Tag Archives: Jeff Duty

Harts Creek Area Deed Index (1884-1910)

25 Tuesday Oct 2016

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Big Ugly Creek, Ferrellsburg, Fourteen, Green Shoal, Guyandotte River, Hamlin, Little Harts Creek, Ranger, Sand Creek, Timber

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The following deed index is based on Deed Book 52 at the Lincoln County Clerk’s Office in Hamlin, WV, and relates to residents of the Harts Creek community. Most notations reflect Harts Creek citizens engaged in local land transactions; some reflect Harts Creek citizens engaged in land transactions outside of the community. These notes are meant to serve as a reference to Deed Book 52. Researchers who desire the most accurate version of this material are urged to consult the actual record book.

Aaron and Nancy Jane Adkins to B.W. Walker     100 acres on Allen Adkins Branch of Guyandotte River     12 June 1885     Cain Adkins, JP     p. 58-59 [NOTE: References logs, Mack H. Adkins]

Aaron Adkins, Jr. to B.W. Walker     Ridge Between East Fork and Guyandotte River (Upper 1/3 of 200 acre survey)     12 October 1889     Elias Vance, JP     p. 60 [references Samuel B. Price timber]

E.E. Adkins to Allen Brumfield, Jr.     185 5/8 acres     17 August 1897     p. 411-412

Enos Adkins et ux to Allen Brumfield, Jr.     2 Tracts     22 August 1895     p. 424-425

Enos Adkins et ux to Allen Brumfield     28 December 1894     Elias Vance, JP     p. 413-414

Isaac Adkins et al to Allen Brumfield, Jr.     22 June 1892     p. 420-421

Sarah Adkins to B.W. Walker     100 acres Allen Adkins Branch     14 August 1889     p. 61-62

Spencer Adkins to John P. Lucas     221 1/2 acres Guyandotte River (Laurel Hill District)     14 March 1896     p. 273-274

Spencer Adkins et ux to Martha Jane Lucas     63 5/8 acres     Big Branch (Laurel Hill District)     29 January 1908     p. 275-276

J.M. Brammer et ux to David Farley     44 1/2 acres     Laurel Fork of Little Harts Creek     11 April 1910     A.E. Wagner, JP     p. 300-301

Allen Brumfield to Hollena Brumfield     25 January 1904     p. 428-429

Allen Brumfield to Hollena Brumfield     70 acres     9 July 1904     p. 430-431

Louary Brumfield et al to A.C. Barrett et ux     Lot No. 6 Hamlin     23 July 1903     p. 308-310

C.E. Burns to Nancy Webb     52 1/2 acres Frances Creek     10 August 1908     p. 10

James L. Chafin to L.C. Browning et ux     Big Branch     19 January 1903     p. 314-315

John Conley et ux to Rosa N. Vannatter     66 acres Big Ugly Creek     19 October 1908     p. 117-118

B.C. Dial to Brad Toney     100 acres on East Side of Guyandotte River     23 October 1891     J.R. Wilson, NP     p. 241-242

John Dingess to Hollena Brumfield     7 August 1891     p. 418-419

J.P. Douglas, trustee, to Hollena Ferguson     p. 426-428

J.P. Douglas, trustee, to John D. Shelton     10 acres Sand Creek, Big Branch     6 June 1908     p. 38-39

Leo F. Drake et al to Lewis Thompson     100 acres Harts Creek     30 March 1905     p. 264-265

John F. Duty to Jefferson Duty     12 1/2 acres     28 July 1898     p. 114-115

William R. Duty to Emma Duty     80 acres     4 December 1897     p. 115-116

William R. Duty to Jefferson Duty     50 acres     4 December 1897     p. 113-114

Marvel Elkins to William A. Sias     100 acres Sulpher Spring Fork of Fourteen Mile Creek     7 February 1888     p. 27-28

Maggie Farley to Louis R. Sweetland     1/4 acre and 1 Lot Hamlin     15 August 1907     p. 365-367

Jonah Ferguson to Dollie Ferrell     30 acres Big Ugly     19 October 1907     P.M. Toney, NP     p. 289-290

