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Tag Archives: Hollene Brumfield

Dr. Cecil L. Hudgins leaves Aracoma, WV (1890)

15 Sunday Mar 2015

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Lincoln County Feud, Logan

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Appalachia, Aracoma, Blood in West Virginia, Cecil L. Hudgins, doctor, genealogy, history, Hollene Brumfield, Lincoln County Feud, Logan County, Ohio, Portsmouth, West Virginia

Doc Hudgins moves LCB 09.25.1890 1

Dr. Cecil L. Hudgins leaves Aracoma, Logan County (WV) Banner, 25 September 1890. Doc Hudgins treated the wound of Hollena Brumfield in September 1889.

Hollena Brumfield grave (2015)

31 Saturday Jan 2015

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Cemeteries, Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Women's History

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Al Brumfield Cemetery, Appalachia, Blood in West Virginia, books, Brandon Kirk, genealogy, Harts, history, Hollene Brumfield, Lincoln County, Lincoln County Feud, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia

IMG_8555

Yesterday, I re-visited the Hollena (Dingess) Brumfield grave in Harts, Lincoln County, WV. Hollena was the daughter of Henderson and Sarah (Adams) Dingess and the wife of Allen Brumfield.

In Search of Ed Haley 337

17 Thursday Jul 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, banjo, Billy Adkins, blind, Bob Bryant, Brandon Kirk, Burl Farley, Charley Brumfield, Ed Haley, Fed Adkins, fiddlers, French Bryant, Green McCoy, Harve "Short Harve" Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John Hartford, Kentucky, Lincoln County Feud, Martin County, measles, Milt Haley, music, Nashville, Piney, Smokehouse Fork, Tom Holzen, West Fork, Wolf Creek, writing

Brandon and I also called Bob Bryant, a son of the infamous French Bryant, who lived with his son at the mouth of Piney Creek on West Fork. Billy Adkins had encouraged us to call Bob, saying that he would probably tell us what he knew of the Haley-McCoy murders. When we called Bob, his son said we were welcome to talk with his dad, although he warned us that his memory wasn’t very good.

Bob said he was born on Piney in 1911.

When I asked him about French Bryant he said he knew very little about him because his dad “was pretty old” when he was born. He said he did remember his father talking “some” about the Haley-McCoy affair.

“Milt and Green were pretty rough fellers who got in a lot of trouble all the time,” Bob said. “They were bad to drink. Milt Haley and Green McCoy was fiddlers — I think so. Maybe they was. Yeah, I almost know they was. One of them picked the banjo, I believe, but I don’t know for sure.”

Bob said Hugh Dingess, who was “kind of an outlaw,” organized a posse to fetch Milt and Green after they shot Al and Hollena Brumfield. They found them over around Wolf Creek in Martin County, Kentucky.

“Them Dingesses up there killed them,” Bob said. “It didn’t take much to get them to shoot you back then. People’d shoot you just to be a doing something.”

I asked Bob if he ever heard anything about who took part in what he kept calling “the shooting” and he said, “Hugh Dingess and four or five more.”

He paused, then said, “A few of them I wouldn’t want to tell you.”

We were just waiting for him to say his father’s name when he said, “Short Harve Dingess was pretty rough. Seems like he was in that bunch some way.”

Some of the others were: Al Brumfield, Charley Brumfield, Fed Adkins, and Burl Farley.

Bob never identified his father as a member of the mob but mentioned that his father was a friend to the Dingesses on Smokekouse.

He said he remembered seeing Ed play at the schoolhouse above the mouth of Piney when he was nineteen years old.

“He was a real fiddler,” Bob said.

In subsequent weeks, Brandon and I went through most of our information — processing it, sorting it, discussing it. We thought more about the story of Milt causing Ed’s blindness by dipping him in ice water and wondered how anyone would have ever equated those as cause-effect events. I got on the phone with Dr. Tom Holzen, a doctor-friend of mine in Nashville, who said Milt’s dipping of Ed in ice water, while a little crude, was actually the right kind of thing to do in that it would have lowered his fever. Based on that, Milt seems to have been a caring father trying to save Ed’s life or ease his suffering. Was it the act of a desperate man who had already lost other children to disease?

