Tag Archives: Trace Fork

In Search of Ed Haley 327

25 Wednesday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Lincoln County Feud

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After talking with Luster, we drove to see Naaman Adams on Trace Fork. We talked in the yard with Naaman, who wore a straw hat and work clothes. His mother, we knew from Billy’s records, was Imogene Mullins, a first cousin to Ed’s mother and her namesake.

Naaman said his grandfather Ben Adams had lived in an old log cabin at the mouth of Adams Branch on Trace. Ben had feuded frequently with his neighbors and once ordered sixteen rifles for protection — eight .32 Winchesters and eight .38 Winchesters. To our surprise, Naaman said he had one of those very rifles. Disappearing momentarily into his house, he returned outside with a magnificent 1873 model .38 Winchester. Pointing to a dark spot on its butt end, Naaman said it had been caused by rifle fire. Apparently, during a feud, as Ben stood in his doorway shooting at his enemies, someone fired back, striking his rifle and causing the spot. He didn’t know if this incident occurred during the 1889 troubles.

Of the old feuds, Naaman said: “People back then feuded amongst themselves but ganged up on outsiders. People’d be killed and nobody knew who did it.”

Naaman said Ben’s feud “just died out” when a lot of the participants moved away from the area. The law eventually confiscated most of his guns. Someone located one of them in the old Logan Courthouse when it was torn down in the sixties. Bob Dingess had a .32, as did Ernest Adams, while a Hall on Twelve Pole had a .38.

Just before we left, Naaman mentioned that his wife was a daughter of Ewell Mullins, Ed’s first cousin. Ewell, of course, was the man who had bought Ed’s Trace Fork property in 1911. Naaman said when his father-in-law had bought the property, it contained a one-story boxed log house, which stood near a sugar tree toward the branch. Later, Ewell moved the house further up the bottom; old-timers had told Naaman about placing logs under the house and rolling it. In the 1950s, Naaman and several other men demolished the house. They did it in stages: first, the front was removed and rebuilt, then the back was removed and rebuilt. The newer home — the one there now, which we had nicknamed the “red house” — was patterned in its design after the older one.

This was a little disheartening: there didn’t seem to be anything left from Ed’s time on Harts Creek (nor in Ashland or in Calhoun County).

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

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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.

In Search of Ed Haley 311

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Harts, Lincoln County Feud

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

He started with the Brumfields.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Search of Ed Haley 309

23 Friday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music

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Throughout the winter 1996, Brandon kept busy interviewing folks around Harts for new Ed Haley-Milt Haley leads. In March, he wrote me about recent developments, including the death of Bill Adkins, Sr. — the old fiddler in Harts. At Bill’s wake, Brandon met Andy Mullins, who had recently moved back to Harts Creek after settling in Michigan in 1952. He was the son of Roxie Mullins.

Andy said, when he was a child, Ed Haley spent summers with his parents. Ed also stayed with George Mullins on Buck Fork, George Baisden (a banjo player) in the head of Hoover Fork, “old John Adams” on main Harts Creek, and Johnny Adams (Ticky George’s son) on Trace Fork. Ed had a big, fat belly. Sometimes, he came with his wife, a quiet woman who would eat dinner and then sing for an hour or so while playing the mandolin. Their daughter “Mona Mae” traveled with them, as did her husband, Wilson Mullins.

Andy didn’t remember much about Ed’s other children. He said Clyde stayed six months at a time on Harts Creek and “wouldn’t work a lick” and “couldn’t stay out of trouble.” He heard that Ralph used to hang upside down from a bridge in Ashland.

When Ed was young, Andy said, he supposedly played a lot of music with George Baisden. Later, he played with Bernie Adams and Claude Martin. Andy remembered that Ed didn’t saw the fiddle — he played smooth — and he was a good singer. His voice was like a bell. When he played music with Bernie and Claude, people gathered in and brought food and booze. Andy never saw Ed drunk, although he would get pretty high. Ed and Bernie were hateful. Somebody might request a tune and Ed would say, “What do you think I am, a steam engine?” — then play it five minutes later. Andy remembered Ed playing “Devil’s Dream”, “Drunkard’s Hell,” “Soldiers Joy” and “Sally Goodin”.

Andy was familiar with Ben Adams, who he said operated a mill-dam at Greasy George’s place on main Harts Creek. Ben used this dam to back the creek all the way up to Henderson Branch. Before turning it loose, he would go and tell people to get out of their homes. His nephew, “old John Adams” (a.k.a. “Long John” or “John Frock”), was the one who went to Dingess and killed the man who had shot Ed’s uncle, Weddie Mullins. Andy said the doctor had this man on a table working on him when John showed up and “wasted” him. John Frock let Ed cut his fingernails one time and he cut them up so badly that his fingers bled. (Mona had told me a similar story, except she thought that Ed had cut Devil Anse Hatfield’s nails.)

