Days of Darkness (38 page)

For a moment after Bobby Baker slumped, dead, over the steering wheel and his car slammed into the curb at the foot of the hill, there was a strange silence around the town square in Manchester, as though a century of violence and death, and the bitterness, hatred, grief, sorrow, fear, and pain that had torn at the hills of Eastern Kentucky and left behind a bloody trail of blasted lives and ruined reputations of both men and towns, had sent up one final cry of misery and then collapsed with a sigh that was itself a recognition of man's futility.

In that final act of what may be called the last and longest of the great feuds, there were echoes from other feuds: the plea of Sarah McCoy, battered to earth by a Hatfield pistol but still reaching out to touch her dead daughter; the screams of the Logan boys, gunned down and trampled by Craig Tolliver's men; the dying cry of J.B. Marcum in the hallway of the Breathitt County courthouse as Curtis Jett's bullets cut him down; the plea of Bad Tom Smith for one more hymn on the scaffold, the sound of his neck breaking as he fell through the trap. There were the pride and defiance of Mrs. George Turner of Harlan demanding that her son stop screaming and die like a man, as his brother had; the sobs of Alice Howard as her beloved son Wilse was led away to the gallows; the dignity of Susan Eversole as she took the fatherless children of Bad Tom Smith, the man who had killed her father and her husband, back to her own home to rear; the bravery of Sue Martin as she ran for help against the Tolliver gang burning her home; the surviving goodness of Thena Baker, imploring Jim Howard to let the dead past bury its dead; the struggles and piety of John Jay Dickey, praying, singing, preaching through the hills torn by bullets, drenched in blood.

And with the dying echoes of gunfire, the questions keep echoing across the years: Why here? Why in those years? There can be, are, people who are simply, inherently bad, but what malign spirits brought so many, in such a short time, into this small cup of mountains?
Men who are not bad are taken in an evil time, by forces beyond their grasp, and led to do evil things. Those who resort to violence are not always violent men.

Was there something in the times, something in the circumstances and the stage of development of the nation that led it to internecine war, as adolescence must go through anguish to achieve maturity, a process that was echoed in the feuds? Was there a pioneer, immigrant dichotomy that at once longed for a new, beneficent order while recoiling instinctively from inherited memories of official oppression and cruelty in other places, other times, to which the new place, the new age, bore hope and promise of paradise? Was political freedom, the gift of political participation, wine too heady for people whose forebears had for centuries been denied such self-dominion?

Trouble did not end with the feuds. For another half century Eastern Kentucky remained the victim of violence. Strife tore the mining towns, just as worsening floods tore the valleys. For many years the region's homicide rates remained among the worst in the nation. But roads and colleges and parks have come to mark the mountains. The reputation for violence left by the feuds is now like old scars from some long-past, seldom-remembered accident of youth. Gradually, even the scars are forgotten.

Yet there must be moments even now when in the mists of twilight the ghost of Wilse Howard rides once more the roads of Harlan; when Bad Tom Baker stands, defiant and doomed on the courhouse lawn; when Big Jim Howard strides the streets of Manchester with his sample case, remembering; or when little Cal Tolliver, in his fourteenth year, stands before the America Hotel of Morehead, a little boy facing death, in each hand a blazing .44.

Sources

As far as I know, this book represents the only attempt to compile a brief history of all, or at least the most important, of the feuds of Eastern Kentucky, and having attempted it I can see why. Writing the history of one feud is difficult; writing about all of them is almost impossible.

When I began this I thought I would be able to get most of my information from previously published works on individual feuds. I was wrong. I found almost nothing published on the Turner-Howard feud of Harlan County, the French-Eversole War of Perry County, or, most important, the Clay County War that lasted almost a century and involved at least a dozen families.

Of state newspapers, I found the
Louisville Courier-Journal
and the
Hazel Green Herald
the most extensive journalistic sources, but even these left a lot to be desired. For example, in publishing the account of the jailing of Bad Tom Baker, the
Courier-Journal
stated casually that “a dozen men have been killed the last month.” It fails to say who they were, where they were killed, or why, and I could find no record in the courthouse or in regional papers.

In the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the
Courier-Journal
saw the fight as a case of Kentucky against West Virginia and took the side of Kentucky without apology (and often without great accuracy). The
Cincinnati Enquirer
frequently referred to the feud in Breathitt County as the Marcum-Hargis-Callahan-French feud, although there was no French in the Breathitt feud. Fulton French was involved in the French-Eversole War in Perry County.