Al and Hollene Brumfield graves

05 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Al Brumfield, Appalachia, genealogy, Harts, history, Hollene Brumfield, Lincoln County, Lincoln County Feud, U.S. South, West Virginia

Al and Hollene Brumfield graves, Harts, Lincoln County, WV, 2004

Al and Hollene Brumfield graves, Harts, Lincoln County, WV, 2004

In Search of Ed Haley 329

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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

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accordion, Al Brumfield, Andy Mullins, banjo, Bernie Adams, Billy Adkins, Birdie, Blackberry Blossom, Brandon Kirk, Charles Conley Jr., Chinese Breakdown, Clifford Belcher, Crawley Creek Mountain, Down Yonder, Ed Belcher, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddler, guitar, Harts, Harts Creek, history, Hollene Brumfield, Joe Adams, John Hartford, Johnny Hager, Logan, Logan County, Milt Haley, music, piano, Pop Goes the Weasel, Raggedy Ann, Soldiers Joy, Spanish Fandango, timbering, Trace Fork, West Virginia, Wirt Adams, writing

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 Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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Andy Mullins, banjo, Bernie Adams, Bill Adkins, Bill Monroe, Billy Adkins, Black Sheep, blind, Bob Dingess, Brandon Kirk, Buck Fork, Claude Martin, Dingess, Dobie Mullins, Drunkard's Hell, Ed Haley, Floyd Mullins, George Baisden, George Mullins, Green McCoy, Grover Mullins, guitar, Harts Creek, history, Hollene Brumfield, John Hartford, Logan County, Maple Leaf on the Hill, measles, Michigan, Millard Thompson, Milt Haley, Mona Haley, moonshine, music, Naaman Adams, Roxie Mullins, Smokehouse Fork, Ticky George Hollow, Trace Fork, West Virginia, Williamson, Wilson Mullins, writing

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 326

24 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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Bernie Adams, Big Branch, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Cacklin Hen, crime, Dood Dalton, Ed Haley, fiddle, fiddler, fiddling, Green McCoy, guitar, Harts, Harts Creek, history, Hollene Brumfield, John Hartford, Logan, Luster Dalton, Milt Haley, Mona Haley, music, Rockhouse Fork, Stump Dalton, Wild Horse, writing

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 324

20 Friday Jun 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Albert Dingess, Ben Adams, Bill's Branch, blind, Buck Fork, Dorothy Brumfield, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, feud, French Bryant, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Harve "Short Harve" Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John Brumfield, Lincoln County Feud, Logan County, Milt Haley, Piney, Smokehouse Fork, Ticky George Adams, timbering, Violet Mullins, West Virginia, writing

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 319

12 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Bernie Adams, Brandon Kirk, Cain Adkins, Caroline Brumfield, Cecil Brumfield, Dave Dingess, Ed Haley, fiddle, French Bryant, Harriet Brumfield, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John Hartford, John W Runyon, Lillian Ray, Logan, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, Sallie Dingess, Smokehouse Fork, Tom Martin, writing

A little later, Brandon visited Lillian Ray, a seventy-something-year-old daughter of Cecil Brumfield who lived in a beautiful two-story house on the Smokehouse Fork of Harts Creek. Lilly, he discovered, had a lot of the old Dingess family photographs. To Brandon’s surprise, there were several thick-paged Victorian velvet-covered albums full of tintypes and a few boxes of sepia images on decorative cardboard squares. Only a few were labeled, but he recognized some of the faces: Al Brumfield, Henderson and Sallie Dingess, Hugh Dingess, Mrs. Charley Brumfield, Mrs. John Brumfield, and Dave Dingess. No doubt, there were pictures in the album of Ben Adams and Hollena Brumfield in their youth.

Before leaving, Brandon asked Lilly about Ed Haley. She said she remembered him coming to her father’s house when he lived in the old Henderson Dingess homeplace. He would just show up, leading himself with a cane, and stay for two or three days. Lilly hated to see him come because he was so hateful to the Brumfield children — “always running his mouth.” She described him as a “little short man” who “drank a lot” and told how he and Bernie Adams once borrowed a fiddle from her father and then pawned it off in Logan. The fiddle originally belonged to Tom Martin.