Harts c.2000

20 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Harts, Spottswood, Whirlwind

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The community of Harts sits indiscreetly in the narrow section of the Guyandotte Valley on land that makes up the northernmost region of the Logan County coalfield and what was once “feud country.” Located some ten miles from a four-lane federal corridor linking the state capital to eastern Kentucky and fifty miles up a two-lane rural highway from Huntington, the second largest city in West Virginia, it is a settlement just on the cusp of modernization. It is a treasure trove of hidden history, quickly disappearing even in the minds of its locals, who have little if any recollection of its booming timber era or the exciting times of the railroad hey-day. It’s really the kind of place you might drive through without noticing much — or never have a reason to drive through at all.

Basically, Harts is an old timber town divided in the center by a lazy muddy river and intersected by a two-lane highway, Route 10. On the west side of the river — site of the old Brumfield business headquarters — is an empty store, a tavern-turned-church-turned-beauty shop, a garage, and a brick tabernacle. On the east side is an old brick general store, a nice video rental establishment, a state highways headquarters, an old wooden general store, a small brick post office, a fire department, a grocery store, a hardware store, a general merchandise store, a Victorian general store-turned-restaurant, and a new brick Head Start center. Running between those buildings on the east side is a track owned by CSX (formerly C&O) Railroad. Just behind the businesses are a few dozen houses of all vintages: brick, wooden, single-story, two-story… There are no street signs or traffic lights or even stop signs.

Route 10 connects Harts with the city of Huntington to the north and with the Logan coalfields to the south. From town, Big Harts Creek Road heads west up the creek to West Fork or Smokehouse Fork, while a little unnamed road diverges north past the tracks toward extinct post offices named Eden Park and Sand Creek. The four streets in town are paved but very few locals even know their proper names, which are Railroad, Beecher, Ward, and Brumfield Avenues. Just down the river is a brick house-turned-bank, a rural health clinic, a brick construction company headquarters, a new coalmine development area called Heartland, and a mechanic shop/gas station (owned incidentally by one Charles Brumfield).

Culturally, Harts might be thought of as an inconspicuous Harlequin romance and Wild West show gone wild, at least in its not-so-distant past. Many of the rabble rousers and roustabouts are long since dead. Actually, somewhat to my disappointment, a lot of the old families are gone completely from the area and no one really feuds any more. Many residents seem to work as schoolteachers or run small stores or work in the coalmines or draw government relief. People are nice and treat each other well. Most are related or at least seem to be. They watch TV or go to church or tend their yards or hunt or fish or ride four-wheelers or hop on the four-lane at Chapmanville and drive to Wal-Mart some 45 miles away. Old-timers are quick to say that Harts has a bad reputation for no reason — the only two murders within town limits occurred almost a century ago. There are no parks, museums or movie theatres — and only a few registered Republicans. It’s the kind of place where you can leave your doors unlocked at night or if you’re gone all day…and feel safe about it.

I have to admit, after several visits to Harts, I loved it. On one visit, I learned from Billy Adkins that the old Ben Walker farm was for sale…and seriously considered buying it. (I passed on the idea when I realized that my wife would never forgive me for it.) Harts, then, would remain a place to “see.” I began telling folks out on the road that it was “my Ireland.” It represented a desire on my part to get back to the kind of places where (at least in my romantic imagination) a lot of fiddle playing originated. A lot of my friends were from these kind of places. For them, when they wanted to tap into that ancestral ancient tone, they thought of Ireland, whether they were Irish or not. For me, coming from St. Louis, Harts was the closest I could ever hope to get to that. Such places are at the heart of the music I love.

Venturing up Harts Creek, the first thing you really notice is Harts High School, a forty-some-year-old two-and-a-half-story yellow brick structure near the mouth of West Fork with a gymnasium, annex building, and a baseball field, all situated on what was a prison camp during the early fifties and, a little further back in time, the upper reaches of the Al Brumfield property (and, a little further still, an Indian camp). In many ways, this school is the lifeblood of the community — at least in the lower section of the creek. In the mid-sixties, just as Harts began to turn away from its violent past, the high school basketball team won a state championship and began building a program known regionally for its successes. Today, basketball is what this community is best known for — not the murders or moonshining traditions of years past — with crooked politics maybe finishing a close second.

A little further up the creek, just below the Logan County line, a few miles past an old country store, a little restaurant, another baseball field, and a place of worship named the Cole Branch Church of Jesus Christ of the First Born. From there, the road forks left onto the Smoke House Fork of Big Harts Creek, location of the Hugh Dingess Elementary School and Dingess, Butcher, Farley and Conley country; or the road forks right into the head of Harts Creek to “Ed Haley country.” Of course, no one calls it that. People think of it as “Adams country” or “Mullins country” and really, that’s about all there ever was in that section. Ed himself is often identified with the Mullins family — his mother’s people. The adults in this part of Harts Creek vote in Logan County — not Lincoln — and send their kids on buses over Crawley Creek Mountain to Chapmanville High School. This section of the creek — where gunshots once rang out regularly and where moonshine was so readily found — is now remarkably quiet and low-key outside of the occasional marijuana bust. Unfortunately, it seems to have lost its musical tradition as well.

