Tag Archives: Peter Mullins

In Search of Ed Haley 354

16 Saturday Aug 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cas knew that Ed sold his homeplace at the mouth of Jonas Branch to Ewell Mullins. He said it originally stood below a big sugar tree in the bottom above Uncle Peter’s. (It was moved on logs.) It was a “little old two-room plank house” consisting of the “eating room,” which had a flat-rock chimney in the back with a fireplace and a “sleeping room.”

Cas best described the kitchen, which was just “out at the back” of the house.

“They wasn’t no floor in it,” he said. “It just sat on the ground. It was the length of the house — I guess maybe about eight feet wide — and they cooked out there in that. They cooked out there, packed it in, and set it on the table and they eat and everything in the same house. I’ve seen that old woman, Ewell’s wife, put fence rails in the stove — had a cook stove — and she’d stick them in there and set a chair on them till they burnt up to where they wouldn’t fall out. Me and her old man and his brother, we’d go up on that cliff and drag wood down that creek and the snow knee deep.”

Brandon asked Cas about the fate of Ewell’s house and he said they first enlarged it.

“We moved an old storehouse we had down the field there out there and put it beside of it,” he said. “It was there when the old man Ewell died ’cause the old storehouse had a crack up over the bed and his mother come in there and she was whining about that. Man, the snow’d blow in at him.”

Cas continued, “Then we turned around and tore that down and built this other to it. Tore that other’n down and built it back, too.”

He said the newer home was built on the same spot as the old one but it didn’t resemble it in any way.

Based on this testimony, we concluded that Ewell’s original home was truly gone.

Speaking of Uncle Peter, Brandon asked about him.

“Ah, he was a tomcat now, that old man was,” Cas said. “He was crippled in one foot and he walked on the back of it. Had his shoe made turned back. Prohibition men would come in and… I’ve seen him down there right below where Kate lived — he’d go out and hit that cliff. He’d get them bushes and swing up and go right up over them cliffs. He was bad to drink in his last few years. Well, they all the time made liquor and fooled with it. Finally got to drinking the stuff.”

Cas said Peter was bad to fight if provoked but Aunt Liza “was just like all other old women. She was a good old woman. She just stood and cooked.”

Cas thought that Ed’s mother was related to Uncle Peter, but wasn’t sure how.

“Wasn’t his dad named Milt Haley?” he asked.

Yeah.

“Well, you know they killed him down there around Green Shoal,” he said. “I heard somebody not too long ago a talking about them taking them over there and hanging them. I never did know too much about it. Nobody never talked too much about things back then.”

Cas had also heard about Ben Adams but didn’t know of his involvement in the 1889 troubles. He said Ben was a “pretty mean fellow” who lived in a log cabin still standing just up the creek.

“He had some kind of a brewery up here,” Cas said. “They had it built back in the bank. Sold booze there. Bootleg joint. I don’t know if all the old rocks and things is gone from there or not. He lived on Trace when he killed Jim Martin.”

Part of Ben’s old mill-dam was reportedly still visible in the creek at the Greasy George Adams place.

Cas told us again about Weddie Mullins’s death at Dingess, West Virginia. Weddie was an uncle to Ed Haley.

“I never did know too much about it,” he said. “We was little when that happened, I guess. Him and some of them Dingesses got into it and they shot and killed Weddie. And old man John Adams went down and looked at him, said, ‘What do you think about him?’ ‘Oh, I believe he’ll make it.’ Said he just hoisted that pistol, brother, and shot him right in the head and killed him. Said, ‘I know he won’t make it now.'”

This “old man John Adams” was Emma Haley’s half-brother, “John Frock.”

Cas said John could be ruthless.

“His wife was a coming out the gate and he shot her in the head and killed her,” he said. “Shot her whole head off. He was a little feller. He lived right there where Louie and them lived.”

Cas didn’t know what that killing was over.

“Back here at one time it was dangerous to even stick your head out of the door, son,” he said. “Why, everybody packed guns. Anybody’d kill you.”

The jockey grounds were rough places.

“A fella tried to run a horse over me up there at the mouth of Buck Fork and Billie Brumfield laid a pistol between his eyes and said, ‘You run that horse over him, you’ll never run it over nobody else.’ I believe it was before he killed his daddy.”

Cas said Dump Farley was at a jockey ground one time “right down under the hill from where Bill Thompson lived in that cornfield playing poker and he shot the corn all down. Talk about fellers a rolling behind the stumps and things.”

In Search of Ed Haley 353

10 Sunday Aug 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Early the next morning, Brandon and I arrived on the bus in Harts and drove to see Cas Baisden, who we spotted in a porch swing up main Harts Creek, just above the mouth of Smoke House Fork. It was a pastoral scene: a somewhat old farmhouse, several chickens in the yard and a few cattle in the distance who’d done a marvelous job of clearing the mountainside just back of the place. As we pulled up to the house, I realized that it was built fairly high off of the ground — probably as a precaution against flooding. Cas just kind of stared down at us as we unloaded from the car.

Once he figured out who we were, he invited us in to the living room. There we learned that Cas was eighty-seven years old and had spent his whole life on Harts Creek.

“I was born in 1910,” he said. “The only five years I was gone from here was when I was in the Army. I left here the second day of April ’42. I spent five year in the Air Force. Never was off the ground.”

