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 261

09 Sunday Mar 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Music

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Appalachia, blind, Crawley Creek, Ed Haley, fiddle, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts Creek, history, Jacob Stainer, John Hartford, Milt Haley, music, Stump Dalton, Ward Kinser, West Virginia, writing

Stump said Ed would sometimes talk to him and his brothers.

“Well, his fiddle playing of course was the number one thing he talked about but also his rendezvous, like playing on street corners and beer gardens, and the people he associated with playing music. That’s the type of conversations he would have. He’d tell about some fiddle player maybe dying or something happening to them, and he knew them all over the country. Now he’d been around, old Ed had, buddy. Ed stayed on the road practically.”

What about his children?

“I think he had two or three,” Stump said. “He had one boy come to our house one time and stayed three days with him. That’s the only one of his kids I ever seen. I forget his name. He was older than me. He was turned just like his daddy. You’d never know that the boy’d get into anything but I think he drank some.”

What about Ed’s father? Did he ever talk about his father?

“Yeah, he’s talked about his dad, but I don’t remember the things he said about him. Never heard him mention his mother.”

We tried to prod Stump’s memory by mentioning that Milt was killed at the mouth of Green Shoal.

“Yeah, Milt Haley. My dad knowed all about it. They got chopped up with an axe. Do you know that big two-story house? That’s where it’s supposed to’ve happened at — right along in there somewhere. They was him and one other guy killed — McCoy.”

So what do you know about Ed’s blindness?

“He told me he was blind from the time he was three years old,” Stump said. “His eyes wasn’t like our eyes. His eyeballs — instead of the pupils and stuff — was white. Just very faint, you could see the pupils.”

Ed was very good at compensating for his blindness and was able to use his fingers to identify certain types of fiddles.

“Dad bought me a little Jacob Stainer fiddle one time off of a man by the name of Ward Kinser,” Stump said, elaborating. “Ward was a distant relation of ours, lived up above Logan. He come riding a horse up through there with that fiddle and Dad bought that off of him for five dollars and give it to me. Ed come just not long after we’d bought that fiddle. When Dad went out to the road and got him, he said, ‘Come on Ed, I got a fiddle down here I want you to look at.’ And him blinder than a bat. We went down there and Ed took that fiddle and set it right on his belly and he started at the neck up here, just feeling around it at the keys. He felt all around that fiddle then he turned around to my dad and said, ‘My, my, Dood. That’s the first Jacob Stainer I’ve had in my hand in I don’t know how many years.'”

Stump laughed, “I never will forget that.”

We asked Stump about Ed playing at the old post office/store in Harts.

“Yeah, he played down there,” he confirmed. “He played for money down there. He put out a little old can, I believe it was. He used to play a lot up there at Logan at the courthouse. Now, he had more friends around here, like up on Crawley and up on Big Hart, than just our family. He may stay a month with us and stay sober but then he’d get with a bunch up on Crawley and up in the head of the creek here and you wouldn’t see him for a while. He’d stay up in there drinking. He got killed about half way up Crawley.”

What?

“Now, it was after I come out of the army, I know,” Stump said. “The first part of ’53. They was a beer garden up there, like a two story building — seemed to me like a bunch of Butchers owned that, I’m not sure — and they found him dead at that building up there. Somebody beat him to death. I’ve heard somebody robbed him. They was supposed to been three people done it, but it never did come out. I never heard no names.”

I had to stop Stump and say, “Wait a minute. Are you saying that Ed Haley was murdered on Harts Creek?”

“Yeah,” he said assuredly. “We knew where he was at. He’d been at our house. That’s where he said he was going. Well, he’d been gone awhile, ’cause he’d go up Big Hart, maybe, it might take him maybe a month to get on Crawley up there. They took Ed Haley, buddy, and shipped his body back out of here. He never come back to our house after that.”

Wow…

In Search of Ed Haley 252

28 Friday Feb 2014

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

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Anna Adams, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Chapmanville, Ed Haley, Ella Haley, fiddling, Gaynelle Thompson, history, Imogene Haley, John Adams, Kiahs Creek, Little Harts Creek, Logan County, Milt Haley, Mona Haley, music, Roxie Mullins, Ticky George Adams, Wayne County, West Virginia, writing

In Chapmanville, Brandon and Billy dropped in on Gaynelle (Adams) Thompson, a granddaughter of Ticky George Adams who spent a lot of time with Aunt Roxie Mullins during her “last days.” Gaynelle said Ed Haley’s mother never remarried after Milt’s death and died prematurely when Ed was eight to ten years old. She said Ed used to visit her parents, John and Anna Adams, on Trace Fork during the summers in the ’30s and ’40s. “Everybody in the country thought they was nothing like him,” she said. Gaynelle heard that Ed was a drinker and could get rough but said he was well mannered at the Adams home. He never cursed or drank and talked mostly to Gaynelle’s mother. He came with his daughter and wife and stopped visiting when he became too sick to travel just a few years before his death. In earlier years, he played on Kiah’s Creek and Little Harts Creek near the Wayne County line.

In Search of Ed Haley 251

26 Wednesday Feb 2014

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

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Admiral S. Fry, Al Brumfield, Arena Ferrell, Boney Lucas, Burbus Toney, Cat Fry, Charles Lucas, Christian Fry, crime, Eliza Fry, Evermont Ward Fry, genealogy, George Fry, George McComas, George W. Ferrell, Green Shoal, Guyandotte, history, James L. Caldwell, Jesse James, John Brumfield, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, The Lincoln County Crew, Watson Lucas, West Virginia, writing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 248

23 Sunday Feb 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, crime, feud, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, history, Milt Haley, Opal Brumfield, Paris Brumfield, Rome Lambert, Stella Abbott, Tucker Fry, Wayne Brumfield, West Virginia, writing

A little later, Brandon and Billy visited Wayne Brumfield at Douglas Branch in Ferrellsburg. Wayne was born in 1926 and is the great-grandson of Paris Brumfield. As expected, Wayne and his wife Opal knew the general story of the Haley-McCoy killings. Wayne said the whole trouble was over someone losing timber but he never heard of anyone named John Runyon or Ben Adams. He said Tucker Fry and Rome Lambert — two residents of Green Shoal who (Brandon discovered) were married to Al Brumfield’s first cousins — supposedly participated in the Brumfield mob. According to Opal, Milt or Green said to the other, “Eat plenty ’cause it’ll be our last meal.” She also remembered hearing that Stella Mullins cooked their dinner, that a pistol was used to kill them, that someone hid under a bed and that chickens pecked at their brains in the yard. Wayne said people were afraid to touch Haley and McCoy’s bodies.