Trace Fork, the site of Ed Haley’s birth, is attributed by Ivy Branch in its head, Adams Branch, and Boardtree Branch toward its middle and Jonas and Dry House Branch toward its mouth. There are several small family cemeteries on Trace, with the maroon-bricked Mountaineer Missionary Baptist Church at its mouth. In previous days, the Upper Trace Fork School (now Trace Old Regular Baptist Church) sat in its headwaters, where the Logan-Lincoln-Mingo county line meets. As a matter of fact, Ivy Branch heads near Kiah’s Creek at the Wayne-Mingo County line, while Boardtree Branch heads at McCloud Branch of Twelve Pole Creek in Mingo County. Adams Branch heads at Rockhouse Fork in Lincoln County.

A little further up the main creek is Buck Fork, an extensive tributary comparable to West Fork or Smokehouse in size. It is the ancestral home of the Mullins, Bryant, and Hensley families whose names still dominate the mailbox landscape. In previous decades, it was the location of the Hensley School and Mt. Era Church. Just below Buck Fork on main Harts Creek is a large Adams family cemetery, while just above it is the equally large Bob Mullins family cemetery.

Continuing up Harts Creek is Hoover Fork, home of the Mullins, Adams, and Carter families as well as the Hoover Church of the General Assembly. Henderson Branch, home seat for Tomblins and Mullinses is the next tributary, followed by Lambert Branch (at Whirlwind) and Workman Branch. Bulwark Branch follows (populated by Carters and Workmans), trailed by Brier Branch (Smiths) and Tomblin Branch. In the headwaters of Harts Creek are Tomblins, Daltons, and Blairs, as well as the Pilgrims Rest Church and Hannah Baptist Church.

In all sections of Harts, gossip reigns supreme as a source of local entertainment. (This in spite of Bob Adkins’ warning that people should “tend to their own business.”) Maybe that’s why we hear so much about a 100-year-old murder when we ask about it and a bunch of other things we don’t ask about. Genealogy is super important. When you sit down to talk with someone, the first thing they want to know is how you fit into the community pedigree. It’s a way of squaring you up.

Boone County’s “Little Johnny” Hager 2

13 Tuesday May 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Published by Boone County Genealogical Society

Madison, West Virginia, 1997

Dedicated to the late Dolly (Hager) Bell

Spottswood Items 09.18.1903

12 Monday May 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Spottswood

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“Jay,” a local correspondent from Spottswood in Logan County, West Virginia, offered the following items, dated September 14, 1903, which the Logan Banner printed on Friday, September 18, 1903:

John Workman has gone down on Twelve Pole to haul timber for the C. Crane Co.

Major Adams is buying up a nice drove of calves.

The county surveyor, Alfred Buskirk, and A.Y. Browning of Oilville are surveying at this place.

The title of Choke Neck Dude has been conferred upon a teacher who visits the Trace.

Preston Collins has erected a new dwelling house.

Miss Bettie Workman has a severe sore foot. She has not been able to come home since she commenced teaching.

It is whispered around that the wedding bells are soon to ring at Anthony Adams’. It is Miss Rosa Adams and George Mullins.

There is quite a lot of law working going on in Squire Adams’ court.

Attorney Riddell is having a good practice.

C.J. Plaster has sold his timber to Geo. Brammer.

Joe Cranse and Sol Riddell, with their genial smiles were entertaining a number of young ladies of Spottswood last Sunday.

May & Rosenthrall have commenced a logging job on head of Smokehouse. They have employed Sol Adams, J.P., to superintend their works.

In Search of Ed Haley 206

29 Friday Nov 2013

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

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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.

In Search of Ed Haley 204

27 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Chapmanville, Ed Haley, Harts, Music

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A few days after visiting Earl Brumfield, Brandon dropped in on his good friends, Charley Davis and Dave Brumfield. Davis was an 88-year-old cousin to Bob and Bill Adkins. Brumfield was Davis’ son-in-law and neighbor. They lived just up Harts Creek near the high school and were familiar with Ed Haley and the story of his father, Milt. Charley said he once saw Ed in a fiddlers’ contest at the old Chapmanville High School around 1931-32. There were two other fiddlers in the contest — young men who were strangers to the area — but Ed easily won first place (a twenty-dollar gold piece). He was accompanied by his wife and a son, and there was a large crowd on hand.

Dave said Ed was mean as hell and laughed, as if it was just expected in those days. He said Ed spent most of his time drinking and playing music in all of the local dives. Sometimes, he would stop in and stay with his father, Cecil Brumfield, who lived in and later just down the road from the old Henderson Dingess place on Smoke House Fork. Dave remembered Ed playing at the Cow Shed Inn on Crawley Mountain, at Dick Thompson’s tavern on main Harts Creek and at Ellum’s Inn near Chapmanville. Supposedly, Ed wore a man out one time at a tavern on Trace Mountain.

Dave said he grew up hearing stories about Ed Haley from his mother’s people, the Adamses. Ed’s blindness was a source of fascination for locals. One time, he was sitting around with some cousins on Trace who were testing his ability to identify trees by their smell. They would put first one and then another type of limb under his nose. Dave said Ed identified oak and walnut. Then, one of his cousins stuck the hind-end of an old cat up under his nose. Ed smiled and said it was pussy willow.

