Tag Archives: Polly Bryant

Interview with Tom Farley (2002)

27 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Culture of Honor, Halcyon, Lincoln County Feud, Music

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Back in Harts, Brandon and Billy visited Tom Farley on the Marsh Fork of West Fork of Harts Creek. Tom was the grandson of Burl Farley, one of the ringleaders in the Brumfield-Dingess mob of 1889. He was a great storyteller and knew a lot of interesting tales about the old vigilantes around Harts.

“Milt Haley and Green McCoy, my grandpa Burl Farley was in that,” Tom said. “Dealer Dave Dingess was in that. Dealer Dave Dingess played the fiddle for them when they chopped them boys’ heads off. He wasn’t a mean fellow. Burl Farley and them just got him drunk. French Bryant and Burl Farley was supposed to been the men who went over and chopped their heads off. My uncle Lewis Farley was in it.”

French Bryant, Tom said, married his aunt Polly Dingess.

“I’ve heard that Polly was one of the hatefulest women that ever took a breath,” he said. “A lot of people said she was the Devil’s grandma. French Bryant, he took her by the hair of the head and he tied her up to that apple tree. She took pneumonia fever and died.”

Tom told a great story about Bryant.

“French Bryant, I know a story they told me. It might be a lie. He was hooked up with the Ku Klux Klan. Was a captain of them. This is an old story. It’s supposed to happened right up here in this hollow. Dealer Dave and a bunch of them had their moonshine still set up in here. There was some young men came back in this country looking for Burl trying to get them timber jobs. They thought they was spying on them. This might every bit be lies but I was told this by all them old-timers. Burl Farley, Dealer Dave Dingess, French Bryant, Lewis Farley, and a bunch of them was supposed to’ve beheaded them right under that beech tree, my daddy always told. This story goes that they come in here looking for work. The Ku Klux Klan brought them here, made old Polly Dingess cook them a midnight supper. Dealer Dave played the fiddle for them and they danced all night. The next day at twelve o’clock Polly fixed a big dinner. Their last meal. One of them told the other two, said, ‘We just might as well eat. This is the end of the line for us.’ One of them just kept eating. He told the other two, said, ‘You better eat because this is the last meal we’ll ever eat.’ Said French Bryant cussed them and said, ‘Eat because you’ll never eat another meal.’ Dealer Dave asked them, ‘What do you want me to do as your last request?’ Said two of them cried and wouldn’t say a word. Said that one boy that eat so much told Dealer Dave, said, ‘Play ‘Satan’s Nightmare’.’ Took them out there at one o’clock under that beech tree and laid their heads across the axe and chopped two of their heads off. Said two of them cried and wouldn’t say a word. Said that one boy that eat so much told Dealer Dave, said, ‘Play ‘Satan’s Nightmare’.’ They chopped their heads off. Said French took their heads and set them on the mantle.”

So Dealer Dave Dingess was a fiddler?

“Dealer Dave played the fiddle,” Tom said. “I remember seeing old man Dave. He was tall and skinny. He played ‘Blackberry Mountain’ and a bunch of stuff. ‘Wild Horse’. Dealer Dave was the biggest coward that ever put on a pair of shoes. When it would start to get dark, my daddy and my uncle Bill Dingess — just tiny kids — they’d have to walk up this hollow with him. One would walk in front of him and the other one behind him. Said Lee Dingess cussed him all to pieces, told him, said, ‘Dealer Dave, nobody’s gonna hurt you. There ain’t a man alive that’s gonna bother you.’ Dave said, ‘Hush, Lee. I’m not afraid of the living. I’m afraid of the dead.’ Afraid to pass that cemetery. They called him Dealer Dave because he horse-traded so much and every time he got cheated he cried and he had to trade back with you. Make a trade today and tomorrow he’d cry till you give him his horse back. They said he was good on the fiddle. They said he played for square dances.”

Interview with John Dingess 2 (1996)

11 Friday Jul 2014

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

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Al rounded up a gang of men to accompany him on his ride to fetch the prisoners in Williamson. Albert and Charlie Dingess were ringleaders of the posse, which included “Short Harve” Dingess, Hugh Dingess, John Dingess, Burl Farley, French Bryant, John Brumfield, and Charley Brumfield. Perhaps the most notorious member of the gang was French Bryant – “a bad man” who “did a lot of dirty work for the Dingesses.” On the way back from Kentucky, he tied Milt and Green by the arms and “drove them like a pair of mules on a plow line.”