Wow — I had to ask, “What is the secret to living so long?”

“Working, working, buddy,” Cas said. “I work ever day a little bit. I wish you’d a seen the coal and stuff I packed in this morning. I got two calves down there and chickens and cats and dogs. I live on tobacco, Cheerios, and milk.”

Ever drink any whiskey?

“Barrels of it,” he said. “It’s been ten or twelve years since I quit fooling with drinking. Yeah, I went up here and joined the church and things. A fella never knows what he misses when he gets in a church. I used to be rougher’n a cob.”

Cas was partly raised by Uncle Peter Mullins, so he remembered Ed Haley well.

“He’d come up there to Peter’s and just go from house to house playing music and eating,” he said. “He used to go up to Ewell’s — I guess where he was raised — and come down that road just a running and hollering and whooping and cutting the awfulest shine that ever was and you wouldn’t a thought he could a stayed in that road. I don’t know how he done it, but he’d take spells like that. If he got a hold of you with a knife, though, he was dangerous. Hang on you and cut as long as they’s a thread on you. Him and that old woman, they’d get drunk and they’d fight up there. You know, it’s a wonder they hadn’t a killed one another. I believe they did try to cut one another up there at old man Peter’s one time.”

What about the Haley kids?

“Why them young’ns would do anything,” Cas said. “Clyde went out here where Robert Martin used to live on that mountain and went down in the well and they had a time a getting him out. And up here a little bit was a big sycamore and he was up in there and we’d throw rocks at him, son, and if we’d a hit him and knocked him out of there he’d been killed. I believe Clyde was the meanest one among them, I don’t know.”

I asked Cas if he ever played music and he said, “Nah, I done well to call hogs. But now Ed was about as good a fiddler as they was. Nobody could play better than Ed. He could play anything on earth he wanted to play.”

Cas had memories of Ed playing at Uncle Peter’s, either outside for small crowds or inside for “big dances” before “they finally broke up and quit.” The old dances started about the “edge of dark” and people would just “jump around — most people never could dance” – until sun-up. There was no trouble — just “fiddle, dance, drink” — although a person had to watch out for what Cas called the “old hedgehogs.”

I asked him if Ed ever drank much at the dances and he said, “Sure. He’d get to drinking and have more fun than the one’s a dancing.”

When Ed wasn’t around to play dances on Trace, Robert Martin would show up and fiddle tunes like “Cacklin’ Hen”. Martin had the first radio “that was ever in this country” so people went to his house “out on the mountain” and listened to it until “way late in the night.”

In Search of Ed Haley 345

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Harts, John Hartford

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A few days later, Brandon and I loaded up the bus and headed to Harts where we arrived about midnight and parked at the Fas Chek. The next morning, we drove to Trace Fork to scope out the hollow. Initially, we stopped to see Von Tomblin, Ewell Mullins’ daughter, who lived next door to “Ed Haley’s place.” Von said she thought the back part of her father’s house was original; we were welcome to walk over and check it out.

“Just be sure and watch for snakes,” she said.

We trudged over through the field to the maroon house where we cluelessly looked at it.

Eventually, Brandon pointed down the bottom to the site of Uncle Peter’s place at the mouth of Jonas Branch. A few minutes later, as we sat in a swing under a tree at Uncle Peter’s place, taking in the sights and smells, Clifton Mullins came walking up with a big grin on his face, decked out in a Hank Williams, Jr. T-shirt. We told him we were trying to figure out just how old Ewell’s house was and he suggested that we walk up the hollow and ask Bum about it.

In no time whatsoever, we were on the porch with Bum, Shermie, and two sisters named Alice and Dicy. We had a very confusing — but potentially crucial — conversation about Ewell’s place:

Brandon: Now Ewell had an older home before that one, didn’t he?

Bum: They built onto it, what they done.

Brandon: Which is the old part?

Bum: The back part again’ the hill.

Brandon: Now, Ewell bought that place off of Ed.

Bum: Well now, Ewell built the front part. But the log house that was here, Ed or some of them built it. Some of his people. Older house there. If I ain’t badly mistaken, it was a log house. Got different grooves on it now than what it was.

Brandon: Was you ever in the old place?

Bum: Yeah. Had four or five rooms.

Brandon: When did Ewell tear it down?

Bum’s sister: I think all they tore down was the kitchen part to it.

Brandon: So part of Ewell’s house is the old place?

Bum: They took out the back here again’ the hill.

Brandon: Is part of the old log home still there?

Bum: It’s covered up now.

Brandon: But they’s log under that?

Bum: Yeah, I think it is.

We eventually headed down the hollow to Clifton’s, where his sister Connie showed us more family photographs. Clifton showed us his storage building, which featured Aunt Liza’s beautiful spinning wheel on piles of bags and boxes. Brandon and I agreed right then and there that we would give just about anything to have it. For all we knew, Liza had used it to make or mend Ed’s clothes when he was a boy.

Harts Creek and Big Ugly Creek land grants (prior to 1850)

16 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Big Ugly Creek

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Listed below are land grants and early deeds citing the Harts Creek and Big Ugly Creek areas of what was then Logan and Cabell counties, Virginia. The list will be updated and improved periodically.

