them all the way out. He did finally get his sight back. Had to wear a blindfold for two or three weeks or a month. Laid around for a while.”

Faye said, “Mom said Grandma was laughing — she kinda thought it was funny to tell about him pulling that eyeball out and it popping back like a rubber band.”

We could just picture the fight, based on what we’d read in the Lambert Collection.

“Fist fights between neighborhood bullies, or to settle old scores” were a part of local culture in those times. “It was not uncommon for contestants to engage in ‘gouging,’ as a natural sequence of a fist fight. Weapons were banned, but many a man lost an eye, by having it gouged out.”

It probably wasn’t too long after Green’s fight with Paris that he and Milt were murdered. Daisy knew they were killed in October (just after Spicie’s twenty-third birthday) after being captured in Eden, Kentucky, where Green’s first family lived. She said a Brumfield mob easily took possession of them there because “the law was afraid of them.”

“Paris Brumfield was one of the ringleaders,” she said. “They brought them back from Kentucky up to Fry and killed them there. They made Green McCoy play the fiddle and he didn’t want to. They was a gonna kill him, they said. Mrs. Fry — that lived in that house — she crawled under the bed, she said. She was afraid they was gonna kill her.”

Mrs. Fry was a sister to Boney Lucas.

Daisy said some of the younger Brumfields protested Milt’s and Green’s murder.

“They are good Brumfields,” she said. “Like other people, they’re mean people in every generation. Some of the Brumfields was real good people.”

Daisy said Spicie didn’t go with Milt’s wife to beg for Milt’s and Green’s life, as we’d heard from Billy Adkins. Actually, Daisy didn’t think her mother had known Emma Haley but Brandon wondered about that since one of Emma’s uncles had married an aunt to Spicie McCoy years before. (Another confusing, but seemingly relevant, genealogical connection.)

“Then after they shot them and killed them,” Daisy said, “they took a pole axe and beat his brains in and his brains went up on the door, Mom said. Oh, that liked to killed Mom.”

After the murders, the Brumfields warned people not to touch Milt’s and Green’s bodies.

“The Hatfields up there was a friend to Green McCoy ’cause when they murdered them they wasn’t gonna let them be buried, they said, and the Hatfields from Logan County come down there with their rifles to see if Grandpaw had let them bury them on his farm,” Daisy said.

That seemed unlikely to us, considering how the Hatfields were busy feuding with Randolph McCoy’s clan, however, Devil Anse Hatfield’s mother was a first cousin to Spicie McCoy’s grandfather.

In any case, Daisy said there was no Hatfield-Brumfield trouble because Milt and Green were buried on Cain’s farm before the Hatfields arrived in Harts.

In later years, Spicie made several trips to the gravesite with her son, Sherman McCoy — sometimes on paw paw runs. Faye took Daisy and Spicie on a final trip in August of 1953. The graves were in bad shape.

“It looked like it had been neglected,” Daisy said. “They just had little rocks for their tombstone. I couldn’t go up there now — I’m ninety-one years old — but I went there several years ago with my mother.”

In Search of Ed Haley 251

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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According to the Fry history, A.S. Fry eventually moved to Guyandotte, a river town in Cabell County, “where he built and owned a hotel. The Jesse James gang, who robbed a Huntington bank, stayed in his hotel for several nights.” His son George, meanwhile, took control of the family interests at Green Shoal. He presumably lived in the family homestead, where he was located at the time of Milt and Green’s murder in 1889. Deed records refer to it “as the old A.S. Fry homestead above the mouth of Green Shoals” and describe it as follows:

BEGINNING at the mouth of Green Shoals Creek, thence up with the meanderings of said creek to a survey made by C.T. fry, thence with the line of same to a white oak corner on a point, thence up the said point with the line of Chas. Lucas to the top of the mountain, thence running with the ridge to the head of a little ravine to a dog-wood corner made by C.T. Fry, thence down the hollow with C.T. Fry’s and B.C. Toney’s lands to a walnut corner made by said C.T. Fry, thence down the hill with John Fry’s and B.C. Toney’s line to the river, thence down with meanderings of the river to the place of beginning, containing seventy-five acres, more or less.

Although the deed was vague in giving its coordinates, it clearly proved that the “A.S. Fry homestead” — and thus the site of Milt and Green’s murder — was on the same side of the river as the railroad tracks.

By 1889, when the Brumfield gang took over the Fry house, George and his wife Eliza had a six-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Cat Fry, a niece, also lived in the home. The family was connected to various participants in the 1889 troubles. Eliza’s older brother was married to Paris Brumfield’s sister, while two of her sisters were married to Brumfield’s nephews. These marriages were perhaps complicated when Paris murdered Mrs. Fry’s brother, Boney Lucas.

Following the Haley-McCoy murders, George Fry suffered some bad luck. In 1892, his wife reportedly had an illegitimate child by John Brumfield (Al’s younger brother). Four years later, his father sold the family homestead on Green Shoal to Arena Ferrell, a local storekeeper. George’s wife died around 1902 “when her children were young” (according to one source) and was buried in the old Fry Cemetery at Green Shoal. A.S. Fry himself was murdered at his hotel in 1904. George afterwards moved to Guyandotte where he died on May 19, 1905. Control of family businesses thereafter went to his brother Evermont Ward Fry, who was still alive as late as October 1939.

As for the “murder house” itself, Arena Ferrell deeded it to her adopted son George W. Ferrell, who is credited with writing “The Lincoln County Crew” — the song about Milt’s death. In 1899, he sold it to George R. McComas, who in turn sold it to J.L. Caldwell three years later. (This was probably the same J.L. Caldwell referred to in George Fry’s 1880 letter.) It was around that time (1902-04) when the railroad came through the Guyan Valley, which apparently had a direct effect on the “murder house.”

“The railroad now runs through one side of the house as well as that of the school building,” Ward told Fred Lambert. “This school was about one fourth mile above our residence.”

In 1915, Caldwell sold the property back to Arena Ferrell. Then, in 1919, it was transferred to Watson Lucas, whose heirs sold it to the current owners, the Lamberts, in the 1960s.

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.”