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In Search of Ed Haley 338

19 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, John Hartford, Music, Roane County

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On April 12, 1997, Brandon and I went to see Ugee Postalwait in Rogersville, Alabama. For the most part, she repeated a lot of the same stories I’d heard before, maybe with a new detail or two here and there. We began with her memories of Ed and Johnny Hager, who came to her father’s house around 1913. Brandon asked her specific questions about Johnny, which caused her to say: “He was a little short fella, slender. He was a nice person. Well-mannered. He was a good banjo-player. John Hager was a good friend of Dad and Mom’s both — all of us. Us kids, too. He used to write Mom and Dad. He wrote them from Webster Springs and he wrote them from Greenbrier. Different places where he was at. John wrote a letter back home and said he quit traveling with Ed ’cause Ed drank. He couldn’t take it. I’ve often wondered and studied about what become of him.”

Later, Ed sometimes came with a guitar player, but Ugee couldn’t recall his name.

Brandon was curious to know how far Ed traveled with his music, so he asked if Ed and Ella ever played around Parkersburg.

“I’m pretty sure they have,” Ugee said, “and Marietta, too. Harvey took them up to Akron to play music and they crowded that street so bad up there that they passed a law up there, you couldn’t stand on the corner and play music any more. They wouldn’t allow them to stand on the street. They had to move. See, they was such a crowd got around them.”

I asked, “How much do you reckon Ed would take in of a night?”

Ugee said, “I have seen Ed and Ella take in as much as a hundred dollars right there in Spencer.”

Wow, were they using a cup or a hat to collect money?

“They never used no cup. Just sit a box down or hat down and people come through and throwed money in it. Anyone that come along and dropped money in there, they’d play just the same.”

Would he play me anything I’d ask for?

“Why sure. He’d play it for you and then maybe if you asked for it again he might play you something else and call it that. He didn’t care to rename songs, like ‘Soldiers Joy’. He might call that ‘Runnin’ the Soldier’ or ‘Runnin’ the Track’ or something like that.”

I reminded Ugee that she heard Ed say he just picked up a fiddle and started playing it when he was small and she said, “Oh, yeah. He’d sit in the floor and play on that fiddle. Somebody brought something in that had two strings on it. He wasn’t very old. Just barely a walking, he said. Just like him a talking to me one time, telling me about his dad. Telling about them a lynching him. He said, ‘Goddamn him, they oughta lynched him.’ And I never asked him why. Why would a man say that about his dad? Maybe he was thinking about that man putting him in that barrel of water and causing him to be blind. But Ella’s eyes, they was ate out with blue vitriol.”

Ugee fully believed that measles had caused Ed’s blindness because they almost “put her blind,” too, when she was a girl.

“I must have been about five years old,” she said. “Well, Ed musta been there, too. Musta been the same year he was there that I had the measles and I went blind in my eyes. Couldn’t see nothing for three or four days. Had Granny’s bed set up by the side of the fireplace. I remember that instead of springs, it had rope. And Christmas time come up. And Dad, he played Santa Claus, I reckon. He got me jellybeans. I couldn’t see nothing for two or three weeks. I didn’t think I’d ever see again. Back then, they called them the ‘big’ measles and the ‘little’ measles. The big ones, they called the German measles. And I had them bad. Harvey come around — he was older than I was — he’d say, ‘You stink’, ’cause he could smell that fever on me.”

Brandon asked Ugee what year she was born in, to kind of help us better understand the time frame of her memories.

“I was born in 1907,” she said. “I got married in 1924. I left and went to Akron, but we come back ever month for a long time. If we knowed Ed was a coming in, we was there. I moved back in 1930. We lived on the farm until 1941. Then we went to a farm at the mouth of Stinson.”

At some point, Ugee moved back to Akron, where she lived when I first met her in 1991.

In Search of Ed Haley 337

17 Thursday Jul 2014

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

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Brandon and I also called Bob Bryant, a son of the infamous French Bryant, who lived with his son at the mouth of Piney Creek on West Fork. Billy Adkins had encouraged us to call Bob, saying that he would probably tell us what he knew of the Haley-McCoy murders. When we called Bob, his son said we were welcome to talk with his dad, although he warned us that his memory wasn’t very good.

Bob said he was born on Piney in 1911.

When I asked him about French Bryant he said he knew very little about him because his dad “was pretty old” when he was born. He said he did remember his father talking “some” about the Haley-McCoy affair.

“Milt and Green were pretty rough fellers who got in a lot of trouble all the time,” Bob said. “They were bad to drink. Milt Haley and Green McCoy was fiddlers — I think so. Maybe they was. Yeah, I almost know they was. One of them picked the banjo, I believe, but I don’t know for sure.”

Bob said Hugh Dingess, who was “kind of an outlaw,” organized a posse to fetch Milt and Green after they shot Al and Hollena Brumfield. They found them over around Wolf Creek in Martin County, Kentucky.

“Them Dingesses up there killed them,” Bob said. “It didn’t take much to get them to shoot you back then. People’d shoot you just to be a doing something.”

I asked Bob if he ever heard anything about who took part in what he kept calling “the shooting” and he said, “Hugh Dingess and four or five more.”

He paused, then said, “A few of them I wouldn’t want to tell you.”

We were just waiting for him to say his father’s name when he said, “Short Harve Dingess was pretty rough. Seems like he was in that bunch some way.”

Some of the others were: Al Brumfield, Charley Brumfield, Fed Adkins, and Burl Farley.

Bob never identified his father as a member of the mob but mentioned that his father was a friend to the Dingesses on Smokekouse.

He said he remembered seeing Ed play at the schoolhouse above the mouth of Piney when he was nineteen years old.

“He was a real fiddler,” Bob said.

In subsequent weeks, Brandon and I went through most of our information — processing it, sorting it, discussing it. We thought more about the story of Milt causing Ed’s blindness by dipping him in ice water and wondered how anyone would have ever equated those as cause-effect events. I got on the phone with Dr. Tom Holzen, a doctor-friend of mine in Nashville, who said Milt’s dipping of Ed in ice water, while a little crude, was actually the right kind of thing to do in that it would have lowered his fever. Based on that, Milt seems to have been a caring father trying to save Ed’s life or ease his suffering. Was it the act of a desperate man who had already lost other children to disease?

In Search of Ed Haley 336

15 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley

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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.