1812   Squire Toney         100 acres   1 1/2 poles from A.W. grave

1813   Jacob Stollings       185 acres   Harts Creek, mouth

1814   Henry Conley         N/A            Hearts Creek

1815   George Spears       300 acres   Guyan River at upper end of William Brumfield’s line

1817   Edmund Toney       40 acres     Guyan River near Harts Creek

1819   William Brumfield   75 acres     Below Big Ugly on Guyan River

1819   William Brumfield   75 acres     Waters Guyandotte

1821   Charles Spurlock     N/A           mouth of Harts Creek

1824   Jacob Stollings       50 acres     N/A

1824   Peter Dingess        170 acres    Harts Creek

1827   John Goare           N/A             Marsh Fork

1828   Elias Adkins          N/A              Waters Guyandotte

1828   Richard Elkins       18 acres       Harts Creek

1828   John Fry               N/A              Green Shoal Creek

1833   Isaac & Elias Adkins   N/A          Mouth of Harts Creek from Richard Elkins

1834   Henry Conley        N/A              Harts Creek

1834   Abner Vance, Jr.   N/A              Harts Creek

1834   Richard Vance       N/A              Smokehouse

1835   Isaac Adkins          N/A              Waters Guyandotte

1835   Moses Brown          N/A              Guyandotte River

1835   John H. Brumfield   N/A              Waters Guyandotte

1836   Harvey Elkins          N/A             Harts Creek

1836   Richard Elkins          N/A             Harts Creek

1836   Squire Toney           N/A             Ugly Creek

1837   Richard Vance         25 acres      Trace Fork

1838   Joseph Adams         100 acres     Mouth Rockhouse Fork from Guy Dingess

1838   John H. Brumfield    255 acres     Big Ugly Creek

1838   Ralph Lucas            N/A              Ugly Creek, Green Shoal

1838   John Rowe              38 acres       Ugly Creek

1841   Joseph Adams         30 acres       Buck Fork

1841   Moses & John Workman   N/A      Harts Creek

1842   Joseph Adams         N/A              Harts Creek

1842   Robert Hensley        N/A              Smokehouse

1842   Lorenzo Dow Hill      N/A              Buck Fork of Harts Creek

1842   Peter Mullins            25 acres      Harts Creek, from Abijah Workman and Mekin Vance

1842   Burbus Toney          N/A              Limestone

1843   Joshua Butcher        N/A              Smokehouse

1843   Price Lucas              N/A              Harts Creek

1843   James White, Jr.      N/A              Rockhouse?

1844   Joseph Adams         N/A              Four Tracts, Harts Creek and Buck Fork

1844   Peter Mullins            50 acres       First lower branch of Trace Fork

1844   Meken Vance           N/A              Harts Creek

1846   John Workman         N/A              Hoover Fork

1847   William Dalton          N/A             2 Tracts, Harts Creek, Kiahs Fork

1847   Samuel Lambert       N/A             Marsh Fork

1847   Arnold Perry             N/A             Hoover’s Fork

1847   Obediah Workman    N/A             Henderson’s Branch

1848   Joseph Fry               N/A             Ugly Creek

1849   John H. Brumfield     N/A             Ugly Creek

1849   Levi Collins              N/A             Ugly Creek

1849   Peter Mullins            N/A             Harts Creek

1849   Patten Thompson     N/A             Marsh Fork

In Search of Ed Haley 336

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By the spring of 1997, Brandon and I were at a reflective point in our research efforts. We had begun to lose our edge. After all, how many times could we ask, “Now, how did Ed Haley hold the bow?” or “Do you remember the names of any tunes he played”? We decided to step away from interviewing people and focus on writing what we knew about Ed’s life and music. I spent long hours in Nashville at my dining room table listening to Ed’s recordings and working with the fiddle, while Brandon — in his three-room house in Ferrellsburg — transcribed interviews, re-checked facts, and constructed a manuscript. This went on for quite some time.

Eventually, Brandon came to visit and we decided to telephone a few people and ask more questions. Our first call went out to Edith Dingess, the only surviving child of Ed’s uncle, Peter Mullins. Andy and Dobie Mullins had told us about her several months earlier when we visited them on Harts Creek. Edith, they said, had recently moved from her home on Mud Fork in Logan to stay with a daughter in Columbus, Ohio. When we dialed her up, her daughter said, “She might be able to give you some information. Her memory is pretty bad. She’s 81 years old and she’s had a couple of real major heart attacks.”

I first asked Edith if she knew about Ed’s mother — her aunt — who apparently died in the early 1890s. Unfortunately, Edith didn’t know anything about her. As a matter of fact, she said she barely remembered Ed, who we knew had been practically raised by her father. She said he was a “nice person, likeable” who would “laugh and joke and go on.”

“I know Ed Haley used to come to our house with Mrs. Haley and they had a little girl. Might’ve had some boys — older,” Edith said. “I believe they lived down around Huntington. They’d come up home when my dad was a living and we was all home — I was young then — and they’d play music and we’d have company. We used to have some square dances at our house. We had some good times when he come up there.”

Edith said Ed’s children led him around, but he also got around using a cane.