Dave said he last saw Ed around 1945-46 when he came in to see his father, Cecil Brumfield. Ed had gotten drunk and broken his fiddle. Cecil loaned him his fiddle, which Ed never returned. Brumfield later learned that he had pawned it off in Logan for a few dollars to buy a train ticket to Ashland. Cecil bought his fiddle back from the shop and kept it for years.

Dave’s stories about Milt Haley were similar to what his Aunt Roxie Mullins had told me in 1991. Milt supposedly caused Ed’s blindness after getting angry and sticking him head-first into frozen water. Not long afterwards he and Green McCoy were hired by the Adamses to kill Al Brumfield over a timber dispute. After the assassination failed, the Brumfields captured Milt and Green in Kentucky. Charley said the two men were from Kentucky — “that’s why they went back there” to hide from the law after the botched ambush.

The vigilantes who captured Milt and Green planned to bring them back to Harts Creek by way of Trace Fork. But John Brumfield — Al’s brother and Dave’s grandfather — met them in the head of the branch and warned them to take another route because there was a rival mob waiting for them near the mouth of the hollow. Dave said it was later learned that Ben and Anthony Adams — two brothers who had ill feelings toward Al Brumfield — organized this mob.

The Brumfield gang, Dave and Charley agreed, quickly decided to avoid the Haley-McCoy rescue party. They crossed a mountain and came down Hoover Fork onto main Harts Creek, then went a short distance down the creek and turned up Buck Fork where they crossed the mountain to Henderson Dingess’ home on Smoke House Fork. From there, they went up Bill’s Branch, down Piney and over to Green Shoal, where Milt played “Brownlow’s Dream” — a tune Dave said (mistakenly) was the same as “Hell Up Coal Hollow”. Soon after, a mob beat Milt and Green to death and left them in the yard where chickens “picked at their brains.” After Milt and Green’s murder, Charley said locals were afraid to “give them land for their burial” because the Brumfields warned folks to leave their bodies alone.

Brandon asked about Cain Adkins, the father-in-law of Green McCoy. Charley said he had heard old-timers refer to the old “Cain Adkins place” on West Fork. In Charley’s time, it was known as the Fisher B. Adkins place. Fisher was a son-in-law to Hugh Dingess and one-time superintendent of Lincoln County Schools.

In the years following the Haley-McCoy murder, the Brumfields continued to rely on vigilante justice. Charley said they attempted to round up the Conleys after their murder of John Brumfield in 1900, but were unsuccessful.

In Search of Ed Haley 115

23 Thursday May 2013

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Spottswood, Warren, Whirlwind

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Ed Haley’s grandfather, Andrew Jackson Mullins, was born about 1843 to Peter and Jane (Mullins) Mullins. Jackson, as he was called, was named in honor of President Andrew Jackson, that early American icon. Like many folks in those days, Peter and Jane Mullins appear to have been caught up in the Jackson mystique. They even named one son Van Buren, after his vice president. Jackson Mullins was the first child born to Peter following the family exodus from Kentucky or Tennessee to Logan County, (West) Virginia. The 1850 Logan County Census listed him as seven years old. In 1860, he was eighteen. During the Civil War, Jackson served in the Confederate army. Brothers Weddington and Van Buren served as Confederates. In the late 1860s, Jackson married the slightly older Chloe Ann (Gore) Adams, a widow. Chloe had been born around 1840 to John and Margaret (Dingess) Gore, pioneer residents of Harts Creek. She had first married John Quincy “Bad John” Adams, a first cousin to Jackson, with whom she had four children: Dicy (born 1857), Joseph (born May 1858), John C. “Frock” (born c. 1861) and George Washington “Ticky George” (born 15 Jul 1864). She and Jackson had three children: Imogene Mullins (born c.1868), Peter Mullins (born May 1870), and Weddington Mullins (born April 10, 1872). Jackson and Chloe are thought to have lived on Trace Fork, perhaps at the present-day site of the Turley Adams home where they certainly lived in later years.

What little is known of Jackson Mullins — the man who partially raised Ed Haley — comes through deed records and census records. On February 13, 1869, his uncle Spencer A. Mullins wrote him a note that read: “Mr. A.J. Mullins and wife: you will pleas Come down and git your Deed for the Buck fork Land. I will not pay the taxes any longer.” In 1869 he purchased 200 acres of land on the creek from Riland Baisden. The next year he was listed in the 1870 census as 27 years old with 700 dollars worth of real estate and 200 dollars worth of personal property. His daughter — Ed Haley’s mother — first appeared in that record as “Em. Jane Mullins,” age two.  An April 1871, Justice Jeremiah Lambert provided a receipt to him for $2.80 “in the cost of the peace warrant in favor [of] him against Benjamin Adams.” An 1871 Logan County tax receipt listed A.J. Mullins as a resident of “Hearts Creek.” On February 28, 1877, the Logan County Court appointed him as “Surveyor of Roads in Precinct No. 76 in place of Weddington Mullins for the time of two years commencing April 1, 1877.” On December 17, 1877, the Logan County Clerk provided a receipt to him for recording a deed from Henderson Dingess and wife (parents to Hollene Brumfield). An 1878 tax receipt shows him in charge of six tracts totaling 244 acres under the ownership of “John Adams Heirs.”