“French Bryant run and drove them like a pair of horses ahead of these guys on the horses,” John said. “That’s quite a ways to let them walk. Old French, he married a Dingess. I knew old French Bryant. When he died, he was a long time dying and they said that he hollered for two or three days, ‘Get the ropes off me!’ I guess that come back to him.”

When the gang reached the headwaters of Trace Fork — what John called “Adams territory” — they sent a rider out ahead in the darkness to make sure it was safe to travel through that vicinity.

Waiting on the Brumfield posse was a mob of about 100 men hiding behind trees at Sycamore Bottom, just below the mouth of Trace Fork. This mob was led by Ben and Anthony Adams and was primarily made up of family members or people who worked timber for the Adamses, like Tom Maggard (“Ben’s right hand man”).

As the Brumfield rider approached their location, they began to click their Winchester rifles — making them “crack like firewood.” Hearing this, the rider turned back up Trace Fork, where he met the Brumfields and Dingesses at Boardtree Bottom and warned them about the danger at the mouth of Trace. They detoured safely up Buck Fork, then stopped at Hugh Dingess’ on Smokehouse where they remained for two or three days, not really sure of what to do with their prisoners. They made a “fortress” at Hugh’s by gathering about 100 men around them, fully aware that Ben Adams might make another effort to recapture Milt and Green.

While at Hugh’s, they got drunk on some of the red whiskey and apple brandy made at nearby Henderson’s. They also held a “trial” to see if Milt and Green would admit their guilt. They took one of the men outside and made him listen through the cracks between the logs of the house as his partner confessed on the inside. About then, the guy outside got loose and ran toward Bill’s Branch but was grabbed by “Short Harve” Dingess as he tried to scurry over a fence.

After this confession, the Brumfields and Dingesses considered killing Milt and Green on the spot but “got scared the Adamses was gonna take them” and headed towards Green Shoal.

John didn’t know why they chose George Fry’s home but figured Mr. Fry was a trusted acquaintance. He said they “punished” them “quite a bit there” but also got one to play a fiddle.

“These people that killed them, they made them play their last tune,” John said. “One of them would play and one guy, I think, he never would play for them.  I forgot which one, but they never could get one guy to do much. The other one’d do whatever they’d tell him to do. That’s just before they started shooting them. The tune that they played was ‘Hell Up Coal Hollow’. I don’t know what that tune is.”

After that, the mob “shot their brains out” and left them in the yard where the “chickens ate their brains.”

A neighbor took their bodies through Low Gap and buried them on West Fork.

John said there was a trial over Haley and McCoy’s murders, something we’d never heard before. Supposedly, about one hundred of the Brumfields and their friends rode horses to Hamlin and strutted into the courtroom where they sat down with guns on their laps. The judge threw the case out immediately because he knew they were fully prepared to “shoot up the place.”

This “quick trial,” of course, didn’t resolve the feud. Back on Harts Creek, Ben Adams often had to hide in the woods from the Dingesses. One time, Hugh and Charlie Dingess put kerosene-dowsed cornstalks on his porch and set them on fire, hoping to drive him out of his house where they could shoot him. When they realized he wasn’t home, they extinguished the fire because they didn’t want to harm his wife and children. Mrs. Adams didn’t live long after the feud. Ben eventually moved to Trace Fork where he lived the rest of his life. Charlie never spoke to him again.

John also said there seemed to have been a “curse” on the men who participated in the killing of Haley and McCoy. He said Albert Dingess’ “tongue dropped out,” Al Brumfield “was blind for years before he died,” and Charlie Dingess “died of lung cancer.” We had heard similar tales from Johnny Farley and Billy Adkins, who said mob members Burl Farley and Fed Adkins both had their faces eaten away by cancer. Vilas Adams told us about one of the vigilantes drowning (Will Adkins), while we also knew about the murders of Paris Brumfield, John Brumfield, Charley Brumfield, and Bill Brumfield.

Just before hanging up with John, Brandon asked if he remembered Ed Haley. John said he used to see him during his younger days on Harts Creek.

“When he was a baby, old Milt wanted to make him tough and he’d take him every morning to a cold spring and bath him,” he said. “I guess he got a cold and couldn’t open his eyes. Something grew over his eyes so Milt took a razor and cut it off. Milt said that he could take that off so he got to fooling with it with a razor and put him blind.”

John said Ed made peace with a lot of the men who’d participated in his father’s killing and was particularly good friends with Cecil Brumfield, a grandson of Paris.

In Search of Ed Haley 218

06 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley

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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.