Tag Archives: Joe Adams

Don Chafin’s Deputies (1912-1913)

28 Thursday Apr 2022

Posted by in Logan

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The following list of Don Chafin’s deputies prior to the Battle of Blair Mountain is based on Record of Bonds C in the Logan County Clerk’s Office in Logan, WV:

Don Chafin was elected sheriff on November 5, 1912 and appeared on December 28, 1912 with his bondsman U.B. Buskirk for $40,000 (p. 215)

Name, Date of Appointment, Surety, Surety Amount, Page

Garland A. Adams…28 January 1913…J.W. Chambers…$5000…236

Joe Adams…14 October 1913…G.F. Gore, A. Dingess, David C. Dingess, Anthony Adams, Sol Adams, Sr., and Sol Adams, Jr….$5000…297

John Barker…5 February 1913…F.P. Hurst…$5000…241

J.E. Barlow…26 April 1913…S.B. Lawson…$5000…268

Joe Blair…28 December 1912…J.W. Chambers and Allen Mounts…$5000…224

Bert Bush…6 January 1913…Monroe Bush…$5000…230

John L. Butcher…28 December 1912…Lewis Butcher, J.W. Chambers, Albert Gore…$5000…221

J.A. Chafin…20 June 1913…J.W. Chambers and A.A. Vance…$5000…275

John Chafins…31 January 1913…H.H. Farley and A.J. Browning…$5000…240

Nim Conley…18 July 1913…Ed Chapman and W.W. Conley…$5000…281

R.J. Conley…25 March 1913…Albert Gore…$5000…252

Riley Damron…5 July 1913…Millard Elkins and J.E. McCoy…$5000…278

David Dingess…3 April 1913…J.W. Chambers and George Justice…$5000…254

Everett Dingess…10 November 1913…John F. Dingess and Burl Adams…$5000…304

Vincent Dingess…7 July 1913…Georgia Dingess, William Gore, and Albert Gore…$5000…279

Ed Eggers…21 April 1913…Paul Hardy…$5000…264

Joseph A. Ellis…30 January 1913…O.M. Conley…$5000…239

R.H. Ellis…undated…Elizabeth Ellis…$5000…233

H.H. Farley…29 January 1913…L.E. Steele…$5000…237

W.F. Farley…28 December 1912…Robert Bland…$5000…223

Harry S. Gay, Jr….15 October 1913…S.B. Lawson…$5000…299

Albert Gore…28 December 1912…J.W. Chambers, G.F. Gore, Millard Elkins…$5000…222

Guy F. Gore…31 July 1913…Albert Gore and William Gore…$5000…286

Joe Hall…23 April 1913…C.P. Donovan, Paul Hardy…$5000…267

A.A. Hamilton…14 June 1913…A.A. Hamilton…$5000…273

Paul Hardy…20 February 1913…W.F. Farley…$5000…244

John Harrison…19 April 1913…J.S. Miller, M. Elkins, W.E. White, and James Ellis…$5000…262

Tennis Hatfield…14 June 1915…James Ellis and Lewis Chafin…$5000…396

William Hatfield…28 December 1912…J.S. Miller and George Justice…$5000…229

J.O. Hill…17 April 1913…Katie Mounts…$5000…261

B.J. Hiner…23 April 1913…C.P. Donovan and Paul Hardy…$5000…266

Mat Jackson…13 October 1913…Albert Gore, Van Mullins, G.F. Gore, and David C. Dingess…$5000…296

S.B. Lawson…12 April 1913…J.W. Chambers…$5000…256

G.W. Lax…21 April 1913…Paul Hardy…$5000…263

Allen Mounts…226

Cecil Mounts…11 June 1913…Allen Mounts…$5000…272

K.F. Mounts…28 December 1912…Allen Mounts…$5000…225

George Robinett…17 July 1913…George Justice…$5000…284

Joe Scaggs…231

F.A. Sharp…28 December 1912…W.F. Farley and L.G. Burns…$5000…217

L.E. Steele…29 January 1913…H.H. Farley…$5000…238

Noah Steele…6 September 1913…L.E. Steele, Jr….$5000…290

Charley Stollings…21 July 1913…Matilda Stollings, Tom Butcher, Bettie Stollings, W.I. Campbell, and Milton Stowers…$5000…283

T.B. Stowe…13 January 1913…Martha J. Stowe…$5000…234

Elias Thompson…16 April 1913…W.I. Campbell and K.F. Mounts…$5000…258

George E. Thompson…17 April 1913…A.F. Gore and Willis Gore…$5000…260

Moses Williamson…29 April 1913…L.H. Thompson…$5000…270

Clay Workman…28 December 1912…S.B. Lawson…$5000…228

This list will be updated soon to include more names.