Before we hung up, Edith gave us the telephone number of her niece, “Little Liza,” who lived with a daughter in Lancaster, Ohio. This was wonderful; I had first heard about Little Liza from Lawrence and Pat Haley in 1991. Little Liza had grown up in Uncle Peter’s home and was a featured face in family photographs. Prior to this lead, I wasn’t even sure if she was still alive.

When we called Liza, we first spoke with her daughter, Ora Booth, who gave the familiar introduction: “I don’t know if you’ll get too much out of her or not. She’s kinda forgetful and she repeats herself a lot. All I can do is put her on the phone and see what you get out of her. She’s seventy-six and her mind just comes and goes on a lot of things.”

I told Liza that I was good friends to Lawrence and Pat Haley, had heard a lot about her, and was very interested in Ed’s life. She said Ed used to stay a week or two with Uncle Peter — who she called “Poppy” — before heading back to Ashland. To our surprise, she had no idea exactly how Ed was related to her family.

“It’s been so long and you know I’ve been sick and everything and been operated on for cancer and stuff and I just don’t feel good,” she said. “When you get old, your mind just comes and goes.”

Just when I thought Liza’s memories of Ed had all but disappeared, she said, “I tell you, he was awful bad to drink all the time. Lord, have mercy. Anything he could drink, he’d drink it. That might have been half what killed him. He was a mean man. Just mean after women and stuff. I don’t know whether he could see a bit or not, but you’d get and hide from him and he’d come towards ya. I was scared of him.”

I asked Liza who Ed played music with when he visited at Peter’s and she said, “He just played with his wife. He didn’t have nobody else to play with. Lord, him and her’d get into a fight and they’d fight like I don’t know what.”

I wondered if Ed fought with his kids.

“Yeah, they liked to killed Ed Haley one time up there,” she said. “They’d just get into a fight and the kids’d try to separate their mommy and daddy and it’d just all come up. I had to holler for Ewell to come down there and get them boys off’n Ed Haley ’cause I was afraid they’s a gonna kill him. I didn’t want that to happen, you know? He got down there and buddy he put them boys a going. They was mean. I guess they took that back after Ed Haley. Yeah, he’d come up there and go here and yonder. After Mommy and Poppy got so bad off, people’d bring him down there and set him off and I had to take care of them, so Poppy just told him, said, ‘Ed, she has to wait on us and she can’t wait on you. You’ll just have to go somewhere else.’ He did.”

That was a horrible image.

In Search of Ed Haley 322

18 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Spottswood

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

After spending a few hours with Vilas, we drove a short distance up main Harts Creek to see Violet Mullins. Violet still lived in her mother Roxie’s little house. I hadn’t seen her since my first visit to Harts with Lawrence Haley in 1991; the home seemed a bit empty without Roxie. Violet began to speak in a voice hauntingly reminiscent of her mother’s.

“I knew Ed well,” she said. “He used to come stay all night at our house when he was traveling through here. I know he played all kinds of music. He’d play tunes and then sing them. He’d sing ‘The Drunkard’s Hell’ and the ‘Brownlow’s Dream’, I’ve heard him play that. They’d always be a big gang with him and I never stayed around with them where they was a playing music very much. He’d drink with them every now and then. He’d get to drinking and they’d get into a racket and have him a talking every once in a while. He never was at our house too much — just come and stay all night, him and his daughter and his son. Now, his son Jack stayed with us a long time. He come here, you see, and stayed with Uncle Peter’s fellers, and with different families around here. He stayed for a year or two.”

In Search of Ed Haley 321

17 Tuesday Jun 2014

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Trying to lift our spirits, we went to see Vilas Adams, who lived on the Boardtree Branch of Trace Fork. Vilas was a great-grandson of Ben Adams and a grandson of Ticky George Adams. He was very friendly, inviting us inside his very nice home where his wife fed us a whole mess of good food, which we ate between asking questions.

I first asked him about his memories of Ed Haley, who he said frequented Ewell Mullins’ store during the late 1930s and early forties.

“Down there at old man Ewell’s store, they’d gather in there of an evening and tell tales, old man Jeff Baisden and them,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw Ant Adams and I would walk down there and then Ed would walk down there from Uncle Peter’s. It was a quarter a mile — just a little hop and a jump I call it. Ed would come in there and fiddle for them and if they wanted a certain song, they’d give him a quarter or fifty cents. That was good money I guess back then.”

Vilas’ grandfather Anthony Adams (a brother to Greasy George) always gave Ed a quarter to hear his favorite tune.

“What was Ed like?” I asked.

Vilas implied that he was withdrawn.

“Mostly he stayed with that fiddle,” he said. “He was good.”

Like most of the other older people in Harts, Vilas knew about the Haley-McCoy killings.

“My grandpaw would tell me them tales but I wouldn’t pay no attention,” he said. “He was telling about them fellers — Sol Adams — going over there and locating them and they went back and captured them. Well, his daddy Anthony tried to waylay them and take them back through here somewhere. They thought they’d come through these hills somewhere but they missed them.”

So, Sol Adams — a 20-year-old nephew to Ben Adams who was often called “Squire Sol” because of his status as an officer of the law — “went over and located Haley and McCoy” in Kentucky after the ambush. Meanwhile, his father Anthony and uncle Ben Adams, organized a gang to recapture them as the Brumfields brought them back through Harts Creek. This seemed strange: why would Sol operate against the interests of his family? And why would he have even been compelled to even become involved since he was a Logan County justice and the crime had occurred in Lincoln County?