In Search of Ed Haley 235

07 Friday Feb 2014

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

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Addison Vance, Al Brumfield, Benjamin Fowler, Bill Fowler, Cain Adkins, Charley Brumfield, Ed Haley, Effie Fowler, Emzy Petrie, Ferrellsburg, genealogy, George H. Thomas, George Washington Fowler, Harts Creek, Henry H. Hardesty, history, Isham Roberts, James P. Mullins, John H. Adkins, John H. Napier, John W Runyon, Milt Haley, Salena Vance, writing

The Lincoln County Courthouse — which holds deed records, vital statistics, and criminal records for the Harts Creek District — burned on November 19, 1909, taking with it whatever records might have existed pertaining to the 1889 feud. Thanks to a now-forgotten arsonist reportedly hired by a gas company to eliminate locals’ claims to mineral rights, we can locate little information in the courthouse on Milt Haley’s death or Brumfield family antics. However, somehow, we do have access to Lincoln County land records since 1867 and they reveal quite a bit about the happenings at the mouth of Harts Creek in the late 1880s. (The Logan County Courthouse, which holds similar records on Ed Haley and his family, has fared little better: it was burned by Yankee soldiers during the Civil War.)

Al Brumfield, according to Brandon’s research, first settled with his wife in a small, boxed house on property owned by his mother and located just below the mouth of Harts Creek at the Shoals along the Guyandotte River. In 1888, some seven years after his marriage, he secured his first piece of property on Brown’s Branch, courtesy of his mother. More importantly, according to land records (in one of those moments where written records confuse the story by totally conflicting with oral tradition), he did not own any property at the mouth of Harts Creek at the time of the Haley-McCoy trouble. Al apparently bought land there from Bill Fowler immediately after the Haley-McCoy trouble. The earliest documented account of him owning the log boom was an 1895 deed, which partially read, “…about three hundred yards above the mouth of said creek where the log boom is now tied.”

One thing for certain: Brumfield wasted little time in eliminating his business competitors at the mouth of Harts Creek immediately following the Haley-McCoy murders. In 1889, he had four primary rivals: (1) Bill Fowler; (2) John Runyon; (3) Isham Roberts and, to a lesser extent, (4) James P. Mullins. Fowler was his cousin, Runyon was no relation, and Roberts was his brother-in-law. Mullins was located more than a mile up Harts Creek at Big Branch and operated a business that was likely past its prime.

In 1890, Brumfield acquired two tracts of land (a 95-acre tract worth 113 dollars and a 25-acre tract worth 75 dollars) from Runyon. We don’t know what price was paid for this land (thanks to the courthouse fire) but considering the circumstances it may have helped save Runyon’s life in the wake of his possible role in the Haley-McCoy fiasco. In that same year, a stubborn Bill Fowler sold two valuable lots on the west side of Guyan River totaling 165 acres to Isaac Adkins, not Al Brumfield. Fowler was apparently resisting the urge to sell out to his ambitious younger cousin who had reportedly burned his business. One tract was 75 acres and worth six dollars per acre, while the other was 90 acres and worth four dollars per acre. The property was worth 810 dollars. Meanwhile, in 1891, Brumfield’s brother-in-law, Isham Roberts, who was referenced in a circa 1884 history as a “prosperous young merchant” at the mouth of Harts Creek, sold out and moved upriver near Fowler Branch (present-day Ferrellsburg).

Not only did Fowler, Runyon and Roberts sell out — they moved away completely. Fowler took his wife and four children (Bettie, age 15, Effie, age 14, Benjamin Franklin, age 12, and George Washington, age 10) and moved to Central City in Huntington. In May of 1892, his wife bought Lot 6 Block 88 in Central City from Susan Porter and her husband. On October 19, she deeded it to Louis H. Taliaferro, who deeded it back to William Fowler, who deeded it back to Taliaferro, who deeded it back to Mrs. Fowler. The Fowlers were in Central City in 1900. According to family tradition, Roberts moved to Oklahoma because of his wife’s disapproval of the violent deeds committed by her family. Several years later, she sold her interest in her father’s estate to Charley Brumfield — the man who had murdered her father in 1891.

Aside from businessmen, the 1889 troubles drove away other important citizens from Harts. First was Cain Adkins, a doctor, lawman, preacher and schoolteacher. In 1891, Cain Adkins sold 40 acres to John H. Adkins, who thereafter claimed the remainder of the farm. Two years later, in 1893, John and his wife Sallie deeded “the Canaan Adkins Farm” (205 acres) to Salena Vance for $607.50. In 1895, Vance and others sold the farm to J.A. Chambers, who in turn deeded it to Louis R. Sweetland in 1897. Thereafter, Salena Vance acquired the property again (jointly with her children, John and Nettie Toney) and sold it to George H. Thomas and E.O. Petrie in 1913. Later that year, Petrie sold his half-interest to Thomas. In 1914, the property contained a 300-dollar building.

In addition to Preacher Cain, John H. Napier, a doctor and in-law to Adkins, seems to have fled the community around 1890. According to Hardesty’s History of Lincoln County, West Virginia (c.1884), Napier settled near the mouth of Harts Creek in 1879. His wife, Julia Ann Ross, was a niece to Cain Adkins. Her older sister married Cain Adkins’ brother-in-law, Addison Vance, of Piney. John was listed in the 1880 census as a thirty-seven-year-old physician with a wife (age 30) and five children, as well as a nephew. He did not own property locally, although his occupation as a doctor and businessman might have made him particularly threatening to an ambitious person like Al Brumfield. “Mr. Napier is a prosperous merchant in Hart Creek district, with business headquarters at the mouth of the creek,” Hardesty wrote.

In Search of Ed Haley 234

06 Thursday Feb 2014

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

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Aaron Adkins, Al Brumfield, Bill Abbott, Bill Adkins, Bill Fowler, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Cain Adkins, crime, Fed Adkins, feud, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, history, Isaac Adkins, John W Runyon, Mac Adkins, Milt Haley, Paris Brumfield, Ras Fowler, West Virginia, Will Adkins, writing

In the months following my trip to Harts, Brandon finished his undergraduate work at college and moved into a three-room house at Ferrellsburg. He spent his mornings and afternoons teaching in the local schools and his evenings hanging out with Billy Adkins. One night, he interviewed Billy’s father, Bill, Sr. — that colorful old fiddler laid up with Alzheimer’s. As Billy asked his father questions, Brandon crouched in the doorway prepared to write down his answers. At first they weren’t even sure if Bill was awake. Then, his eyes still closed, he began to tell a little bit of what he knew about the Brumfields and their 1889 troubles.

