History of
Corporal Fess Whitaker

COPYRIGHT 1918
FESS WHITAKERTHE STANDARD PRINTING CO. INCORPORATED
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

        The strong characteristics of the men and women who, with unexampled courage, endurance and patriotic devotion achieved so much with so little means and in the face of obstacles so great, could but impress themselves upon the people of Letcher County. From

the first mothers they have escaped that sign of Athenian decadence, the restless desire to be ever hearing and telling some new thing to show what good people Letcher County has.

        This book claims to be but an epitome of the History of Fess Whitaker; but it will be found to contain a general account, to which interest he has taken by an uneducated man, special and particular incidents, etc. The adult or educated mind will read far more between the lines than is found in the book. The author trusts that he has imparted to the short stories something of that spirit which should be impressed upon the people whose minds and character are still in the formative state - an admiration of their own country and a pride in its past, the surest guarantees that in the future her fair fame will be enhanced, her honor maintained and her progress in all right lines be steadily and nobly promoted.

HISTORY OF CORPORAL
FESS WHITAKER

        FESS WHITAKER was born June 17, 1880, in Knott County, Kentucky. Knott County is located in the mountains of Kentucky between the Big Sandy River and the north fork of the Kentucky River. There are no railroads in Knott County but there is lots of fine coal (what is known as the Amburgey seam), and lots of fine timber. Hindman is the county seat. Knott County has fine churches and schools and good roads, and, no doubt, the best farming county in the mountains.

        When I was only six years old my father swapped farms with Tood Stamper and put the Whitakers together in Letcher County and the Stampers together in Knott County. My mother was old Kelly Hogg's daughter, and in time of slavery my Grandfather Hogg swapped a foolish negro to Mr. Mullins of Knott County, for a good farm worth $10,000 today, known as the Black Sam Francis farm now. Mr. Mullins thought lots of his little negro and called him his Shade, meaning that he could rest and the negro could work. But when the greatest man that ever has been elected President of the United States of America, Abraham Lincoln said slavery was not right and

released the shackles from four million slaves, Mr. Mullins lost his farm and his little negro "Sam Hogg Mullins," too.

        When I was six years old my parents went back to Rockhouse, a tributary to the north fork of the Kentucky

River, now one mile from the little town of Blackey, or the old Indian Bottom Church. The same year that my parents moved to Rockhouse my father, who was the late I. D. Whitaker, Jr., died. He was the son of S. A. Whitaker, known so well in Kentucky and Missouri. After the death of my father

my mother was left with eight poor little orphan children to raise, six boys and two girls. The boys' names are very funny; they are, according to name and age: Fred and Fess, Little and Less, Gid and Jim, and all the rest. And all the rest were the two girls, Julia and Susan.

        My mother was left with a very good farm of about 125 acres, and the Rockhouse Creek ran right through the center of it. During those days every spring we had what was known as big tides. The late Bill Wright was the greatest logger and splash-dam man in the mountains of Kentucky. The next year after my father died Mr. Wright had five big splash-dams in the head of Rockhouse and Mill Creek and had between ten thousand and fifteen thousand big poplar saw logs in the dams, and when he turned those five dams loose there was no land or fence left below. So that same spring he cleaned our farm on both sides of Rockhouse and in about ten days here he came with twenty- eight big, strong mountain men, bedding all the logs that lodged. I will never forget what happened. They were all eatin' dinner at mother's; and one man, by the name of Sol Potter, was eatin' big onion blades and he got choked and got his breath all that evenin' through the onion blade, but by good luck Mr. Potter is a real rich man in coal land below Hemphill leased to Parson Brothers and Big Jim Montgomery, and in that bunch of log- bedders was Henry Potter, of Kona, another rich man of the mountains, and a brother to Sol Potter and also a brother-in-law of ex-Jailer Hall. Mr. Wright, the owner of the logs and dams, was murdered by Noah Reynolds just above his home, now Seco. Reynolds

was sent to the penitentiary for life and served seven years and was paroled by Governor Beckham. Reynold's is now a Baptist preacher and lives in Knott County. The Southeast Coal Company is now operating on Mr. Wright's land at Seco, Ky.

        After the big tide and all the rails gone and big saw-logs laying out in the bottoms in the corn in April, we had no money, so us boys finished making the crop and minded the stock out of our corn with the dogs until fall. There was no such a thing those days as wire fences, and in the fall we went to the mountains and cut and hauled in rail timber and made rails back out of big white oak trees or black oaks worth $25 per tree now. We would cut and saw the cuts to make the rails out of about eight feet, would split and burst them open with two good wood gluts and iron wedges and a good old seasoned hickory mall, weighing about thirty pounds. After we got our corn and fodder laid up for winter the people would go many miles to an old horse mill to get cornmeal ground. Everyone would take their turn grinding. They would put their horse into the mill, put their corn in the hopper and then get a switch and start the old horse around. And in about one hour he would have about one bushel of good meal. There were only three mills within fifty miles square. Old Levi Eldridge had one on Rockhouse, and old Pud Breeding had one on Breeding's Creek, and old Fighting George Ison one on Line Fork.

        When I was eight years old my mother started me to an old water mill with two bushels of corn to get meal and put me on an old mule named "John," put a spur on my right heel to make the old mule go if

he took the studs. So I was just going across Burton Hill and, like a boy, I wanted my mule to trot, so I applied my spur and he started and I began to bounce around on the saddle, and the tighter I clinched my legs the faster the old mule got, so he ran through big ivy and laurel patch and threw me off. By luck I only got skinned up a little bit, so I finally caught old "John" and took off my spur and got back on the old mule. It was a very cool, frosty morning, so I went up about two miles to where the late 'Esquire Whitaker lived and I got down to warm. I hitched my old mule to the gate and fixed my corn on better and went into the house. After I got warm I went back out and got on my old mule and went on to the mill at Ben Back's. I got down to take my corn off and there was no corn, so I took back down the road huntin' for my sack of corn. I went back to where I warmed and there I found my sack torn all to pieces. While I was warming the old cows pulled it off of my saddle and the hogs drug it over a cliff of rocks and eat it all up. So I went home and mother sure did fix my back, and then we shelled another sack of corn and mother took it, because it was noon and no bread and a houseful of children and no bread to eat.

        I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I only clucked and motioned for what I wanted. Lots of people thought I was an idiot because I could not talk. I may have looked like one, for I was a little old country boy that never cut my hair in those days only about twice a year, and I wore a big checked cotton shirt and old jeans pants made by my mother and old yarn socks, and 70-cent stogie shoes with brass toes. This was my winter suit and my summer suit was only a big yellow factory shirt and no hat or shoes.

        At the age of ten I was taken by my mother and uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, Ky., the county seat of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. We rode an old mare named "Kate," without any saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an idiot sure enough. So when Judge H. C. Lilley opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken me before the judge. The

judge ordered old Black Shade Combs, then the sheriff, to summons twelve jurors and two doctors. One doctor thought I had been born an idiot, and Dr. S. S. Swaingo, of Jackson, held out that I was all right of mind, and so the case was put off until 10 a. m. Tuesday. Then Dr. Swaingo got old Dr. McCray and gave me a thorough examination. The doctors found by examining my neck,

where the small tits in one's neck are, that the tit in my neck had grown together. After the doctors cut the tit loose in my neck I began to talk and to have a good joke. The doctors took me to a one-horse barber shop and had my hair cut and fixed me up and presented me on Tuesday morning to Judge Lilley, and he was surprised beyond reason that I was Fess. So that was Fess's first miracle. Later on they have all been worked out to the present.

        When my mother took me back home everybody was surprised and people came miles and miles to see the boy that was so much talked about and to see the boy that had been made to speak after ten years of worthless tongue.

