Tag Archives: Harvey “Long Harve” Dingess

Interview with John Dingess 1 (1996)

10 Thursday Jul 2014

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

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That winter, Brandon made contact by telephone with John Dingess, a Connecticut resident who proved to be one of our best sources on the 1889 feud. John was born on the Smokehouse Fork of Harts Creek in 1918. A grandson to Henderson Dingess, he moved away from West Virginia after serving his country in World War II.

John said Henderson Dingess met his wife Sallie while boarding with her father Joseph Adams on Harts Creek. Henderson didn’t care much for his in-laws (he said they were “hoggish”), particularly his brother-in-law Ben Adams. Ben lived over the mountain from Henderson on main Harts Creek where he operated a small store. He and Henderson feuded “for years.” At some point, Henderson’s oldest son Charlie Dingess got into a racket with Ben over a yoke of cattle and “almost killed him in a fight” at Cole Branch.

The feud between Henderson’s family and Ben Adams reached a new level of tension when Ben refused to pay the sixteen-cents-per-log fee required by Al Brumfield to pass logs through his boom at the mouth of Harts Creek. Brumfield “was more of a businessman” than a feudist but “got into it” with Adams at his saloon near the boom. In the scrape, Ben pulled out his pistol and shot Al, who was spared from harm only because of a button on his clothes. Al subsequently fetched a gun and chased Ben up the creek — a very humiliating thing as there was probably a whole gang of people to witness his flight.

Ben soon gathered up a party of men with plans to force his timber out of Harts Creek under the cover of darkness. Before he could put his plan into action, though, the Dingesses caught wind of it and warned the Brumfields who promptly armed themselves with .38 Winchesters and .44 Winchesters and gathered in ambush on the hill at Panther Branch near the mouth of Harts.

Ben, anticipating trouble, put his wife, the former Victoria Dingess, at the front of his gang in the hopes that it might discourage her cousins from shooting at him as they came down the creek. It was a bad idea: the Brumfields and Dingesses shot “her dress full of holes.”

This was particularly horrible since she was probably pregnant at the time.

The next day, she came to her uncle Henderson’s to show him what his boys had done to her dress but he never punished them.

At that point, Ben was probably hell-bent on revenge and arranged for Milt Haley and Green McCoy, who John called two “professional gunmen,” to “bump Al off.”

John was sure of Ben’s role in the events of 1889.

“Ben Adams, my father’s uncle, he gave them a .38 Winchester apiece and a side of bacon to kill Al Brumfield,” he said.

Milt and Green caught Al one Sunday as he made his way back down Harts Creek after visiting with Henderson Dingess. He rode alone, while Hollena rode with her younger brother, Dave Dingess. As they neared Thompson Branch, Milt and Green fired down the hill at them from their position at the “Hot Rock.” Al was shot in the elbow, which knocked him from his horse and broke his arm, while Hollena was shot in the face. Al somehow managed to make it over a mountain back to Henderson Dingess’, while Hollena was left to crawl half a mile down to Chapman Dingess’ at Thompson Branch for help.

Upon learning of the ambush, Harvey Dingess (John’s father) hitched up a sled to one of his father’s yokes of cattle and fetched Hollena, who remained at Henderson’s until she recovered.

Immediately after the shootings, there was a lot of gossip about who’d been behind the whole affair. John said there was some talk that Long John Adams had been involved “but the Dingess and Brumfield people never believed it.” Everyone seemed to focus in on Milt and Green, who’d recently disappeared into Kentucky (where McCoy was from).

“They used to, if you committed a crime in West Virginia, would run away to Kentucky,” John said. “In the hill part of Kentucky there on the Tug River.”

Brumfield put up a $500 reward and it wasn’t long until a man rode up to Henderson Dingess’ claiming to have caught Milt and Green in Kentucky. He was sent to Brumfield’s home near the mouth of Harts where he found Al out back shoeing an ox steed. They talked for a while, then Brumfield told him, “You put them across the Tug River and when I identify them you’ll get your money.”

Pat Adkins interview in Harts, WV

09 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Later in the summer, Brandon visited his friend Pat Adkins, who lived in a little trailer just back of where the old Al Brumfield home once sat at the mouth of Harts Creek. Pat was raised in the magnificent Brumfield house and was its owner at the time of its burning. He was a first cousin to Billy Adkins.