Dr. Robert Maslowski endorses “Blood in West Virginia”

14 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud

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I proudly announce Dr. Robert Maslowski’s endorsement of my book, Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy. Dr. Maslowski, President of the Council for West Virginia Archaeology and graduate professor at the Marshall University Graduate College, ranks as one of Appalachia’s most dedicated and accomplished scholars. A retired archaeologist for the Huntington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, he is popularly known as the editor of West Virginia Archaeologist and as executive producer of three award-winning archaeology films: Red Salt & Reynolds (2003), Ghosts of Green Bottom (2005), and Secrets of the Valley: Prehistory of the Kanawha (2010). Throughout his long professional career, he has worked with the Smithsonian Institution, the National Geographic Society, the National Park Service, and the U.S. military. In so many ways, he has made significant contributions to our understanding of Appalachian history and culture. A personal note: during my time as a graduate student at Marshall University, Dr. Maslowski was my favorite instructor. Receiving praise from such an accomplished scholar and an outstanding instructor means a great deal to me.

Here is Dr. Maslowski’s endorsement of Blood in West Virginia:

“Not only does Blood in West Virginia present a compelling narrative of a little known feud in southern West Virginia, it provides valuable insights into the local politics, economy, timber industry, and family life in Lincoln County during the late 1800s.”

In Search of Ed Haley 335

13 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in African American History, Ed Haley, Music

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Meanwhile, as Brandon flushed out more information about the 1889 feud, I was on the phone with Ed’s daughter, Mona Hager. In no time, she was singing “Old Man Duff”, one of Ed’s songs:

Old Man Duff was so doggone tough

That they called him dynamite.

On a mattress filled with broken glass

He rested well each night.

He combed his hair with a garden rake

And he ate his vittles raw.

He picked his teeth with a horseshoe nail

And he shaved his beard with a saw.

Old Man Duff was mighty tough

And rough as a man could be.

He had hair on his chest

And he wore no vest a

And he looked like a chimpanzee.

Old Man Duff had a daughter fair

But she died a poor old maid.

Lots of men woulda courted her

But they were all afraid.

Once old Duff seen a fella with her.

You could hear him rave and shout:

He’d put his hand down the poor man’s throat

And he’d turn him inside out.

Old Man Duff was mighty rough

And tough as a man could be.

He ate iron nails and the bones of whales

And he drank gasoline for tea.

Old Man Duff lived a thousand years

And he died and went below.

And when old Satan looked at him

He smiled and said, “Hello.”

Now the fire was mighty hot

When they put old Duff in there,

But he layed right down and he went to sleep

And it never singed a hair.

Old Man Duff was mighty rough

And tough as a man could be.

He had hair on his chest

And he wore no vest

And he looked like a chimpanzee.

Mona also remembered Ed singing “Man of Constant Sorrow”. She said Ed sometimes sang “little ditties” like with “Sourwood Mountain”. Ella did the same thing to “Kiss Me Quick”.

Kiss me quick, kiss me runnin’.

Kiss me quick ’cause my daddy’s comin’.

Love my wife, love my baby.

Love my biscuits sopped in gravy.

Ed never called square dances but would “blurt out some of the square dance reel” while fiddling.

I told Mona that I was still very interested in the source of Ed’s music.

“Pop was around a lot of blacks, you know, up in the coalfields up in West Virginia,” she said. “I even had a black nanny up there. She babysat me sometimes for Mom and Pop. Now that was at Manuel and Nora Martin’s house on the hill there at Aracoma [near Logan]. And Pop took me up to an old color lady’s bootleg joint one time somewhere up in West Virginia. And I know he was around a lot of blacks and I know that he learned some of the black’s music. They had a lot of blind friends that made music on the street, too, and one of them was Clayton White. He played an accordion. He walked up from 15th to 16th and back, you know.”

I asked Mona how many musicians were playing on the streets of Ashland in Ed’s time and she said, “Well, there was Pop and Mom, and there was Bill Bowler, and then there was a lady named Lula Lee. Now she was an illiterate woman and a lot of people got my mom and her mixed up. Mom was a cultured lady.”

I asked Mona if she thought her mother’s education rubbed off on Ed over the years and she said, “Oh, yeah. He only got uncultured when he was drinking. He talked well educated but of course he wasn’t. He was a very intelligent man.”

Mona seemed surprised when I told her that Ed could supposedly quote the Bible.

I asked her more about Ed’s and Ella’s relationship in later years and she said, “You know about me bringing him back from Logan back to Mom after they were divorced? Well, I was up there and I persuaded Pop to come home with me and I brought Pop home and he had one of those long change purses that snapped together and he had that in his pocket. And when we got home, he sit down and he was talking to Mom and he said, ‘Ella, I’ve got this plumb full of half-dollars and if you’ll let me sit by your fire this winter, I’ll give them all to you.’ I’m glad I took him home. That was when we lived on Greenup. He stayed with her until he died. Eventually Mom stayed with Lawrence and Patricia. She didn’t do any good after Pop died. She lost her friends. She didn’t have anybody to talk to.”

So after their divorce, they had a good relationship?

“They had a better relationship than they did before the divorce,” Mona said.

Interview with Ward Adkins (1997)

12 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Fourteen, Lincoln County Feud, Shively, Timber, Wewanta

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Not long after talking with Mr. Dingess, Brandon went to see his good friend Ward Adkins, an elderly resident of nearby Fourteen Mile Creek. Ward said his grandfather Albert Neace used to help Al Brumfield make whisky, barrel it, and ship it downriver on flatboats. Making whiskey was Brumfield’s major source of income.

“You know dern well he didn’t make his fortune in a little old store up there at that day and time,” Ward said. “About all he sold was soap, salt, and soda — a little sugar.”

When Albert quit the business, Brumfield said, “You won’t tell nothing will you, Albert?” to which he replied, “No, you know better than that.”

Albert knew it wasn’t smart to cross Al because “the people who worked around” him “had a way of dealing” with his enemies.

“When they took a notion to kill somebody, they’d go out the day before and dig the grave,” Ward said. “Then they’d play up to whoever it was they aimed to kill…talk them into going squirrel hunting with them. They’d squirrel hunt around close to that grave. Kill them, roll them in it, and cover it up.”

Ward’s step-grandfather, Will Headley, had told him about witnessing Milt’s and Green’s murder.

“They stood them up beside of a house and shot them in public because they wanted to teach people a lesson,” Ward said.

Will’s uncle Burl Farley went with the Brumfields to fetch them in Kentucky. Ward knew a lot about Burl.

“He started out in timbering,” Ward said. “He worked for Cole & Crane Timber Company up on Browns Fork of Pigeon Creek. Uncle Burl was pretty well to do. He was dangerous mean. He was an Atheist. He felt you just did what you wanted to do on this earth and then died and that was the end of it so he didn’t have nothing to fear. Of course, I liked the old man. If he liked you, he was good to you. He ruled over his domain down there. What he said went. It was just strictly law. There wasn’t no bucking him. There wasn’t no law to fool with Uncle Burl.”