        I was put in school at the age of ten years and was known as the funny schoolboy. The children would all laugh at me because I could not talk plain, but it did not take me very long to learn how to stand ahead in my classes. I was very fast to learn in all the books they had those days except arithmetic. The first school I ever went to was in an old log house dobbed with mud, with an old-fashioned chimney made out of mud and sticks of wood. The late W. T. Haney, who was murdered on the head of Little Carr, of Knott County, for $30.00, was the teacher. He was known one day as being the best- read man and no doubt the best educated man in Eastern Kentucky those days. He was the father of John Haney, of Chicago, the expert railroad man, and the stepfather of George M. Hogg, one of the leading men in Eastern Kentucky. Mr. Haney, after hearing all of the children's lessons in the afternoon, would lay down in an old country wash trough for a nap of sleep. The

trough was made out of a fine large yellow poplar, eight feet long, and hauled out of the mountains with a yoke of steers. The log was hewed square on one side with a sixteen-inch broadax, then eight inches left at each end and the remainder was hulled out to a big trough, then two holes were bored in the bottom of each end of the trough and four wooden legs, made by hand, were driven into the trough and set up. In the inside of the trough at one end at the bottom was a hole bored and a pin made to fit so that it could let the water out. The water was "hit"and put in the tub and when the "wimen" began to wash they would have what was known as battling sticks and they would apply the water and soap on the clothes and lay them on the eight-inch end of the trough and begin to battle. The old troughs have about all played out of fashion, as the galvanized tubs were brought in and have taken the day; still there is many a one used up to the present day. The soap they used those days was the best of soap. The men folks would cut and haul in out of the mountains so many white oak and hickory trees. They would cut and saw them up and pile them up in a big pile and burn them to get the ashes. After the ashes were cooled off they took them and poured them into a gum called those days that was sitting on some boards that the gum was made to lean on. After staying nine days, on the old moon, water was poured in the gum on the ashes and the red lye began to drop and run out of the bottom into another trough, made like the washin' trough but smaller. After the lye leaked out good and got all the strength out of the ashes, the lye was put in an old country fashion pot and the hogs' guts that had been washed and dried and strung on a pole in the corner of the old

chimney was taken down and put in the pot with the lye. The lye was so strong it soon ate up the hogs' guts and boiled to a jelly- like substance and taken off and put in old big round gourd raised on the farm. The gum that held the ashes was a hollow tree cut down and burnt out inside and sawed into about four-foot lengths for gums.

        The second school that I went to was taught by little Sammie Banks, of Big Cowen. Sammie boarded with my mother, and after the five months' term of school was out Preacher Jim Caudill made up a subscription school at the mouth of Rockhouse at $1.00 each and mother signed for five, and she had no money, but had a good nerve. The first week I went mother took me up in her lap and tried me in arithmetic where the teacher had me, and I knew nothing about it. The teacher was pushing me too fast. Mother told me that she would try me one more week and if I could not do anything in the arithmetic by the next Friday that she would give me a good whipping. So the next Friday came and I had not learned anything, so I played off sick about 11 o'clock that morning at school and went out of the schoolhouse and began to play off crazy, and my sister Julia, now Mrs. J. D. Stamper, of Big Springs, Tex., ran after mother. There being no medical doctor within forty miles, they brought a charm doctor, Andy C--, rubbed me and charged mother five dollars for it and claimed I had been poisoned very bad, so by Monday I was ready for school. And mother told me what would happen Friday if I could not do anything with my arithmetic. So I tried, and Friday evening mother tried me and I was in long division, but I could not do anything. She got me up in her lap and tried her

best to show me, but all in vain. So she put me down and laid the book upon the table and took me by the hand and led me to a large cedar tree and broke her a good switch and began whipping me. She whipped me until she gave out, and sat down on a large rockpile to rest and stood me up and talked to me

while she was resting. After she got through resting she raised and gave me the same dose again; then she took me back in the house and got me up in her lap and began to show me about my lesson, and it jumped in my head like a falling star, and from that time until the present date I challenge the State of Kentucky in the arithmetic. That was my second miracle.

        The third school I went to was taught by Eddie Brown, on Burton Hill, in a new log house, with no

chimney and no floor in the house and a big fire in the middle of the house. I always had the rest of the children beat by this time. I was twelve years old and past and had begun to get to be a pretty mean boy on account-of so many people picking at me. Eddie Brown, the teacher, told us children if we were not good children that the "Old Bugger Man" would come and get us. So the"Bugger Man" sure did come the next school. I was thirteen years old then, and Wesley Banks had been employed to teach the school, and by this time the school had the name of having the meanest lot of boys in it of any other school in Letcher County. I was called the leader. There were four of us called bad - Mason Whitaker, Ben McIntar, Print Ison and myself. Mr. Banks took charge of the school on July 5, and all the children's parents came in to see the new teacher. So the teacher got up to talk and open his school. He was a very homely mountain man, and the first thing he said was:"This school has an awfully bad name and I understand that Mr. Eddie Brown teached this school last year and told you all that the "Bugger Man" would come if you were not good school children. Now, I am the 'Bugger Man.'"

        When he said that every child threw its eyes on him.

        "Next one I call their name please come around to where I now stand," said the teacher.

        The first name called was Fess, then Print, Mase and Ben. So we all went around to where the teacher was and he said: "Boys, I have bin told that you four boys have bin very bad boys in school, so I am going to turn a new leaf."

        My heart was in my neck, for I knew that Mr. Banks had already brought in twelve long green oak switches before opening school.

        "Fess," said he, "it's reported to me that you are the meanest," and he took me by the hand and sure did like to beat me to death and when he got through with me he told

me to take my seat. Then he took Print next and gave him the same, then Mase, and while he was whipping Mase a large splinter flew off the switch and across a twenty-foot house and stuck in under the shoulder blade of the back of Less, a brother of Fess. Then he had to take a pair of old home-made tooth pullers that had been made in a

blacksmith shop by big Jim Back, of Caudill's Branch, and pull out the splinter. After all that he gave Ben the same dose as he did us. He then said that the school had opened, and gave us our lessons. He only had to apply his new rule once. After the free school was out the same old Baptist preacher, Jim Caudill, got up a subscription school again that winter.

My mother had rented part of her farm to Joe Brown, of Cumberland River, and he had eight boys, and one, by the name of Criss, was very bad. Along during the second week Criss done something and the teacher went to whip him and he bucked on the teacher, so the good old teacher, about sixty years old, put the whipping off until he could see the father of Criss. So that

night Criss made him a wooden pistol and wired a big forty-four cartridge hull on the end of it and made a fuse hole in the end of it and filled it with black powder and drove a stick in on the powder and took it with him to school. The teacher had seen the boy's father and told him about the trouble and the father said to be sure and whip him, so he called for Criss to come around and get his whipping, and instead of going up he ran out of the house and the teacher followed him, but all in vain. So the teacher came back into the schoolhouse and sat down in the chair and started giving out a spelling lesson. The schoolhouse was on old-fashioned log house dobbed with mud, and some of the mud had fallen out of the cracks of the schoolhouse. With his big forty-four cartridge hull loaded he sighted it right at the teacher's old bald head and struck a match and touched it to the fuse hole and the old wooden gun went off and the wooden bullet struck the old man right in the head. He jumped up and dismissed the school, very badly scared and bleeding, and never did teach another school. So the next year they got the "Bugger Man" teacher again and everybody came out to see him open his school the same as they did before.

        Wesley Banks, at the age of thirty, did not know a letter in the book and began going to school, and at the age of thirty-three received a third class certificate and began teaching and now has taught forty-six schools in Letcher County thirty-seven years in succession without missing, and very near whipped every boy in Letcher County. He was at one time called the best teacher in Letcher County.

        At the age of fourteen I became head of the family, as my older brother, Fred, became grown at the age of sixteen and, there being no father to make him mind, he ran around the country one year, doing no good. At the age of eighteen R. B. Bentley, with both legs off, then County Court Clerk of Letcher County, took him into his home and finished his education for him. He is now a well-to-do-farmer and stockman of Richmond, Ky.

        After I became head of the family mother went off one Sunday and myself and the four younger boys run a year-old colt in the stable and we had just killed some hogs, so we got the hogs' bladders off of the hogs' guts and blew them up and filled them up with white beans and they sure would rattle. So I tied three bladders to the colt's tail and opened the door and turned the colt out. There was a large apple orchard all around the barn, it being about four acres square. So the colt started, its tail in the air, then under its belly, then between its legs, scared to death, and just simply burning the wind. " 'Pon my honor," when it got to the other end of the orchard it turned to come back and its tail hit an apple tree, causing one of the bladders to burst. Talk about jumping! The colt went up in the air about ten feet, and when it hit the ground it made an awful funny noise and started for the barn. Us boys got out of the way and when it got within ten feet of the barn it made a long jump for the door. and just as it went to go through the door it struck its hip against the side of the door and knocked one of its hips out of place.

        Just as soon as mother came home the other boys told on me, so I sure did get some more of that oak tea just like Wesley Banks gave me, and my mother sure was mad.

        My mother was a Hogg before her marriage, and sure could whip and whip with a good constitution. I am now fifteen years old and in school and the best attendant in Letcher County. There were about twenty young men and thirty young girls in my class. The school was mostly composed of Bankes, Isons, Fraziers, Caudills, Backs, Hoggs and Whitakers. Burton Hill is located about two and one-half miles from the mouth of Rockhouse. It is a beautiful place and about twenty acres square and all level, covered with large black pines, cedars, ivy and laurel and lots of mountain tea grows there. It lies in the bend of Rockhouse Creek, and the creek runs very near all around it. It is now owned by Less, brother of Fess, of Amarillo, Tex. That is where the late Wesley Collins and Daw Adams built the first church in the lower end of the county. And the first preacher I ever saw was then.