In Search of Ed Haley 329

28 Saturday Jun 2014

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

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

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

Wirt said he sometimes bumped into him in local taverns:

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

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

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

Brandon wondered about Ed’s tunes.

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

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

Wirt told us more about Johnny Hager and Ed Belcher.

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

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

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

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

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

After Milt was caught, he made a last request.

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

In Search of Ed Haley 311

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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Two months later, Brandon was still digging, but in a different way. He was knee-deep in land records at the Lincoln and Logan County court houses. He was curious — based on the economic aspect of the 1889 feud — to know about property ownership for feudists, particularly those with land around the mouth of Harts Creek.

He started with the Brumfields.

In 1889, Paris Brumfield owned 771 acres of land worth $1020, while his wife owned 367 acres worth $483. Al Brumfield had 295 acres (195 acres on Brown’s Branch and 100 acres on the Guyan River) worth $642. By combining Al’s totals to that of his parents, the Brumfields owned a total of 1433 acres of land worth $2143. A little further up Harts Creek, Henderson and Sarah Dingess owned 546 acres (five tracts) worth $1234.50 with a building valued at 100 dollars.

How did these totals compare to the land holdings of their enemies?

Well, Cain Adkins owned 205 acres worth $420 (with no buildings listed for 1889), while John Runyon owned 100 acres worth $187.50. Ben Adams owned at least 340 acres in Lincoln and Logan Counties (2 tracts) worth $380. By combining Ben’s property with that of Adkins and Runyon they owned 645 acres worth $987.50 — not even half of the Brumfield family holdings.

Based on these records, we realized that it might have been the financial superiority of the Brumfields and Dingesses which caused Adams, Runyon, and/or Adkins to act out against them (through Milt and Green).

But there was also a reason for the Brumfields to feel a little threatened themselves: John Runyon, whose 100 acres of property was situated geographically closest to them near the mouth of Harts Creek, had accumulated his estate in only three years of residence in Harts. His first tract, totaling 75 acres, was worth $1.50 and was deeded by A.S. “Major” Adkins in 1887. The other tract, totaling 25 acres and worth three dollars per acre, was deeded in 1888. Neither tract contained a building, according to land records.

Al’s 100 acres near the mouth of Harts Creek, in contrast, reflected eight years of effort.

Brumfield was likely concerned that Runyon had acquired so much land at the mouth of Harts in such a short time, especially since it was property that he wanted for himself.

It was immediately clear in looking at the feud in mild economic terms that Milt Haley and Green McCoy were pawns in a larger game between local elites. While Paris Brumfield, Al Brumfield, Cain Adkins, John Runyon, and Ben Adams were leading citizens, property owners and businessmen, Milt and Green were timber laborers and musicians who owned no property whatsoever. Based on what we’d heard from Daisy Ross, it was easy to see why Green might have took a shot at Paris, but why did he attack Al? And what was Milt’s motivation for even getting involved in the whole mess? Was he pulled into the fray because of his friendship to Green, as Daisy Ross had said? Or did he have connections to Ben Adams (a possible economic dependence on the timber-boss, his residence nearby Adams on Trace, or the fact his wife was related to Ben)?

And what did either man hope to gain from the assassination of Al Brumfield? I mean, that’s a hell of a lot to risk for a side of bacon and a few dollars. I had this nagging suspicion that they were maybe innocent of the crime, but Brandon was pretty well convinced of their guilt (as had been Lawrence Haley). He did, however, leave an opening by pointing out how Bob Adkins, Howard Dalton, Joe Adams and Lawrence Kirk had all heard that they were innocent. Bob and Joe had actually mentioned other suspects: Burl Adams, a nephew to Ben Adams, and John “Frock” Adams, a half-brother to Ed’s mother (who later shot his wife’s head off with a shotgun in his front yard). There was also the testimony of Preacher McCoy, who said Milt and Green were “as innocent as Jesus Christ on the cross.”