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 334

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, Music

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Around that time, as Billy and Brandon wandered in the woods of eastern Kentucky, I called Jimmy Triplett, a fiddler and protégé of Doc White in West Virginia. Doc, in addition to being Ed’s friend, was a jack of all trades — fiddler, doctor, dentist… I’d recently heard that he was a photographer and wondered if maybe he had pictures of Ed or Laury Hicks. Jimmy wasn’t really sure.

“It was way back when he was a youth that he took pictures,” he said. “I guess he was considered an amateur, but he made a lot of photographs used for postcards.”

I asked Jimmy if Doc ever talked about Ed and he said, “Yeah, he talked about how good he was and everything. He said that he was one of the best that he ever heard.”

What kind of tunes did Doc play?

“The main one Doc plays is ‘Pigeon on the Gate’ — he got that from Ed Haley,” Jimmy said. “I think it would be in standard tuning — it’s a D tune. I don’t know that there’s that many other tunes that he got off of Ed Haley that he played, but he talked about him a whole bunch and then described seeing him and his wife play.”

Jimmy played a tape over the telephone of Doc talking and playing “Pigeon on the Gate”.

“Here’s one they call the ‘Pigeon on the Gate’,” Doc said. “Ed Haley, a blind man, played that tune from Kentucky. Best fiddler that ever I heard draw a bow. His wife was blind and she played the mandolin. They used to come through the country and stop at our houses and stay for days and play with us. You ought to’ve heard him play the fiddle. He’d make them fellas over there sick.”

Jimmy referred me to John Morris, an Ivydale-area fiddler who’d known Doc and even learned “Pigeon on the Gate” from him. John was too young to remember Ed personally (he was fifty-something) but had heard a lot of stories.

“I growed up hearing about Ed Haley from my dad,” John said. “I heard a lot of other stories about him later. He used to come here and stay at my grandparents’ house some. Their names were Amos and Ocie Morris. They just lived about a mile and a half from the train station and it was on the way to Calhoun County and they were from Calhoun County. He’d ride the train to Ivydale. If it was the evening train, usually a lot of people from Calhoun County — the next county back — stayed at my grandparents’ house. He’d stay at my grandpaw and grandmaw’s up here and then go on the next day. He usually, I think, visited with Laury Hicks mostly.”

What about Laury?

“Laury Hicks was evidently a riverman,” John said. “I believe it was Aunt Minnie Moss that said he could take a hog’s head of salt or something under each arm and he poled boats up and down the Elk River and hauled supplies when they used them flatboats. I’ve heard stories of his strength — what a strong and robust kind of a man he was. My dad said that when Laury Hicks died, Ed Haley wasn’t here and the next time he come through they took a chair and set it out at Laury Hicks’ grave and Ed Haley sat out on Laury Hicks’ grave and fiddled for about four hours.”

John said stories abounded about Ed among the people of Calhoun County.

“They told that they was having church over there someplace one night in an old school building or something on top of the hill between Walker and Stinson,” he said. “Ed happened to be in the country and they wanted him to play some hymns. He got started playing and he got off of playing hymns and they wound up breaking up church and having a dance. And they was about to take him up over it — about to get in trouble with the law over it — for breaking up church.”

I asked John if he thought that was a true story and he said, “Well, I’ve heard that. I know Ed cussed all the time. He was bad to cuss and swear. I heard that my Grandmaw Morris about put him away from the table for swearing at the table. Dad said he swore continuously.”

It was coincidental that John would mention Ed’s profanity. A few days later, Brandon met a niece to Johnny Hager at a genealogical meeting and she said Johnny quit traveling with Ed because he used foul language and because he had another woman in Calhoun County. Supposedly, when this woman died Ed played the fiddle at her grave all night. This “other woman” story may have had some merit: Wilson Douglas told me that Ed had an illegitimate daughter in that country.

Chasing John Runyon (1996)

07 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by in Cemeteries, Ed Haley, Inez, Lincoln County Feud

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A month or so after “striking out” on the Ed Haley house, Brandon and Billy drove to Inez, Kentucky, and searched for more information about John Runyon. Venturing north of the county seat, they met Leonard Porter, who lived in a little settlement called Tomahawk. Porter remembered Mrs. Runyon staying with Mary Fields in a small house at the mouth of nearby Hall Branch and said she was likely buried in the Fields family cemetery on a point at nearby Hall Branch Road. Billy and Brandon headed up there, where they found the grave of Bill Fields (1882-1948) and Mary Fields (1888-1985), but none of John Runyon’s family. Just down the hill from the cemetery (presently a trailer court) was the old homestead of Mr. and Mrs. Fields. At one time, they later discovered, the Fieldses ran a store beside of their home. Across the road was the location of the former Mary United Baptist Church — named for Mary Runyon or Mary Fields – now converted into a house. As they stood on the hill, Billy reminded Brandon that Bill Duty’s mother-in-law was a Fields prior to her marriage.

They next tried to find the location of John Runyon’s homeplace. According to the Williamson family history, Runyon lived at the “old Stidham post office,” which they figured was located on Rockhouse Fork. Unfortunately, they found no sign of “Stidham” up the many branches of Rockhouse. There were no mailboxes labeled “RUNYON” or any signs to help them along. Many of the names of local hollows had changed since the time of the old deeds.

Feeling a little desperate, they pulled into a driveway with a mailbox labeled “HINKLE” and spoke with a very nice middle-aged man who told them the exact location of the old Stidham Post Office — actually, all three of them. The first location ran by Joe Fannin was situated at the mouth of Spence Branch near Milo. Around 1935, the office was relocated to a site on what is now called Hinkle Valley Road, just across the creek from a sign reading “Left Fork.” The final Stidham Post Office was in what is today James Webb’s Music Store. Upon viewing the sites, Billy deduced that the old Runyon homeplace had been near the second post office.

While in that vicinity, they talked with an elderly man named Walt Mollett who confirmed that John Runyon had been a local resident. He said Runyon was probably buried down the road in a cemetery on Graveyard Point at Stidham, basically the junction of Route 1884 and Route 40.

A few minutes later they were at the cemetery, parking beside the road in a treacherous curve and tromping through a forest of damp growth. At the center of the cemetery was a single, ancient pine tree. Near the pine, Brandon spotted the grave of Runyon’s daughter, Wealthy Fry. Just below her was Aquillia Porter. And below her was a grave with a new tombstone written as “Mary M. Runyons” and dated “January 28, 1861-January 29, 1958.” Beside of Wealthy Fry’s final resting place was an older stone originally created for “Mary Runyon” dated “January 28, 1861-January 29, 1956.” There were plenty of Williamsons in the cemetery — all relation to Mrs. Runyon — including Sam Porter’s second wife — but absolutely no sign of John Runyon’s grave.