Al Brumfield, Bill said, put in a four-log-wide boom at the mouth of Harts Creek and charged a tax on all logs passing through it. John Runyon arrived on the scene just as Brumfield was making a small fortune and put in a rival business. “John Runyon was against the Brumfields,” Bill said. He bought twelve Winchester rifles and armed several men to protect his property, then hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to kill Brumfield. In the ambush, Al was shot in the arm and his wife was shot in the mouth. Haley and McCoy immediately left the area but were soon caught on Tug Fork and jailed in Kentucky. A Brumfield posse got the necessary legal papers and brought the two back to Harts through the Twelve Pole Creek region.

They were on their way down Harts Creek when a spy warned them of an ambush organized by “old man Cain Adkins” at the mouth of Big Branch. Thereafter, the Brumfields went over a mountain to the Guyandotte River and crossed it in boats. They took Haley and McCoy to an old log house later owned by Tucker Fry where they were killed by a mob that included Bill’s uncles Will Adkins and Mac Adkins.

Bill said his uncle Will Adkins died just after the Haley-McCoy killings on November 23, 1889.

“He got drowned in the backwater over here,” he said. “They had a boom across the creek four logs wide. He fell off in the backwater there and drowned hisself. I think Dad was the cause of it. Him and old Bill Abbott was in a row with each other. Uncle Will come along and heard them. He started across there to see what was wrong, to help Dad out if he needed any help. Of course, he fell in that water and drowned himself. He’s buried up on the hill at Ferrellsburg. Old Bill Fowler bought his tombstone. Boy, she’s a big’n. I bet it cost him right smart of money. Uncle Will was named after old Bill Fowler. He was kin through marriage. He married Granddad Aaron’s sister.”

Bill said John Runyon’s attack on Brumfield was one of several violent attempts to secure the property at the mouth of Harts Creek. A little later, Paris Brumfield feuded with Bill Fowler, a local merchant, miller, farmer, and a saloon operator. Fowler was a highly successful businessman; unfortunately, he built his interests on land that Brumfield desperately wanted. Finally, presumably after some trouble, the Brumfields “burned Bill Fowler out”. Bill’s father, Fed Adkins, said he stood at the riverbank watching barrels of alcohol explode straight into the sky as Fowler’s store and saloon burned away.

“The whiskey run into the river,” one Fowler descendant later told Brandon. “They said he had big costly horses and it burned them, too.”

In 1890, after intense pressure from the Brumfields, Fowler sold his property at the mouth of Harts Creek (two tracts of land totaling 165 five acres on the west side of the river) to Isaac Adkins. One tract, according to land records at the Lincoln County Courthouse, was 75 acres and worth six dollars per acre, while the other was 90 acres worth four dollars per acre. Fowler left Harts and settled at Central City in present-day Huntington. Al Brumfield, meanwhile, acquired the Fowler property and employed Ras Fowler, a son of Bill, to work his store. The younger Fowler was a schoolteacher and postmaster. Actually, he was postmaster at the time of the Haley-McCoy trouble.

Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy (2014)

24 Friday Jan 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Appalachia, Brandon Kirk, crime, feud, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, history, logging, Milt Haley, Pelican Publishing Company, photos, timbering, true crime, West Virginia, writers, writing

In June of 2014, Pelican Publishing Company will release my book detailing the true story of the Lincoln County feud.

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.”

In Search of Ed Haley 228

19 Sunday Jan 2014

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

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Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Billy Adkins, Bob Dingess, Burl Farley, Cat Fry, Ferrellsburg, feud, French Bryant, Green McCoy, history, Hugh Dingess, John Hartford, Milt Haley, Ross Fowler, Ward Brumfield, writing

Bob said the Brumfields left Hugh’s with Milt and Green when they heard about the existence of an Adams mob nearby.

“They took them up over the ridge and down and crossed into Ferrellsburg up at Fry,” he said.

They went to the home of Tucker Fry, who took all of the women away from the place.

“I think maybe they stayed there a day and night or something like that a trying to make them tell who hired them to do that,” Bob said. “They was a trying to get them men to tell who hired them to kill Al Brumfield. And they took one of them outside and lectured him while the other was inside. When they took him back in, they said, ‘He won’t talk.'”

Bob said the mob even took Milt and Green into different rooms trying to get a confession but they just blamed the shooting on each other. Finally, French Bryant “blew Haley’s brains out with a gun.” Burl Farley hollered and everyone shot Haley and McCoy “all to pieces.” Cat Fry, who was about ten years old at the time, hid in a corner or in the fireplace and witnessed their deaths. “It was very cruel,” Bob said.

The mob returned to their homes after killing Milt and Green and it wasn’t long until the “murder house” was burned to the ground so there’d be no evidence against them.

I asked Bob if he remembered the house and he said, “Aunt Cat, she told me it was a two-room log house. One of them old-timers, big ones. They all slept in one room. Big fireplace in the other one. I never was in that house.”

Bob said that hard feelings over the feud lingered for years, especially toward Ben Adams. “After Haley and them was killed, old man Ben Adams never done no good at timber,” he said. “He run a mountain still up there — moonshine — and he had cabins built and he had men there and ever man had a Winchester and you couldn’t do much a bothering him ’cause old man Ben was a mean man.”

So what happened to Ben, we wondered.

“Ben died in 1912,” Bob said rather undramatically, “and was buried up yonder on the hill.”

According to Bob, the 1889 feud eventually ended because most of the participants were related and ultimately wanted to see it put to rest. “Here’s the thing,” Bob said. “The Adamses and Dingesses all married through each other and the Brumfields married into the Dingess clan. Everybody was kindly keeping a steel tongue because they didn’t want no more feuding more’n what they had and they didn’t want the young people to really know anything about it — how cruel it was. Dad up here never would talk about it. Nobody talked. Years and years and years in here it was just gossip. People a talking that didn’t know a thing on earth about it. It was a rumor. Someone would tell one story and someone would tell another.”

Every now and then a bit of the story leaked out, mostly from eyewitness Cat Fry. “Aunt Cat down here, now, was a little eight-year-old girl in the same house when they was killed,” Bob said. “She would very seldom talk about it but once in a while if nobody was around sometimes she’d start off a telling me about it some. She wouldn’t hardly tell you names. Nobody wanted to hear it. They wanted to let it die down and forget all about it.”