The 1880 Logan County Census listed Jackson as 37 years old, while his wife was 40. Children in the household were John C. Adams (aged eighteen), George Adams (aged 15), “Emagane Mullins” (aged 12), Peter Mullins (aged 9), and Weddington Mullins (aged 6). That same year, Jackson sold five tracts of land totaling over 200 acres to brother-in-law Mathias Elkins for 3,000 dollars. He also sold 50 or so acres on Buck Fork to his father Peter and stepmother Elizabeth for 600 dollars. In February 1881, the Logan County Court reappointed him to relieve his brother Weddington as Surveyor of Public Roads for Precinct No. 76 “commencing April 1st, 1881.” That same year, he secured land from the John Q. Adams estate and bought 100 acres on Trace Fork from A.A. Low, attorney. On August 7, 1883, Enoch Baker, a timber boss on Harts Creek,  provided a receipt to him for fifteen dollars “in payment for a Stove.” In 1886, Jackson deeded 37 tracts on Trace Fork to stepsons Joseph and John Adams. On April 2, 1888, he signed a promissory note agreeing to pay William Abbott $41.75 plus interest within a year. Because he was illiterate, he signed the note with an “X.”

In March 1891, Jackson and Chloe Mullins deeded their property on Trace Fork to their three children: Imogene Haley, Peter Mullins, and Weddie Mullins.

In the 1900 Logan County Census, Jackson gave his birth date as March of 1845, while Chloe gave hers as July 1834. Ed Haley first appears in the 1900 Logan County Census as “James E. Haley, born August 1885,” and living in their home. His birth date of 1885 was two years later than what was given by the Haley family records. By 1910, Jackson lived with son Peter Mullins, while Chloe was in the home of Weddie Mullins’ widow, Mag. Ed was absent from the census entirely, indicating that he was gone from Harts by that time. A few years later, in 1915, Jackson Mullins died and was buried in an unmarked grave at the Bob Mullins Cemetery on main Harts Creek. His widow died in 1919.

In Search of Ed Haley 83

28 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Green Shoal, Lincoln County Feud, Spottswood

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We found Bum on our way up the hollow and went to sit on his porch with his aunt, Liza McKenzie, two of his sisters, Alice and Dicy — and of course Shermie. As soon as Liza figured out who we were she looked at Lawrence and said he was just a small boy the last time she’d seen him.

“Yeah, I guess around 1940 or ’41 was the last time I come to this area,” Lawrence said.

Liza said, “Well, I lived in Kentucky about sixty years. Perry County, up in Hazard.”

I said to her, “Is that where Milt Haley was from?” and she said, “I don’t know but now Ed Haley was borned and raised right around here. When he was a boy, he got up on top of that house down there where Aunt Mag used to live — in that old two-story house — and rolled off in a box. Mother said, ‘Lord, Ed, are you hurt?’ He said, ‘No, God no. It’s give me eyesight.’ He said he jarred his eyesight back.”

I liked Liza right away.

I asked her if she had any pictures and she said, “Loretta’s mother had all the pictures of Ed Haley I ever did know. They used to have a picture down there at Loretta’s of Ed’s mother. She was a pretty woman.”

She looked at Clifton and said, “Clif, I believe your mother had a picture of Ed Haley that was made down there at the old home where he was born and raised. Down there where Aunt Mag used to live. I know they had them.”

Clifton remembered it.

“Yeah, they was sitting out in the yard,” he said. “They was together. She was in the chair and he was standing. He didn’t have no pants on.”

Clifton said, “Yeah, you’re right. They was a picture down there. But I looked; they was so many pictures in that box.”

     Box of pictures? I thought.

Before I could ask about them, Clifton said, “There’s one down there faded out. It’s in a big frame. I got it in another building.”

He told me, “I can show them to ya.”

About that time, Cas Baisden came up to the porch. Bum said he was Liza’s 83-year-old twin brother. I asked Cas if he remembered Ed and he said, “I knowed him, yeah. He was raised up here. Old man Peter lived down at the mouth of the holler and his boy lived up the road here and old man Ed’d go up there and he’d come down that road a running and jumping just like he could see and cut the awfulest shine that ever was.”

Lawrence joked, “That’s probably how Clyde got to be the way he was.”

Cas said, “Yeah, I guess Clyde took after him. Clyde went out here and got down in a well once and they had the awfulest time that ever was getting him out. Way back in top of a mountain.”

I asked Cas about the first time he ever saw Ed and he said, “It’s been many a year ago. He stayed down here, him and his wife and them. They’d play music and drink and fight and scratch with one another and them boys was so mean… He’d get so drunk he couldn’t walk.”

Bum knew that Ed was real “easy to get mad about music,” but said he could get him to play nearly anything he wanted because Ed liked him. He’d ask Ed to play something like “John Henry” and he’d say, “Are you sure that’s what you want me to play? You know, I was just thinking about playing that.” If Ed didn’t like someone Bum said he’d “goof around” and not play for them.