Jim Webb, a gentle middle-aged musician and proprietor of Webb’s Music Store, told Brandon and Billy that someone had wrecked in the cemetery a few years earlier and destroyed many of the tombstones. Equally tragic, the wrecker that removed the vehicle from the cemetery had caused more damage to the stones. The community had organized a fund to restore the graves, Webb said, but it was little consolation. Brandon theorized that John was buried beside of Wealthy — that someone had used Mary’s old tombstone to “sort of” mark the spot. He didn’t rule out, though, that Runyon had been buried with his parents on nearby Nat’s Creek in Lawrence County. (The Graveyard Point cemetery was more oriented toward his wife’s family, the Williamsons.) A quick drive to Nat’s Creek, including a tour of the “town” of Peach Orchard (a virtually abandoned coal town once prominent in business affairs and the site of a General Garfield Civil War story), failed to produce any signs of a Runyon cemetery, although it did offer some of the most serene, peaceful, spooky and haunting countryside found in the locale.

Brandon felt a real frustration in not being able to positively find Runyon’s grave and thus achieve some sense of closure on that facet of the story. It was as if he and Billy, whose ancestors had supposedly spent years looking for Runyon, had also been evaded by ole John — even in his death.

In Search of Ed Haley 333

06 Sunday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Ed Haley, Spottswood

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That fall, Brandon and Billy drove to Trace Fork to inspect the “Ed Haley home” — or at least what we wanted to be the Ed Haley home. It was, of course, most likely the Ewell Mullins home since Mullins bought Ed’s land in 1911 and reportedly built a new house there. Billy and Brandon spoke with Von Tomblin, Ewell’s daughter who lived next to the old home. Von said she was born in the back part of the home in 1935. As far as she knew, the front part of the house was torn down years ago, but not the back. Upon inspection, the back portion of the house did appear older than the front.

Von recommended that Billy and Brandon talk to Cas Baisden about the house, since he helped tear some of it down.

They found Cas down the creek.

Baisden said he helped push Ewell’s store against the front of the house when he was a boy. Later, they tore the entire home down, then built an almost-exact replica on the same spot.

Before Brandon and Billy left, Cas told them that Ewell Mullins had three stores in his life. The first one was built when Cas was a small boy near Ewell’s home. The second one was built around 1940 near the original one. The third one was built at the mouth of Ticky George Hollow just prior to Ewell’s passing.

Cas also remembered Ed Haley and his family well. He said Ed had the meanest boys he’d ever seen and probably drank himself to death.

Later that night, Billy and Brandon visited Pete and Gaie Adams near the mouth of Trace Fork. Gaie, who is a niece to Bob Dingess, had a lot of old photographs and said she remembered Ed and Ella spending weekends with her grandma, Alice Dingess. There was a little more confusion about the Ed Haley place: Gaie thought Ewell’s house had been completely torn down, while her husband said the back part was original. Oh boy.

Interview with Nellie Thompson of Wayne, WV (1996)

05 Saturday Jul 2014

Posted by in Culture of Honor, Harts, Lincoln County Feud, Twelve Pole Creek, Wayne

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A few weeks later, Brandon called Nellie Thompson in Wayne, West Virginia. Nellie reportedly had the picture of Milt Haley and Green McCoy.

“I don’t know if I have anything like that or not,” Nellie said, “but I do have an old letter from Green McCoy.”

What?

Almost hyperventilating, he asked her to read it over the telephone.

Nellie fetched it from somewhere in the house, said it was dated May 19, 1889, then read it to him and said he was welcome to see it.

The next day, she called Brandon back and said, “I think I’ve found that picture you were looking for. It’s a little tin picture with two men in it.”

Oh god.

A few days later, Brandon drove to see Nellie about the picture and letter. Before dropping in on her, he spent a little time at the local library where he located a story about Spicie McCoy.

“As I promised last week, today we will explore the life of a lady who claimed to have a cure for diphtheria,” the story, printed in the Wayne County News (1994), began. “Spicie (Adkins) McCoy Fry was so short that if you stretched out your arm she could have walked under it. Anyone who lived in the East Lynn area knew who Spicie Fry was because she had probably been in almost every church around to sing at a revival meeting, something she loved to do. Spicie was well educated. She saw that her children went to school. Once out of grade school, Spicie’s sons took advantage of correspondence courses in music, art, and any other subject they could get thru the mail order catalog. Spicie’s son Monroe Taylor Fry was a self-taught musician.”

After a short time, Brandon drove to Nellie’s home, where she produced a small tin picture of two men sitting together. One of the men was obviously Green McCoy based on the picture we had already seen of him. The other fellow, then, was Milt.

As Brandon stared at the tintype, Nellie handed him Green’s letter. It was penned in a surprisingly nice handwriting, addressed to his brother Harrison, and was apparently never mailed. At the time of his writing, it was spring and McCoy had just moved back to Harts — probably after a short stay with his family or in-laws in Wayne County. He may’ve been there with his older brother, John, who’d married a girl almost half his age from Wayne County earlier in February.

Dear Brother. after a long delay of time I take this opertunity of droping you a few lines to let you know that I am well hoping when these lines reaches you they may find you all the same. Harrison you must excuse me for not writing sooner. the cause of me not writing is this[:] the post master here is very careless. they let people brake open the letters and read them so I will write this time to let you know where I am and where Lynza is. I have moved back to the west fork of Harts Creek and Lynza is married and living in wayne co yet on beach fork. everybody is done planting corn very near in this country. every thing looks lively in this part. tell Father and mother that I[‘m] coming out this fall after crops are laid by if I live and Lynza will come with me. tell all howdy for me. you may look for us boath. if death nor sickness don’t tak[e] place we will come. Harrison I would rather you would not write anymore this summer. people brakes open the letters and reads them so I will not write a long letter. Brumfield and me lives in 2 miles of each other and has had no more trubble but every body says that he will kill me if I don’t kill him. I look to have trouble with him so I will close this time.

On the back of the letter was written the following: “My wife sends her best respects to you all and says she would like to see you all. my boy is beginning to walk. he is a spoiled boy to[o].”

Clutching carefully onto the tintype and letter, Brandon asked Nellie what she’d heard about Milt and Green’s death. She didn’t really know much, but her brother Goble Richardson said he’d always heard that pack-peddlers who boarded with Paris Brumfield never left his home alive. These men were supposedly killed, tied to rocks, and thrown to the bottom of the Guyan River where the fish ate their rotting corpses. Soon after the “disappearance” of these pack-peddlers, Paris would be seen riding the man’s horse, while his children would be playing with his merchandise.

When Brandon arrived home he studied over Green McCoy’s letter — all the cursive strokes, the occasional misspellings, trying to extract something from it beyond what it plainly read.