        Mother had washed us all up and put a clean shirt on us boys and taken us up to church. Mr. Collins opened up the church like the old Regular Baptists do nowadays. After church was opened Mr. Adams was the first preacher. He was then about forty years old and had been married seven times and stood about six feet and four inches on the ground, and holds the world's champion horse-swapping medal. He had two big long cowboy spurs, one on each foot. and his boots had the pictures of the moon and stars on top of them. So Mr. Adams opened the song book and

gave out an old-fashioned song and asked everybody to help sing, and after the song he took his text. Don't remember just what it was, but according to his faith Adams was carried off in a trance and he was squatting and yelling and said "Brothers and sistern, if this doctrine is from the Lord it's all right, and if it's

from Daw A. it's no good," and about that time he drove those two big cowboy spurs into his thighs and he gave a great yell and everybody had to laugh. So Mr. Adams never got up to preach any more from that day until this, but he is a good old Baptist Christian and professed a hope a few years ago and was baptized at Mayking, Ky., where he was born and reared up. Mr. Adams belongs to one of the largest generations

in the country and is well liked and thought of by everybody. His great-grandfather came over here the same time that Daniel Boone did, and Boone settled at Kona and Adams at Mayking. Those days times were rough in Letcher County; a moonshine still was in very near every hollow and a blind tiger everywhere. And Adams was a big-hearted fellow and fell on the church that day to get to skin some good old man out of his horse or mule.

        Mr. Collins, the other preacher, died some years ago in the asylum at Lexington. He died in good faith and died a regular Baptist, and belonged to a large generation of people and good parents. One of his sisters sailed from New York on February 23, 1918, as head of the Salvation Army in France. You will always find the Collins' trying to live in the faith and always doing something good for their neighbors. Those were the first preachers I had ever seen. I had never been taught anything about churches or Sunday-schools, but since that day I have seen all kinds of churches.

        Just before the end of school the late Elijah Banks, who lived on the head of Montgomery Creek on the north fork of the Kentucky River that empties into the river in Perry County, in the great coal fields of Eastern Kentucky, had four grown boys in school, so they set in begging my mother to let me go home with them on Friday evening, and at last my mother consented to let me go. So after school was out Friday evening we all started for Montgomery Creek, about eight miles through the mountains.

        We went down to the mouth of Caudill Branch at the three big cliffs of rock, up Caudill Branch to the

mouth of Whitaker Branch, and up Whitaker Branch and across a big mountain well covered with white oak, chestnut oak, red oak and chestnuts and three big coal veins under same; No. 3 veins four feet thick, No. 4 veins six feet thick, and No. 7 veins seven feet and eight inches thick. Over in head of right-hand fork of Elk Creek down we go, and down that fork to the mouth at Uncle Dave Back's and then up a steep hill to the top, and there we found a nice level country, 2,097 feet above sea level, and one of my father's sisters lived there, Aunt Peggie Dixon. All of them came out to see me, and after we left there we went around through the flat woods, and as we went through the flat woods the Banks boys told me that Thomas Gent, a big, rough nineteen- year-old boy, had knocked out Press Hensley's black cow's eye and they wanted me to whip him and they would give me twenty- five cents for it. I told them I would do it. I had the twenty-five cents on my mind, and it was my first piece of money to get, should I win. I made up my mind to win. So now we were around in the flat woods to where Press Hensley lived. The Banks boys. called out Hensley and asked about his old black cow getting her eye knocked out. He went on and told all about it, and it sure did go in on my brain, so we had to go down a little steep place through a big chestnut orchard to where the G. boy lived. I went in and asked where the boys were and the old folks said that they were around in the Rich Gap field. That pleased the Banks boys, so just as we got in sight of the field I met Thomas, a very big man, weighing about 140 or 150 pounds. I asked him about knocking the cow's eye out, and, like a mountain man, he said he did. Just as he said it I struck him in the stomach with my left

hand and on the chin with my right hand and he struck the ground, and onto him I went and into his face. I skinned it in a thousand places and I got up and asked for my price of twenty- five cents, which was gladly paid. We all went on rejoicing over the hill to where the boys' father lived.

        I never had a better time in my life than I did on that trip, and I also won a title in the fighting ring. The boys' father had thirty- six big, fat bee gums and he got an old rag and tied it on a stick and set it on fire that made a smoke and then took it and robbed a bee gum and taken out a dishpanfull of fine linn honey. Aunt Bettie Ann, now dead, had plenty of good homemade sugar all molded out in teacups and she gave me plenty of it. The boys' father told me all kinds of big war tales and country tales. He sure was a great hand to tell tales, and good company.

        We all went wild-hog hunting on Saturday and caught two big wild hogs, then that evening us boys all went down Montgomery Creek about three miles to Wash Combs' to a big country dance. There were about twenty girls and boys and a good banjo and fiddle. They sure could dance some of that old country dancing. Along about 11 o'clock they all got to courtin'. They laid across the beds and hugged each other those days. That was the style. After all the beds were full and no more room on the beds to court they would sit in each others' laps and hug each other. I went to sleep and they put me on a pallet on the floor in the corner of the house. At 4 o'clock in the morning the boys woke me up and we all went back up to the boys' father's.

        So Sunday evening we all went back over the mountain to our school. That was one great trip that will never be forgotten, and my first trip away from home. I learned on that trip to have a nerve and to have faith in myself.

        After the free school was out my mother took me up to old Shade Combs', sixteen miles up on Rockhouse, to a winter school. Shade Combs was a first cousin to my mother, and he remembered the time when he was the sheriff and they had brought me to Whitesburg to try and get me on the county and we had some good jokes about it. Mother stayed all night and next morning she put me in school. Professor C. C. Crawford was the teacher, and I made myself at home and liked school fine and done well in school.

        I am now sixteen years old and out of school, grubbing and fencing and clearing land, trying to keep my brothers in school, which I did by hard work. I was known those days as the father of my brothers. During that year my sister, Julia Stamper, now of Big Springs, Tex., was plowing an old yoke of oxen named Dick and Mon, and Little, now Dr. Whitaker, of Blackey, Ky., was driving the old oxen, and I hid behind a big rockpile, wrapped up in a big white sheet, and when they came around the rockpile I jumped at the old oxen and it simply scared them to death. Their tails went in the air and they went across that field just a-flying, and old Dick got the bottom plow stuck in his side and died from the effects of it. Julia and Little ran to the house and told mother what had happened, not realizing it was me that had scared the poor old steers. So I owned it up, and I do believe

that was the hardest whipping that my mother ever gave me. It was funny, but I guess I sure did need it.

        The same year during mulberry time on Saturday we all came in about 11 o'clock in the morning for dinner. We had a large mulberry tree down next to the gate and it was awfully full and just getting ripe. So we all made a dive for the tree, five of us boys. We all got right in the top of it and began to eat. After getting

what we wanted I began to shake the tree with the boys and they all got scared and fell out. Less got two ribs broken, Little threw his left arm out of place, Gid broke his left leg, and Jim got his tailbone broke, and poor old Fess fell out at the same time and got my left thigh broke. That was an awful sight to see five brothers broke up like we were. Those days there was not a doctor in forty miles of my

mother's. She put splits on our limbs and put them in boxes to keep them straight. The boxes were made out of six-inch lumber. It did not take over thirty-three days until we were all out to work again. We were all hurt that time, so mother could not whip or quarrel at me.

        In the same year, but in the fall, mother went to catch "Old John," the old mule I went to mill on. Just as she went to put the bridle bits in the old mule's mouth he turned the other end and mother jumped back to keep the old mule from kicking her. Just as she jumped she stepped on a slantin' rock and fell and broke her right leg square in two. We had our mother carried home and her leg dressed like she did us boys, and she could not use that leg for seventy-four days. The old main stake was sick this time and we got in the hole very bad and in debt, so I had to lay up my education upon the mantle (made out of an old oak board), and on November 1 I took me a piece of raw middling meat, a piece of corn bread and two big onion heads and pulled out to look for me a job. I pulled for Stonega, as that was the nearest railroad, and no job there for a boy like me, so I went on down Callahan Creek to Mudlick and tried, and there I got me a job - the first job - and it was seventy-five cents per day, and board fifty cents per day. This job was wheeling dust from a band sawmill. After working one day and a half I white-eyed on account of the dust and they could not pay me until payday, so I took script for my pay. I then paid my board and bought canned beef and crackers with the rest. That night I caught a boxcar of coke and the train left Appalachia, Va., at 8:40 p.m. for Corbin Ky., and I began then my first

hoboing. I was on my first train, and on the third day I was set off at Knoxville, Tenn., so I began hollering and some stranger broke the seal, as I heard them call it then, and got me out of the car and took me to a machine shop and told me to wash myself, and I did. I was just as dirty as a black man not to be black. After the whistle blew for dinner I walked up to the upper end of the yard watching and trying to find out how to catch a train that would take me back to Stonega, Va., for I was sure tired of hoboing. So late that evening I met a colored man walking up through the yard and I asked him where he was going and he told me he was going to try and catch a through drag of empty coke cars for Stonega, and that pleased me to death, and I asked him how far we were from Stonega and he replied about 350 miles. So he said for me to go with him, and I did, and when we got to the upper end of the yard we met another white man headed for Cumberland Gap on our road. So when night came we all went up a little ways out of the yard and made us a bed down by a pile of railroad ties and made a fire and were going to catch the first freight that went up the hill that night. So my two partners asked me to go out to some of the houses and beg us something to eat. I went and knocked on the first door I came to and a nicely dressed lady came to the door and asked me what I wanted and I told her a nice story that I had learned from my partners. The good lady went and brought me a little wooden tray full and some nice biscuits baked out of baking powder, which are fine while they are hot, and after they get cold they are not like sour milk bread, they are hard. So the good lady said to me: "Young boy, I am not giving you these biscuits for your sake. I am giving them to you for Christ's sake."