I probably got more information from interviews and correspondence than from books or newspapers, especially in the Clay County War, about which relatively little has been written. The late governor Bert Combs introduced me to Stanley DeZarn, of Hamilton, Ohio, who introduced me to descendants of the Bakers of the Baker-Howard feud in Clay County. Florence Baker, court clerk of Clay County, also helped me with county records, such as they are. The Clay courthouse fire of 1932 destroyed many of the previous records. Stanley also introduced me to James Burchell, grandson of James Howard, who was extremely generous and helpful. Bert Combs introduced me to John G. White, who confirmed some of what I had heard. All of these people were from Manchester.

I am especially grateful, too, to Jess Wilson, an author from Possum Trot, in Clay County, who gave me access to his maps, excerpts from the Dickey diaries, and copies of his books
When They Hanged the Fiddler
and
The Sugar Pond and the Fritter Tree,
both of which deal with the feuds. Jess, who is himself a Baker, gave me valuable genealogies of the Baker family. I have not been
able to get more (Clay County) Howard genealogy than that furnished me by Harlan genealogist Holly Fee, who gave me some Turner-Howard genealogy. But perhaps the best reference work on Clay County I found was the diaries of the Reverend John Jay Dickey. They were valuable for the Breathitt County wars as well. I talked briefly to Richard Golden of Pineville, whose grandfather, Captain Ben Golden, was an attorney in feud trials in both Breathitt and Clay.

Along with Stanley DeZarn and Jess Wilson, perhaps my best source of information was Tom Walters of Leesburg, Florida, who not only gave me the records of his grandfather, who was involved in the shooting of Pitt Stivers, in Clay County, but drew me a map of Manchester at the time of the feuds. He and his wife, Gail, were most hospitable and helpful.

There are several short works that mention the Clay war. Alvin F. Harlow's
Weep No More, My Lady
(New York: Whittlesey House, 1942) contains a treatise on “the hundred-year feud,” which is interesting but contains errors.
Stories of Kentucky Feuds
and
The Great Truce of Clay,
by Harold Wilson Coates (Knoxville, Tenn.: Darst Coal Company, 1923), contain much that is folklore. The
Autobiography of Old Claib Jones,
as written by J.W. Hall (Hazard Ky.: Hazard Press, 1915), is entertaining. Robert Ireland's “Judicial Murder of Dr. Abner Baker, Jr.” (
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society,
Winter 1990) contends that Baker was tried twice for the same murder. I tend to believe that the first trial was no more than a competency hearing and could not have cleared him, but Ireland is an authority on the trial, and his treatise is certainly worth reading.

Incidentally, the
Courier-Journal
for September 16, 25, and 26, December 5, 22, and 27, 1932, and January 9 and February 2, 1933, gives good accounts of the trials involved in the killing of Frank Baker. Curiously, the
Courier-Journal
of December 2, 1943, tells of the conviction of one of the Benges for barn-burning and states that fifty people had been killed recently in a continuation of the Clay feud. It did not say who the dead were or how far back that phase of the feud went.

As far as the Hatfield-McCoy feud is concerned, you can take your pick. There are dozens of books and articles on the feud, all saying pretty much the same thing. Altina Waller's
Feud: Hatfields and McCoys and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1960
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988) is the most thorough study of the feud available (the title gives you an idea) but is more concerned with the times than with the feud. Waller also published a shorter but interesting view of the feud in the
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
(Summer 1991), “Feuding and Modernization in Appalachia.” The best book on the feud itself is probably Otis Rice's
The Hatfields and the McCoys
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982). The
Courier-Journal
files in the Louisville Free Public Library offer detailed accounts of the trials of the Hatfields in Louisville and the court battles between Kentucky and West Virginia over jurisdiction of prisoners taken in the feud. The
Hazel Green Herald
of April 26, 1894, had an account of the death of Frank Phillips, the Pike County deputy and general wild man. The
Register of the Kentucky Historical Society
for 1982 carried James Klotter's “A Hatfield-McCoy Feudist Pleads for Mercy,” and the summer 1988 issue of the
Appalachian Journal
published Klotter's “Hatfields and McCoys Revised.”