Strangely, the letter didn’t reveal to which Brumfield — Al or Paris — Green referred when he wrote, “every body says that he will kill me if I don’t kill him.” It seems likely, though, based on what Daisy Ross had said, that Green referenced Paris.

Still, it was Al Brumfield who was ambushed only three months later.

What started their trouble?

And who was the careless postmaster who allowed people to “brake open the letters and read them?”

At the time of the Haley-McCoy trouble, Harts had two post offices: Harts and Warren. The postmaster at Harts — where McCoy likely received his mail — was Ross Fowler, son to the Bill Fowler who was eventually driven away from Harts by the Brumfields. Ross, though, was close with the Brumfields and even ferried the 1889 posse across the river to Green Shoal with Milt and Green as prisoners (according to Bob Dingess) in October of 1889. A little later, he worked in Al Brumfield’s store. The postmaster at Warren was Andrew D. Robinson, a former justice of the peace and brother-in-law to Ben Adams and Sallie Dingess. Robinson seems to have been a man of good credit who stayed neutral in the trouble.

In Search of Ed Haley 332

04 Friday Jul 2014

Posted by in Calhoun County, Ed Haley, Music

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The next day, at the fiddling contest, Brandon met George Carr of Madison, West Virginia. George said Ed was the reason he started playing the fiddle many years ago.

“I was raised in Calhoun County,” he said. “I first saw Ed Haley as a small boy in the one-room Walker School House. Sometime in the early ’30s, about ’34, ’35, I’d say. Him and his wife came and they played for us and he fascinated me with that fiddle. And he had a son called ‘Puckett’ and I don’t know what ever became of him. But Ed and his wife would play on the streets in Spencer where the stock sale was every Friday and they would play there and she pinned a tin cup in her apron and they got nickels and dimes and quarters and fifty cents but no greenbacks. He stayed with a fella by the name of Laury Hicks who was a local fiddler and a self-taught veterinarian. His wife, Minnie Hicks, was a midwife — delivered many, many babies — who held my father in her arms when he was a small baby and he died in ’75 and he was 77 years old.”

Dr. Ivan Tribe endorses “Blood in West Virginia”

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud

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I proudly announce Dr. Ivan Tribe’s endorsement of my book, Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy. Dr. Tribe, Professor Emeritus of History at Rio Grande University, ranks as one of Appalachia’s most distinguished and recognized historians. Best known for his Mountaineer Jamboree (1984), the definitive history of country music in West Virginia, Dr. Tribe is author of six additional books, beginning with Albany, Ohio: The First Fifty Years of a Rural Midwestern Community (1980). Dr. Tribe has also contributed over two hundred articles, composed at least eighty sets of liner notes for albums, and written more than forty record and book reviews. Throughout his long career as an educator and author, he has consistently offered top-notch scholarship on the subjects of traditional country music, bluegrass music, and coal mining communities. While I recommend any one of Dr. Tribe’s writings, his Mountaineer Jamboree remains a personal favorite. Receiving praise from such an outstanding scholar and accomplished author means a great deal to me.

Here is Dr. Tribe’s endorsement of Blood in West Virginia:

“Except for the Hatfield-McCoy Feud which spilled over into two states, eastern Kentucky is better known as Appalachia’s feud country. However, Brandon Kirk’s book demonstrates that Lincoln County, West Virginia had a feud that has been largely overlooked by prior chronicleers. The Brumfields versus a variety of persons named Adkins, McCoy, and Haley made the community of Harts a real hot spot among mountain communities in the late 1880s. Kirk’s Blood in West Virginia tells a fascinating story that elevates the Lincoln County feud to its proper place in Appalachian and West Virginia History.”

In Search of Ed Haley 331

03 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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About an hour later, Brandon showed up at Pat’s, followed by various members of the Haley clan: Noah, Clyde, and a bunch of children and grandchildren. The house was soon full of people — talking and eating. It was a bittersweet moment due to Lawrence’s absence, although his spirit was everywhere. I watched the Haleys — Ed’s children and grandchildren — business executives, gamblers, bar owners — mix with one another. Conversation was friendly between them, although there seemed to be an estrangement — especially among the younger ones. Basically, they were raised up separate from each other (the “Kentucky Haleys” vs. the “Ohio Haleys”); to be honest, it was as if they really didn’t know each other that well.

I realized that the binding force in Ed’s family — the glue that held all of them together — was the music…or at least the memory of it. Children who had never met before were sitting in the floor together or running through the house and yard — some hearing about Ed for the first time. I kept thinking about how one of them might some day pick up a fiddle and naturally crank out some of those “Haley licks.”

Brandon and I sat in the living room with Noah, Clyde, and Mona. Clyde immediately started talking about Ed.

“I used to hate him — hate that man — the way he treated Mom,” he said.

“Evidently, Mom cared for him or she wouldn’t a let it go on,” Noah said.

“I learnt as I got older and got a little tolerance in my mind I learned to forgive my hate for my dad to something else,” Clyde said. “I give it to God or whatever you want to call it.”

“I think the reason you didn’t like him Clyde was because when we stole them ducks there at Keyser Creek, he took each one in a room by ourself and he took a strap and he held us by the arm and he beat the hell out of us,” Noah said, laughing.

“That was Mr. Runyon’s ducks,” Clyde said. “Yeah, he beat us with the buckle part of that belt.”

“Yeah, and I think that’s why you didn’t like him,” Noah said. “I remember that beating we got.”

Clyde said, “Oh, we got a good one, didn’t we?”

I asked where Ed lived when that happened and Clyde said, “That was a four-room house. Ralph, our oldest brother, he had made a trapdoor in that floor and he used to bootleg moonshine through that trapdoor.”

“Clyde, you remember the cow he stole and kept it under the porch?” Noah asked.

Clyde said, “Yeah, Ralph did that. That wasn’t a cow. That was a calf. Our house stood up on stilts and Ralph or somebody had fenced that all in to keep that calf in. Got that while he was in the CCCs.”

Noah said, “And he built a trapdoor so he could go down through the floor…”

“In the bedroom,” Mona added.

Clyde laughed and said, “Ralph got that calf in the house and he was trying to put that calf up in Mom’s lap and it done something all over Mom.”

In Search of Ed Haley 330

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Ed Haley, Music

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Meanwhile, plans were underway for an “Ed Haley Fiddle Festival” in Ashland. The whole idea was conceived by Pat Gray, a local real estate agent who’d been inspired by an article in the Ashland Daily Independent regarding our interest in Ed’s life. Pat incorporated the “festival” (which was actually a fiddling contest) into Ashland’s Poage Landing Days, a citywide carnival-like celebration centered on the downtown area. The fiddle contest was scheduled to take place in the basement/auditorium of a Presbyterian church in Ashland. Pat declared me the “Grand Marshall” of the Poage Landing Parade, booked my band and I for an evening show and even offered to put us up at her place.