In Search of Ed Haley 232

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Whirlwind

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In spite of new economic developments, educational opportunities for young Ed Haley were limited. As far as can be ascertained, he received no formal education as a child. In that Victorian era of prosperity and refineries, schools (and other forms of improvement) were slow to arrive in the mountains of Appalachia. Joe Adams, whose father was Ed’s age and who was raised at the mouth of Trace Fork, summed it up this way: “All the education they got, they got theirselves.” (He had heard the old-timers speak of the McGuffey Readers.) In August of 1897, Ed got his first chance for an education when Sophia and David Kinser donated land on Trace Fork to the district board of education for the purpose of building a schoolhouse. So far as is known, this was the first school built on the branch. It was easy to picture Ed showing up to visit and entertain students with his amazing fiddle playing…and perhaps to occasionally sit in on school.

In February of 1898, as Ed approached his teen years, Weddie and Peter Mullins swapped property on Trace Fork. Weddie deeded his land to Peter’s wife Liza, who likewise sold her land to Weddie. Thereafter, Peter made his home in the spot where Lawrence Haley and I had visited in the early ’90s, while Weddie lived at the Jackson Mullins home. A few years later, after Weddie was murdered, his widow remarried to Lee Farley — brother to Burl — causing many people to refer to their home as the “old Lee Farley place” (as opposed to the Jackson Mullins place).

In May 1898, the Logan County Court appointed Henry Blair, Jr. as guardian of Ed Haley “an infant under the age of 14 years.” Blair and Albert Dingess paid the bond of 100 dollars. Haley was listed with his maternal grandparents, Jackson and Chloe Mullins, in the 1900 census.

By that time, the Emma Haley property had dropped in value to 33 dollars. Then, for reasons unknown, the value of “Emmagene Haley’s” property increased to $5.50 an acre for a total worth of $110 in 1906. Maybe Uncle Peter or Weddie had made an improvement on the property or maybe someone had appraised it for timber. In any case, Ed would’ve inherited it outright at that time as a person of legal adult age. More than likely, he had no idea of its worth.

The timber boom led directly to the creation of new towns on Harts Creek. Around 1902, a new post office was created at the mouth of Smoke House Fork called Spottswood. According to a 1904 business directory, Sol Adams was a justice at Spottswood. In 1906, Anthony Adams was the operator of a general store, as was J.M. Adams and James Thompson. Berl Adams was a blacksmith, Sewell Adams was a logger, Francis Collins was a miner, Albert Gore was a constable, David Dingess was a lawyer and Sol Riddell was a teacher. Joseph Adams dealt in walnut lumber, while Reverend John McCloud handled local religious matters. Alice Adams was the postmistress at Spottswood. A little later, Berl Adams, Albert Dingess, Alice Adams, Charles Dingess, William Farley and Thomas J. Wysong opened up general stores.

Later, other post offices opened on Harts Creek. In 1910, according to local tradition, Whirlwind Post Office opened in the head of Harts Creek. This replaced Spottswood as Ed Haley’s local post office, although he was traveling away from Harts quite a bit at that time. Whirlwind was roughly sixteen miles from Logan and nine miles from Dingess. (I had seen the remnants of Whirlwind post office on my recent visit to Harts Creek.) It served 250 people and received mail daily.

Ed Haley, meanwhile, sold the only piece of land he would ever own in March of 1911 to his first cousin Ewell Mullins for 25 dollars (1/5 of its appraisal value as per the assessor). In the deed, Jonas Branch was called Gunnel Branch and the size of the tract was given as 25 acres. The deed read as follows:

Beginning at a rock at the mouth of the Gunnel Branch on the right side of Trace creek thence up the hill to the top of the hill; thence up the ridge to opposite a ash corner on a cliff thence down the hill to the ash thence cross the creek to a plum tree thence up the hill to a beech thence a strait line to the top of the hill thence around the ridge to point on the u[p]per side of the Gunnel Branch thence down the point to a stake on the bank of branch thence down the branch and with the division between Ed Haley and Liza Mullins and crossing the creek to the beginning, containing 25 acres more or less.

Tax books first listed the property in Mullins’ name in 1912 and valued it at $140.

In Search of Ed Haley 224

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

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I asked Joe if he ever heard any stories about Milt being a fiddle player and he said, “They was having a square dance up there at Peter’s once and I heard them a talking about his father playing the fiddle but that was all. They never said what he played or how much or nothing about it. They just said he was a musician. I’ve heard talk of him but I didn’t know him personally. I know about the trouble they had up here. I heard them talking about that up at George Greasy’s. Said they followed them over yonder at Green Shoal or someplace somebody said and killed them. I heard my dad a talking about that.”