        I thanked her and looked her right in the eye and said, "For God's sake put a little butter on those biscuits for me."

        The good lady laughed at me and took my name, which I gave her, and she gave me some very good advice, and it is still in my heart today. I bade her good-bye and went back to my partners. They were very well pleased, and after we had supper we talked awhile and they taught me how to hobo, or catch a freight train, and told many hobo stories around the firelight.

        We all laid down about 9 o'clock that night on the ground by a good fire. It was getting cool, that being in the early part of November. When I woke up my two partners were gone and I ran just as fast as I could up the hill after a passenger train. After I came to myself I could hardly believe I had done what I had, so I went back down the track to where our camp fire was burning, and there I found the colored man's old cap and my hat gone, so of course I put the old cap on. I did not know what to do, so I decided to make a start back towards Knoxville. I was then about three miles out of the city, and right in the upper end of the yard I met two men. They tried to raise a talk with me and went out to one side and talked and then came back to me and asked me some more questions and finally they took me with them and stopped behind an old dark house about two hundred yards from where they met me and began to whisper, and I believe as I am living today they meant to kill me. And in less than a second it turned as bright as the brightest day you ever saw all around me about three feet square. And those two men just

simply flew, and just that minute it turned dark again and I flew the other way and in about two hours daylight broke and I walked down in the yard to where a large train was made up, as they are called. I crawled into one of the big hoppers and in about ten minutes they coupled a large engine to it and I heard the engine blow two long whistles and about that time a man stuck a big pistol right in my face and told me to get out of there and to get out d--n quick. I bounced the ground in a hurry and begging and rolling on the ground playing that I had sprained my ankle. The man tried to make me walk, but I still played off cripple. He told me to sit down and he asked me what I was doing there and I simply told him the truth and he got sorry for me and told me that he would turn me loose this time, but watch out for the second time. I asked him to get me a walking cane, which he did, and I started hopping along up through the yard. Just as soon as I got out of sight I threw my cane away and sat down and took a good, long, hearty laugh and then got up and walked seven miles to the nearest railroad station, and while there I met an old soldier making his way for Stonega and when the train stopped it happened to be a water tank station, and while they were taking water my soldier partner broke the seal and it was a carload of hay for Stonega. We both jumped in and the next morning we were setting in front of the Big Red Stable at Stonega. I got me a place to board and the second day got a job in the mines trapping at 90 cents per day. Later on I got a job driving a hard-tail, or a mule, in the mines at $1.30 per day. On the 20th day of February I went home on a visit and took mother and the four boys in the lower room and poured out

on the bed $23.00, all in one-dollar bills. They were all scattered out on the bed. Everybody thought that was some sight. That much money those days and money was scarce. I told mother that it was for them all and for her to keep the boys in school and I would go back to my job and make some more.

        On the seventh day of May the mine foreman put me to running an old-fashioned Jeffries motor. I worked one month on that job and went home again. It was thirty-three miles across the big Black Mountains and across the Cumberland River and then across the Pine Mountains to old Uncle Oby Fields' on the head of Big Cowan Creek, then across a small hill onto the head of Kingdom Come (the creek which John Fox, Jr., wrote his two books on), and down Kingdom Come to the mouth of it and then down the river seven miles to my mother's at the mouth of Rockhouse. That was a pretty good walk for a boy only seventeen years old.

        I gave my mother on this trip $45.00 and she was awfully pleased with me and said: "Fess, we need the money bad enough, but you air gittin' 'long bad in yer education, and I can't hardly stand ter see yer do that."

        "After I get the other boys where they can take care of theirselves I'll finish my education," I replied, "I am now going to jine the army."

        During the Spanish-American War, February 12,1898, I enlisted for two years or long as the war lasted. I was signed to Company L, Fourth Kentucky Volunteers, and was stationed at Lexington. After I had been signed to my company there was a big fellow come around and asked something smart,

thinking he was one of those smart fellows, and before he could think I had knocked him down with a big garbage bucket and I had him whipped before he found it out. That built my reputation during my service in Company L.

        My Captain was Ben B. Golden, of Barbourville Ky., and before time to discharge us volunteers after peace was made the Captain resigned and H. J. Cockron was signed as Captain of Company L. And when the First Sergeant, James Day, of Whitesburg, Ky. made out all the discharges for the Captain to sign the Captain came in the office at Anniston, Ala., where we were discharged, to sign the discharges and he took up with the Sergeant alphabetically and asked about each man whom he did not know personally When he came to my name he asked the Sergeant if that was the man that laughed so much and the Sergeant told him it was, so he had me put down excellent character. Then Captain Cockron signed the discharges.

        During the time we were in camp at Lexington some of the boys in my company got body lice all over them and I got scared and took my dog tent and stretched it up under some hedge trees next to the railroad track, and the first night the train went by at 11 o'clock and she whistled some awfully large yells and scared me and I jumped up in my sleep and tore my dog tent all to pieces. I thought the train was running over me. So the next day I fixed my tent up and got me some wheat straw and made me a bed and ditched the water around my tent and it sure did do some raining that spring and my bed rotted. Sleeping in so damp a place I took the fever and

was taken to a hospital. After three days I was taken out of that hospital and put in a division hospital, where I just did live. After three months in the hospital some of the boys told me if I could make my temperature register 98 degrees three times in succession I could get out, and the same fellow told me how to do. He said when the thermometer was put in my mouth and I caught the doctor looking off to draw my breath hard so as to cool the thermometer, which I did, and on the fourth day the doctor ordered the nurse to bring in my uniform and to let me set up some. So when they brought that dear old uniform it was rolled up in a dear old American flag that I had offered to sacrifice my life for. The doctors had given me up to die and had ordered the nurse to wrap my clothes up in the flag so it would be placed with me. It was over one-half of the time that I did not know anything, but when I did come to myself mother was the first I thought about. She had been notified, but on account of being so poor, no money and so many miles away from the railroad she could not come, but waited in great patience to hear from me. The first letter I received after I could tell the nurse who my mother was and her address I got a letter in return in a few days and it is still written upon my heart in large American tears like the dear old mothers are shedding for their loved ones who are in France today in those cold trenches and dugouts and mud and water up to their waists and the top of the earth covered with snow and ice nine feet thick, fighting for the freedom of America, which we are sure to win if God lets this world stand, and I believe we will win this war during 1918.

        After I got my uniform and put it on with many wrinkles in it after being rolled up for about four months, I sure did look funny. I was so thin the sun shined through me. After about twelve days I got able to go and I was put in an ambulance and taken to the Southern Depot at Lexington and transported to Anniston, Ala., where I was signed back to my old company. When I walked up through my company street there was the worst surprised set of young men I ever saw. They all thought I was dead and had forgotten me, but when they realized it was sure Fess they all sure did rejoice.

        As soon as I got strong enough to do guard duty I was put on guard over at Division Headquarters. I was put on the third relief and I dreaded to see night come. But about 11:30 that night the corporal of the guard woke me up and said: "Get up, third relief."

        I got up, straightened myself up and got my belt and gun.

        "Outside, third relief," he said, and lined us up and started around with us. I was put on first post. My beat was from the guardhouse to the end of No. 2 post, where there was a large tent stretched up On the inside were two big dry goods boxes and a dead man stretched on each box covered with a white sheet. The corporal and the man I relieved told me that I was not to let any dogs or cats eat on those men, and every round I was to go in and look at them. That made the cold chills run all over me and my hair stood straight up.

        It was in the latter part of May and the wind was blowing and it was cloudy. The clouds were running like they do lots of times when the moon is shining.