James P. Ferrell to Bradford Toney     7 June 1887     Philip Hager, NP     p. 240-241

Smith and Nettie Ferrell to Elizabeth Duty     16 acres     21 November 1899     p. 116-117

Floyd Fry et ux to Bradford Toney     150 acre interest just above mouth of Green Shoal     28 June 1898     J.H. McComas, NP     p. 243 [references B.C. Toney farm]

A.B. Harrison and J.H. Fry to A.B. Staley     86 acres Fourteen Mile Creek (Laurel Hill District)     8 April 1892     p. 81

Sarah Headley to E.C. Lucas et ux     one acre Fourteen Mile Creek (Laurel Hill District)     2 March 1907     p. 313-314

L.D. Hill to Moses Lucas     100 acres Mile Branch     24 April 1903     p. 316-317

Alex Hollandsworth et ux to Lee Fry     House and Lot, Hamlin     26 March 1908     p. 367-368

James A. Holley et ux to Allen Brumfield, Jr.     Guyandotte River     6 June 1898     p. 415-418

Nancy A. Holley et ux to Maggie Farley     1/4 acre Hamlin     7 June 1907     p. 364-365

J.W. Johnson to Spencer Adkins and John P. Lucas     right of way     11 July 1908     p. 277-278

B.B. Lucas to Lottie Lucas     75 acres     Green Shoal branch     11 December 1906     M.C. Farley, NP     p. 220-221

Charley and Louisa Lucas et vir to Morgan Phipps     7 acres Laurel Fork (Jefferson District)     13 September 1910     p. 371

John P. Lucas to A.B. Staley     65 acres West Side Guyandotte River     26 December 1899     Jefferson Lucas, JP     p. 82-83

John P. Lucas to A.B. Staley     46 acres Fourteen Mile Creek (Laurel Hill District)     12 March 1907     Jefferson Lucas, JP     p. 78-79

William Mans to Mary Alice Mans et al     quit claim     12 May 1905     p. 11-12

A.F. Morris, special commissioner, to B.B. Lucas     75 acres on Green Shoal     7 December 1906     p. 218-219

W.C. Mullen et ux to A.P. Sanders     278 acres Lick Branch     17 October 1907     p. 369-370

Lewis and Malinda Nelson to A.E. Wagner     15 acres on West Side of Guyan River     4 December 1906     D.F. Smith, JP

Wesley Nelson to A.E. Wagner     23 acres     21 March 1906     p. 57-58

Floyd Rakes to Georgie E. Staley     50 acres on Fourteen Mile Creek (Laurel Hill District)      28 July 1892     p. 79-80

John W. Runyans to Canaan Adkins     66 2/3 acres (interest in 200 acres) West Fork and Guyandotte River     6 February 1889     p. 248

F.D. Stallings et ux to Abijah Workman     100 acre interest on Francis Creek     15 March 1899     p.7-8

Russell S. Stollings et ux to William D. Farley     35 acres Little Harts Creek and Francis Fork of Twelve Pole     24 March 1900     Isaac Fry, JP     p. 298-299

Ralph and Anna Steel to William R. Duty     73 3/4 acres     14 August 1903     p. 112-113

B.C. Toney to Bradford Toney     20 acres and 80 acres Big Ugly     20 February 1884     -. 239-240

Moses B. Toney et al to Allen Brumfield     10 June 1892     p. 422-423

Wirt Toney et al to Bradford Toney     140 acres Guyandotte River     1 April 1887     p. 244-245

O.J. Wilkinson, Commissioner of School Lands, to J.H. Meek, trustee     25 acres Ranger School     West Side Guyandotte River     20 December 1909     p. 207

F.B. Wilson to John D. Shelton     105 acres Sand Creek     Jerry Lambert, NP     1 October 1908     p. 36-37

J.R. Wilson to J.A. Holley     Timber on Bobbies Branch     15 November 1899     p. 155

Abijah Workman to Nancy Workman     30 acres Francis Creek     17 January 1900     Rufus Pack, NP     p. 9

David Workman to Brad Toney     140 acres     20 October 1891     p. 237-238

NOTE: I copied all of these deeds.