Brandon asked Vilas if he knew who had been in the Adams gang and he said, “No, I’ve heard my grandpaw talk but I’ve forgot some of it. They was somebody from down around Hart somewhere. He said they took them over around Green Shoal or over in there somewhere and killed them. Grandpaw said they maybe hit them with axe handles.”

Vilas said his grandfather told him something horrible had happened to most of the men who murdered Haley and McCoy.

“He said just about every one of them that was in on that, something bad happened to them,” he said. “I heard one of them’s own boy killed one of them. And one of them got drowned and my grandpaw said the river wasn’t deep. Said he fell off a horse or something right at the mouth of Hart.”

Of course, Vilas was referring to Paris Brumfield, who was killed by his son Charley in 1891, and to Will Adkins, who drowned at the mouth of Harts Creek on November 23, 1889.

Brandon asked Vilas about “old Ben Adams” and he almost immediately started talking about the old timber business.

“See, that was my great-grandpaw,” he said. “They would build splash dams. They had one right out here. They had them tied some way or the other. And they built them up on Hart there, maybe up on Hoover, and they’d work all winter and put them logs in the creek. And in the spring when them floods come, it would wash all them logs down around Hart and then they’d put them together and raft them on down to Kenova. I guess that was all they had to make a living — timber and farm.”

Ben, of course, made his living in timber. He lived at the mouth of Adams Branch, a little tributary of Trace Fork presently referred to as Still Hollow.

“Over there at what we call Still Hollow, they said he had a still-house there and he had a license to make apple brandy back then,” Vilas said. “And he would go with a wagon everywhere and get apples. They was a log house over there in the mouth of that holler — just down the road here a little ways. When I was a boy the old log house was there, but it rotted down. Just one-story as far as I can remember. The old well’s there. He had some kind of an old store or saloon right there.”

Vilas speculated very little on Ben Adams’ personality, but compared him to his son, Greasy George Adams: “always a likeable fella but seemed like trouble followed him.” He heard that after Ben’s first wife died, he lived with first one woman, then the next. He eventually got into a heap of trouble by murdering a local postman, Jim Martin.

“He killed a fella right over there at the mouth of that hollow,” Vilas said. “My grandpaw said he had some sort of an old store or saloon and he was shooting out the door. Right there in the mouth of that holler. It broke him. Lawyers. Lost everything he had.”

It was rumored that Ben’s and Martin’s trouble had something to do with a woman or a right-of-way.

Spottswood Items 10.02.03

16 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Spottswood

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

An unnamed local correspondent from Spottswood in Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, which the Logan Banner printed on Friday, October 2, 1903:

Some one insulted John Carter last Friday night by stealing his kraut tub.

Rev. I.M. Nelson preached a fine sermon Sunday at the Buck Fork schoolhouse in memory of Weddington Mullins. There was a large congregation.

Mrs. Sol Adams says she wants all the pumpkins there are on Hoover with which to make apple butter for they are fine for that.

Peter Mullins got mashed up by a log truck the other day, but has got so he can walk about the place again.

Peter Mullins is one of the greatest squirrel hunters on Hart’s creek. The crack of his repeating shotgun is often heard.

Miss Bell Dora Adams is struck on a young teacher who stays on the Buck Fork.

Mrs. French Bryant of Nolan, W. Va., is very low with fever at this place.

Moses Butcher of Yantus was a visitor at this place last week.

Prof. L.W. Riddle is a candidate for matrimony subject to the action of the ladies of Spottswood.

Miss Bettie Workman has resumed teaching after an illness of two weeks.

Miss Inez Adams, one of the belles of this place was making “goo goo” eyes at a young teacher while at church last Sunday.

Peter Carter says there is only one girl in the world for him and that is Miss Frances Baisden.

 

Spottswood Items 10.02.1903

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Dingess, Spottswood, Timber

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Ayer,” a local correspondent from Spottswood in Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, dated September 29, 1903, which the Logan Banner printed on Friday, October 2, 1903:

Miss Belle Dora Adams, one of the wealthiest belles of Spottswood, was entertained last Sunday by Joseph Baisden, a popular young and wealthy citizen of Dingess.

Peter Mullins and L.M. Riddle, two prominent young men of this place, got left last Sunday. “Shorty” Adams and Joseph Baisden took their girls, Miss Belle Dora and Susie Adams.

Sol Adams, Sr., has bought a fine mule of Stephen Mullins.

Crops are better than farmers were expecting.

K.F. Atkins has finished his job of trucking logs on Hoover.

Spottswood is growing fast. There are three stores in the town and John M. Adams will soon complete the fourth. It is also said that Attorney Riddell will engage in the mercantile business here.

James Thompson and Sol Baisden are doing a fine business hauling logs.

Last Sunday a number of drunkards entered church during services, but were quickly led out and guarded till services were over by Peter Mullins, Joe Adams, Constable A.F. Gore and Squire Sol Adams. Squire Adams says he will have peace at church if he has to hang the rough boys.

Miss Belle Dora Adams, accompanied by Joseph Baisden, left Spottswood this morning for her school near Dingess. They are well respected and well liked young people.