My post was up on a ridge and the railroad yard was down on one side and the engine was running up and down through the yards and the old bells ringing and on the other side was an old coralle and every once in awhile you could hear an old mule blowing his whistle sounding just like "How are you, Fess?" On my second round when I got up in about ten feet of the tent and the flaps were flapping awfully and scared me very bad, but I went in and looked at the dead men. When I started back, walking very fast, an old cat about twenty feet of me went "meow." I am sure I could have heard it one-half mile and it just simply scared me to death, and when I got to the guardhouse I loaded my gun and got my back up against the tent and there I stood until I saw the first relief coming to relieve me. Nobody knows how good I felt when I saw the light coming down the ridge to relieve me.

        I came off post duty at 10 o'clock and I was asked to stay and assist the doctors in operating upon those two dead men, which I did. I had to light their cigars and put them in their mouths while they were cutting them up. They took their insides out and put them in a dishpan, cut their heads open and took their brains out separately and took their backbones out and cut into twenty-four pieces. The soldiers were dying from a disease called spinal meningitis and they were trying to stop it. After the operation their bodies were put back together and well dressed and put in caskets and shipped home. After I got my rest on guard I was picked out of the company and put in the kitchen to help John Gibson cook, which job I held until discharged in 1899. After I was discharged in

1899 I returned to my old Kentucky home back in the mountains, forty miles from the railroad, which I had to walk.

        After I spent thirteen days with my mother I slipped off and walked to Jackson, Ky., a distance of sixty-five miles, and enlisted for two years and was sent to Cuba and was signed to Col. Teddy Roosevelt's brigade. That was where Teddy and I first met. He soon took a liking to me, and after the Battle of Santiago Teddy, without a wound and I with a bullet wound in my left arm, took me by the hand and said: "Fess, we have gained a great battle for our country. You or I will be the next President of the

United States, and if you get the nomination I am for you, and if I get the nomination I want you to be for me, for you have a great influence in the United States."

        We shook hands and parted. So Teddy was from the North and had more votes than the South and beat me to the nomination. But I was for him and am still for him.

        After eighteen months in Cuba I was discharged and returned to my same old Kentucky home. When Teddy raised the standing army from twenty-five thousand to sixty-five thousand I became a soldier again. I was then twenty-one years old, that being August 23, 1901. For three years I served. I was

signed to the Fort Slocum (New York) Recruiting Station, and thirty days later I was signed to the "114th Company, Coast Artillery," Fort Totten, N. Y., under Capt. John W. Ruckman, Lieut. Balentine and Kesling. After I had been in that company for a few months the Top Sergeant made me chief cook, which job I held for six months. Then I asked the Top Sergeant to take me out of the kitchen, which he did. Then I had to go doing guard duty again. I soon began to be an expert orderly bucker, which I was hard to beat on. One time I know two of us boys were picked to do orderly, so we took our bayonets and cut the guard manual. McGlofin cut "C" and I cut "T" and I was beat and was given No. 2 post. The next day about 8 o'clock in the morning Capt. Landers walked up on me and said, "Why don't you arrest those two men?"

        I presented arms to him and came to port arms and asked, "What two men, sir?"

        "What two?"

        "Yes, sir," I replied.

        "Those two men going yonder," he said.

        "What for, sir?" I again asked.

        "For being drunk," he replied.

        "They are not drunk," I said.

        "I am going to prefer charges against you," he told me.

        "Very well, sir," I replied, presenting arms again to him.

        He went on down to the guardhouse to prefer charges against me, and sure enough he met two drunken men that No. 1 had let in. Old Toomy was walking No. 1 post, so the captain had his belt pulled

and put him in the guardhouse and I saw the corporal of the guard coming with one man and I knew that my time was coming next.

        So the corporal came up and said to me, "Turn over your orders," which I did. "Give me your gun and belt." I also did that. "Forward march and down to the guardhouse."

        I went, and at noon on Sunday everybody in my company was very much surprised to see me in the guardhouse after I had been beat for orderly. So in the afternoon the Sergeant of the Guardhouse sent me and Toomy to our quarters under heavy guards to get our old fatigue suits and to put our good clothes away. Monday morning I was taken out with the rest of the prisoners and lined up and counted and then signed to do certain work. I was put on the slop cart and a guard over us. We had to go to all the quarters and mess halls and get the slop and haul it off. I and Toomy were to be tried at 10 o'clock and it was raining something awful. My old campaign hat had leaked and my face was all striped with dirt, so when we got over to headquarters they put Toomy on trial first and the court placed Toomy's fine at $10 and ten days in the guardhouse. They called me in before the court and the judge read the charges to me and asked me what I had to say.

        "Not guilty, sir," was my reply.

        The judge asked me if I wanted any witnesses, and I told him I did, so he took the names of the witnesses and the commanding officer's orderly was called in and the judge told him what to do. So we started in on my case. The men that tried me were commissioned officers and I was only an enlisted man, but

we were all working for Uncle Sam, so we started in on the case and I stood in with them. After taking the proof I asked the judge to give me ten minutes to argue my case. The judge was surprised, but according to the army rules he had to grant me that privilege, and if I ever did put up an argument that was one time I did, and I soon won my case, and right there I started building myself in the army. Just after I got out of the guardhouse my old-time partner Teddy Roosevelt, the President of the United States and always doing something good for someone, had an order issued from the War Department stating that all non-commissioned officers must be first-class gunners. All of the companies were lined up and asked by the Captains how many wanted to go up for the examination. I stepped out and all of the rest of the company laughed at me. I was put in school at Fort Totten for a while and soon was taken out of school at Fort Totten and sent to Fortress Monroe, Va., to a fine army school, and from there I was sent to Governor's Island, N. Y., and from there to Fort McKinley, Maine. So after the officers thought that they had me alright I was examined under orderly No. 52-189 and was qualified as a first-class gunner. I was examined on a 14-inch gun at Fort McKinley, Maine. My target was pulled by a tugboat making sixteen knots per hour and the distance was twenty-two miles out in the ocean and I hit the target four shots out of five. The target was only 12 feet square at the bottom and 6 inches at the top, canvas stretched all around it and a 6-inch black stripe ; painted around the target. One of my shots struck the small target. The bullet which I used weighed 2,250 pounds and the powder charge weighed 640

pounds. I had to load and fire that gun every sixteen seconds. Fort McKinley is located on the banks of the Casco harbor, main channel to the Atlantic ocean, what is known to the War Department as the "She Big Bar." I was examined at Fort Totten, N. Y., on the rest of the examination, which are lots. On Long Island Sound there is one of the best army instructing schools in the army today. After I had qualified as a first-class gunner then I was promoted to a non-commissioned officer and signed back to my same old "114th Company," then I was appointed by my Captain as an instructor. I was picked out of the New York harbor of 19,000 men and put on the recruiting service on a salary of $65.00, board and railroad fare and traveling expenses and going over the country getting men for the army, which job I held until I was discharged.

        I was discharged out of the army August 22, 1904. I now hold two discharges of excellent character, first- class gunner and non-commissioned officer's warrant. Soon as I was discharged I bought me a ticket for Norton, Va., from Norton to my old mining and railroad station, Stonega, Va., and then I pulled across the Big Black Mountain through the same old way as I had traveled when a boy to my mother's home.

        Soon as I got home all of the girls began to come in to see me and I sure could court some. All the girls were struck on me because I was a soldier, and after a man has been a soldier for four or five years and gets back home and there being so many pretty girls he wants to marry. So I got struck on four real pretty girls, Susan Cornett, Tina Breeding, Mary Amburgey and the one that made the winning, Mantie Ison. When I made up my mind which one I loved best I sure set in to courtin'.

        I first got struck on my wife it was down on Caudill's Branch to "old Stiller Bill" Caudill's funeral. He had made so much moonshine that he bore the name of "Stiller Bill." He had been dead ten years and had 12 grown children, 187 grandchildren and 91 great-grandchildren to mourn his death. His funeral was preached by the old regular Baptist and Ira Combs was up preaching. It was then that I looked under a big beech tree and I saw a big, fine looking country girl. She weighed about 160 pounds, had blue eyes, black hair and big, fine, red, rosy cheeks that God had given her and she had a nose as large as a banana.

        Something went down in my heart and it really smothered me so I kept my eyes on her, and the more that I looked at her the prettier she got. Finally she got up and went out to an old country spring to get a drink, so I got up and went out to follow her. I went right to her and said, "Mantie, I am struck on you."

        "Now you are just trying to make fun of me," she said.

        "No, I mean what I say," said I, and so we began to talk and she and I went back down to where they were preaching.