News of Interest from Leet 03.11.1915

26 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by in Barboursville, Big Creek, Big Ugly Creek, Hamlin, Leet, Timber

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“Observer,” a local correspondent from Leet in Lincoln County, West Virginia, offered the following items, which the Lincoln Republican printed on Thursday, March 11, 1915:

There is an alarming lot of sickness in this vicinity at present.

Mrs. John B. Toney, Mrs. Wirt Toney, Misses Dixie and Kizzie Toney, Edna Hager and Elmer Ferrell are all very ill with typhoid fever. Drs. Crockett and Henley are in constant attendance.

Philip Hager, of Hamlin, is here with his daughter, Edna, who is seriously ill with typhoid fever. Misses Madge, Pearl and Ida Hager are also here with their sister, Miss Edna.

Charles Hendrick of Barboursville, was visiting on the creek Saturday and Sunday.

John B. Mullins has gone to Island Creek, where he has employment.

Business is at a stand still here and work is scarce.

A Knights of Pythias lodge was organized at Big Creek Saturday night. Albert Gill, C.C. Fry, Lenzie Lane and Chas. Bolin, of this place were charter members.

Jeff Miller has rented Philip Hager’s farm at the mouth of Big Sulphur and is preparing for a large crop.

The European war makes flour $9.00 per barrel; coal $1.00 per ton; cuts the price of lumber in halves; doubles the price of sugar and cuts the ginseng market “clean out.” Automatic-reversible-double-action — that war.

In all the criticism of the Governor by the democratic press, we have never seen where they claim that the rates of the Light and Heating Co. ought not to have been reduced. Then if they were too high, why all this hue and cry?

Mrs. General Gillenwater is real sick, being threatened with pneumonia.

Mrs. John M. Hager has been indisposed for several days.

John Hunter has been confined to his room the past week.

The infant child of Mr. and Mrs. Ed Reynolds, born last Thursday, died Sunday.

J.B. Lambert, who is working at Sharples, Logan county, spent Saturday and Sunday with his family here.

Jeff Duty has purchased Paris Bell’s farm. Mr. Bell has purchased the Noah Adkins farm.

Boone County’s “Little Johnny” Hager 2

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Big Creek, Big Harts Creek, Big Ugly Creek, Calhoun County, Music

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After his return to West Virginia, Johnny Hager took immediate notice of the large number of musicians who lived in the head of Big Harts Creek. His first cousin, Jefferson “Jig-Toe” Baisden (1879-1970), was a dancer and banjo-picker. J. E. “Ed” Belcher (1889-1970), who played several instruments, and Robert Martin, an Arthur Smith-style fiddler, were other significant musicians in the area. Ed Haley (1885-1951), a blind fiddler from Trace Fork, particularly caught Hager’s attention. Johnny’s desire to absorb Haley’s music was understandable because, as Jess Chambers stated, “It was a badge of honor to have played with Ed Haley.” Jeff Baisden, a cousin to both men, may have introduced the pair.

Johnny could supposedly play any instrument and his trip out to Kansas allowed him to soak up a variety of western tunes and playing styles which were completely new to folks in Logan County. Both of these qualities, his diverse musical capabilities and his unique musical background, ensured that he an Ed Haley had many intense music sessions. According to Turley Adams, Johnny’s great-nephew, Hager encouraged Ed to take his show on the road and volunteered to serve as Haley’s “eyes” on such trips. This willingness to travel, coupled with his apparent competence as a musician, made Johnny a perfect sidekick to Ed. Haley and Hager were both unmarried, a convenience which allowed them to roam the country with few cares or responsibilities.