Not long after visiting Lilly, Brandon sent me a letter updating me on his research along with pictures of people we’d only imagined. As they turned up, I wondered if I were to go into a room with Al, Paris, Milt, Green, French, Cain, Runyon — without knowing who any of them were — which ones would I take to strictly on a personality basis? Which ones would I have a gut reaction to think, “Well, he’s a pretty fair good old boy,” or, “Boy, I don’t know about that feller there. Something’s just not right.” I mean, you walk in the room and, “That’s Al Brumfield?” No way. “That’s Cain Adkins?” Nope, I can’t believe that.

Pat Adkins interview in Harts, WV

09 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Culture of Honor, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Al Brumfield, Bill Brumfield, Bill Fowler, Billy Adkins, Black John Adkins, Brandon Kirk, crime, Fed Adkins, feud, Green McCoy, Harts, Harts Creek, Harvey "Long Harve" Dingess, history, Hollena "Tiny" Brumfield, Hollene Brumfield, John W Runyon, Lincoln County Feud, logging, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, Pat Adkins, writing

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.

Vergia Rooney recalls the “murder house”

03 Tuesday Jun 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Green Shoal, Lincoln County Feud

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Al Brumfield, Arena Ferrell, blind, Brandon Kirk, Cat Fry, crime, feud, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts, history, Hollene Brumfield, Ida Taylor, J.L. Caldwell, Jake Davis, Jim Brumfield, Lincoln County, Lon Lambert, Mae Brumfield, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, Virgie Rooney, Watson Lucas, West Virginia, writing

In the early summer of 1996, Brandon made contact with Vergia Rooney, a daughter of Jim Brumfield and granddaughter of Paris Brumfield. Vergia was born in 1899 (making her the oldest person interviewed in this project) and was raised on Green Shoal. She was an older sister to Ida Taylor, with whom we had spoken in 1995. She had lived in Texas since 1930.

Vergia said Al Brumfield practically raised her father, who was young when his parents died. Later, when Vergia was about five years old, she went with her father to visit Al at his beautiful two-story white house in Harts. As far as she remembered, Al was well-dressed, clean-shaven, and had dark hair. He was blind, so he wore dark glasses and kept a cane near him. “He was suffering from a progressive illness he had which terminated to him being blind,” Vergia said. For much of the visit, Al sat in the first story front room facing the river, what he called the “sitting room.” He eventually adjourned to the kitchen where he sat at the table and had coffee and a piece of cake.

Vergia said Al’s home was nice and had a store built next to it so close that the two buildings almost touched each other. The whole place was busy with workers, all of whom were supervised by Aunt Hollena Brumfield. Vergia didn’t remember Al having a gristmill but he did have a large barn just up the creek in a bottom. A little further, behind Mae Brumfield’s present-day house, was his log boom, which had in earlier years been the scene of a lot of trouble.

This “earlier trouble,” of course, was the 1889 feud, which Vergia said started when some “McCoy outlaws” became jealous over the Brumfield boom and ambushed Al and Hollena as they rode a single horse down the creek. It was never proven, but Milt Haley and Green McCoy were accused of committing the ambush. They were taken to a two-story, log house at the mouth of Green Shoal and beaten to death by a Brumfield mob.

Vergia’s grandmother Cat Fry hid under a bed during the killings.

The morning after Milt and Green’s murder, Vergia’s mother spotted their bodies on her way to school.

“It was an awful sight,” Vergia said. “They were draped on the front steps and yard. One of them lay across the doorstep going into the house.”

There was never a trial because people like Cat Fry, who knew a lot about the killings, seldom discussed it. Vergia didn’t hear anyone mention the names of the participants when she lived in Harts because many of the people involved were still alive in the community.

Vergia said the murders occurred at the present-day Lon Lambert place at the mouth of Green Shoal. It was vacant when she first remembered it and was in terrible condition. At that time, it faced upriver and had a front and back door, which she remembered swinging open at times, with two steps leading into each of the two doorways. There were windows in the front and back of the house. It had, at most, two rooms on the bottom floor. The upstairs was used as a “drying room” for apples and peaches. Around 1905, Al Davis moved in and remodeled it. He tore the downriver side (back) away, which had pretty much collapsed, and boxed in the old door on the front of the house. A new front door was constructed to face the railroad tracks.