Bob remembered French Bryant well. “He was a big 200-pound 6’4″ tall mean man,” Bob said. “He’d carry a pistol on him that hung on his hip — one of these cap ‘n balls. He lived just over the hill up yonder and he made liquor and sold it all the time up that holler. Nobody lived up there. He had two miles of a hollow there to himself and he had a big dapple gray stud horse about fourteen, fifteen hundred pounds. He’d get on that horse and go to Ferrellsburg and if the river wasn’t too big he’d swim him across that river and he’d get him a load of groceries and put them on his back and then swim that horse back.” Bob told Billy, “People didn’t fool with that old man, either. Right when you leave the mouth of Hart and come up there at the schoolhouse — just across the creek starting up West Fork — there was a big house there and old man Ross Fowler lived there. I never did know what Ross done, but old man French went there… They didn’t have no lamp oil, they had pine knots. He took a sack full of pine knots there and set them afire and burnt creation up — burnt them out of house and home. Nobody ever knowed he did it, of course. He was a mean old cuss but he didn’t bother nobody in his last days. He made a little liquor and sold it and that’s the only way the old man could make it.”

Just before we left Bob’s, he told us a very important bit of information about Ed’s relationship with Al Brumfield’s oldest son, Ward. “Like I started to say a while ago, they was a feud between the Brumfields and the McCoys,” he said. “But remember, Ward Brumfield was a very fine man. He was a handsome man. Ward was a wonderful person. He was a first cousin to me and I have to congratulate him. He’d get up and him and Ed Haley’d hug each other and they’d prance and dance on the floor and just love each other. They’d both sit down at the table to eat together. Ward and him forgot all the past. Ward and Ed Haley was good friends.”

In Search of Ed Haley 227

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Al Brumfield, Ben Adams, Bob Dingess, Brooke Dingess, Burl Farley, Cat Fry, Dave Dingess, feud, French Bryant, genealogy, history, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, John W Runyon, Milt Haley, moonshine, Peter Mullins, timbering, writing

I asked Bob about Milt and he said, “I don’t know too much about the first Haley. I think he was a rambler and just traveled here and there and got in with them Mullinses up there making liquor and moonshine and stuff. I’ve been told that he married Peter Mullins’ sister and he stayed there among them a long time. They was two or three clans of them Mullinses. They was a bunch of horse-thieves and stealers who come out of Kentucky. Well, they run them out of Kentucky. They aimed to kill them and they got into Harts Creek in that wilderness section back in there. They was gamblers, they was moonshiners and they was always in a fight and trouble with each other. They couldn’t trust each other. The men wouldn’t work a lick and the poor old women did the work and the men just sat in the yard or played cards or drunk liquor and that was the way they done it.”

Talking about Milt got us into the story of his feud with the Brumfields.

“See, that all happened before I was born,” Bob said. “That happened in ’89 you see and all I know is what my mother and what Aunt Cat down at Hart told me. Now, I was told this: that Al Brumfield controlled all timber that went out of Harts Creek down there and he had an apparatus put in right above the mouth of the creek to catch the timber and not let them go in the river. All right. Ben Adams up here was a millionaire nearly at that time and had all of this big poplar timber in this creek for miles up and down here. Ben Adams had a lot of timber down there and the way I got it some logs got lost. Well, he undertook to make Al pay for the timber since Al was responsible for it and taking the ten-cents-a-log to hold it in the creek for them till they got it rafted and Al wouldn’t do it. And Al went to get a gun to kill him and Ben Adams run up Harts Creek and took the Big Branch and took that ridge on back home. He got away from Al. Well, it was always figured that Ben Adams hired these two men to kill Al so he could get that timber out of here. Now, I’ve been told that.”

I asked Bob about John Runyon and he said, “I never heard of John Runyon. But, somehow, down yonder in that curve… You see, these men had done gone there and planted themselves waiting for these people to come.”

Bob said Milt and Green were laying in ambush when Al and Hollena Brumfield came riding along. Al rode one horse, while Hollena and Bob’s father Dave rode another.

“My dad was a riding behind Aunt Hollene and Al was in front and somehow when them men started he saw the gun and he fell over on the other side of his horse and hung to the saddle till he got around that point. He put his arms around the horse’s neck and had his leg up so they couldn’t… They was two shots fired. I don’t know which one of them was shot first but they shot Aunt Hollene right through the cheek. The bullet went in right on the left side of her cheek right at her ear and come out right above her nose. Dad jumped off the horse when they shot her and throwed his hand up and they shot him through his hand then they got away. And Dad took part of his shirt and tore it up and tied it and put it around her head to keep her from bleeding to death. I don’t guess he paid too much attention to that hand as long as he got her took care of.”

I said to Bob, “So, did Al gallop off at that point?” and he answered, “As far as I know, he made a get-away. He went on down the hollow, fast speed I imagine. He knowed they was a gonna kill him.”

“Well now, what about Haley and McCoy?” I asked.

“So far as we know, they run and took the mountain,” Bob said. “They was hid in the bushes, see? But Dad recognized them and knowed who they was. Aunt Hollene did, too. They never did get along in here after that. They run them men back through that country back yonder and caught them almost at Dingess on the N&W. And they was a clan of Dingesses back in there and they headed them off for them and they caught them. Ah, they was a mean bunch of men in here, then. Of course, I knew old man French Bryant — he was a ringleader in it. Old man Burl Farley. A lot of Brumfields and Dingesses and everything else involved in it. And they brought them back to Uncle Hugh’s up here.”

In Search of Ed Haley 224

14 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Al Brumfield, Alifair Adams, Anthony Adams, Ben Adams, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Ernest Adams, Ewell Mullins, George Mullins, Greasy George Adams, Harts Creek, history, Jay Queen, Joe Adams, John Hartford, Lewis Maynard, Mag Farley, Major Adams, Milt Haley, Mountaineer Missionary Baptist Church, Peter Mullins, rafting, writing

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 219

07 Tuesday Jan 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley, Green Shoal, Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Music, Toney

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Appalachia, banjo, Bell Morris, Billy Adkins, Brandon Kirk, Bud Workman, Bumble Bee, Charley Davis, crime, Dave Dick, Don Morris, Ed Haley, Greasy George Adams, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts, history, Hollena Brumfield, Hollene Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Irvin Workman, Milt Haley, Peter Mullins, Ranger, Route 10, Toney, writing

Back at Billy’s, the subject of the “murder table” came up again. Supposedly, the table upon which Milt and Green had eaten their last meal somehow eventually ended up in the possession of Billy’s family. He suggested visiting his aunt Don Morris, who as a child had eaten from the table many times. Taking the cue, we loaded in the car and drove up Route 10 to Don’s house. Don lived at Toney, a small residential settlement just upriver from Green Shoal.

Don was a pleasant lady — very eager to help — and was aged probably in her seventies. After all the introductions, I asked her about the table. She said her grandfather Irvin Workman must have gotten it soon after the 1889 troubles. “He had it way back when he was raising his family,” Don said. “Then my dad, Bud Workman, when he moved out with my mother, they took the table with them.”