Johnny and Ed traveled to various places in West Virginia but are particularly remembered up around the Calhoun-Clay County area north of Kanawha County. Aside from being populated with rural folks similar to Hager’s neighbors in Logan and Boone Counties, the area was also endowed with a host of great musicians. Haley and Hager wintered there as young men with a fiddler named Lawrence “Laury” Hicks (1880-1937). Ugee (Hicks) Postalwait of Akron, Ohio, a daughter of Laury Hicks, said that Ed and Johnny first came and visited her father in the early 1910s. Hager was a tall, slim banjo-picker. When Ed and Johnny left Laury’s home in the spring, with Johnny leading the way, Ugee and her brother stood on the bank by the house and “hollered and cried after them.”

Most agree that Johnny’s travels with Ed Haley ended around 1914 when Haley married Ella Trumbo, a blind music instructor from Morehead in Rowan County, Kentucky. Haley’s habit of cursing and drinking also helped end the partnership. Hager did not care for it.

For the most part, Johnny spent the remainder of his life playing music while boarding with his Baisden kinfolk on the North Fork of Big Creek. Irene Hager, a daughter of Hubert E. and Mary (Pauley) Baisden, remembered Johnny playing music on her father’s front porch in the late 1920s. Her father, a banjo-picker, lived at Greenview and the Big Branch of Spruce Fork of Little Coal River in Boone County. Hubert Baisden was Johnny’s first cousin. Hager boarded with him for several weeks at a time. One of Hager’s chores at the Baisden home was to keep wood in the stove. Irene said that Johnny often talked about his early travels with Ed Haley.

Johnny Hager was a man with little roots and family, a fellow who never had a real home. Many from Harts Creek remember that Hager was simply from the “the North Fork of Big Creek.” Dave Brumfield, a great-nephew, said that Hager stayed in that vicinity with a Thomas family. No doubt, this Thomas family was headed by Sampson Thomas who married Dicy Adams, a sister-in-law to Johnny’s sister Victoria Adams. Incidentally, just over the mountain from North Fork was the Broad Branch of Big Ugly Creek where lived a fiddler named Jefferson “Jeff” Duty (born about 1877). During Hager’s stay on the North Fork, he probably visited this musician (and any others in this locality) to learn a few new licks.

Hager also stayed with Simon and Bertha (Baisden) Bias on Bias Branch in Boone County. Mrs. Bias’ grandfather, Riland Baisden, was a brother to Johnny Hager’s mother. He spent a lot of time on the Garretts Fork of Big Creek with the Barkers before leaving them to stay with Wilson Craddock’s family on Hewitts Creek in Boone County. Mr. Craddock’s widow has a necklace which Johnny gave her during his time there. Lydia (Adkins) Johnson of Powderly, Texas, recalled that Hager lived with her mother and father during her “growing up years at home” in the late 1920s and 1930s. Johnson “was born (around 1923) and raised in Boone Co. just over the hill from Chapmanville.” Hager was a hard worker and was very efficient at “old-time” carpentry jobs and such tasks as digging wells. According to Johnson: “[Johnny] was a handy man, & a fiddle player. (Sometimes) a neighbor would need him to come live with them, to build them an out house for them. He was noted for the best out houses, he earned his keep by living with & helping others.”

Lydia Johson described Johnny as “a very neat man” and Dolly Bell agreed, stating that he always kept his hair cut and his face shaved. He never wore suits and never dated women so far as any of his family knew. In Irene Hager’s words, he “was a pretty straight fellow” and Dave Brumfield said he never drank when visiting his father’s home on Harts Creek.

NOTE: Originally published in “Kith and Kin of Boone County, West Virginia” Volume XXII

Published by Boone County Genealogical Society

Madison, West Virginia, 1997

Dedicated to the late Dolly (Hager) Bell

In Search of Ed Haley 240

12 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What about Cain Adkins?

“Adkins. That sounds right.”

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

In Search of Ed Haley 215

27 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by in Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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At Broad Branch, we found that Bill Duty’s old one-story log house was completely gone. We wanted to go to the family cemetery just across the creek and up the hill but didn’t because it was overran with giant weeds.

We were all just kinda hanging out there, crammed in the car, when Doska said, “Milt Ferrell could play a fiddle. He was a first cousin to my daddy.”

Wait a minute — another fiddler? I’d spent quite a bit of time trying to track down the names of the old fiddlers around Harts. All of a sudden, they were falling from the woodwork.