Peter Mullins paid a visit to the Big Cash Store today. He found the ever-smiling clerk at the counter, glad to see him enter. He bought 15 cents worth of tobacco and was invited to come again by the owner, Miss Alice Adams.

John R. Slade is so in love with Miss Aquilla Mullins that he had to quit school on account of her presence. He couldn’t get his lessons for looking at her.

Whirlwind 2.6.1919

27 Thursday Mar 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Whirlwind

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Blue Eyed Beauty,” a local correspondent at Whirlwind in Upper Hart, Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, which the Logan Democrat printed on Thursday, February 6, 1919:

Vinson Collins and Mrs. Martha Spry were united in marriage Saturday night, the Rev. Sam Adkins officiating.

The death angel visited Smokehouse Monday night, claiming Charles Conley as its victim. Death was due to influenza.

Raymond Collins died at his home on Mud Monday and his body was brought here for burial Wednesday. This is the second child of Preston Collins to die since the first of the year. We hear another child of the family is in a very critical condition at this time. The influenza has been the cause of all the sickness and the deaths.

Reece Dalton and William Tomblin hauled a load of household furniture Friday for Doke Tomblin, who is moving here from Shamrock.

Bill Tomblin has been on the sick list this week, but is much improved at this writing.

Constable Peter Mullins arrested Jesse Blair Wednesday on a warrant charging him with having disturbed a religious service. The alleged offense is said to have occurred last July, before Jesse went to the army.

In Search of Ed Haley 269

17 Monday Mar 2014

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Back in the car, I mentioned to Brandon and Billy that we hadn’t made any real progress on learning what happened to Emma Haley. Billy suggested trying to locate her grave in the old Bob Mullins Cemetery at the mouth of Ticky George Hollow on Harts Creek. He said it was one of the largest and oldest cemeteries in the area. I told him that I was all but sure that Emma was buried in one of the “lost” graves on the hill behind Turley Adams’ house but wouldn’t mind checking it out anyway.

We drove out of Smoke House and up main Harts Creek to the Bob Mullins Cemetery, which was huge and very visible from the road. We parked the car and walked up a steep bank into a large number of gravestones. Some were modern and easily legible but most were of the eroded sandstone vintage with faded writing or completely unmarked. I located one stone with crude writing which read “E MULL BOR 69 FEB ?8 DEC 1 OCT 1899.” It could have easily been Emma Haley — who was born around 1868 and died before 1900. However, Brandon read it as “E MULL19 SEP 188?-1? OCT 1891.” We couldn’t agree on the markings well enough to satisfy ourselves.

As we stood at the “E MULL” grave, Brandon pointed across Harts Creek.

“Greasy George lived over there where that yellow house is,” he said.

He then pointed across Ticky George Hollow to Louie Mullins’ house, saying, “That’s where ‘John Frock’ Adams lived.”

John Frock was Ed Haley’s uncle and a suspect in the Al Brumfield ambush at Thompson Branch.

“Ticky George lived on up in the hollow,” Brandon said.

We walked down the hill to speak with Louie but learned from his wife Eunice Mullins that he’d passed away several years ago. Eunice was a daughter of Greasy George Adams. She said Ed used to play music at her father’s home. She also confirmed that Ewell Mullins, her father-in-law, bought Ed’s property on Trace. He lived there for years and was a storekeeper before moving to the site of her present home, where he operated yet another store. Ed played a few times at this latter location before it was torn down around 1950.

From Eunice’s, we went to Trace Fork to take a closer look at Ed’s old property. Along the way, as we drove by Uncle Peter’s place, we bumped into Sol Bumgarner walking near the road. He invited us up to his house, where we hung out for about half an hour on the porch. I played a few fiddle tunes and asked about people like Uncle Peter, Ben Adams, and Johnny Hager.

Bum said Uncle Peter Mullins lived at the present-day location of a tree and swing near the mouth of the hollow in a home that was part-log. Ben Adams, he said, lived further up Trace and hauled timber out of the creek with six yoke of cattle. He remembered Ed’s friend Johnny Hager standing on his hands and walking all over Trace.

I reminded Bum of an earlier story he told about Ed splintering his fiddle over someone’s head at Belcher’s tavern on Crawley Creek. He really liked that story — which he re-told — before mentioning that Ed composed the tune “Hell Up Coal Hollow” and named it after the Cole Branch of Harts Creek. Cole Branch, Brandon said, was the home of his great-great-grandfather Bill Brumfield who kept the hollow exciting around the turn of the century.

After an hour or so on Trace Fork, we decided to see Oris Vance, an old gentleman on Little Harts Creek who Billy said was knowledgeable about early events in Harts. We drove out of Harts Creek to Route 10, then turned a few minutes later onto Little Harts Creek Road. As we progressed up the creek on a narrow paved road past trailers, chicken coops, and old garages, I noticed how the place quickly opened up into some beautiful scenery with nice two-story brick homes.

In the head of Little Harts Creek, near the Wayne County line, we found Oris walking around outside in his yard. He was a slender, somewhat tall fellow, well-dressed, and obviously intelligent. His grandfather Moses Toney was a brother-in-law to Paris Brumfield. Toney and his family had fled the mouth of Harts Creek due to Brumfield sometime before the 1889 feud.