Things kinda tapered off after that. Nobody knew anything about Ed having any brothers. Cas had heard about Ed’s father, who he thought was named Green.

“You know, he got killed when I was a little fella, I guess,” Cas said. “His name was Green. They took him over yonder on Green Shoal, they said, and killed him. Walked him down here and up Smoke House and over and down Piney and across the river.”

I asked if Lawrence looked like Ed and Liza said, “Yes, he does. Ed was a bigger man than he is. Ed was a big man.”

But Lawrence looks like Ed in the face?

“Yeah, he looks like him all over.”

Cas said, “Ed was a taller man. I guess he takes after his mother. She’s a little short woman.”

Lawrence agreed: “Yeah, she was about five feet tall — not much bigger than Aunt Liza.”

In Search of Ed Haley 82

26 Tuesday Mar 2013

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

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I told Turley that Lawrence and I needed to visit Joe Mullins, who had been gone during our last trip to Harts Creek. Turley completely deflated us: Joe, he said, had recently suffered a stroke. He now lived with his daughter Connie Mullins in a trailer just up the creek. Turley pointed the way. Driving a short distance, Lawrence and I parked our car by the creek and walked over a little narrow bridge where an army of barking dogs greeted us. At the porch, Connie introduced us to her brother, Clifton. We stepped on inside and found Joe seated in a wheelchair, surrounded by more dogs. His mind — or at least his ability to communicate a great deal — was all but gone due to the lingering effects of his stroke. Lawrence sat next to him with his hand on his arm. Almost in tears over Joe’s condition, he tried to rekindle Joe’s memories by saying, “I’m Ed Haley’s boy.”

I hung out with Joe’s kids — Connie, Clifton and Loretta. While all were reasonably young, Clifton and Connie had Parkinson’s Disease.

“They’s four of us got it,” Clifton said. “They said it runs through the family some way another. Musta come down the tree somewhere.”

I asked him how old he was.

“38,” he said.

Clifton had just moved back to Harts.

“I got hurt in Michigan and Daddy was sick so I said, ‘Well, it’s a good chance for me to go help my daddy and my sisters.'”

Clifton’s sisters said he was the one who found Ed’s smashed fiddle years ago in the rafters of Uncle Peter’s old smokehouse.

“I was up in there — we was playing around one day — and it fell out on me,” he said. “And I just looked at it and I said, ‘Well, I’ll try to glue it together.’ I started gluing it and it wouldn’t glue so I dumped it into the creek. I didn’t know whose it was. I was about eight but all the pieces wasn’t there to it. When it hit that guy it just splintered everywhere.”

Clifton suggested that we visit Bum and his family just up the hollow. Two years earlier, Bum had told originally Lawrence and I how he had witnessed Ed smash the fiddle over a man’s head while at a tavern on Crawley Mountain. Bum lived only a short distance from Joe’s trailer, up the hollow past Uncle Peter’s old homeplace, in a house situated near Enslow Baisden’s log cabin.

In Search of Ed Haley 73

26 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by in African American History, Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Logan, Music, Sports

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Mona’s memories were really pouring out, about a variety of things. I asked her what Ed was like and she said, “Noah is a lot like Pop in a way. He always liked the outdoors, Pop did. He’d get out and sleep on the porch at night. He could peel an apple without breaking the skin. There was an old man up on Harts Creek and I’m almost sure that his name was Devil Anse Hatfield and Pop trimmed his fingernails out on his porch with his pocketknife. Aw, he could trim my nails or yours or anybody’s.”

Ed was good at predicting the future.

“Pop said machines was gonna take over man’s work and we was gonna go to the moon one day,” Mona said. She figured he wrote the song “Come Take A Trip in My Airship” because it sounded like his kind of foresight.

Mona said she remembered some of Ed’s stories but warned me that I wouldn’t want to hear them.

Of course, I did.

I asked her if they were off-color and she said, “Well, not really, but he was kind of an off-color guy. I can’t really remember any of the tales about him. What was that one about him dreaming he was on Fox Cod Knob and dragging a big log chain and he fell over a big cliff and when he come to hisself he was standing on his head on a chicken coop with his legs locked around a clothes line?”

What?

“He told some weird stories sometimes — ghost stories and things that I can’t remember,” she continued. “He told that story about Big Foot up in the hills of Harts Creek. A wild banshee. Pop talked about it. Clyde said he saw a Big Foot.”

Lawrence said, “It was up in the head of the Trace Fork of Harts Creek somewhere. Pop was on the back of this horse behind somebody. They was coming down through there and all at once something jumped up on back of the horse behind him and it was just rattling chains all the way down through there and the more that chain rattled the faster that horse would go. They absolutely run that horse almost to death getting away from it.”

I asked about Ed’s travels. Mona said her parents walked and hitchhiked a lot. Along the way, Ella sang to occupy the kids. Lawrence remembered buses and trains, where Ed sometimes played the fiddle for a little extra money from passengers. I asked if he ever talked about playing on any boats and Mona said, “No, but I know they did because I was with them on the ISLAND QUEEN that was going back and forth to Coney Island. Up by the calliope on the top deck.”