Milt Ferrell — a man related to the Dutys and with the first name of Ed’s father. I said, “Now who was he?”

“Mayme’s daddy,” Eunice said, as if that helped. “Mayme lives down there.”

“She’s bad off,” Doska added. “One of her lungs has collapsed.”

I just had to see this Mayme Ferrell, although I didn’t want to impose on her if she was in poor health.

Nonsense.

Doska and Eunice said she would love the company…and she just lived down the road.

On the way to Mayme’s someone mentioned that she lived at the old Rector Post Office, a settlement from earlier in the century. We soon turned over a little bridge and pulled up to the only structure left in “Rector proper”: Mayme’s incredible two-story log cabin. It was ancient and leaning, with an old cemetery just behind it on the hill. The whole scene was like something from a dream.

We got out of the car and walked up to a small back porch where Eunice pecked at the screen door and hollered, “Mayme? It’s Eunice.”

In no time at all, Mayme Ferrell was peeking back out at us. She was frail, half-blind and hooked to a breathing machine — and very surprised to see us all on her porch with fiddles, cameras, and notebooks.

Mayme invited us on inside where we sat down in the living room and started talking like old friends. She was well acquainted with Eunice and Doska and knew a lot about Billy and Brandon’s families. It was clear after a few minutes of interchange that her life had went beyond school teaching — she was an educated woman of the modern world, who’d spent twelve years in Los Angeles and San Francisco. She got me to play her a few tunes and the next thing I knew she was singing lyrics that she remembered from her childhood, like “Nigger looky here and nigger looky yander. The old gray goose is flirting with the gander.” Or things like: “I had a piece of pie and I had a piece of puddin’. I give it all away for to sleep with Sally Goodin.” Or this: “Old Aunt Sal, if you don’t care I’ll leave my liquor jug sitting right here. If it ain’t here when I come back we’ll raise hell in the Cumberland Gap.”

Eunice remembered “Cluck old hen, cluck and sing. Ain’t laid an egg since way last spring.” Doska said her father Jeff Duty used to play the tune.

I said to Mayme, “So your father was a fiddler? Tell me about him.”

She was immediately nostalgic.

“Daddy was named for a poet, but I don’t think his parents knew it,” she said. “John Milton Ferrell. He was a great guy. He was a wonderful person. My daddy’s people were just easy going. Most of them were musicians. My daddy, he would lead the songs in church. He was a board member for three terms and the last term he was the president of the board. They would meet over at Harts and those Brumfields — I’ll tell you what — most people were afraid to go through there. Charley Brumfield shot his daddy and killed him. His daddy was beating his mother and he made him leave, so I understand, and then when he came back — I guess he was drunk…”

Mayme looked at Brandon and said, “Those Brumfields were rough then, son. Good people. If they liked you they liked you, and if they didn’t you better leave them alone. They were ambitious people. They just got to feuding among themselves, but it wore out after a while. But my daddy was a good friend to all of them. Charley Brumfield would’ve done anything for daddy. They’d get in a poker game after they had their meeting and they’d all drink. Well daddy would come home with a pocket full of money. One time he came home drunk and he couldn’t hang his hat up. Of course, the older children laughed and I cried, but he sang, ‘Hey hey rushin’ the rabbit. Into the brush and then you’ll habit.’ Didn’t say ‘have it.’ I don’t know what they were getting in that brush. He was a very, very humble person and he was witty.”

Milt Ferrell, Mayme said, played the fiddle around election time, at weddings, at schools or on Friday at all-night dances.

“We’d have barn-raisings,” she said. “After they got the roof over the barn and put the second floor in — the floor where you put your fodder and hay — they’d have a barn dancing. They’d dance all night.”

Milt played with the fiddle under his chin, as did Jeff Duty.

Mayme cried when I played one of her father’s tunes, “Over the Waves”.

She said her father’s older brothers Clinton Ferrell and Fulton Ferrell were also fiddlers. Clint was the smoothest fiddler in the family but would only occasionally pick up Milt’s fiddle and play “Mississippi Sawyer”. Their cousin Jim Lucas was also good.