Brandon mentioned that Milt and Green had supposedly been hired by Ben Adams to kill Al Brumfield, which caused Joe to say, “Well, I don’t know whether it was Ben Adams or… Well, Al and Ben were both head strong, let’s put it that way. I don’t know what was wrong with the families back then, but they seemed like they wanted to fight each other. They didn’t want to fight no strangers. They was all fighting through each other all the time. They’d burn each other’s barn and shoot their mules and cows in the field and everything on earth. All of them first cousins. I said, ‘That don’t make no sense to me.’ But back then if somebody needed something, it didn’t matter how mean they were, people’d go help them. If somebody was sick, people’d go sit up with them.”

Talking about the old Adamses around Harts Creek caused Joe to reminisce about his grandparents, Solomon and Anthony Adams.

“Grandpaw Anthony was from Hazard, Kentucky. He cut timber and built splash dams through here. Them old Adamses — Anthony, Ben, Sol — they’d float logs down to Hart and raft them to Huntington. I heard them tell about them Robinsons down there helping them raft them. Grandpaw Anthony, he didn’t let nobody put nothing on him. Them old fellas, 90-percent of them carried a pistol all the time. Most of them had ten or twelve children. Grandpaw Anthony, he acquired that place in the Forks of Hoover and he traded that place in Hoover for this place out here. He built a little house right out here on thirty-five acres in 1908. He ran a store at one time, too. They sold riggings, shoes, groceries, plow stocks, shovels…

“I can’t remember my grandpaw Sol nor his wife Dicy nor my Grandpaw Anthony but I can remember my Grandmaw Alifair well. She was from Missouri. She’d stay a while with us and she’d go up George Mullins’ and stay a while and she’d go down to Aunt Alice’s and stay a while. All the women smoked them old stone pipes and they wore them big gingham aprons that had two big pockets on them and they carried their tobacco and pipe and stuff in their pocket. They always had these old-time fireplaces and she’d go out in the chip-yard where they made ties and stuff and she’d pick her up a bunch of splinters and she’d sit them up in the chimney corner to light her pipe with and you’d better not bother them either.”

Joe’s father was Major Adams (1885-1944), the youngest son of Anthony Adams. He was a hammer-style banjoist.

“My daddy had a .32 Smith & Wesson with a shoulder holster with red leather and he kept that a hanging on the head of the bed,” Joe said. “They had these old iron beds with big, high headboards and stuff on them. And he kept that a hanging on the head of the bed all the time fully loaded in the belt and we knowed better than to tip it. Now, you might hang something up like that and a child take it down and shoot your brains out with it.”

Joe said Trace Fork had changed quite a bit since his childhood days. In the thirties, Ewell Mullins, Ed’s first cousin, had a store on the creek, as did Ernest Adams and Joe Mullins and Lewis Maynard. At one time, there were four stores on the creek; today, there are none. In 1938, the same year that electricity arrived on Trace, the Mountaineer Missionary Baptist Church was constructed at the mouth of the creek. Now an impressive brick building, it was originally a 24′ X 20′ structure. Prior to its construction, people met at Anthony Adams’ store or at the lower Trace Fork School. Joe said he bought the creek’s first television set from Jay Queen’s Bluegrass Hardware in Chapmanville in 1955. The roads were paved on Trace about that time.

Joe said we might find out more about Ed from Ewell Mullins’ daughter, Mag Farley. Billy said she ran a store just up Harts Creek near a fire department and playground. We found Mag working behind the checkout counter. She was a granddaughter to Uncle Peter but didn’t look very much like him. She got a little excited when we showed her pictures of her family but became suspiciously quiet when we inquired about Emma Haley. All we could get out of her was that Ed’s mother never remarried after Milt’s death and died around Harts. Maybe that was so, but we felt there might be more to her story; Mag’s version was almost too dull. We gathered back toward a cooler where we talked and ate bologna sandwiches and potato chips.

In Search of Ed Haley 223

13 Monday Jan 2014

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After talking for some time about Ed’s music, our conversation drifted toward his family on Harts Creek.

“Old man Peter Mullins, everybody called him ‘Reel-foot Peter’ cause he had his foot cut off here and had a special shoe made,” Joe said, referencing Ed’s uncle. “He walked kindly on his heel. He worked on log jobs but he couldn’t do much. He gathered ginseng. He made most of his money on moonshine. He hauled it up to Black Bottom in Logan and sold it. He liked to drink. They drunk moonshine most of the time. They were good old people.”