I asked, “Who told you that table was the Haley-McCoy table?” and she said, “My dad. It was in his father’s house before it was in his.”

“And you said that people would come by to see it?” I asked. “Who would come to see it?”

Don said, “I imagine it was relatives of the people that was involved in it.”

Don seemed to remember the table well, so I asked her for some paper so I could try to sketch it based on her memories. I started out asking about the length of the table, the style of its legs, and so forth…estimating everything by comparing it to Don’s current table. It was like doing a police sketch. After I had a rough drawing of the table, I asked her about the size and angle of the bullet holes.

Satisfied, I asked Don if she’d heard anything about Milt and Green’s death.

“It was pretty complicated,” she said. “Well, they got those men in and fed them. They knew they was gonna kill them all the time and they let them eat first. I can’t remember too much about the actual thing, because they didn’t talk too much about it in the family. Grandpa did sometimes. Well, I understood they shot them around the table after they ate. But it was execution style. Now, I couldn’t swear to it.”

Don figured the only light in the room was a kerosene lamp in the middle of the table. There was a story, Brandon said, that Hugh Dingess “shot out the lights” just before the murders — which presumably meant this lamp. While this may have occurred (perhaps so no one could witness the subsequent murders and thus testify in a future trial), it seemed unlikely. I mean, the room was probably really crowded if only half the people supposedly there were actually there and shooting in the room would have seemed dangerous. Of course, shooting a kerosene lamp could have set the whole house on fire.

“Well, I have heard they did, and I’ve heard they didn’t, so I couldn’t say which is true,” Don said of the lights. “I don’t think they could have without burning down the table.”

Brandon asked, “Was one of the men supposed to have played music before they killed him?” and she said, “He sang, didn’t he? It seems to me he played the banjo and sang a song. I guess they thought since they was going out anyway they might as well go out in style.”

I said, “Now, I heard that the wives went down there to try to plead for their lives and they turned them away. Have you ever heard that?”

Don answered, “Yes, I’ve heard that, but whether or not it’s true I’m not sure. My husband’s mother Bell Morris was related to the McCoys.”

I said, “Just for the record, what happened to that old house?” and she said, “I bet it burned.”

Don wondered why I was so interested in Milt Haley and I explained that I was researching the story of his son, Ed Haley, of which he was a very important part. I asked if she ever heard Ed play and she said, “I’m not sure, seems that maybe I did a long time ago. I think Haley played with Dave Dick. Dave played banjo. He was blind.” Brandon said Charley Davis had described Dick as a “pretty good” banjo-picker who mostly played “little ditties” like “Bumble Bee”. He lived downriver around Ranger but stayed in Harts for a week or so at a time with different families, sometimes playing for dances. Kids used to imitate him by bumping into things.

After mentioning Ed’s name to Don our conversation dwindled off to me asking if she knew people like Peter Mullins, Greasy George, or Hollena Brumfield. She gave answers like, “Well, I used to know a Peter Mullins. His foot was turned back. I remember watching him go up the hill there at the house.” As for Hollena Brumfield: “I knew one down here at this big old house at Hart. They put in a restaurant and you know it didn’t do too well. She said, ‘We got hotdogs on ice.’ Yeah, I knew those people.”

In Search of Ed Haley 218

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Alice Workman, Augusta Bryant, Billy Adkins, feud, French Bryant, genealogy, Harts, history, Hollena Brumfield, Martha Bryant, Milt Haley, Polly Bryant, writing

Later that evening, I expressed an interest in visiting Alice Workman. Alice was Billy’s aunt by marriage and lived right across the street in Harts. More importantly, she was the daughter of French Bryant, who, according to some sources, had murdered Milt Haley and Green McCoy at Green Shoal.

French Bryant, according to Billy’s notes, was born in 1855 or 1858 in Logan County, (West) Virginia. His parents were Rufus and Lucy Adeline (Caldwell) Bryant. French married Polly Dingess, a daughter of William and Emaline (Stollings) Dingess, and settled on Marsh Fork, a tributary of the West Fork of Harts Creek, in Logan County. He and Polly had six children: Carolina (1880), Edna (c.1882), Almeta “Allie” (1885), Fannie (1889), Hollena (1890), and Auglin (1896).

Just after the turn of the century, in 1902, French married Augusta Bryant, a cousin, and had one child, Gladys (1903). In 1904, he married Martha Ann Carter (1882-1964) and had nine children: Clarence (1905), Ruth (1907), Ruby (1907), McDonald “Doc” (1909), Robert Lee (1911), Wilson “Wig” (1913), Pearl (1915), Ann (1917), and Alice (1921). He and Martha raised their family on Piney Creek, a small West Fork tributary in Logan County.

French died on February 9, 1938 and was buried on the ridge in the head of Piney and Hugh Dingess Branch.

I wondered if Alice might be willing to talk about her father with us. I pictured her as an ancient woman — much like Roxie Mullins — who was full of stories and family heirlooms. I asked Billy if we were going to stir up any trouble asking her about Milt and Green’s murder and he laughed and said, “I don’t think so. Just don’t forget — you get to go back to Nashville. I have to live here.”

Alice greeted us at her back door. I was surprised to find that she was a relatively young woman, just slightly older than I. Billy told her that we were doing research on some of the old-timers around Harts and wondered if she had any old pictures of her father. Within a few seconds, she produced an incredible photograph of French Bryant in his younger days. Instead of looking like an “axe-wielding murderer” or a “feuding hillbilly with a chip on his shoulder,” he was a real “stud” — neatly groomed, in shape, and sporting a respectable suit (bowtie and all).

Alice said she didn’t know much about her father’s early life because he died when she was a teenager. In his younger days, he had supposedly worked as a stonecutter and made railroad ties. “They say he was a real dancer in his younger days,” she said, smiling. He eventually settled in the head of Piney Creek, where Alice was raised.

Billy told Alice that I was interested in the old vigilante mob in Harts — people like French Bryant, his grandpa Fed, the Brumfields… She sort of laughed, saying, “Yeah, yeah,” but didn’t offer any information. We got the impression that she probably didn’t know anything about her father’s supposed participation in the 1889 mob and that if she did she wasn’t going to tell us about it. She did say that her father loved Hollena Brumfield and used to visit her in Harts. We knew that he had named a child after her.

Alice basically remembered her father in his graying old age. She said he kept the mustache of his youth, packed a pistol only for protection, and seldom drank anything. He was baptized about two years before he died. His widow (Alice’s mother) thereafter settled on a West Fork farm — the same place where Lawrence Haley and I had stopped when looking for directions to Milt’s grave in 1993.