Vergia’s memories of Al Davis living in and remodeling the old Fry home were interesting in that he never owned the property. From 1902 until 1915, the property was in the hands of J.L. Caldwell, who likely rented it to Davis and perhaps others. Watson Lucas bought it in 1919 from Arena Ferrell.

“I am unable to remember in detail about the house as I never was inside the home until Watson Lucas brought the property,” Vergia later wrote Brandon. “I was there twice but several times after the Lamberts purchased the property from Watson Lucas. There were 2 BR, 1 LR-Kitchen, DR and bath room downstairs and I believe, there was a ladder [inside the house] utilized to [get] upstairs for awhile. I was never upstairs, but I think there [were] two rooms upstairs later on.”

Watson’s daughter-in-law Mabel Lucas remembered the home when she moved to Harts in 1939-40 as having four rooms downstairs and two rooms upstairs. There was no staircase in the house; to get upstairs, one had to climb a set of steps built outside against the upriver side of the building. So far as Mabel knew, the place was a frame house (not log), insinuating that the old Fry home had been torn down in previous years.

Hollena Brumfield Grave

30 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Women's History

≈ 2 Comments

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Al Brumfield Cemetery, Appalachia, crime, feud, genealogy, Harts, Hollene Brumfield, Lincoln County, photos, U.S. South, West Virginia

Hollena (Dingess) Brumfield, a major character in the story of the Lincoln County Feud, is buried at Harts, Lincoln County, WV

Hollena (Dingess) Brumfield, a major character in the Lincoln County Feud, is buried at Harts, Lincoln County, WV

In Search of Ed Haley 272

24 Monday Mar 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Albert Dingess, Ben Adams, Brandon Kirk, Charlie Dingess, crime, Dave "Dealer Dave" Dingess, Dave Dingess, feud, fiddler, fiddling, French Bryant, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Harve Dingess, Harvey "Long Harve" Dingess, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Maude Dingess, Millard Dingess, Milt Haley, Thompson Branch, writing

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 Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud, Timber

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Al Brumfield, Albert Dingess, Ben Adams, Billy Hall, Brandon Kirk, Burl Farley, Charlie Dingess, crime, Dave Dingess, feud, Floyd Dingess, Harts Creek, Harve Dingess, Harvey "Long Harve" Dingess, Henderson Dingess, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John W Runyon, Logan County, Maude Dingess, Milt Haley, Rockhouse Fork, Sallie Dingess, timbering, West Virginia

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.

In Search of Ed Haley 270

21 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley

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Al Brumfield, Billy Adkins, crime, French Bryant, genealogy, Harts Creek, Harve Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Logan County, Maude Dingess, Millard Dingess, Paul Dingess, West Virginia, writing

After talking with Oris, we drove back onto Smoke House Fork to locate the site of the old Hugh Dingess home. I wanted to see where Milt Haley had played his last tune. Some twenty minutes later, we parked in a driveway at Bill’s Branch and met Paul Dingess, one of Hugh’s many descendants, and a local resident. Paul gave us a walking tour of the Hugh Dingess farm, showing us what was left of the old Dingess place — a small pile of chimney stones — as well as the “hanging tree” where the mob almost hung Milt and Green. He said his grandfather Millard Dingess had inherited the property years ago. With darkness fast approaching, we thanked Paul and took off down Smoke House.

A short time later, we stopped to visit Harvey and Maude Dingess, a neat elderly couple who lived in a nice brick home just below the old Hugh Dingess homeplace. Maude, Billy said, was a niece to Hollena Brumfield and a granddaughter to Henderson Dingess. Her husband Harvey was raised on West Fork near the likes of French Bryant and others. These were incredibly close connections and I was very excited at the prospects of what they might know.

Inside, after all the proper introductions, we sat down at the kitchen table. I had Hugh Dingess’ hued log home on my mind, so I asked about it first. Harve said Hugh’s son Millard lived in it after Hugh’s death. The old-timers told all kinds of ghost stories about it.