Now would Ed drink a lot with Uncle Peter when he was around Harts?

“Old man Ed every now and then he’d take a few drinks of it,” Joe said. “I’ve seen him pretty high. It didn’t take much of that moonshine to get in your hair. I’ve seen it just as clear as a crystal. You could look through the bottle just like looking right on in a looking glass and you could shake it and about seven beads’d pop up there on top of it and they’d just roll around and around. And you couldn’t smell it. I’ve seen some that you’d look at and it’d look like muddy water and you could smell it through the bottles. But they made good whiskey. They generally made it out of chop or corn and if they’d double it back and use good clear water it was good. You could just turn it up and it wouldn’t take your breath.”

Brandon asked what Ed was like when he was “feeling high” and Joe said, “He seemed like he was in a good mood about all the time. When I was around him I never did hear him say nothing out of the way to nobody. Old man Ed, he was a fine old man but he got over here at a beer garden. Clifford Belcher had a beer garden on this mountain — it was the meanest place that ever was — and he was over there playing one night and they was a big bunch of them a playing cards and the law come in to arrest them all. Some of them boys jumped out the window. And Ed got into it with somebody in there and they said that fellow said something and Ed just come over and took that fiddle by the neck and busted it all to pieces over that fellow’s head. I don’t know what he said to him but I come along there after it happened. They arrested a whole bunch of them fellows and put them in a cattle truck, the state police did, and took them to jail. They was about fifteen or twenty of them. They was Geronie Adams and Virgil Farley and Frank Farley. They loaded them up and hauled them to Logan and them fellows a cussing. They said, ‘You just might as well keep quiet. You’re going to jail.’ I think they took Ed to jail, too.”

Brandon said he’d heard several old-timers talk about how people used to play jokes on Ed when he was at Trace and Joe agreed.

“They played all kinds of tricks on him,” he said. “They was an old man stayed up here, old man Jeff Mullins. He was Peter’s wife’s brother. They called him dumb, but now he wasn’t as dumb as they thought he was. He stayed up there when Ed and them was up there and they was all the time playing pranks on Ed and him. Tennis Mullins, Ewell’s boy, he was big and fat and he run the store all the time. He was all the time fooling with Ed and old man Jeff.”

I asked how Ed took it when people joked with him and Joe said, “He was good about it. He never got mad. I know up there one time they was out there at old man Peter’s where they was a bridge there and they was a bunch of trees there. And old man Ewell Mullins, he was all the time fooling with Ed. He told Ed, he said, ‘We’ll climb a tree here to the top and let them cut it down.’ Well, Ed couldn’t see. Ewell, he climbed up the first limb about ten feet high and said, ‘Cut ‘er down boys!’ He jumped off about the time it started to fall. And Ed climbed right in the top of it. I bet he was forty feet up there. And they cut it and it fell and skinned him all over and liked to killed him. Ewell never would tell him though that he was just up a little bit on the tree.”

Joe said he also remembered Ed’s uncle Ticky George Adams.

“The old man as far as I know he never did work on no public works of no kind or draw no release or nothing,” he said. “He kept his family… He went from house to house — and everybody raised all kind of stuff and had cattle and plenty of milk and butter and eggs and everything — and every place he stopped they give him something. He had a little pole on his back with a sack on it. You’d see him a going bent over just kindly in a long run. He’d go up Trace and go through the head of Trace. And old man George would go around that a way and come down Rockhouse by Will Farley’s and back up through my Uncle Sewell’s and Aunt Alice’s down here. Everybody’d give him something. They’d give him a stick of butter or give him some milk or give him some meat or give him some eggs or something another. That’s the way he raised his family. Those Hoover times was hard.”

In Search of Ed Haley 222

11 Saturday Jan 2014

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When I pressed Joe for specific details about Ed’s technique he said, “He’d play up on the bow about four or five inches, but he played the full stroke with the bow all the time. He didn’t jiggle it.”

I asked if he always sat down when he played and Joe said, “I’ve seen him sitting down and standing up both. They said he danced, but I never did see him dance none. He pat his foot when he played. You’d never hardly know he was patting it. He just patted one foot. He had that chin rest…”

“So Ed put the fiddle up under his chin?” I interrupted.