In Search of Ed Haley 216

30 Monday Dec 2013

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

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Bill Duty, Billy Adkins, Chloe Mullins, Durg Fry, Ed Haley, fiddlers, genealogy, Green McCoy, history, Hollena Brumfield, John Wesley Berry, Jupiter Fry, Mayme Ferrell, Milt Ferrell, Milt Haley, music, writing

I asked Mayme who her father’s favorite fiddler was and she laughed and said, “I suppose my daddy’s favorite fiddler was a man named Jupiter Fry. He married my daddy’s aunt.”

Billy asked, “Was he a brother to Durg Fry?”

“Yes,” she said. “You smart people. He went to New York one time and won a fiddling contest. He used to live down the creek here on the Laurel Fork of Big Ugly. My daddy used to go around there to Uncle Jupiter’s — they didn’t have much — and they would play poker all night long with just two or three pennies. They were very, very poor. Not many people were very well off. You wouldn’t think it by looking at this dilapidated place now but we had quite a bit. All the buildings are torn down. We had plenty — enough for us. We had some money here all the time. But Uncle Jupiter was the best fiddler in the country at one time.”

I asked Mayme if Jupiter was a right- or left-handed fiddler and she said, “Oh goodness, I don’t know. I don’t remember Uncle Jupiter. I remember Durg. He played some, too. He was right-handed. Durg would play and dance while he played. He did the hoedown. He did enjoy dancing.”

I asked Mayme if she remembered hearing any talk about Milt Haley and Green McCoy and she said, “Heavens, yes. Why didn’t I listen? Daddy talked about them. There was a great deal said but I just dismissed it from my mind. I didn’t try to remember it. Did Hollene Ferguson come in there in any way? She was a real kind person. I was there a few times. Incidentally, my mother’s daddy built that house.”

What was his name?

“John Wesley Berry. He was a riverboat captain and a carpenter from Guyandotte.”

I said, “I know Hollene put people up for the night and I’ve heard that Ed Haley had gone through there and stopped off and played the fiddle.”

“Well, Ed Haley frequented the place in this area,” Mayme said. “He’s been on this creek, too.”

She wasn’t sure if her father ever met Ed but she heard him talk about him.

Brandon figured they knew each other based on some interesting genealogical connections: one of Milt Ferrell’s uncles married Money Makin’ Sol Mullins’ granddaughter, while another uncle married a sister to Chloe Mullins (Ed’s grandmother).

I got kinda excited about Mayme confirming Ed’s trips through Big Ugly.

“Well see, we knew that he’d been to see Bill Duty a lot,” I said. “And we have found that Milt Haley, his father, was actually living in Bill Duty’s household at one time.”

“Milt Haley lived with Bill Duty before Bill Duty ever moved here, when he was still down in Logan County,” Brandon said, “and we think Milt may’ve moved up this way with Bill when he moved up here.”

“Well, I think maybe he did,” Mayme said quickly. “I think maybe he did. You’re awakening some old memories. I think he lived with them.

“Was there music in Bill Duty’s household?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that,” Mayme said. “Bill Duty married my daddy’s aunt.”

“Let me ask you a question,” I said to Mayme. “In the community back when you were a little girl did most people talk about the Haley-McCoy affair, or did they try not to talk about it for fear that somebody might hurt them or something?”

“I don’t think that there was any fear of being hurt,” she said. “They were not quite as notorious as the Hatfields and McCoys were.”

Just before we left, Mayme “made” me promise to come back and play for her in the fall.

I asked her for a favor: Could I go up into the old part of her house?

“Sure,” she said, “Just be careful.”

When I opened the door from the living room leading into the original cabin, I was so overwhelmed with sights and smells of the nineteenth century that it chilled me to the bone. It was dark, except for a little light streaming through a window, and everything was dilapidated, dusty, damp — and in most cases, ruined. A lot of the furniture had just rotted or collapsed to the floor and there were piles of papers everywhere at my feet. It was as if the people living there fifty years ago had just walked out, blew out the candles and never went back. Upstairs was the same. The whole experience made such an impression on me that I later began packing a picture of Mayme’s cabin in my fiddle case and eventually used it as a graphic on one of my albums.

In Search of Ed Haley 214

21 Saturday Dec 2013

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

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Big Ugly Creek, Bill Duty, Billy Adkins, blind, Doska Adkins, Ed Haley, Eunice Ferrell, fiddling, Jeff Duty, John Hartford, Milt Haley, Tom Ferrell, writing

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 209

12 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Al Brumfield, Appalachia, Aracoma, Ben Adams, feud, Green McCoy, Hollena Brumfield, John W Runyon, Logan County Banner, Milt Haley, Oakland House, West Virginia, writing

Thereafter, on January 9, 1890, came this powerful bit of news in soft faded print: “John Runyon, Deputy Sheriff of Lincoln county, and Benjamin Adams, of Harts Creek, registered at the Oakland House Saturday [Jan. 4]. Mr. Runyon says that every thing is quiet on Harts Creek, and thinks that the Brumfield-McCoy war is at an end.”

The implications of this tiny find were huge. First of all, John Runyon didn’t leave the Harts area for Kentucky immediately after Milt and Green’s murders, as we had been told. Secondly, he had distanced himself enough from the trouble by January of 1890 to provide the local paper a quote concerning the status of the feud. So what had happened between November 1889 when The Ceredo Advance reported the feud as having a Brumfield faction and a Runyon faction, and January 1890 when Runyon dubbed it a “Brumfield-McCoy war?” The newspapers themselves were confused because one of them said regarding the factions at work in the feud: “if two sides [it] could be said to have…”

Obviously, by January of 1890 Runyon had found a way to separate himself from the trouble, perhaps at the expense of Ben Adams. But why would he be so bold as to register at the Oakland House (a popular meeting place for timbermen) at the same time as Adams? And what was his reaction when the newspaper reported him there with “old Ben Adams”? Surely, the Brumfields and Dingesses felt their joint occupancy at the hotel was just too suspicious — as did we. No doubt, Runyon’s statement that “every thing is quiet on Harts Creek” changed immediately.

We were also fascinated by the fact that Runyon was a Lincoln County deputy-sheriff. Previously, we had only heard that Runyon was the owner of a small “grab-a-nickel” store near the mouth of Harts Creek. How did he get to be a deputy? Wouldn’t that position have been best served by someone from a large family (meaning many votes for the sheriff) and with deep roots in the area? Maybe we had underestimated Runyon. His status as a deputy-sheriff was perhaps an indicator that he had more power and was more of a threat to local businessmen and politicians like Al Brumfield than we’d figured.