        After the meeting was over I asked her what she was riding and where her horse was. She told me she was riding "old George." The horse had built a good reputation by being a good horse to tram logs. So I rode by her side home and after we got home we began sparking and after months courtin' we one Sunday were sittin' in an old-fashioned country rocking chair out in the back porch. I had her talked down and all she could do was just rock and nod her

head to what I said. She had never seen a railroad or a train of any kind and she had never been to Whitesburg, the county seat of Letcher. She had been kept out of school to help her father run his farm She could not talk up with me, so I got her head to nodding to everything I said, and I asked her what she thought about us getting married. She nodded right into it and I went home that evening tickled to death, I was so well pleased I couldn't sleep a wink that night.

        The next morning about 4 o'clock I got up and got my horse and pulled for Whitesburg to the County Clerk's office. It was a distance of about eighteen miles and was on December 13, and the worst old sloppy, muddy time ever was, but I didn't care, for I was goin' to git married.

        After I got my license I pulled back down the river and got to her home just before daybreak and went in. They all slept in one room, had five big feather beds and my sweetheart was laying in one of them. I told her to get up, that I had them.

        "Got what?" she said.

        "The license," I told her.

        She just laughed at me, and don't you know I had to set in and court her about ten more days before she would agree to marry me.

        After she agreed the second time we set the day. About seventy-five or a hundred people came in to help eat the wedding dinner, and the biggest part of them stayed for the dance. When we all started around on Elk Creek to get married I turned my horse over to my wife to ride and her father brought out an old mule for me to ride. She had the name of

being the meanest mule in Letcher County. Her name was "Dinah." So I put the saddle on and she only humped up a little, but when I put my foot in the stirrup and threw my leg across the saddle the old mule started right around the hill with me bucking and jumping. And mother began shouting and my wife liked to fainted and had to be taken off my horse After we all got straightened out we all went down on Elk Creek and the late Jim Dixon, founder of the old Regular Baptist Church of Indian Bottom, told us to stand up and to look him straight in the eye and said don't neither one of you laugh or cry. And the good old man went on and married us. Soon after our marriage we moved out to keep house in an old schoolhouse on Burton Hill.

        Mother gave me six hens and one rooster, one old sow and one pig, one cow and calf, one big feather bed and two pillows and my wife got the same from her folks.

        We started out living very nice and happy, but my mind was on rambling, as I had been traveling. On January 7 my wife became sick and I had to go after Dr. Roark on Montgomery Creek, about eighteen miles. All my father-in-law's mules were gone to Stonega after a load of goods except old "Dinah," and I was compelled to ride her. So I saddled her up about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and a man held her until I got on, then I struck out down the river and up Elk Creek across a big mountain and on to the head of Bull Creek, up Bull Creek apiece and across another hill on to the head of Montgomery and down Montgomery to the mouth of Dr. Roark's Branch, up the branch to Dr. Roark's house. I got there about

10:45 that night. Dr. Roark could not come and fixed me some medicine and I started back and went out to the fence to where I had hitched old Dinah and when I went to get on her she started down the branch kicking and bucking. I finally stopped her and got her started out O. K. down the branch, and as I went back across the mountain at the head of Montgomery it was very dark and my old friend "Dinah" got out of the road and we got lost in the top of the mountain. I got off of my old mule, took the bridle in my hand and started for the bottom of the hill and I came to a little log house dobbed with mud and a board loft, nowadays called the ceiling. I yelled and yelled and finally a man came to the door and said, "What do you want?" I asked him who lived there and he told me John Hall. I got down and went into the house and he took one of the boards out of his house loft and split it up and made a torchlight and told me how to go and went out to the fence with me. I got on old Dinah and the man handed me up the torch, made out of boards, and when I started the sparks from the torch began to fall on the old mule and she began to run and kick. After a little distance I had to throw the torch down and I was in the dark again and in the mountain. I had to let the old mule be the boss, as she could see and I could not. Finally she got in the road again and didn't stay no time until she got in under some pines where it was awfully dark and got lost again. Along about 2 o'clock in the morning I rode up to another log hut. After yelling several times someone came to the door and I asked him who lived there, and he said John Hall. There we were back to the same place again. I asked Mr. Hall if there was not another road I could take that would

get me out of there. He told me how to go through the hill to Preacher Jim Caudill's, my old school teacher. And I started off, and after about one hour I got on top of the hill and got lost again. It was so dark and I could not find my way out, as there were no moon and stars shining. So I got down and took my bridle in hand and made for the bottom and just before daylight I came to another house and hollowed and a woman came to the door and asked me what I wanted. I inquired who lived there and she told me John Hall. Now, I thought I had come to a new house on account of the woman, but when she told me John Hall lived there I thought I would fall off of that old mule I was so surprised and I simply got down and went into the house and waited until it began to break day.

        After it got light I started and finally got out of the head of Bull Creek and got back home just as they were eating breakfast. My wife very much improved.

        My father-in-law, Jeff Ison, had been elected Justice of the Peace, and J. P. Lewis had been elected Judge, and as yet no Constable had been elected, so my lather-in-law began to beg me to let him have me sworn in as his Deputy Constable. My wife cried and made fun of me, but Jeff and I got on our mules and rode to Whitesburg to court, and Judge Lewis, now Secretary of State, swore me in for the office. The first raid I got in was the arrest of twenty-two men and women, known as Barlows and Engles After I got the warrants I did not summons anybody to help me. I played Johnnie Wise and got all the dope I could on them. There were three bunches of them. I got one man to help me one night and I had to cross

a very big mountain, and about 11 o'clock in the night I was right in the head of Island Branch and I slipped up to a little old board or log house that stood on the side of the hill. It had board doors and no windows and one old big chimney and puncheon floor made out of chestnut wood. I had a mall in my hand and two good guns on me. The first thing I did was to hit the old board door with the old hickory mall with all my strength, and when I hit the door flew open just like lightning had struck it. I was in the house before you could tell how I got in, and I summoned everybody under arrest. Four men and three women came out of those old shuck beds just like wild hogs and come right at me. My man I had summoned to help me had got scared and run off and left me. I began shooting at them, not to kill, but to scare them. I knocked down two of the men and while I was putting handcuffs on them one man by the name of Nathan Engle went up the chimney and got away.

        So I brought my two men and three women over to George Whitaker's, at the head of Tolson Creek, and got breakfast. I then took them down to Jeff Ison's and fastened them up in one of his rooms. I then set out to catch Nathan Engle, the one that had got away from me. So I waylaid a small road on the top of Campbell's ridge and just as he passed I nailed him and took him and put him in the same room with the rest of them.

        The next morning I went down to Lower Caudill's Branch and got all of them except Mary Engle. She had taken refuge in a large cave just opposite Jeff Ison's on top of a high ridge. Her mother was a very poor woman and she came up and told Jeff if he would

give her ten pounds of side meat she would tell where Mary was. So they traded and Mr. Ison told me. I summoned Gid Hogg to help me make the arrest. I placed Hogg in the county road at the foot of the hill and as I was going up Elk Creek I got in behind her and was in twenty feet of her before she knew it. She made for the cave and I fired at her. Before I got to the cave I saw two bright objects back in the cave about sixty feet. I ordered her out three times and the last time began firing in the cave. I saw her start. The mouth of the cave was full of smoke and she ran by me and took right down the mountain. I took right out after her. She ran over rocks, brush, and a straight line to where I had Hogg placed. When she saw him she whirled on me and made for her bosom. About that time I nailed her and told Mr. Hogg to search her and he took a .38 bulldog pistol out from under her arm beneath her dress waist. She was so mad her teeth just rattled. She had a red calico dress on, which cost about five cents per yard, and a twenty-five-cent boy straw hat on which was painted red out of poke berries and three chicken feathers dyed blue in the right side of her hat. She was barefooted and her feet were all scratched up where she had been hiding and running around in the woods so long. So I took her in and the next day we tried them and they all were convicted and found guilty. I took them all to Whitesburg, a distance of eighteen miles, one day walking and had them all locked up in jail.

        Two years ago the same Nathan Engle betrayed his father-in- law, Billie Combs, and told him that he would go with him down in Perry County and help get his wife back, who was known as the famous horse

thief of Kentucky for a woman. So poor old Billie got him a piece of meat and bread and went with him. Nathan put him under a cliff and told him to stay and he would go around to one of the Sloans', who had taken Billie's wife, and get her to come and talk with Billie. The old man fell asleep and Nathan slipped back and shot out the old man's brains and come through that night to his mother's. The old man was found dead on the third day by an old man cow hunting. He was brought back home that day for burial, and Nathan met the train to help take care of his dead father-in-law, whom he had killed. When the train stopped at Blackey the Sheriff stepped off and captured Nathan and he was taken to Hazard and put in jail and tried and sent to the pen for life.