“He put it up under his chin and played,” Joe confirmed. “Ed Belcher, he played with it under his chin, too. Now Robert Martin, sometimes he’d have it under his chin, sometimes he’d have it down here on his chest.”

Brandon asked if Ed packed his fiddle in a case and Joe said, “Yeah, he had a case. If it was raining or something, I’ve seen him with it under his coat. He had two or three bows. I’ve seen him take the bow loose… He took the end of it loose and put it under the string and played some kind of a tune. They was just one tune he played like that. I believe it was some kind of a religious song. I don’t know how he done it.”

I asked Joe if Ed sang any and he said, “I heard him sing a little bit one or two times on one or two tunes. He’d play a verse and then he’d sing a little bit but not much. Seems to me like that his wife sung a little bit with him on some of them but they didn’t do too much singing. He’d play a little bit, then sing a little bit. They was just a few tunes that he done like that. He didn’t play none of this modern music or nothing like that. He played old-time tunes, like ‘The Arkansas Traveler’. He’d play that and some of them boys’d be sitting off someplace and talking about the big rock in the field and all about the feller digging the taters out and that old sow rooting them out. Ed would play the music and they’d put that in. They’re all dead now, them boys that used to do that. Noah Mullins and my brother Howard and Burl Mullins and Cary and them.”

Joe’s memories seemed to stretch back fondly to that time.

“Yeah, it was all right,” he said. “Every time I played with him he played ‘Lady of the Lake’. Real old tunes.”

Joe said Ed played “Love Somebody”, “Birdie”, “Brownlow’s Dream”, “Hell Up Coal Hollow”, “Hell Among the Yearlings”, “Wild Hog in the Red Brush”, and “Jenny’s Creek”. He also played “Mockingbird” with “everything in it.”

“He’d make the bird holler and everything else,” Joe said.

I asked Joe if Ed played a tune for a long time and he said, “Well, some of his tunes he played a long time and some of them were just short and sweet. He put a lot extra in them sometimes. It went along with it but if you didn’t know him pretty well and watch what you was doing you’d get off. It just come natural for me to follow him because he played good time.”

In Search of Ed Haley 221

10 Friday Jan 2014

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I wondered if people around Trace listened to the radio, especially the Grand Ole Opry, in the early days.

“They was a few radios,” Joe said. “We had one here. We ordered it from a company called Jim Brown. It had five batteries. And like Jerry Clower said, you’d take them and set them in front of the fire and get them hot and then plug them in, they’d play. They was kindly hard to get — they didn’t cost much. I think they was about ten or twelve dollars for all of them. But Robert Martin had one on top of that hill and my brother had one on Twelve Pole, and on Saturday night when the Grand Ole Opry come on, it was a sight to watch these people a going. It come in good and clear. Robert learned a lot of Arthur Smith tunes off the radio. Yeah, Arthur Smith come down there at Branchland and stayed a week with him and I was talking to Robert after he left and he said, ‘I wish you boys’d come down.’ I said, ‘Well, if you’d a let us know, we woulda come.'”

Brandon said to Joe, “I remember you were telling me last time I talked to you that you thought Robert Martin was about the best around.”

Joe said, “In the modern music. Now, in the old-time music, you’d take Ed Haley and Johnny Hager and Ed Belcher. Ed Belcher, he stayed at George Mullins’ and he was like my brother: he was an all around musician. He could tune a piano and play it, he could play an organ. He could play anything he picked up. I never did hear him play a banjo but he could play anything on the fiddle or guitar. He’d note the guitar all the time. He played like these fellers play on Nashville. They was several people around here had banjos and played. Geronie Adams — Ticky George’s boy — he played a banjo a little bit. And they was a fella — Johnny Johnson — played with Robert Martin out on that hill. He was from someplace in Kentucky.”

I asked Joe what kind of banjo style Johnny Hager played.

“He played the old…,” he started. “They’s some of them calls it the ‘overhand’ and some of them call it just ‘plunking’ the banjo. They was several people played like that. Bob Dingess down here, he played that a way a little bit. My dad, he played the banjo and he played that.”

I asked Joe how Ed dressed in the early forties.

“Well, he wore dress pants most of the time,” he said. “He wore mostly colored shirts — blue or green or just any color. Work shirts. Most of the time he wore suspenders with them. And had buttons sewed on them to buttom them with. Buttons on the inside. Mostly he wore slippers. They was a lace-up slipper. Three laces. He could tie his shoes just as good as you could tie yorn. He wasn’t a big man — he was a little small man. About 5’4″, 5’5″.”