We pulled into Ashland on September 20th, 1996 and parked the bus in a church parking lot just down the hill from Pat Haley’s. Mike Compton, my mandolin player, and I walked up to Pat’s for breakfast (at her invitation) where I found her entertaining Mona and Patsy (Jack’s wife). Mona had written out the words to some of Ed’s songs for me, like “My Happy Childhood Days Down on the Farm”:

When a lad I used to dwell

In a place I loved so well

Far away among the clover and the bees.

Where the morning glory vine

‘Round our cabin door did twine

And the robin red breast sang among the trees.

In my happy boyhood days down on the farm.

There was a father old and gray

And a sister young and gay

And a mother dear to keep us from all harm.

There I passed life’s sunny hours

Running wild among the flowers

In my happy boyhood days down on the farm.

It was obvious that Mona had been thinking a lot about Ed’s music, so I didn’t waste any time getting my fiddle out for her. She caught me a bit off guard when she asked me if she could accompany me using Mike’s mandolin. The next thing I knew, she was playing right along with me — scarily like her mother. After we’d finished a tune everyone got really quiet, then Patsy looked at Mike and said, “You’ve just lost your job.”

Several tunes later, I asked Mona about Ed’s bowing style. There was a lot of conflicting information on that, so I wanted to get her opinion again. She said Ed “mixed things up,” or more specifically, that he varied his bowing between long and short strokes.

I had kinda figured that was true and had even come to think that maybe he had “area bowings,” much like his “area tunes.” It’s really a very natural thing. I play different tunes and different ways when I’m with the Goforths and Hawthornes in Missouri than when I’m with Earl Scruggs and Benny Martin in Nashville, or Fletcher Bright, or Jim Wood, or Bruce Molsky and Brad Leftwich, or Charlie Acuff, or Buddy Spicher, or Hoot Hester.

I should say here that all this business of bow holds, short and long bow strokes, and whether Ed held the fiddle under his chin or not, should never be taken as Scripture. In my own experience, I’ve held the fiddle under my chin, on my arm, on my chest, with all kinds of chin rests, no chin rests, shoulder rests, and used different kinds of bows. (I even used to tape a tin penny nail or two on the bow shaft for weight when I pulled it for long square dances so I wouldn’t have to press down with my index finger.) I’ve bowed heavy, light, long strokes, short strokes, off-string, on-string, and so forth. I’m sure that Ed’s technique — like mine or probably any musician — was constantly changing. What I have tried to document with Ed is who saw him play a certain way, where and when. It’s important to keep that in mind so as to not get lost in the contradictions.

John W. Runyon 3

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Big Sandy Valley, Inez, Lincoln County Feud, Timber, Wyoming County

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The John W. Runyon family seems to have headed further south to try their luck elsewhere. In February 1902, Mary Runyon, her recently remarried daughter, Wealthy (Runyon) Hinkle-Fry, and her former son-in-law Clarence Hinkle were listed in Martin County deed records as residents of Buchanan County, Virginia.

John Runyon, meanwhile, soon gave up on his case in Wyoming County. A court entry dated April 2, 1902 and titled “John W. Runyon vs. Buskirk and Wittenberg” mentions how he “failed to give bond for costs as required in an order entered at a former term of the Court.” The Court ruled that “the defendants recover of the plaintiff their costs in their behalf expended in their defense herein including an attorneys fee of $10.00.” Included in this record was a list of thirty-four “Petit Jurors” who were, for some reason, to be paid “out of the County Treasury to wit” for their services in this case, some of them serving as many as nine days and being paid as much as eighteen dollars. It wasn’t clear why jurors served up to nine days, as records indicate that the court dismissed Runyon’s case before it went to trial.

After a short stay in Virginia, the Runyon family returned to Martin County and settled near the old Stidham Post Office on Rockcastle Creek, several miles north of the countyseat of Inez. On June 25, 1903, Wealthy Fry died at the age of 22 years old. Aquillia Porter died on February 20, 1910. A few months later (April 20) her husband remarried to Maude Williamson. Both of the Runyon girls were buried in the Williamson family cemetery at Stidham. Runyon’s legal problems, meanwhile, continued in Martin County as late as the 1910s.

On the bright side, John and Mary Runyon Fork purchased many acres of land around Rockhouse between 1893-1917 and sold at least 1,001 acres in that same vicinity between 1904-1932. Most of it went to their family: Sam Porter got 100 acres in 1910, 50 acres in 1917 and 35 acres in 1925. Various members of the Williamson family also bought tracts from John and Mary Runyon.

In 1920, John W. Runyon was listed in the Martin County Census as a resident of the Stafford Fork Precinct. He was a 65-year-old general laborer. His wife Mary was 55 years old. Asa G. Williamson, age 52, brother-in-law, was also in the household. Next door was the family of grandson John W. Porter, a 23-year-old farmer, with wife Etta M. (age 23). There were two children listed: Analena, age three; and Virginia Lee, age one. Aubrey Lee Porter, 22-year-old brother to John, who was also present in the home and employed as a coal miner.

John Runyon died on January 12, 1925 in Martin County. His widow spent her final years under the care of his niece, Mary (Runyon) Fields, who had been listed with the family in the 1900 Wyoming County Census. Mary was a daughter of John’s twin brother. She married Bill Fields and participated in much of the “family business” (marriage records, land transactions). Mary Runyon was still alive in 1952, when the Runyon genealogy book was assembled and was a source on the Adam Runyon family line.

Back in Ferrellsburg, Brandon called Bill Porter, an 80-year-old man in the Inez-area who was distantly connected to John Runyon’s family. He hadn’t known Runyon personally but said, “He was a well-thought of person. He followed the timber business. Everywhere he went he had bad luck. He was pretty bad to crook people.”

Mr. Porter said the Runyon place sat just above the old Stidham Post Office at Graveyard Point and told all about the Runyon descendants. He said Aubrey Porter married a Williams and raised a family of three children (including one son named Jimmy) in Columbus, Ohio. John W. Porter had two children — Merrill and John, Jr — and lived in Norfolk, Virginia. Hattie (Hinkle) Apney had two daughters: one named Guiniford, who married Russell Goble (an active member of the Inez School Board for years), and Jean, who married Virgil Ramey. Mr. Porter thought Hattie divorced her husband and moved to Point Pleasant, West Virginia, where she died.

John W. Runyon 2

01 Tuesday Jul 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud, Timber, Wyoming County

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In that same time frame, John W. Runyon moved his family to Baileysville in Wyoming County, West Virginia, where he opened a business under the name of “Porter and Runyon.” He began to buy various items by credit at a store owned by Buskirk and Wittenberg, a partnership of contractors operating under the powerful Cole and Crane Company.