Oris told us the basic story of Milt Haley’s and Green McCoy’s murders as we knew it up to their incarceration at Green Shoal. He said Hugh Dingess, a grandson to the “old” Hugh Dingess, was his source for the tale. At Green Shoal, one of the prisoners begged the Brumfield gang not to kill him so that he could see his children, but the mob gave no mercy and blew Milt’s and Green’s brains out.

“Cat Fry looked out of a window in the top of the house and saw out into the yard,” Oris said, apparently referencing her view of their grisly corpses.

Oris said he saw Green McCoy’s widow at a singing convention in Chapmanville in the early ’30s. She was an alto singer in a gospel quartet with her guitar-playing son. When Oris saw her, she was sitting with songbooks in her lap near a hotdog sale across the road from the old high school.

In Search of Ed Haley 253

01 Saturday Mar 2014

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

One fall day, Brandon and Billy drove to see 80-something-year-old Cas Baisden, a son of Jeff and Harriet (Jonas) Baisden. Cas lived on a farm near the mouth of Smoke House with a relative of Uncle Peter Mullins. He had been mostly raised by Uncle Peter and had vivid memories of watching Ed Haley play in his yard, as well as in the house. He said Ed didn’t usually have a very big crowd around him. “People didn’t care a bit, even though he was about as good as they was,” Cas said. He said Ed and his wife could play anything. “He was real skinny and would drink anything he could get his hands on.” He added that Ed knew all the roads and trails up around the creek and could walk them as well as a sighted person.

Ed’s uncle Weddie Mullins married Cas’ aunt, Maggie Jonas. Cas said Weddie went to Dingess to get some booze one time and was killed in a shooting scrape. The man who shot him was laid up in bed when Weddie’s half-brother John Adams came in and asked, “Do you think he’ll make it?” Someone said he might live so Adams pulled out his gun and said, “I know he won’t,” and opened fire on him. Later, in unrelated events, Adams “blew his wife’s head off.”

Cas said Ed’s uncle Ticky George Adams was harmless. He was a small man, short and chubby, who dug ginseng a lot on Big Creek. George was a brother-in-law to Ed’s friend Johnny Hager, who came from the North Fork of Big Creek and stayed a lot with Ewell Mullins and others around Harts. Johnny was a good fellow, a musician and a non-drinker.

Cas knew that Ed sold his homeplace on Trace to Uncle Peter’s son, Ewell Mullins. It was a plank building with two long rooms. In the rear of the eating room there was a flat-rock chimney with a long fireplace. The other room was used for sleeping. Later, an old store building was pushed up against the sleeping room to make a kitchen. The house had no porch.

Cas said Ed’s son Clyde Haley was “like a monkey” when it came to climbing trees; one time, he climbed 40 feet up into a tree and all the other kids ran away because they didn’t want to see him fall.

Cas remembered sketches about Ben Adams but didn’t know if he had been involved in the 1889 feud. At one time, he operated a store on main Harts Creek below the mouth of Smoke House. Across the creek, he had a saloon made entirely of rock. Later, he lived on Trace. Cas said part of his old mill-dam could be seen in the creek at the Greasy George Adams place.

In Search of Ed Haley 233

05 Wednesday Feb 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Whirlwind

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In that same year, 1912, according to a state business directory, there were a variety of folks with business interests in Whirlwind, West Virginia. Sol Riddell was the postmaster, a lawyer, and part owner of a general store named Mullins & Riddell. Peter Mullins was a carpenter, D. Adams was an apiarist, Grover Adams dealt in ginseng, Sol Adams was a miller and lumber dealer, W.J. Bachtel was a teacher, Reece Dalton dealt in livestock and M. Tomblin was a teamster. Reverend Perris Hensley and Reverend William Tomblin were area preachers.

Between 1916-1918, roughly the time Ed Haley left Harts Creek for Ashland, Kentucky, many of these same folks were listed in business directories for Whirlwind. James Mullins was postmaster in 1916, as well as the local general store operator and photographer. William Farley was a mail dealer. In 1918, Frank Adams was a mail carrier. Sol Adams operated a saw mill. Lindsey Blair was a watchmaker. Callahill McCloud dealt in poultry. C.M. Mullins dealt in ginseng. J.M. Mullins operated a flour mill.

By that time, Peter Mullins served as a sort of surrogate father to Ed Haley. It was Uncle Peter who had given Ed a cornstalk fiddle when he was a young boy and who kept him for years. As Ed became a young man who frequently left Harts with his music, Uncle Peter toiled on Trace Fork as a farmer and occasional timberman. He was perhaps best known for his moonshining, an art form with a long history in his pedigree. In January of 1919, he appeared in The Lincoln Republican in an article titled “Four Moonshiners Caught in Raid.”

A constable and owner of a general store was one of the four men arrested Saturday night in Harts Creek district and taken to Huntington Sunday for arraignment before United States Commissioner J.P. Douglas on a charge of illegally manufacturing liquor. The men were found on Trace Fork of Harts creek.