Pat first spoke about Al and Hollena Brumfield, who he said charged people a ten-cents-per-log tax at their boom. The tax was a constant source of friction in the community. Even Al’s in-laws weren’t fond of the fee…and apparently weren’t spared from it, either.

“One time, Harvey Dingess had a big huge amount of logs out there and he said he wasn’t gonna pay no ten cents a log tax,” Pat said. “Harvey was Hollene’s brother. They all liked to drink so he come in there being jovial and friendly and brought Al and Hollene in a big special-made malt whiskey. They got a big drunken party going and finally around twelve o’clock they all got so drunk they went to bed. Harve had his men stationed over there on that hillside and when he waved a light from that porch upstairs them men come down there and cut that splash and let his logs through. The Brumfields got up the next morning — all their hangovers — and went out and looked and that splash had been cut and all of his logs had been run through and Harve was gone. He was on his way to Huntington to sell them.”

Brandon asked Pat if the log boom was the root of the 1889 troubles.

“Bill Brumfield’s wife, Aunt Tiny, told me about the famous posse ride to lynch Milt Haley and Green McCoy,” Pat said, cutting to the chase. “Runyon had a store up on Hart and that was among Hollene’s relatives up in there and she had the big timber operations down here — the splash dam, you know — and had a saloon. Runyon had a legal still where people brought their apples in and stuff to make brandy. Somebody else run one of them too up there — a Dingess. They was into it over the business. Runyon thought that if he could kill them, he could take control of the mouth of Hart. When Hollene came into business that was what she done. She killed out her enemy, or never killed him — burned him out. That was Bill Fowler. Bill Fowler was a businessman and he come into possession of the mouth of the creek. He had him a big saloon out there and she burned him out and burned his saloon and then she took it over. So, I guess Runyon got the same idea: ‘You took it. Now I’m going to get it from you.’ So he hired these guys to kill them and if he’d a killed them they’d a been out of the way and that woulda pretty well cinched him for it. He had plenty of money and he’d a rolled in here and coulda bought it. He’d been the top man then.”

According to Pat, locals quickly determined that Haley and McCoy were involved in the ambush of Al and Hollena Brumfield and formed a mob to capture them.

“They formed about sixty men,” he said. “I know Black John Adkins was in it. John was there a holding the horses. He wasn’t taking no part in it — just going along to show he was in support. I think everybody in the country around in this area and all of Hollena’s relatives were in it. Runyon, he left the country when he realized that they might be coming after him because they suspected him as hiring them.”

Pat said Mrs. Brumfield believed that her husband Bill was too young to have participated in the killings but would have “been in on it if he’d a been old enough.” Pat didn’t think his Grandpa Fed Adkins was in the mob either, but then said, “He might have been — probably was. You know, the killing took place there, I think, about where Lon Lambert’s house is, down under that riverbank. Black John said when Paris came out from under that bank he was just as bloody as he could be where he had stabbed on them men. Said, Paris Brumfield was bloody as a hog. Said, he just took a knife and cut them to pieces and I think they gave Paris the honor of killing them because it was a vengeance killing. They dared anybody to ever touch their bodies. I think they laid about nine days and got to smelling so bad they finally give them permission to bury them.”

In Pat’s view, those who participated in the killing of Milt and Green were not typically violent men. Haley’s and McCoy’s apparent guilt in ambushing Al Brumfield provided a justification for their bloody murders in the eyes of locals and ensured that the “peace-keeping” reputations of the vigilantes would endure as stories about the feud were handed down to later generations. For instance, despite the dangerous reputation of Paris Brumfield, Pat said, “Other than the killing of Haley and McCoy, he was really not a mean person. That was understandable that he helped kill Haley and McCoy if somebody was trying to kill your son. I never heard that he was a mean person. I don’t think he deliberately went around plotting up mean things to do. And I don’t think he was a cruel person.”

Just before Brandon left Pat, he asked him about growing up in Al Brumfield’s house. Pat said when he was young he often hid behind some large framed Brumfield family photographs stacked in an upstairs room. There was one in particular that he remembered: a picture of Al Brumfield — worn and blind, sitting in a chair on a porch.