“They said they would take pack-peddlers in there and take them upstairs and kill them and take their money and whatever they had and then take them out in the woods somewhere and just get rid of them,” he said.

I had heard similar stories about the Al Brumfield house in Harts so I had to ask if there was any truth to those kind of stories. I mean, did the Brumfields and Dingesses really murder these old pack-peddlers?

“I don’t know,” Harve said, “but it was talked. People’d swear that Hugh’s house was haunted, the upstairs part. It was pretty well dark up there. Them kids would go up there and play and they’d come running down the stairs. They’d swear it was haunted and they wouldn’t hardly go upstairs in that old house ’cause they’d told tales about it over the years, I guess. And they said Millard, back when he’d drink, he’d get down drunk and he’d swear that he could hear things up them stairs. Millard said it was all haunted up there.”

So what happened to it?

“About in the ’40s, they quit living in it for a long time,” Harve said, “and then it just kindly squashed down — the heavy snow and stuff — and it just laid there like a junk pile for a long time. They kept getting a little bit out at a time till it just got away — all but the old chimney rocks.”

In Search of Ed Haley 267

15 Saturday Mar 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Burl Farley, Carolyn Johnnie Farley, Charley Brumfield, crime, French Bryant, George Dump Farley, Green McCoy, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Milt Haley, timbering, Wash Farley, writing

Johnnie had also heard a lot about Milt Haley.

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

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

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

Brandon asked about the members of the mob.

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

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

Billy asked who fired the first shot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 266

14 Friday Mar 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Carolyn Johnnie Farley, Ed Belcher, Ed Haley, fiddler, fiddling, George Mullins, guitar, Harts Creek, Hattie Farley, history, Hollene Brumfield, Lewis Farley, Logan County, Mary Ann Farley, Mason Conley, music, Rosa Mullins, West Virginia, writing

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

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

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

“There’s where the old boom was.”

“Here’s where the ambush took place.”

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

“There’s the Hugh Dingess Elementary School.”

“There’s the old Henderson Dingess place.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She tried to describe him.

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

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

What about singing?

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

Now, what happened to Ed Haley?

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

In Search of Ed Haley 264

12 Wednesday Mar 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Ed Haley, Music

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blind, Cow Shed Inn, Crawley Creek, crime, Dood Dalton, Ed Haley, Ezra Jake Dalton, fiddlers, fiddling, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts Creek, history, Hollene Brumfield, John Hartford, Lincoln County, Milt Haley, music, Rockhouse Fork, Ward Brumfield, West Virginia, World War II, writing

Around that time, I got my fiddle out to see if I could coax Jake into playing a few tunes. He said he couldn’t play anything — he’d quit years ago.

“I got shot through this shoulder with a high-powered rifle during World War II,” he said. “My fingers is stiff and my arm don’t operate just right. You’ve got to have a good bow hand to play a fiddle. I used to fiddle, but I can’t do no good no more.”

I asked Jake if he remembered any of Ed’s tunes and he said, “I don’t know — he played so many. ‘Hell Among the Yearlings’, ‘Wild Horse’, ‘The Cacklin’ Hen’, ‘Cluck Old Hen’, ‘Casey Jones’. They was all kinds — you could just keep naming them. Never did hear Ed sing.”

Thinking back to those times caused Jake to say, “Dad fiddled with Ed, you know. Dad never did own a fiddle. Ward Brumfield gave him one and he kept it all of his life. My dad used to like one called ‘The Blackberry Blossom’. ‘The Money Musk’ — man, it was a fast tune when he played it. They’d play ‘The Sourwood Mountain’. Pluck that string, you know. Play that ‘Sally Goodin’. Called one ‘Bear Dog’. It was something like ‘Bonaparte’s’, more or less. I used to, when my dad fiddled, get me two sticks this a way and beat on the strings of the fiddle.”

I asked Jake if he ever heard a tune called “Pharaoh’s Dream” or “Getting Off the Raft” and he said, “I’ve heard of ‘Pharaoh’s Dream’ but never heard of ‘Getting Off the Raft’. Can you play that ‘Danced all night with a bottle in my hand. Swing around the corner with the other man?'”