Mona said Ed always set up in towns near a movie theatre so the kids could watch movies.

“Every time he played he drawed a crowd,” she said. “He was loud and he was good. I never seen him play any that he didn’t have a crowd around him — anywhere.”

Ed was “all business” but would talk to people if they came up to him.

“One time we went in a beer joint up in Logan, West Virginia, that sat by the railroad tracks,” she said. “They played over at the courthouse and we walked over there. Pop wanted to get a beer while I ate supper. It was back when Roosevelt was president I reckon and he got in an argument with some guy about President Roosevelt. That was his favorite fella, you know. This guy started a fight with him and he backed off and walked away. Pop just let the man walk the length of his cane, hooked it around his neck, brought him back and beat him nearly to death. He was strong. He was dangerous if he ever got a hold of you, if he was mad at you. He always carried a pocketknife and it was sharp as a razor. He whittled on that knife — I mean, sharpened it every day.”

“Everybody liked Pop — everybody that I ever knew,” Mona said. “He had some pretty high people as friends.”

In Logan County, Ed visited Pink and Hester Mullins on Mud Fork and Rosie Day’s daughter Nora Martin in Aracoma. Mona said Ed was also friends with a famous boxer in town whose father played the fiddle, but she couldn’t remember his name. I later learned from Lawrence that it was Jack Dempsey, the heavyweight champion of the world from 1919-1926. Dempsey wrote in his biography that his father had fiddled “Turkey in the Straw” so much that all the children thought it was the National Anthem.

Ed mixed freely with some of the colored folks in Logan, and sometimes even left Mona at a “bootleg joint” operated by a black lady named Tootsie. She and Lawrence both felt Ed absorbed a lot of the Blues from the blacks in the coalfields. Mona sang one of her father’s songs — which I had never heard — to make the point:

Done got the [ma]chines in my mind, Lord, Lord.

Done got the ‘chines in my mind.

‘Chines in my mind and I can’t make a dime.

Done got the ‘chines in my mind.

 

My old gal got mad at me.

I never did her any harm.

‘Chines in my mind and I can’t make a dime.

Done got the ‘chines in my mind.

In Search of Ed Haley 25

10 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Music, Spottswood

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After visiting with Turley and Joe’s girls, Bum guided Lawrence and I up a nearby hollow to see his uncle Enslow Baisden. Enslow lived in a newly built single story log cabin. He said he’d gone blind recently due to sugar and cataracts. At Enslow’s, we met “Shermie”, who Lawrence indicated was the “funny boy” that chased the Haley women off of Aunt Liza’s porch in 1951.

“A lot of times I wouldn’t have no company if it wasn’t for him,” Enslow said of Shermie, who was epileptic. Shermie wasted little time in pulling out a few cards from the pocket of his overalls and sputtering toward me, even reaching for my fiddle case. I knew right then I was surrounded by “good people”: they had kept Shermie under their care all of these years as a valued member of the family in lieu of institutionalization.

When I mentioned Ed Haley’s name, Enslow said, “I was young but I can remember him all the time a coming. They was some Martins lived on top of a mountain out here — Robert Martin and John — and they fiddled all the time, and he’d go out there and fiddle with them. I don’t know how he walked from up this creek and out on that mountain and him blind, for I can’t find my way through the house.”

Enslow said he didn’t know much about Ed because he left Harts during the early years of the Depression.

“See, I lost all time, about everything nearly. I left here in ’35 and went up to the northern part of the state here and then went out in Las Vegas, Nevada, a while. Then, when I come out, I went in the Army in April of ’41. I stayed in there four and a half years and got married out in Oklahoma and we never did come back but just on visits. And Ed, he died in ’51.”

Enslow’s recounting of his travels was sort of an interesting revelation since it reminded me that these folks on Harts Creek — like many mountain people — were not as isolated as some may think. Ed Haley himself left the creek and traveled widely with his music just after the turn of the century, while Lawrence and his siblings had lived in Ashland and Cleveland and served overseas in the armed forces. Several of the people I had met on Harts Creek had been to faraway places and lived in big cities but chose at some point to return to the grounds of their ancestors.

I asked Enslow how old he was the first time he saw Haley and he said, “Oh man I was about nine or ten years old. He all the time played that fiddle. He used to come down here to old man Peter Mullins’ and Liza Mullins’. I guess they was real close kin to him. And Ed’s daddy’s name was Milt Haley. I don’t know whether Lawrence knowed that or not.”

Lawrence said, “Yeah, I knew that. But I understood from the way Aunt Liza told me, he came from over the mountain and I think that she was talking about from up around Williamson or over in that area. My dad, he was born right down here below Uncle Peter’s, where Turley’s at now, in the old house.”

Lawrence’s mentioning of “the old house” really got Enslow going. He remembered it well.

“There used to be an old log house there he was born in and they had a chimney outside on that old house down there — just an old rock chimney. Dad all the time talked about it. He said Ed got him one of them little old homemade sleds, you know, and he got him a ladder and put it on top of that house. And he got right up by that chimney and then when he come off’n there on that sled he knocked the rocks off with him.”