In Search of Ed Haley 272

24 Monday Mar 2014

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

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Either way, Milt Haley and Green McCoy were paid a side of bacon and some money to eliminate Al Brumfield. Maude Dingess said Milt and Green ambushed Al and Hollena Brumfield as they rode down Harts Creek on a single horse. Hollena’s brothers, Harvey and Dave, followed behind them on separate horses.

“I guess they thought he was gonna have trouble or they wouldn’t a been doing that,” Maude said, somewhat logically.

As they made their way past Thompson Branch, Brumfield spotted two men hiding in the weeds. He ducked somehow to avoid harm, but Hollena was shot from the horse.

“Al just went on,” Maude said, while Dave and Harve “ran back up here to their mother and daddy’s house to get somebody to go down there with them.”

They later returned with a sled and hauled Hollena’s bloody body back to Smoke House.

In a short time, Milt and Green were rounded up and taken to Hugh Dingess’ home at the mouth of Bill’s Branch.

“I’d say old man Hugh got them kids and took them maybe to some of their relatives’ houses or somewhere else,” Harve Dingess said. “Maybe up to old Albert Dingess’ or somewhere like that. See, old Albert just lived on up the road a mile, mile and a half.”

Harve continued, “They said they all had a big feast there and I guess they had a lot of the corn whiskey there and all of them drinking and playing music. And they said they made the old man Haley — he was a fiddle player — they said they made him play that fiddle all night and all of them drunk a dancing. They said that they just kept telling him to keep that fiddle a going.”

I wondered where Milt got the fiddle at Hugh’s and Maude said, “They sent somebody to somebody’s house that had a fiddle I bet and brought it back. Back in them days you know a lot of households had them old instruments in them.”

I asked if Milt was considered a good fiddler and Harve said, “At that time, I think they said he was. Supposed to’ve been very good.”

Harve had never heard much talk about Green McCoy but stressed: “I know I did hear them talk about them making the old man play the fiddle all night and all of them a dancing and cooking and having a big feast there and drinking their moonshine.”

I said, “Most people that are gonna kill somebody, they don’t want to get to know them. If you have an execution, the executioner don’t want to get to know the prisoner because the more he gets to know that prisoner the harder it is for him to conduct the execution. To have two guys to play music for you before you’re fixing to kill them — that’s a good way to get to know them real quick. Boy, I don’t see how they did that.”

“I guess that’s the reason they kept old French Bryant,” Harve said. “They said he didn’t care for nothing. They said he was one of the leaders. He was a hollering, ‘Let’s go! Let’s do it!’ Pushing the thing, from what I could understand. He was a hollering, ‘Let’s kill the sons of bitches!’ That’s what I heard over the years. I even heard Millard say that one time. French was the one wanting to hang them up to the walnut tree and I think they finally decided against that.”

Brandon wondered who else was in the gang and Maude said, “Hugh and Charlie Dingess was into that. They was Grandpap’s boys — the older boys. Hugh was rough and over-bearing. Harve’s grandfather, ‘Short Harve,’ was into that. Burl Farley was into it, too.”

Maude doubted that Henderson Dingess was involved due to his advanced age (approximately 58 years), but we felt it was entirely possible since (1) men his age and older participated in the Hatfield-McCoy feud and (2) these guys had reportedly shot his daughter. Harve said he figured that his great-grandfather Albert Dingess was in on it because “he was just that kind of guy.”

“Dealer Dave” Dingess was probably involved, too, Harve said, because “them Dingesses all hung together. They was just a band of outlaws, as we would call it, that day and time.”

Harve and Maude hadn’t heard much about the story beyond that, although they knew that Milt and Green were taken away from Hugh’s when the Brumfields learned that another mob was forming to rescue them. They never confessed to committing the ambush on Al and Hollena Brumfield but everyone figured that Ben Adams was behind the trouble. As a result, Maude said the Brumfields and Dingesses were “against” Ben in following years. At one point, they tried to burn his home. Maude’s father was one of the few Dingesses who never held a grudge. He often referred to him as “poor old Uncle Ben.”

In Search of Ed Haley 271

23 Sunday Mar 2014

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

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Brandon asked Maude Dingess about her grandparents, Henderson and Sallie (Adams) Dingess. Maude said Grandpap Henderson was “kindly the leader of his family” but he had a real time keeping his older sons — Charlie, Floyd, and Hugh — in line. They ran around a lot with their uncle Ben Adams, who was Sallie Dingess’ youngest brother. Uncle Ben Adams was pretty tight with the Dingesses in the early years (he named his first three children after them) but was reportedly a bad influence on the Dingess boys. At some point, Maude said, her uncles “turned their meanness on him.”