“Uncle Jim was an excellent fiddler,” she said. “He didn’t jiggle. A real smooth player.”

She didn’t recall any banjos or mandolins on Big Ugly in the old days, although her brother-in-law Clarence Lambert was a great guitarist (“as good as Chet Atkins”) who played Hawaiian music and tunes like “Guitar Rag”.

In Search of Ed Haley 214

21 Saturday Dec 2013

Posted by in Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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A few days later, Brandon and I left the festival and headed toward Charleston and on to Harts via Corridor G and Boone County. We reached Harts around three in the morning and parked the bus at the local Fas Chek near a fire station and bridge. Brandon’s uncle Ron Lucas, the manager of the store, had given us permission to park there. The next morning, Billy Adkins met us at the bus and we decided to see Doska Adkins, a woman of advanced age and granddaughter of Bill Duty. Maybe Doska would know about Milt Haley living with her grandfather, who had settled on nearby Big Ugly Creek.

In no time at all, Brandon, Billy and I were charging over Green Shoal Mountain talking genealogy and well on our way to Big Ugly country.

About twenty minutes later, we turned off of the main road into Fawn Hollow and began climbing a rocky driveway toward Doska’s house. We soon spotted Doska cutting brush out near her yard. She was a small-framed woman crowned with a tuft of white hair, having every bit the appearance of “the helpless old widow” — barring the machete in her hand, of course. I could tell right away that things were about to get interesting.

We followed Doska into her home, stepping quickly past a barking dog tied up on her porch. Inside, on the living room wall we spotted a mass of more than forty bushy squirrel tales hanging together in a pattern, which she said were her hunting trophies for the season. Sensing our interest in such things, she showed us a stuffed squirrel that she herself had killed, stuffed and mounted onto a small log. Before we could really ask her anything about Milt Haley, she told us all about how to pickle squirrels for later eating, then opened a desk drawer full of snake rattlers…more trophies.

It took us a few minutes to sit down and actually focus on the reason for our visit. When I told Doska about my interest in Ed’s life, she said he used to stay with her father, Jeff Duty. It didn’t take him long to get familiar with a place, she said, and he couldn’t be fooled with paper money.

“How often would he come there to stay?” I asked.

She said, “Well, I don’t know how often. If I was around, I was real little. I don’t remember him but I’ve heard Daddy talk about him.”

Brandon asked Doska, “Did your dad and Ed play music together?” and she said, “Yeah.”

We wondered what songs Jeff Duty played.

“They was one he played on the fiddle that I thought was real pretty,” Doska said. “I think he called that the ’11th of January’ and he’d play a while and then he’d pick a piece in it. Yeah, man he used to sit on the porch of an evening down yonder where I was raised and play for us.”

Brandon asked, “Was your dad considered the best fiddler up around this part?”

Doska said, “He was pretty good and he could play a banjo, too.”

I asked if her grandfather Bill Duty ever talked about Milt Haley and she said, “No, all of my grandparents was dead before I was born. See, I was born in 1917 and I never seen nary one of my grandparents. Mommy used to have a picture of my grandpaw but I don’t know what happened to it.”

Billy asked her, “Was Ed Haley any relation to you at all?”

“No, he’d just come through here — I don’t know why — and he liked to stay at my daddy’s,” she answered. “Didn’t matter who come through this country. If they’d ask to stay all night somewhere they’d say, ‘You can go to old man Duty’s and stay all night.’”

Of course, knowing what we knew about Milt and the Dutys it seemed likely that Ed came around Jeff for reasons more than his hospitality. As Bill Duty’s son and a fiddler, he would’ve been an excellent source on Milt — the father Ed never really knew.

Doska said her grandfather Duty’s home was no longer standing on Broad Branch but I wanted to see the site anyway. (It was, after all, very possibly the place where Milt settled with the Duty family in the early 1880s.) We asked Doska to accompany us but she said she looked awful; she had been cutting brush all day, she said, and wasn’t dressed to go anywhere. After a while, though, we persuaded her to go with us.