        In April, 1905, I was plowing a yoke of steers in the old bent field on Burton Hill and there was nothing but saw briers. My wife was helping me; she was driving. About 10 o'clock the old steers took a notion to go to the river. They raised their heads and started. My wife had a rope on one of them and tried to hold them and got her foot hung under a bunch of those saw briers and fell down. She cried awhile and then I helped her up and we quit work. The birds and the toad frogs were singing and my mind became rambling and I pulled for Texas, the old Lone Star State, and stopped in Big Springs, Texas. I soon got a job with the carpenters working some three months there. I was employed by the Connell Lumber Company, which job I held until the panic of 1907. After I was out of a job and no money, and having a wife and one child, I began to realize what I had to do. So the T. & P. Railroad shop was there and Mr. Potten was master mechanic of the shops. I laid

away for him one evening and hit him for a job. I had been told by Fred Leper when I shook hands with Mr. Potten to hold tight to his hand and tell him about Teddy and myself in Cuba and I would be granted a job. So I did what Fred told me to, and it worked just like a clock. A job there was sure worth something. A man had to work in the shop those days when the times was good about eighteen months before he could get out on the road or ever be able to fire the engine for old Uncle Johnnie. I began on Monday; one week and ten days I had worked out of the pits to a bell cleaner and I was cleaning a bell one day on one of those big Western Blair engines and George Tamset, the roundhouse foreman, come to me and told me to go out there and fire the switch engine for Uncle Johnnie. There had been a wreck up at Midland and the fireman had been taken off of the switch engine and sent to help bring in the wrecked train. So I got on the switch engine one day and Mr. Davis got mad at me because Mr. Tamset had run me around all of the roundhouse men and I was not to blame. I done the work and done it right and looked after all of the company stuff. So Mr. Davis began to say dirty things about me and finally Homer Scragins told me that Davis was carrying a gun for me and had threatened my life and would not speak to me.

        I went home and got me a good .44 pistol and put it under my overalls while I worked and at dinner I would beat the other boys back to our room. Three of us boys were using the same box to keep our dirty clothes in and put our soap and towels in. When the boys would open the box there was the .44 there.

When they got their soap and towels and go on washing I would slip the .44 back in my pocket for protection. One day I passed where Davis was working on the engine and I heard him say, "There goes that d-- r--." I had my gun on me and as I went back to where I was working he struck at me with a monkey wrench. Then the shooting began. I put everyone out of the roundhouse. Billie Lee, assistant foreman, jumped in the turntable pit, and Davis ran through into the blacksmith shop and ran over the blacksmith foreman and got away and never has been heard of since. Of course, I lost my job for fighting on duty and got tried for shooting Davis.

        Davis failed to appear against me and the judge dismissed the case. I got tried for the pistol, was prosecuted by County Attorney Brooks, now in France, and defended by Marson & Marson, and I beat the case. They never could prove when I put the pistol on me. They proved I had it in the box and I proved I had the right because my body had been threatened. I lost my job and beat my cases. I couldn't get another job and so I had enough of money to buy my wife a ticket, so I bought a ticket for her home in Kentucky by the way of Louisville and Stonega and thirty-five miles on a mule home.

        I then started on another hobo trip looking for a job. I went to the yardmaster in the Big Springs yard, whose railroad name was Bawley and told him I wanted to go to Aboline, Texas, on a freight, so he put me away in the old yard shanty and told me I would get out about 11 o'clock that night. But I failed to get out until 4 in the morning. He put me in the third car from the engine, and when I got in

the car there were two more hoboes in the car, and by the time we got to Sweetwater, Texas, there were eleven of us all in the same car, all hoboes. So we pulled into Aboline about 3 o'clock the next day. I soon found out that there would be a madeup passenger train out of there over the Wichita Valley Railroad to the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, so I went to the baggage man and showed him that I belonged to the I. O. O. F. and W. O. W. and was dead broke and got him to agree to carry me, and he told me to go up to the water tank and hide in a bunch of mesquite bushes on the right, and when the engineer or Hog Head, known among railroad men nickname for engineers, would look back for the flagman's highball and run and get between the water tank and baggage car and after he got a chance he would open the baggage door and let me in. I done all he had told me to do, but when I jumped out of that bunch of bushes to run for the train there were three more men doing the same thing. So we all caught the baggage car. After a little bit my old baggage friend opened the door and just as he did one of the hoboes jerked it back. So we all rode the end of the baggage car and put our feet on the water tank to rest our legs. We stopped over to take water and, it being very dark, the fireman did not see us. Next to the last stop the negro porter caught us and put us all off. But just as the train started on apast me I caught the rear end of the train and got on top of the coaches. They went about two miles and found out I was on top of the train and stopped the train and the flagman climbed up on top after me, but as he was climbing up on top I was going down the left side of the baggage car. I jumped off and run out in the prairie. They looked all

around and could not find me, so they pulled out again. Just about the time they had got away from me I went under the car on the rods and the fireman saw me and stopped very quick. I jumped off and hit the prairie again. This time the old Hog Head had released his engine and was helping the flagman and conductor look for me. They were all highballing the old Hog Head and got away from me, so I started out walking after the train and in about half an hour I walked into Wichita Falls, Texas.

        I went down to the yard and met the yard crew and told them what a trip I had and that I was dead broke and I had a brother that was master mechanic for the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad at Amarillo, Texas. They looked up the record and found that I was right, so they took me to the restaurant and gave me a nice breakfast and told me that I could not catch a through freight for Amarillo before 9 p. m. The first No. 19 would be due at 9 p. m., so I stayed around there until noon and hit the day crew for dinner. They were glad to give me dinner because I could tell a tale to suit anybody. I met a brother I. O. O. F. and I had a real happy day at Wichita Falls, Texas, waiting for the first No. 19 through freight.

        About 8 p. m. I goes down in the yard and meet my same old night bunch all sitting around talking. They soon knew that I was the same fellow. One of them asked me where I was from. I told him that I was from Kentucky, and he replied: Kentucky, first 19 is two hours late, and said just lay down and we will get you up in time. One of the boys put an old raincoat over me and at 11 p. m. sharp they called me and told me to get in the first car next to the engine; that

it was loaded with lumber for Amarillo, Texas. I got in at the small window in one end and put the window together and put the key in so no one could see me. The next day about 4 p. m. we landed in Amarillo. I took my key out and opened my window and climbed out; I pulled right straight across town and met an old man with a black oilcan made like the railroad cans. He was old Uncle Johnnie, the city pumper, and I asked him if he knew a man by the name of Less Whitaker and could he tell me where he lived. He took me to his home and I had never seen him for thirteen years, as he had been out West for his health seven years before I went to the army and I served six years in the army. So I knocked on the door and a nice looking Western lady came to the door whom I had never seen before, as my brother had got married in Big Springs, Texas. Of course, I was very black and dirty and had an old dirty suit of overalls on.

        I said: "Lady, is Less here?" stepping up to her.

         "You mean Mr. Whitaker?" she asked.

        "Yes, mar'm," I said.

        "He is at the shop" she replied.

        "Don't you know me?" I asked, stepping a little closer.

        "No, sir."

        "You don't? Don't you know Fess?"

        "You are not Mr. Whitaker's brother, are you?"

        "Yes, mar'm."

        She reached out her hand and asked me to come in and I thanked Uncle Johnnie and he went back.

        I told her the little story that I had been telling. I had sent my grip by express on ahead of me and could

not get it out that night, so I washed up, took a good bath and put on one of Less' suits, and while I was doing this Ethel got me supper. After supper Ethel and I struck out for the roundhouse and found Less in the office. He knew me in a moment, and we stayed until he got all of his men to work and he put Parker as foreman and we all went to the city and had a real fine time. The next day I told my brother all my troubles and he told me promotion was awful slow on the Denver railroad, and a man can never work himself out of the shop. He also told me that he could get me a job firing on the Santa Fe if I could play the game and he said that the Santa Fe made more firemen and engineers than any other railroad in the world. I told him Santa Fe for me. He took me out to the Denver shop and let me stay two or three days and he told me all he knew and showed me how to fill the lubricator, work the injector, shake the grates and explained the engine thoroughly. But there are some differences to a dead engine and one heated up.

        He took me on the fourth day to the Santa Fe shops and took me to the officer and introduced me to Mr. J. R. Cook as his brother and as an old experienced fireman of the L. & N. Railroad. So Mr. Cook replied that he had just promoted ten men and was needing firemen. So he took me down to have me examined and reported back. I got by the doctors all right and Mr. Cook gave me a blank to fill out, and of course my brother filled it out and told me how to do and what to say. Mr. Cook passed me and took my name and hung me up on the extra board. I was seventeen times out. It was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I left the number of the house where I would be so the

callboy could find me, and of course I did not sleep any that night for thinking about my new job. So the next morning about 11 o'clock I saw the callboy and he called me for a double-header engine 182 for Plainview, Texas. My brother happened to be by when I was called, and after I signed the book he began to tell me how to play the game, so I got dinner and got my things and pulled for the roundhouse. My train was already made up and engines 180 and 182 coupled together in the yard. I climbed up in the cab and there was a very nice looking gentleman filling the lubricator. He asked me my name and I told him Whitaker, and I asked his. He said George Scurry. About that time he began to screw his plug back in the lubricator and he turned the steam on too quick and the plug flew out and he had enough lubricating oil on him looked like to fill ten more just like that. He was very mad, as he had been promoted to a Hog Head the day before and he had bought a nice new railroad suit and it was awful to look at. He looked straight at me and replied, "Are you a new man or an old head h--l?"