What? Why would he have done such a thing?

“I’ve always heard my dad tell it,” Enslow said. “Said that rock just barely did miss him.”

I wasn’t sure what to make of such a story but before I could really ask anything about it Enslow was off on another tale.

“Dad said one time they sent Ed down there to get some milk or butter or something. When Ed got out there on his way back he got in a briar patch. Dad took a notion to have some fun out of Ed. They had an old horse they called Fred. Dad got to stomping and snickering like that old horse and Ed said, ‘Old Fred, don’t you come here, now. Don’t you come here, Fred.’ Dad said he kept stomping and Ed throwed that stuff at him and tore hisself all to pieces in them briars.”

I asked Enslow to describe Haley and he said, “Well, he just always dressed pretty nice. He was a big man, too. They used to buy him these plugs of tobacco and these guys would get this beech bark and whittle it out about the size of a plug of tobacco and let Ed have that bark and they’d take his tobacco. If he ever got a hold of you, though, he’d eat you up, see. They said you couldn’t get loose from him.”

Apparently, Ed and his wife were so self-sufficient that locals sometimes forgot they were blind. Enslow told a great story about Ella and Aunt Liza, who were sitting by a lamp together one night. “Well, Mrs. Haley, I’m going to bed,” Liza said. “Well, just blow out the light,” Ella answered. “I’m going to read a while.” Liza said, “How’re you going to read in the dark?” Ella said, “Well, I can’t see no way.”

Enslow’s mentioning of Aunt Liza conjured up a great memory from Lawrence.

“Uncle Peter liked to wore me to death one time. Me and my brother Jack went with him up there behind his house and he had a old team of oxen we was snaking logs out of a hollow with. These oxen got hot. One of them got in the creek trying to cool off. Well, Uncle Peter couldn’t get him to move, so he went over underneath a tree and sat down. Well, me and my brother Jack was a cutting up, you know. He was teasing me. I was younger than he was. And I picked up a big rock and throwed it at him and hit Uncle Peter right where it hurts. And he got up. I knowed I could outrun him. My brother — I looked at him — he took off. And I was afraid to move. Uncle Peter come up there. I thought, ‘Well, I’m dead meat.’ It looked like he pulled down a half a tree and got a hold of me and he didn’t let go until he wore that limb out.”

I asked Enslow about Ed Haley’s music.

“I used to hear him play all them old tunes,” he said. “He’d sit and play for hours and hours at a time, him and her.”

Enslow motioned toward Lawrence, saying, “His mother played a mandolin and had a thing on that sat on her shoulders there and had a harp and played them both at the same time.”

He leaned back a little, reflecting, “Yeah, he played all the old music. He’d make up songs. Be sitting around and just directly he’d write a song. Like ‘Hell Up Coal Hollow’ and two or three more he made up that way. You’d come up and say, ‘What was that Ed?’ He’d just tell them what it was.”

Enslow and Bum said Haley made “Hell Up Coal Holler” and named it for Cole Branch, a tributary of Harts Creek. I didn’t know if Ed was the source of that story but I later learned that “Hell Up Coal Hollow” (at least the title) actually predated Haley’s lifetime. As I was gradually learning, Ed wasn’t preoccupied with historical accuracy and was good at creating temporary titles and weaving stories based on coincidence.

Enslow said, “Ed had some kind of saying he always said when he played on the radio down there about ‘carbide acid and acifidity gum’ or something.”

Lawrence said he’d never heard anything about his father playing on the radio but Enslow seemed sure of it.

“He played on the radio down there at Ashland or Huntington or somewheres way back there. I’m pretty sure they said he did.”

I wondered what acifidity gum was and no one knew, although Lawrence had heard Ed talk about it. (We later learned it was an old folk remedy for treating asthma.) Enslow said Uncle Peter asked Ed about it one time and he said, “Well, you have to get a little comedy with the music.”

Wow — so Ed told jokes?

Enslow said, “I guess to draw their attention or something.”

I asked Enslow if he’d ever heard Ed play for a dance and he said, “Well, I used to go to lots of things he played for, but I can’t remember now. They’d go out there on that mountain and play all night at Robert and John Martin’s. They’d be maybe two hundred people out there. Robert Martin all the time played the fiddle and I don’t know whether John played or not.”

Enslow thought Ed and Robert played their fiddles “together,” but Bum added, “Bob played a little different than Ed did. He played newer stuff.”

Enslow thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, my dad, he used to play the banjo all the time, him and his nephew. They used to play for dances way back years ago.”

What was his name?

“Jeff Baisden.”

Bum said, “I was telling him about Grandpaw taking them two little sticks and beating on the fiddle for Ed.”

Someone said, “He’s the one had the big old feet and he’d get up and dance and play the banjo.”

Enslow said, “They called him ‘Jig-Toe’ Baisden. He wore a twelve or thirteen shoe and he’d get up on his toes and dance. And Noah Mullins, Uncle Peter’s son, he could flat dance. He’d get on his heels and dance all over. He called their square dance about all the time.”