According to Bowman’s Reference Book of Wyoming County History (1965): “C. Crane and Co., by its contractors, Buskirk and Wittenburg, began a new era of removing timber by water. The company began building dams as soon as possible after taking over the contract.”

Buskirk and Wittenburg were often permitted to construct “roads for their convenience” and to destroy bridges for the purpose of splashing so long as they had them rebuilt. They built the only splash dam ever constructed on the Guyan River around 1903.

“The company maintained well stocked commissaries and logging camps to take care of their men,” according to the Wyoming County history. The main camp in their operation “had a commissary, blacksmith shop, business office, and post office named Vorheis, in honor of Buskirk’s daughter who had married a man named Vorheis. There were camps at Baileysville… Camps and stores were relocated from time to time as needed.” Their stores “carried a large and varied stock, including up-to-date clothing.”

Runyon’s bill at Buskirk’s and Wittenberg’s store began on May 22, 1899, when he bought a nine-dollar suit, and extended until July 17, 1900, when the store debt totaled $6,495.78. According to the bill, Runyon primarily purchased ordinary store items: bacon, beans, fruits, vegetables, coffees, tobacco, herbs, spices, silverware, kitchen utensils, nails, soap, shoes, hats, gloves, watches, candy, and various types of clothing. He also had bought a plethora of luxury items: a case of oysters, Cuban Gentlemen Cigars, several boxes of chewing gum, a box of roasted peanuts, dolls, musical instruments (including a violin), picture frames, guns, locks, turpentine, Castor Oil, clocks, fire crackers, and fishing gear.

Beginning on September 28, 1899, Runyon and Porter paid periodically on the bill (although Porter’s name was seldom mentioned specifically) and Runyon personally contributed $280.00 in January of 1900. The business folded around September 13, 1900, when Runyon made his last payment to Wittenberg and reduced his bill to $640.15.

Meanwhile, the census enumerator registered Runyon as follows: “John W. Ru[n]yon, logger, rents home, born Feb 1856 in KY, age 44, married 20 years, both parents born KY; Mary M. Ru[n]yon, born January 1861 in KY, age 39, married 20 years, mother of 1 child which is living, parents born in KY; Mary M. Ru[n]yon, born March 1889 in KY, age 11, niece, both parents born in KY.” John’s son-in-law Clarence Hinkle was listed two households away as a logger. Sam Porter was not listed in the census — perhaps well aware of the impending debt owed to Buskirk and Wittenberg. Little Mary Runyon was a daughter of John’s twin brother.

There were other legal troubles. In June of 1901, Drs. S.A. Daniel and C.W. Hall sued Runyon for a $50 debt (with interest). Apparently the doctors had rendered services to a James Ramey with the understanding that Runyon would pay his bill. When the trial took place on June 15, Runyon failed to show up. The court waited for an hour, then heard the plaintiff’s case and ruled against him. Curiously enough, Runyon appealed the decision on June 24, with funds for his appeal bond ($120) coming from the very doctors who originally sued him. In September a summons was delivered to an Anderson Beverly to appear as Runyon’s witness. On April 2, 1902 his appeal came before the court and the doctors didn’t appear even “though thrice solemnly called.” As a result, the judge ruled in Runyon’s favor and stated that he was to be paid “$5.00 for their false clamor herein” and that he “recover of the plaintiffs his costs in this behalf expended including an attorneys fee of $5.00 allowed by statute.”

By that time, Runyon was in a more serious lawsuit with Buskirk and Wittenberg over his store debt. In early July of 1901, Wittenberg sued Runyon and Porter, stating that he had not received a payment from them since September of the previous year. Wittenberg’s contacts with area politicians and influential residents had obvious legal implications. Runyon and Porter were issued a summons to appear in court on the first Monday in August to answer “A.R. Wittenberg of a plea of Trespass on the case in assumpsit damages $6,500.00.” Wittenberg’s use of the figure $6,500 referred to the original debt of $6,495.78, although records show the amount actually owed was $640.15. On the outside of this summons the following was written in poor handwriting, probably by a deputy-sheriff: “Serve[d] on the within name John W. Runyon by delivering to him an office copy of the within summon[s] in person on July 12, 1901.” A summons couldn’t be served to S.W. Porter who was “not found within my bailiwick this July 13, 1901.”

Porter was apparently not a resident of West Virginia (probably Kentucky). An affidavit of Non-Residence was filed on his behalf on August 5, 1901.

“This day I.E. Christian Personally appeared before me E.M. Seuter a Notary Public within and for said Wyoming County, West Virginia and upon oath says that S.W. Porter one of the defendants in the above styled action is a Nonresident of the State of West Virginia,” it read.

Because Wyoming County law couldn’t find him to serve a summons, an Order of Publication was issued on the first Monday in August 1901.

“At Rules held in the Clerk’s Office of the Circuit Court of Wyoming County on the first Monday in August 1901 A.R. Wittenberg vs. John W. Runyon and S.W. Porter partners trading and doing business under the firm name and style of Porter and Runyon,” it read. “The object of the above suit is to obtain a Judgment in favor of the plaintiff against the defendants for the sum of $640.15 and it appearing from an affidavit made and filed with the papers of this cause that S.W. Porter defendant in the above signed cause is a non resident of the State of West Virginia, and on motion of the plaintiff it is ordered that said defendant S.W. Porter do appear at Rules to be held in the clerk’s office of the circuit court of Wyoming County within one month after the first publication of this order and do what is necessary to protect his interest in this suit.”

Wittenberg spent five dollars and fifty cents paying for this publication, which was featured in the Wyoming Tribune from August 9th until August 30th.

It did little good. Porter was basically untouchable by Wyoming County authorities barring extradition papers.

Information at the Wyoming County Courthouse indicated that he never showed up to answer for his part in the failed business and, in so doing, crippled Runyon’s case against Wittenberg.

There is little information available on the actual trial, although records show the judge ruled against Runyon for $614.50 on September 30, 1901. Totaled near this figure was a compilation of the plaintiff’s costs ($32.81), which indicated that he was expected to pay that fee as well. Presumably, all of this debt fell on Runyon since his partner had left the state. He decided to appeal the case but as a non-property owner in Wyoming County, the owner of a failed business, and with no local contacts loyal enough to assist him, he was unable to put forth enough money to post the necessary bond. Wittenberg, meanwhile, prepared his case and hired lawyers.