One time, after Charlie Dingess whipped Ben in a fight, Ben came to complain to Sallie. Henderson saw him coming and told her, “Go out there and tell him to go home. We don’t want no trouble with them.” Sallie went outside and said to her brother, “Now Ben. You just go right back home. Don’t you get off here. There’s no use to quarrel at Charlie and Floyd ’cause you’ve made them what they are. You taught it to them.”

In subsequent years, Henderson tried to “distance” himself from Ben. He often made snide comments, like telling his son Dave that he was “all Adams” when he wouldn’t work.

“If I knew where the Adams vein was in your body, I’d drive a knife in it and let it run out,” Henderson would say.

Brandon asked Maude if her uncle Floyd Dingess was killed over timber in 1888.

“Floyd was tough,” she said. “Floyd was killed there at the mouth of Rock House. He had some logs there and that was his brother-in-law he was into it with, Bill Hall. They just got to quarreling over the logs, I guess. Floyd was bent down to drive the dregs in the logs and Bill Hall run up behind him and knocked him in the head with a pole axe.”

“I’ve heard Maude’s father talk about it,” Harve said. “He said when they’d be a floating the logs out of here — you know, huge water — Floyd Dingess would run them logs like a gray squirrel.”

Maude said, “He was a small man. Dad said Floyd was much of a man to be a little fella like that. He said he saw him do things a big man couldn’t do.”

As soon as we asked about Milt Haley’s death, Harve said, “It was all over timber. The Adamses around in the other creek yonder, they was all wanting to make a dollar out of timber, no doubt. Ben Adams and them had their own dam built somewhere up main Hart — splash dam. Well now, up in this fork, old Albert Dingess had a big one up there. Burl Farley had one too on up above it. They kept a huge dam there and when they’d get ready to float their logs, everybody would turn their dams out at once and let them go. When they would knock them there dams off and everybody had their timber ready to float out of here the timber would get mixed a going down. Naturally, it would. When they’d get down there at Hart — the Brumfields had the boom in there that caught the timber and hold it out of the river and then they’d make up their rafts there — and they’d have to pick through that and sort their timber out. They had their brands on it, but they’d slip and change their brands. Maude’s father, I heard him talk that they’d get down there and they’d get in the awfulest arguments ever was over whose logs were whose and whose belonged to what. I guess they had a time with it.”

In addition to all the hard feelings over people stealing logs, there was a lot of animosity toward Al Brumfield — even among his in-laws — because of the toll he charged at his boom.

“They was having to pay a toll down there at Hollene’s and they didn’t want to pay any toll,” Maude said. “And that’s what Al’s wife was shot over.”

“The Mullinses put this old guy [Milt Haley] up to doing the dirty work, I think,” Harve said. “Now, I ain’t sure on that. I’ve heard that talked a little bit.”

Brandon told Harve and Maude how Ben Adams was supposedly the one who hired Milt and Green to kill Al Brumfield and Maude confirmed, “He did. I thought it was Ben ’cause, you know, they talked that here.”

“That’s what the word was,” Harve said. “The Adamses and Mullinses around there. See, the Adamses and Mullinses was always locked in through marriage. They said that old Ben was the head of it. I just heard Maude’s brothers talking, you know, that he was a pretty ruthless man.”

Maude said, “He was awful hidden in his ways but Dad always bragged on him. Ben was his uncle.”

Brandon said, “People that live in Harts, down at the mouth of the creek, they’ve all been told that John Runyon hired those two men. People up here on the creek have always been told it was Ben Adams. What it looks like is that they both were in on it.”

Harve said, “It’s possible that they were in cahoots because now… Seems to me like, something I did hear… Somebody talked that in the past — might have been Maude’s father — that there was another person or some other people — which could have been the very people you’re talking about — tried to horn in on the Brumfields there at the mouth of the creek at one time and they had some problems with it. Like they tried to put a boom in of their own and squeeze old Hollene out.”

“I think Ben did that,” Maude said.

“Well, Ben could have been in on it with this other guy like he’s talking about,” Harve said.