I asked Jake if he knew anything about Ed’s father and he said, “His dad was a mean guy. My dad has told me many times that Ed had the measles when he was a kid and his daddy took him out up here on Rockhouse and stuck him in the creek and that’s what made old man Ed Haley blind. His daddy stuck him in the creek. His daddy was a bad character. They went on a rampage, him and Green McCoy. My daddy knowed them from the beginning. They shot old Aunt Hollene Brumfield with a .30/.30 Winchester and it come out in her mouth. Never killed her. These fellers went to Kentucky — Ed’s daddy and Green McCoy — and they went and got them somewhere and took them up to Green Shoal up in there and massacred them. Someone took them up on the West Fork and buried them kindly up on the side of the hill. They probably just dug a hole and put them in it.”

Jake remembered Hollena Brumfield well.

“She was an old lady that run a store,” he said. “She was bad to drink — fell down a stairway and broke both of her thighs. She couldn’t get around very good. She had a big garden right there where Taylor Brumfield’s wife’s home is and she’d get out there… She’d keep every bum that come along and work them. She was good to them — she’d feed them, you know — and put them out there in that garden. She’d have them take her a chair out there and she’d hobble out there and sit in that chair and watch them work that garden. Boy, I dreaded her. When she’d talk, the spit would work out that hole there.”

Just before we left Jake’s, I asked him if he knew anything about Ed’s death. He basically repeated what Stump had told us earlier.

“I don’t know what happened. They killed him on the Crawley Creek side of the mountain over there. They beat him to death over there in a beer joint called the Cow Shed Inn. Some drunks did it, you know.”

I was flabbergasted. I mean, how could those Dalton boys tell such an off-target story?

In Search of Ed Haley 249

24 Monday Feb 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Billy Hall, crime, Ed Haley, Eveline Dingess, feud, Floyd Dingess, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Imogene Haley, John W Runyon, Kentucky, Kiahs Creek, Robinson Creek, West Virginia, writing

At the time of the ambush on Al and Hollena Brumfield, Henderson Dingess and his family were in no mood to see yet another one of their fold die violently. Less than a year before, on November 15, 1888, Floyd Dingess, an older son of Henderson, was murdered while working logs at the mouth of Rockhouse Fork on Harts Creek. It was a horrific deed: Floyd, whose wife was several months pregnant, was murdered by his own brother-in-law, Billy Hall. Floyd had never been popular with the Halls. He reportedly made a habit of bullying Billy. It was said that when he came home from working, his wife would clatter pots and pans in the kitchen just so her family wouldn’t hear his footsteps.

When Billy finally shot Floyd on that fateful day, some of the younger Dingess boys were fishing in the creek nearby. They raced home to tell their family what had happened, while Billy quickly returned home and received instructions to hide out in Robinson Creek, Kentucky. Meanwhile, Floyd’s pregnant wife was floated across the creek to her husband, who died in her arms. Hugh Dingess, Floyd’s brother, tracked Billy to Kiah’s Creek but lost his trail. For years, Hugh was devastated by his brother’s death. He used to get drunk and shoot the Halls’ cattle.

The Dingesses eventually learned the whereabouts of Billy Hall and prepared to fetch him by force. The Halls on Harts Creek caught wind of their plan and sent word to Billy to escape by train to Tennessee, which he did — and was never heard from again.

Surely, when Milt Haley and Green McCoy shot Hollena Brumfield less than a year later, the Dingess family was determined to execute a harsh revenge. It was, after all, the second attack on their clan in several months. We wondered then, why would Milt, Green, Runyon, and Ben Adams — knowing the fate of poor Billy Hall — want to risk their lives (and fortunes) to attack Brumfield? Surely Milt and Green — taking a cue from Billy Hall — were well aware that once they committed their heinous act, the only avenue open to them was to flee the state forever. We also wondered if Milt just abandoned Emma and Ed on Trace Fork or if there was some kind of arrangement to later meet him in Kentucky?