Peter Mullins is the constable and owns a general store on Harts creek. He is known as ‘Shooting Pete’ and is now in the Cabell county jail in default of bond. In his store were found 900 pounds of meal and 209 pounds of flour. Sol Adams, Peter Jonas and George Adams, the other three arrested, gave bond. All are held to the grand jury at the April term of federal court. At the home of Geo. Adams, were found 200 pounds of meal, 100 pounds of light brown sugar, 200 pounds of bran or ships stuff and one barrel of mash, made up, which Adams said was for his hogs. He had one hog, according to the men on the raid. The arrests were made on Saturday by G.C. Rutheford and Hartley Ferguson, deputy marshals; H.D. Sims and G.L. Hannan, of the internal revenue department; M.E. Ketchem, Frank Adkins and W.F. Porter of the state prohibition commissioner’s force.

In Search of Ed Haley 232

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Whirlwind

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 231

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Ed Haley was born in 1885 at Warren, a small post office established the previous year five miles up Harts Creek just below the mouth of Smoke House Fork. It was a place of 300 to 500 people chiefly led in its daily affairs by Henderson Dingess, Andrew Robinson, Anthony Adams, Ben Adams, and Burl Farley — all connected genealogically through the Adams family. At Warren, in 1884, the primary business was a general store called McCloud & Company. Henderson Dingess, father to Hollena and the patriarch of the clan, was a distiller and storekeeper. Ben Adams, a brother-in-law to Dingess, was a general store operator. Andrew Robinson was the local postmaster. Van Prince was a physician, perhaps assisting in Ed Haley’s birth or in the treatment of his measles.

Henderson Dingess, a prominent personality from that era, was the son of pioneer parents, born in 1829 to John and Chloe (Farley) Dingess. His wife, Sarah Adams (1833-1920), was a daughter of Joseph and Dicie (Mullins) Adams, who settled on Harts Creek from Floyd County, Kentucky, in the late 1830s. Henderson and Sarah lived in a two-story log house on land partly granted to him by the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1856. There, at the mouth of Hog Pen Branch, they raised eleven children, many of whom were active in the 1889 troubles. In the late 1880s, roughly the time of Milt Haley’s murder, Henderson and Sarah owned a 93-acre tract of land on Smoke House with a building valued at $100. They also owned an additional 350 acres on main Harts Creek and a 44-acre tract on nearby Crawley Creek worth $6.00 per acre with a $20 building on it.

At that time, Harts was caught up in the regional timber boom. According to The Logan County Banner, an estimated one million dollars worth of timber went out of the area in 1889. Perhaps prompted by this capitalistic invasion of the local economy, violence became the norm in Harts. Beginning with Paris Brumfield’s murder of Boney Lucas “over logs” in the early 1880s, there were at least six area killings before the turn of the century. (The Brumfields were involved in four of them and the Dingesses in three.) It was an era when Harts lost its innocence and began to earn the rough reputation it still carries today.

More than likely, following the horrific events of 1889, little Ed Haley and his mother lived for a brief time with Jackson and Chloe Mullins on Trace Fork. This changed a little later when, in 1891, Jackson and Chloe began to deed property to their three children. On March 18, they deeded their homestead to son Peter for 25 dollars. Deed records specify the property as a 20-acre tract of land, which began somewhere around the mouth of Trace and continued up to the Jackson Mullins Branch (basically the present-day Turley Adams property). The following day, Jackson and Chloe deeded another 20-acre tract to son Weddie Mullins for 25 dollars. This tract basically included everything from Jackson Mullins Branch to Jonas Branch.

On March 19, 1891, Jackson and Chloe deeded Imogene Haley 20 acres of land on Trace Fork for 25 dollars. In the property index, Imogene’s surname was spelled as “Hauley”, while the deed referred to her as “Immagin A. Haley.” Her land began at Jonas Branch and continued on up the creek. In the original deed, it was described as follows:

Beginning at the mouth of William Jonas branch thence up the Branch with the center of the branch to a _______ tree on the right hand side of the Branch as you go up the branch near a Chestnut that ________ on the left side of said branch thence acrosf the fields to some willow bushes at the front of the hill thence up the point with the center of the point to the brow of the Mountain thence with the brow of the Mountain to Mary Mullins line thence down the mountain to a bush thence a strate line crosfing the creek to a ash thence up the hill to the back line of the parties of the first part thence down the creek with the line of the said opposite the mouth of William Jonas branch thence down the hill a strate line to the Beginning supposed to contain 20 acres more or less.

An 1891 tax book listed “Emigene Hawley’s” property as being worth $2.00 per acre and having a total worth of $40. Records do not indicate if there was a house or building located on the property. In any case, Emma died soon after: an 1892 tax book lists her property under the name of “Immogen Hailey heirs”, which would have been Ed Haley. More than likely, seven-year-old Ed remained living in the home of his grandparents, Jackson and Chloe, for several more years.

At that time, Logan County was in the middle of a timber boom, which gave employment to Ed’s family on Trace Fork. “Some of the finest timber in the State is found in Logan county,” writes The Mountain State: A Description of the Natural Resources of West Virginia (1893). “Magnificent forests of oak, poplar, ash, lynn, maples, beech, birch, pines, hickory and other varieties still cover the greater part of the county in their primitive state. For thirty years timber men have been at work, destroying the forests and still in all this time not over a fourth of the timber has been removed. As an estimate of the value of the timber still standing in Logan county, three million dollars will not be far amise.”

In Search of Ed Haley 227

17 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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 in Ed Haley

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.