Also, as an officer of the law, Runyon should have played a prominent role in settling the 1889 troubles, first in regard to Hollena and Al’s shooting, then later in regard to Milt and Green’s murder. The fact he was a local lawman and a suspect in the crime may have explained why the Brumfields resorted to using vigilante justice in handling Milt and Green. What kind of justice could they have expected from Runyon and his friends in the county seat after all, if he was an enemy or maybe even behind the hiring of Milt and Green in the first place? We wondered, did the Brumfields ask him to accompany their posse to fetch Milt and Green in Kentucky, or was he already a suspect in the crime? Obviously, there were a lot of questions along those lines.

In Search of Ed Haley 208

07 Saturday Dec 2013

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

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Al Brumfield, crime, Enoch Baker, George Fry, Green McCoy, Green Shoal, Harts Creek, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, history, Hollene Brumfield, Logan County Banner, Milt Haley, writing

On November 7, 1889, The Banner printed a Huntington story titled “Two More Victims To the Endless Hatfield-McCoy Feud/Prisoners Belonging to the Latter Faction Lynched.” This article was extremely difficult to read — some of its words were completely gone, which probably didn’t really matter since it was so error-ridden.

HUNTINGTON, W.VA., October 25 — Information was brought [here from] Hamlin, Lincoln County, that about midnight Friday, a mob surrounded the Lincoln County jail, took two of the prisoners, Green McCoy and Milton Haley, and hung them to a tree a short distance from the [jail]. Haley and McCoy are natives of Kentucky and are allied to the McCoy faction of outlaws [feuding] with the Hatfields generally familiar by the public. McCoy was engaged in a shooting scrape with Paris Brumfield about a year ago and about a month ago he, in company with Haley, ambushed and attempted to murder Brumfield and his wife. The shooting occurred on a Sunday and both victims [were] badly wounded, Mrs. Brumfield being shot in the breast and her husband in the leg. For a time it was thought the woman would die but she recovered. McCoy and Haley escaped to Hunto, Kentucky, [but] not before they made two more attempts at assassination in the county, in ____ of _____ man named Adkins was wounded. The would be murderers were arrested at Ben Postoffice, Martin county, Kentucky, and were confined in jail there. Friday they were locked up in Lincoln county (W.Va.) Jail, and in the absence of definite information it is supposed they were lynched by some of the Hatfield sympathizers.

It wasn’t clear if the Adkins who supposedly wounded in the above account was closely related to Cain Adkins or Fed Adkins. The place names given were also questionable, since Brandon couldn’t locate Hunto or Ben Post Office in any Kentucky map books.

The Huntington story apparently had little credibility since The Banner followed it with corrections:

The above is copied from the Enquirer, and is about as reliable as you find most reports about the Hatfield-McCoy feud. In the first place, the prisoners Haley and McCoy were not in jail.

Secondly. — No mob ever surrounded the jail, they went into Geo. Fry’s house and took them out without any resistance from the guards.

Thirdly. — They were not hung to a tree a short distance from the jail building, but were shot at Green Shoals some 25 miles from the C.H.

Fourthly. — Haley has no connection whatsoever with the McCoys of Kentucky.

Fifthly. — Mrs. Brumfield was not shot in the breast but in the face, and her husband was not shot in the leg but in one arm.

Sixthly. — McCoy and Haley never wounded Adkins, or even shot at him.

Seventhly. — Neither the Hatfields nor the Hatfield sympathizers had anything to do with the _____ing of McCoy and Haley.

It was done by the citizens of Lincoln who sympathized with the Brumfields and Dingess and by men who do not believe in the assassination of women by way laying and shooting them as they peacefully ride along the bank.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud had nothing whatever to do with the trouble, and from present appearances it is about over. Reports that some forty men _____ are armed and preparing for battle is without foundation.

For the next month, The Banner was silent about the Haley-McCoy trouble. Then, on December 12th, it gave this brief update: “Enoch Baker, of Harts Creek, was in town Monday, and reports every thing quiet, but thinks the Brumfield-McCoy feud is liable at any time to break out afresh.”

In Search of Ed Haley 207

02 Monday Dec 2013

Posted by Brandon Ray Kirk in Ed Haley

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Al Brumfield, Brandon Kirk, Cecil L. Hudgins, George Fry, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Henderson Dingess, John W Runyon, Logan County Banner, Milt Haley, V R Moss, William C. Fry, writing

Toward the end of June 1995 Brandon made a trip to the Cultural Center in Charleston, West Virginia, where he spent several hours researching the story of Milt Haley’s murder using old microfilmed copies of the Logan County Banner. By examining the articles chronologically, a new perspective on the 1889 trouble emerged: the “official news accounts of the day” vs. oral tradition.

On page three of a Thursday, September 26, 1889, edition of the Banner was an article titled “Serious Shooting on Hart’s Creek, In Lincoln County” which detailed the ambush at Thompson Branch:

On last Sunday, while Mr. Allen Brumfield and his wife, who live near the mouth of Hart’s creek, in Lincoln county, were returning home from a visit to Mr. Henderson Dingess, father-in-law of Mr. Brumfield, and when about a mile and a half below Mr. Dingess, they were fired upon by some parties in ambush. Mrs. Brumfield was serious if not fatally wounded, the ball entering her right jaw near the ear and coming out near the nose, carrying away the greatest portion of the right jaw. Mr. Brumfield was shot through the right arm and another ball passed through his vest, grazing his breast. A son of Mr. Dingess, who was with them, was shot through the leg. Dr. C.L. Hudgins of this place, and Dr. V.R. Moss, of Barboursville, were sent for and Dr. Hudgins dressed the wound on Monday. We have not learned the names of the parties who were suspected of the shooting, but learn that they are being hunted for, and if found will be properly punished.

The Banner mentioned on its Thursday, October 10, 1889, society page: “John W. Runyon, of Harts Creek, and W.C. Fry, of Guyandotte, were in town Tuesday on business.” W.C. Fry was William Christian Fry, a brother to George Fry, at whose home the Haley-McCoy murders took place a few weeks later. We wondered, were he and Runyon in town together on business? And did their simultaneous trip to Logan have anything to do with George Fry’s home later being selected as the “murder house?”