Brandon asked what Ed was like when he wasn’t playing and Joe said, “Well, he’d just sit around and talk and tell tales about first one thing and then another. They’d just talk about how hard they was raised and how they come up.”

Did the ladies like him?

Joe said, “They all liked him but they wasn’t girlfriends. If he went into a place to play, they’d all come around and hug him and talk to him.”

In Search of Ed Haley 220

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

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The next day, Billy and Brandon suggested that we visit 70-year-old Joe Adams on Trace Fork. Joe had all the right genealogical connections to know about many of the major characters in Ed and Milt’s story. According to Billy’s records, both of Joe’s grandfathers were brothers to Ben Adams, a key player in the 1889 feud. Joe’s grandmother was a Mullins, while the other was a half-sister to Burl Farley. (Burl Farley of course was in the Brumfield mob and even “gave the order to shoot” Milt and Green, according to some sources.) Brandon reminded me that he had talked with Joe earlier in the summer and heard him speak about having played music with Ed in his younger days.

As we pulled up to Joe’s nice house at the mouth of Trace, he and his wife met us at the end of their driveway. Joe, I noticed right away, looked a lot like Kenny Baker and was dressed in work clothes, indicating that he was probably in the middle of some project (a garden, working under a truck hood…). When we got out of the car, Mrs. Adams laughed and jokingly said, “Billy, is that you? What are you a doing up here?” Billy told them who I was and the reason for our visit and Joe basically said, “Well, come up to the porch and I’ll tell you boys all I can.” We gathered in chairs and swings under Joe’s carport where the conversation just took off. Joe was born in 1925.

I asked Joe when he first played with Ed and he said, “I’d say that was around ’40 up to ’43. It was before I went in the Army. We was down there at old man Peter Mullins’ — just out in the yard up there. They had a big old porch and they had a bunch of seats out under a bunch of big apple trees and stuff. Big shade. Had a swing out there. And I said, ‘How about bringing your fiddle out and playing a few tunes?’ And he told one of them boys — I forgot which one it was — said, ‘Go in there and bring my fiddle out here.’ He didn’t have it in a case that day but they brought it out and he played ‘Red Wing’ and he played ‘Soldiers Joy’ and he played ‘The Arkansas Traveler’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m tired now,’ and he just laid the fiddle down and we just quit. Sat around and talked a few minutes. He had some of them boys take it back and put it back in the house when he got through playing it. He took good care of his fiddle.”

“Now after I come out of the Army in ’46 and it seems to me like I seen Ed once after that and he left here and I never did see him anymore,” Joe said.

Brandon asked Joe where he remembered Ed staying on Harts Creek.

“I remember him staying up there with old man Peter and Liza and he stayed there off and on for years,” he said. “His wife and some of the children were there. Aunt Rosie married George Mullins on Buck Fork — he stayed up there a lot, too. Johnny Hager stayed with Ticky George Adams — old man George and Vic — that lived up in that holler up here at this store. Greasy George lived across the creek. And old man Ed, he’d go up there.”

What about Johnny Hager?

“Johnny Hager, he played a fiddle, too,” Joe said. “He didn’t play much. Just once in a while maybe he’d pick it up and play one tune. I had an older brother that’s dead, Howard — he played with them a lot. He played a fiddle, a guitar, mandolin, accordion, anything. He played anything he picked up. And we played around here for years.”

Joe said, “I played with a man lived right up in the head of this creek — I don’t know whether you ever heard tell of him — Robert Martin. He lived on top of the hill back there. Him and John Martin was the only two houses back there. He was a good fiddler. Robert played like ‘Lady of the Lake’ and ‘Blackberry Blossom’ and ‘Sugar Tree Stomp’. He had one he said he made it hisself and he made it for old man Will Farley — he called ‘Possom Creek’.”

Robert Martin left Harts, Joe said, after his brother John was murdered at Big Branch.

“You may have heard something about that,” he elaborated. “When they got in that trouble and his brother got killed down here at Big Branch they claimed that Robert cut him, but I don’t think so. I think it was somebody else. And he moved down here at Branchland and me and my brother’d go down there and play with him. He lived on that riverbank and he’d come out there and play with the fiddle till the bow got plum wet and he’d take it in and hang it up and go get another one. We played lots of times till three or four o’clock in the morning with him and then we’d come back to the house.”