John Kleber of Morehead State University not only opened his own files
but introduced me to archivists in the MSU library, who found for me voluminous accounts of the Martin-Tolliver feud. Fred Brown of Morehead let me read
Days of Anger, Days of Rage,
which he wrote with Juanita Blair (More-head, Ky: Pioneer Press, 1989). Pauline Asher Logan of Pineville let me see articles on the Rowan County feud and photographs of her late husband's father, D.B. Logan, who played such a critical role in the Rowan war. The
Pineville Sun
of March 23, 1954, carried a detailed obituary of Logan.

I had trouble with Harlan. Murphy Howard, an old friend and county attorney at the time, warned me not to ask too many questions about the Turner-Howard feud or I'd risk trouble. I think Murphy was pulling my leg. No one in Harlan seemed reluctant to talk to me, but few knew much about the feud. Ed Cawood of the Bank of Harlan showed me some of the Turner graves, two of which were practically covered with trash in a weedy corner of a building beside a parking lot. He said they had been there almost a century and some of the Turners did not want them moved. They seemed terribly neglected, considering the prominence of the Turners. Cawood said he had heard that the feud had something to do with a dispute over a dog; where these dog stories come from I don't know. I talked with John Egerton, whose
Generations
(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983) is an account of the Ledford family that came to Harlan early in the nineteenth century but moved out because of feud violence, but he knew few particulars. The Led-fords tended to blame the Howards but left no details. The most interesting item I found was the manuscript “A Cumberland Vendetta” by C. A. Ballou at the Kentucky Historical Society Library in Frankfort. Ballou gives a one-sided view and makes no bones about putting the blame for the Turner-Howard feud squarely on the Turners. That is quite different from the version by Jamie Howard III of Harlan, who wrote the feud entry for the
Kentucky Encyclopedia
(Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1992), and who tends to regard the Howards as the outlaws at fault. He was most helpful. Holly Fee, owner of the genealogical library Footprints, in Harlan, was my best source for courthouse records and family genealogies. The
Courier-Journal
of September 23, 1889, gives Wilson Lewis's version of the feud, which is self-serving.

The
Kentucky Explorer,
published by Charles Hays of Quicksand, Kentucky, is probably the best source I found for data on the Breathitt County wars. The issues of April, May, and June 1989 give pretty full accounts. One of the best eye-witness accounts of the feud is a long feature by the late Tom Wallace in the
Louisville Times
of May 22, 1959, in which Wallace recalls the Hargis-Marcum fight and a hilarious interview with James Hargis. The
Hazel Green Herald
also carries a long story on the hanging of Bad Tom Smith at the Breathitt County Courthouse, and in the July 15, 1885, issue, a long defense of Breathitt County by the Reverend Dickey. The issue of March 25, 1885, has an article about Dickey and the schools.

My best source for data on the Perry County French-Eversole war has been Allen Watts of Cincinnati, formerly of Letcher County, who is currently writing a history of the French-Eversole clash that will be far more extensive than my condensed version. Mr. Watts furnished me copies of the
Hazel Green Herald,
and his letters gave me valuable insights into the personalities of Fult French, Susan Eversole and her son Harry. The
Herald
was a major source of regional news stories and other news of the time.

Otherwise, dependable accounts of the French-Eversole War are hard to
find. Perhaps the best are: the
Kentucky Explorer,
June 1988; the
Hazel Green Herald
for November 13, 1888 (the letter from Judge Lilly refusing to hold court in Perry unless he was given troops for protection); the November 14, 1888, issue for its account of the fight on Hazard Courthouse Square, and related stories on September 1, 15, 22, and November 24, 1886; June 1, July 6, August 12, and October 7, 1887; November 2, 1889; September 3 and 10, 1890; May 15 and November 21, 1891; April 22, 1892; September 27, 1894; January 3, April 25, May 2, 9, and 23, August 22 and 29, September 26, and December 19, 1895; the
Boone County Recorder
for February 11, 1891; the Dickey Diaries for April 26, 1898; notes from the
Record of the D.A.R. Perry County History,
1910; the
Cincinnati Enquirer,
June 27, 1895; and the
Louisville Commercial,
May 30, 1895, April 21, 1896, and November 16, 1899. All carry accounts of the Perry County or Breathitt County troubles. Nearly all of the Hazel Green stories were furnished by Allen Watts. Clippings from the
Cincinnati Enquirer
were given to me by Stanley DeZarn. Dr. Samuel Thompson of Louisville helped me with the Filson Club files.