John W. Runyon 1

30 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by in Big Harts Creek, Big Sandy Valley, Harts, Inez, Timber, Wyoming County

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In the late summer of 1996, Brandon and Billy turned their genealogical sights on John W. Runyon, that elusive character in the 1889 story who seemed to have stirred up a lot of trouble and then escaped unharmed into Kentucky. They arranged a biographical outline after locating two family history books titled Runyon Genealogy (1955) and Alden Williamson Genealogy (1962). Then, they chased down leads at the Cultural Center in Charleston, West Virginia; the Wyoming County Courthouse at Pineville, West Virginia; the Wayne County Courthouse in Wayne, West Virginia; the Martin County Courthouse at Inez, Kentucky; and at various small public libraries in eastern Kentucky. Runyon had left quite a trail.

John W. Runyon was born in February of 1856 to Adam and Wealthy (Muncy) Runyon, Jr. in Pike County, Kentucky. He was a twin to James Bertrand Runyon and the ninth child in his family. His mother was a daughter of James Muncy — making her a sister to Nellie Muncy and an aunt to Milt Haley. In other words, John Runyon and Milt Haley were first cousins.

According to Runyon Genealogy (1955), Adam and Wealthy Runyon left Pike County around 1858 and settled on the Emily Fork of Wolf Creek in present-day Martin County. In 1860, they sold out to, of all people, Milt Haley’s older half-brother, Moses Parsley, and moved to Pigeon Creek in Logan County. John’s grandfather, Adam Runyon, Sr., had first settled on Pigeon Creek around 1811. The family was primarily pro-Union during the Civil War.

At a young age, Runyon showed promise as a timber baron.

“The first lumber industry in Logan County of any importance was started on Crawley Creek by Garrett and Runyon during the year 1876,” Bob Spence wrote in Land of the Guyandot (1978). “Garrett and Runyon deserve credit for their efforts in opening the lumber business in Logan County. They were the first to hire labor in this field. It might be of interest to note here that they originally brought trained men from Catlettsburg… In a few years, Garrett and Runyon left Logan [County], and soon Enoch Baker from Nova Scotia came to Crawley Creek to take their place.”

John may have put his timber interests on hold due to new developments within his family. According to Runyon Genealogy, his mother died around 1878 and was buried at Peach Orchard on Nat’s Creek in Lawrence County, Kentucky. His father, meanwhile, went to live with a son in Minnesota. In that same time frame, on Christmas Day, 1878, Runyon married Mary M. Williamson, daughter of Stephen and Ellender (Blevins) Williamson, in Martin County, Kentucky. He and Mary were the parents of two children: Aquillia Runyon, born 1879; and Wealthy Runyon, born 1881. John settled on or near Nat’s Creek, where his father eventually returned to live with him and was later buried at his death around 1895.

During the late 1880s, of course, Runyon moved to Harts where he surely made the acquaintance of Enoch Baker, the timber baron from Nova Scotia. An 1883 deed for Henderson Dingess referenced “Baker’s lower dam,” while Baker was mentioned in the local newspaper in 1889. “Enoch Baker, who has been at work in the County Clerk’s office and post office for several weeks, is now on Hart’s creek,”  the Logan County Banner reported on September 12. Baker was still there in December, perhaps headquartered at a deluxe logging camp throughout the fall of 1889.

After the tragic events of ’89, Runyon made his way to Wayne County where he and his wife “Mary M. Runyons” were referenced in an 1892 deed. Wayne County, of course, was a border county between Lincoln County and the Tug Fork where Cain Adkins and others made their home. He was apparently trying to re-establish himself in Martin County, where his wife bought out three heirs to her late father’s farm on the Rockhouse Fork of Rockcastle Creek between 1892-1895.

In the late 1890s, John’s two daughters found husbands and began their families. On January 3, 1896, Wealthy Runyon married Clarence Hinkle at “John Runyonses” house in Martin County. She had one child named Hattie, born in 1899 in West Virginia. On March 29, 1896, Aquillia Runyon married Samuel W. Porter at Mary Runyon’s house in Martin County. They had three children: John W. Porter, born in 1897 in West Virginia; Aubrey Lee Porter, born in 1899 in Kentucky; and Izella Porter, who died young.

Dr. Ronald L. Lewis endorses “Blood in West Virginia”

28 Saturday Jun 2014

Posted by in Lincoln County Feud, Timber

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I proudly announce Dr. Ronald L. Lewis’ endorsement of my book, Blood in West Virginia: Brumfield v. McCoy. Dr. Lewis, professor emeritus of history at West Virginia University and Historian Laureate of West Virginia, ranks as one of Appalachia’s most distinguished and recognized historians. Best known for his award-winning book, Transforming the Appalachian Countryside (1998), an unsurpassed study of the timber industry in West Virginia, Dr. Lewis is author of five books, beginning with Coal, Iron, and Slaves (1979), as well as numerous articles. Throughout his long career in academia, he has consistently offered top-notch scholarship on the subjects of ethnicity, labor, industrialization, and social change, particularly as they apply to West Virginia and Appalachian history. While I would recommend any one of Dr. Lewis’ writings, his Transforming the Appalachian Countryside remains a personal favorite. Receiving praise from such an outstanding scholar (and personal hero) means a great deal to me.

Here is Dr. Lewis’ endorsement of Blood in West Virginia:

“The family feud is indelibly linked with Appalachia in American popular culture. As portrayed by sensationalist reporters and local color writers of the late 19th century, feuding was evidence of the genetic and/or cultural degeneracy of a people whose lack of social institutions and isolation had arrested their culture in a frontier state as American progress bypassed the region on its way westward. Appalachia was ‘a strange land with peculiar people’ and ‘a place where time stood still.’ Unfortunately, there is not a shred of evidence for this social construction of the region or the ‘hillbilly’ stereotype: that Appalachians were governed by an irrational predisposition to violence. Since the 1980s, scholars have rejected the popular-culture view of drunken hillbillies ready to shoot at the drop of a hat to protect family honor. Brandon Kirk’s Blood in West Virginia is one of the modern community studies that obliterate the stereotype; his intensive research of the Brumfield-McCoy feud that occurred in 1889-90 at Hart, West Virginia, reinforces the revisionist view that feuds occurred as the result of industrial capitalism, rather than the lack of it. Most Appalachian feuds occurred in the mountain counties of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky during the last two decades of the 19th century when railroad, timber, and coal development virtually transformed the region’s economy from its traditional agricultural economy into a rural-industrial one. Kirk clearly demonstrates that the Brumfield-McCoy feud was a struggle between rival factions to control the area’s economic and political development. Family ties among the feudists were incidental. Motives for the feud were, therefore, not peculiar to Appalachian culture; after all, violence for economic and political control in industrializing America was as American as apple pie. Blood in West Virginia is an exciting story well-told; fortunately, it is one that preserves the truth rather than perpetuates the stereotypes.”