In Search of Ed Haley 230

22 Wednesday Jan 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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Ben Adams, Bert Dingess, Billy Adkins, Cat Fry, crime, Ferrellsburg, feud, Fisher B. Adkins, Garnet Adkins, Green McCoy, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Johnny Golden Adkins, Milt Haley, writing

As we stood at Runyon’s Branch staring at weeds and trying to imagine John Runyon’s 1889 spread, Billy said Garnet Adkins and her son Johnny lived nearby. Garnet was a granddaughter of Hugh Dingess and had been raised at Huey Fowler Hollow just off the hill from the Haley-McCoy grave. Perhaps more interesting, her son Johnny had told Billy recently that his grandfather Adkins used to talk about John Runyon being his neighbor.

We quickly drove to Garnet’s where Billy spotted Johnny working with a mule in the yard. In no time, we were in the living room listening to Garnet talk about the Haley-McCoy murders.

“Well, I’ve heard Mommy talk about it, but it’s been so long ago I’ve about forgot about it,” she said. “She said her and Cat Adkins got in there and got in under the bed — or behind the bed or something — when they was a doing that.”

Your mother was there?

“Yeah, she was just a young’n, though,” Garnet said. “She said one of them said to the other… One had the headache and he said, ‘I can’t eat no supper.’ And he said, ‘You better eat your supper. This’ll be the last supper you’ll ever eat.’ And they just took them out there and killed them. I guess they shot them, I don’t know.”

I asked Garnet if she thought the mob might have shot Milt and Green at the table right after they ate and she said, “No, they took them outside, I think. I’ve heard Mommy talk about it. See Cat lived there in that house where Mommy was at. That’s where they killed them at.”

Garnet said she had seen the house.

“Yeah, I’ve saw it,” she said. “It’s up here across from Fry.”

Wait a minute. That was the same side of the river as what Lawrence Kirk had shown me in 1993.

Milt and Green were killed on the other side of the river, right?

“No,” Garnet said.

Her son Johnny, however, agreed with the popular notion that the killings took place at the Fry house on Green Shoal.

“That’s what Granddad Aaron said,” Johnny said. “An old hued log house is what Granddad said. He said it sat there at Fry. There where Lon Lambert lives.”

Garnet insisted otherwise: “It was on this side of the river, just an old flat house.”

Perhaps sensing that we were not going to agree on the location of the murders, Garnet changed the direction of the conversation.

“You know, that was a mighty cruel thing to take them men out and kill them,” she said. “They claimed my granddaddy Hugh Dingess was in on that but I don’t believe he was. Course Aunt Hollene was his sister, you know. Aunt Hollene came up there to his house one Sunday and lord it scared me to death when I seen her face. I run off and hid. She was mean as a hound dog. She carried a pistol and a watch and pocketbook and all kinds of stuff in a big apron pocket swinging down on her.”

Billy said to Johnny, “Down here on this end of the creek, we’d never heard about Ben Adams a being in on it, had we?”

Johnny answered, “Yeah, oh yeah. Well he knowed them Adamses. That’s the reason they brought them in this other way ’cause they was supposed to been, Granddad told me, men a waiting to take them away from them fellers when they brought them back in here. But they come this other way — the back way — on horses. Come back in through Chapmansville and down this a way. They thought they’d be a coming down Harts Creek but they didn’t come that way. They brought them down around the river way.”

Garnet said Milt and Green’s grave wasn’t marked when she was a little girl.

“They just threw them in a hole really,” she said. “Somebody said Ben Walker buried them.”

Johnny said, “Well now Mother. didn’t they come over there and visit that grave after you was a great big girl?”

“Yeah, I was a young woman,” she said. “Now I don’t know where she was from. I just heard them talk about their uncle living over there in Fisher’s place where Irv Workman lives. They went up that hill a crying and carrying on and I didn’t know what to think. I was just an old big young’n there with the young’ns. Mommy and Poppy both was gone. And I’d think, ‘Lord, who in the world is that coming up through there carrying on like that?’ And I kept seeing them motioning over there across the creek to where Fisher’s place was talking about…  Seems to me the man’s name was Ben. Ben Adkins.”

To get an idea of when it was that people used to come to the grave I asked Garnet what year she was born.

“I was born in 1909,” she said. “June 26th. I was born up here at Ferrellsburg.”

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