On the way to Broad Branch, Billy suggested that we stop and see 89-year-old Eunice Ferrell. Eunice had settled on the creek years ago and married a son of the Tom Ferrell mentioned in “The Lincoln County Crew”. She was a very friendly Mormon, slumped over with age. I told her I was interested in “Blind Ed Haley,” an old fiddler from Harts Creek, and she said she didn’t know about him. Her father-in-law had been a fiddler, though. She knew something about Tom’s trouble with the Butchers.

“They said they was in a card game and this man was trying to run the horse over him,” she said. “And he killed him but he got out of it.”

We told Eunice that we were going to see the old Duty place on Broad Branch if she wanted to go and she was all for it. We helped her into the car and took off.

Along the way, I stopped the car so Doska could point out her father’s home — the place where Ed used to stay. Brandon said some “hippie-types” from a big city had moved into the place several years ago.

“Michael Tierney lives there now,” Eunice said. “He’s a lawyer. Catholic man. He’s a good neighbor.”

We were having a blast.

“I’m glad I come,” Eunice said.

In Search of Ed Haley 181

14 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by in Big Sandy Valley, Big Ugly Creek, Ed Haley

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We next looked at Logan County census records, where Milt Haley appeared in 1870 as “T. Milton Haley,” aged 13, living with a Bill Duty on Rich Creek in the Tug Valley. Duty’s home in Hardee District was relatively far away from the Harts area. Ten years later, in 1880, there was no trace of Milt or Duty anywhere in West Virginia, indicating that they may have lived outside the state at that time.

Had they moved together across the Tug into Kentucky?

We got back in the Lambert Collection for help…and found a circa-1934 interview with Jeff Duty, Bill Duty’s son.

At the time of the interview, Jeff was living at Dollie, a now extinct post office on Big Ugly Creek just upriver and over Green Shoal Mountain from Harts. He didn’t mention Milt Haley but gave a great account of his family story:

Grandfathers both came from Russell County, Virginia. Grandfather Geo. Duty came to Pigeon Creek in what is now Mingo County, before the Civil War. Grandfather James Ferrell settled on Big Creek, Logan County before the Civil War. Grandmother Duty was a Jackson and Grandmother Ferrell was a Fields.

Father was born in what is now Mingo County, and volunteered in 1861 as a Confederate. My father, William Duty, was in Gettysburg and Fort Donelson battles. They fought here seven days and seven nights. He was twice wounded. Father Wm. Duty lived in Mingo until fifty-one years ago, when he moved to Big Ugly, Lincoln County [around 1883]. When we moved to Big Ugly there were only three houses from Broad Branch, which is about one-half the length of Big Ugly to the head of Big Ugly, and now there are about two hundred. Big Ugly is nineteen miles long. There were plenty of deer, wild cats, coons, &c. when my father came. Wolves were here for about fifteen years after we came. Tom Ferrell killed the last deer killed about here about forty-five years ago.

My father was a rather big farmer for this part of the country, raising 1,000 bushels of corn a year, and always raising wheat. He had the first “chaff Piler” threshing machine brought in. It took about twelve horses to pull it. When it came on the first trip, my mother had about twenty geese in the yard, and when they heard it they took to the woods and did not come back for three or four days. My father had six children: John lived on Broad Branch, Lincoln County; Jeff here at Dollie; Phidelia Vernatter-Chapman lives in Boone County; Annie Steele lives in Logan County; George lives within three miles of Hurricane, Putnam County; Martha lives in Logan; she married Queen. My father, Wm. Duty, was the man who rode a $150.00 horse to death to save Tom Ferrell, who was in jail, in Hamlin, about 1889, for killing a man named Butcher, from a mob of Butcher relatives. Tom Ferrell is my cousin.

I am sixty-seven. I have eleven children, of whom three are dead: Alva, Lula, Stonewall, Solomon, Vernonda, Thos. Jefferson, Lee, Musco, Ira, Doska, Maggie. Mrs. Duty was Betty Pauley; her people came from Virginia. “Tiger Bill” Pauley was her father.