The Banner first reported Milt Haley’s death in an article dated Thursday, October 31, 1889, and titled “MORE MURDERING/Two Prisoners Taken from their Guards and Shot to Pieces:”

On Thursday of last week, Green McCoy and Milton Haley, the parties charged with the shooting of Allen Brumfield and his wife, on Harts creek in Lincoln county a short time ago were [held by a group of] citizens under charge of Al Brumfield. They were brought to Chapmanville in this county and wished to remain there over night, but fearing that an effort would be made to [kill] the prisoners, citizens there would not take them in. The guards, with the prisoners under their charge, then started down the river, a portion of the guard crossing to the opposite, leaving but the officer and three guards in charge of the prisoners. About six miles below Chapmanville, the guards and prisoners stopped at George Fry’s, at Mouth of Green Shoals in Lincoln county to stay all night. About 8 o’clock a number of persons supposed to be about twenty, came to Fry’s house, and demanded the prisoners. Mr. Fry and family were told to go into the kitchen and the guard to leave the house. The mob then entered the house and began shooting. The prisoners were dragged out of the house and shot down in the yard in front of the door. Not being satisfied with putting several balls through each of the men the mob took rocks and mashed their heads all to pieces. After finishing their murderous work the crowd dispersed, leaving the neighbors to look after the dead bodies.

No effort has been made to arrest any who were engaged in the outrage, yet it is pretty generally understood who were the leaders of the gang.

More than likely, the portion of the guard “which crossed the river and left the main group,” if true, went to alert Brumfield’s friends as to where the prisoners would be held that night.

In Search of Ed Haley 206

29 Friday Nov 2013

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

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Al Brumfield, Allen Martin, Andrew D. Robinson, Andrew Robinson, Anthony Adams, Appalachia, Ben Adams, Ben Robinson, Boardtree Branch, Chloe Gore, Chloe Mullins, crime, David Robinson, Dicy Adams, Elizabeth Abbott, genealogy, general store, Greasy George Adams, Green McCoy, Harts Creek, Harvey Adams, Henderson Dingess, history, Hollena Brumfield, Hugh Dingess, Jackson Mullins, John Frock Adams, John M. Adams, John Robinson, Joseph Adams, Joseph Robinson, Lincoln County Feud, Logan County, Logan County Banner, Lucinda Brumfield, May Adams, Meekin Branch, Milt Haley, Peter Carter, Rhoda Robinson, Sallie Dingess, Solomon Adams, Spicie McCoy, Susan Abbott, Ticky George Adams, timber, Trace Fork, Victoria Dingess, Viola Dingess, West Virginia, Wilson Abbott

Ben Adams — the man who supposedly hired Milt Haley and Green McCoy to assassinate Al Brumfield — was born in 1855 to Joseph and Dicy (Mullins) Adams on Big Harts Creek in Logan County, (West) Virginia. His older sister Sarah married Henderson Dingess and was the mother of Hollena Brumfield, Hugh Dingess and several others. He was a first cousin to Jackson Mullins, Milt Haley’s father-in-law, and a brother-in-law to Chloe Mullins, Milt’s mother-in-law, by her first marriage to John Adams.

In 1870, 17-year-old Ben lived at home with his mother, where he worked as a farmer. He was illiterate, according to census records. His neighbors were Andrew Robinson and Henderson Dingess, both of whom had married his sisters (Rhoda J. and Sally). In the next year, according to tradition, he fathered an illegitimate child, William Adams, who was born to Lucinda Brumfield (niece of Paris).

In 1873, Ben married Victoria Dingess. Victoria was born in 1856 and was a first cousin to Hollena Brumfield and Hugh Dingess. The marriage made for an interesting genealogical connection: Ben was already Hugh’s uncle; now he was also his brother-in-law, as Hugh was married to Victoria’s sister, Viola (his first cousin). Ben’s daughter Sally, who was named after Hollena’s mother, later married a cousin of Spicie McCoy, Green’s wife. For all practical purposes then, Ben Adams was genealogically connected to all sides of the feud — making it a true intra-family feud from his perspective.

For the first decade or so of his marriage, Ben lived with his mother on family property, although he did acquire land and open a general store business. In 1880, he was listed in the Lincoln County Census with his mother Dicy, aged 63, and family. He was 26 years old, Victory was 23, Sally was six, son Charlie was four, daughter Patsy A. was two, and son Anthony was a few months old. George Greaar, age 20, was a boarder. In 1881, he purchased 25 acres on the Meekin Branch of Trace Fork. Three years later, he was listed in a business directory as the proprietor of a general store. At that same time, his brother-in-law and neighbor Henderson Dingess was a distiller.

Later in the decade, Ben fathered three more children: George “Greasy” (1885), Harvey (1886), and May (1889). In 1889, the time of Milt Haley’s ambush of Al Brumfield, Adams owned 260 acres on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork valued at $1.00 per acre in Logan County.

Anthony Adams — Ben’s brother and ally in the 1889 troubles — was a prominent timberman on Harts Creek. Anthony had been born in 1849 and was the husband of Pricie Alifair Chapman, Burl Farley’s half-sister. In 1884, Adams was listed in a business directory as a blacksmith. In 1889, he owned two 50-acre tracts of land, one valued at $3.50 per acre with a $30 building on it, the other valued at $2.00 per acre. By that time, he had three sons of fighting age who may have participated in the feud: Solomon Adams (born 1869), Horatio “Rush” Adams (born 1871), and Wayne Adams (born 1874), as well as a son-in-law, Harrrison Blair (born c.1867).

A quick examination of the Adams genealogy gives a clue as to Ben’s other 1889 allies. First there was brother “Bad John” Adams. Adams was deceased at the time of the Haley-McCoy incident, but he had been married to Chloe Gore — mother of Emma Jean (Mullins) Haley. He had three sons of fighting age in 1889: Joseph Adams (born 1859), John Frock Adams (born 1861), and Ticky George Adams (born 1865)…as well as son-in-law Sampson Thomas.

Rhoda J. Robinson was a sister to the three Adams brothers. She had several children who may have allied with Ben: David Robinson (born 1860), Ben Robinson (born 1866), John R. Robinson (born 1868), and Joseph Robinson (born 1870). There was also brother Solomon Adams, who may have offered his loyalty to Ben, along with sons John M. Adams (born 1869) and Benjamin Adams (born 1867), and sons-in-law David Robinson and Peter Carter (c.1873).

As for Ben himself, he stayed busy with timber after the feud. According to an 1896 article from the Logan County Banner: “Benj. Adams, of Hart, is hauling some fine poplar from trace fork.” In 1901, he married Venila Susan Abbott, a daughter of Wilson and Elizabeth (Workman) Abbott, and had at least eight more children (born between 1901 and 1921). Not long after his remarriage, he was accused of murdering a local postman named Jim Allen Martin — and nearly went bankrupt paying for his legal defense. He died in 1910 and was buried on the hill near the mouth of Trace Fork.

Brandon Ray Kirk

~ This site is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and promotion of history and culture in my section of Appalachia.

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