        "I am an old head."

        "What road are you off of?"

        "The L. & N. " I replied.

        "Good," he said.

        So at 1 p. m. sharp the two Hog Heads coupled our two engines onto our train and Scurry and I got second engine onto our train. The conductor counted his cars and got the crew's names and the orders. I stood and listened to them read these just as if I knew what they meant, but I did not know anything about what they were reading, as my brother failed to tell me anything about a train order or time card. So

when everything was in readiness we pulled out. When the front engineer blew highball I took a large red handkerchief out of my pocket and tied it to one side of my cab and every time I would throw in a scoop of coal I would pretend to wipe the sweat off my face just as if I was an old head. When I started I had 160 pounds of steam and when we went through Zita I only had 80 pounds, only a distance of six miles.

        Of course, I knew nothing of how to scatter my coal with the scoop and let the draft place it. I just put it in at the door and very soon had a large black place in my fire, and after we got past Zita he looked at the steam gauge and said, "I thought you was an old head."

        "Hell! I am used to those big baffle doors; I don't know nothing about how to fire this little cook stove. If you will show me I will burn her up for you." I said.

        "Get up here on my seat," he said, "and I will show you."

        So he got down and took his scoop and scaled his fire and told me to look, then he took the clinker hook and got the coal all scattered and picked her up to 160 pounds again. He scaled his fire the second time and told me to look, then he showed me how to scatter my coal with the scoop and I thanked him, and by that time we were going through Hanny Dawn the hill to the water tank. After we left the main line for Plainview, 102 miles, I held my engine at 160 pounds and when we got to Plainview the second engine was cut out for a switch engine to load cattle and we stayed there fifteen days and I showed Scurry that I had learned to be a good fireman on those class of engines by that time. We got orders on the fifteenth

day to bring what loads we had and come in, so the engine could be washed out, and when I got in I got bumped off of my little engine and the next day I caught one of them big kind, and as soon as I got on the engine I had a new Hog Head and I told him just plainly that I knew nothing about how to fire one of those big battleships and if he would show me I would keep the putty for him. I told him I was used to the small engines and he told me to wait until he blew the highball out of Amarillo, Texas, for Wellington, Kan., and then he would show me, and he did, and I kept the putty at 220 pounds and had seventy-six cars of sheep and cattle tied to us. Before I got back on that trip of about eight days I was getting to be a pretty good fireman. It only took me about three months until I held a regular engine and was signed to a big compound engine, 1186, which I held until I was promoted to an engineer in May, 1910.

        On one trip to Cloris, New Mexico, my engineer laid off and a man by the name of Brisley was signed to my engine 1186. We were called for 5 o'clock that night, so I was on time and reported at the roundhouse and went on and got my engine and began to clean her up. In about forty minutes the engineer came. We run our engine out of the roundhouse on the turntable and turned her for the west end and pulled up and took water and coal and soon coupled onto the train. The engineer blew his sign to test the air and in about fifteen minutes two car knockers reported the air O. K. and sixty-seven cars. Pretty soon the conductor came over with the orders and read them and he also had a slow order over the bridge west of Hanny and not exceed eight miles per hour. About that time I noticed my clinker hook was

gone, so I had to go back to the roundhouse to get one, and after I got my clinker hook I went up by the caboose to let the conductor know I got one. They was about ten old passenger engineers in the caboose dead-heading to Cloris to take the

examination on air and pumps, as the air car and instructor was at Cloris. So when I got on the engine I told Brisley that we had a caboose full of old hog heads or engineers dead-heading to Cloris. He said: "I'll show them dam rascals how to run an engine."

        My engineer began to tell me that the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers were having trouble over him. He went on to say that while he was firing he joined the firemen's brotherhood and after he had been promoted to an engineer that the engineers wanted him to drop out of the firemen's brotherhood and join the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and he had refused and the engineers were knocking on him. He had been married and one of the brakemen had stolen Brisley's wife and ran away with her, and I was told later that Brisley had a real fine looking wife and he was grieving very much and had took to drinking So he was mad, drinking and in trouble and 102 miles in front of him, and so he called for a highball from the rear and received it and I will say he sure did blow a highball that time. As we went through Zita we were making sixty-one miles per hour and only seven miles to Hanny, where they always shut the throttle off and hook up his Johnson bar. When we hit the switch at Hanny I noticed Brisley dropped his Johnson bar two notches and pulled his throttle out some more and he had my fire just dancing on the grate. I thought he was getting ready to shut the engine off, as there was a very large mountain at the west end of the Hanny switch where they always shut off their engines and every once and a while take off five and six pounds of air. So it was only about three miles to the bridge to where we had the slow orders so when we passed over the hill at Hanny he did not shut the engine off. I jumped down and went to throw in a scoop of coal. About that time we hit a steep curve to the left and the coal went in the engineer's lap instead of the boiler. He was running so fast and so

got on my seat and fastened my arms in the little windows and tried to hold myself on the seat, expecting to die any moment. About this time we had hit the bridge and just as the engine hit the bridge she jumped up about three inches and by good luck when the engine came down it hit the rails all O. K. and at the foot of the hill there was a water tank and we were compelled to take water, so on account of the rate of speed she was running she run ahead of the water tank about one-half a mile, and just as he got her stopped before he could reverse her those ten Hog Heads come out of the caboose just like they had been shot out a 14-inch gun. And after he got her reversed he backed up to the water tank and took water and after he got water I simply told Brisley I was not afraid, but I did not want to be killed by a fool and refused to go, so he set in to beg me to go and I could see every inch of the road in my mind, and from there on it was uphill and I knew he could not run any more. Not thinking of coming back, I agreed to go on, so we pulled out and reached Texico about 11:50 p. m. There he got one pint of whisky and we pulled on over into Cloris and cut off from our train and put our engine away, washed up

and went to bed. We should have been called at 10 a. m. next morning, but the callboy could not find us, so we were called for 2 p. m. We got on our engine and the head brakeman took us over to the stock pens and picked up four cars of sheep and took us back in the yard to No. 7 track and coupled us up to forty-seven more cars of sheep and cattle, and Smyers, trainmaster for the A., T. & S. F., came up to our engine and said to Brisley: "Brisley you have been reported up three times for fast running and I don't want to hear of it any more, but I want those cattle and sheep in Canadian, Texas, before the dog law gets you."

        He could run without the trainmaster giving him any hints, and I began to get scared, for I knew it was all down hill from Cloris, N. M., to Canadian, Texas, except two hills which we had to go up.

        So we received our orders and pulled out. After we left Texico I don't remember very much what happened. He was running so fast I could not think, as he was running faster than I could think. Every town on that road of three hundred and nine miles was cleaned of all the dust. What he did not blow out he sucked out with the speed of our train. After I got over the awful scare I noticed everybody sure did sidetrack for him, and just as we called for the Canadian station he ran over a flag and through a train, splitting six cars of sheep and one car of cattle square in two. There were sheep in every man's house, lot and yard in Canadian, but by good luck our engine run out in the sand and turned over and neither one of us hurt. So Brisley got his walking papers and the last time I heard from him he was in Mexico working for the Mexican Central Railroad.

        I was promoted to an engineer in 1910, which job I held until I resigned, November, 1911. I then returned to Kentucky and went in the mercantile business at Goard and during the building of the L. & N. Railroad from Jackson, Ky., to McRoberts, Ky., and after the road was put through I sold out my mercantile business and went to Lexington to get a job. The business was very dull and the company did not need any engineers and Mr. Kishhammer, the trainmaster, gave me a job as brakeman, Lexington to McRoberts. I gave my whole attention to the company's business, and any time I was asked about anything I could tell it and after braking nine months I was taken off the road and made depot, freight, ticket and express agent and operator at Blackey, Ky., which job I held for three years, when I resigned to run for Circuit Court Clerk.

        I ran against two large generations of people, S. P. Combs, who was the Circuit Court Clerk at that time and who understood tricks in an election and my other opponent was G. B. Adams, a young lawyer and a Regular Baptist preacher. Not knowing anything about politics, I was defeated by thirty-six votes. There were eleven voting precincts and I carried nine of them.

        After the election in 1915 I went to work for Mr. D. S. Dudley, president of the Kentucky River Coal Corporation. I bought all of the land on Rockhouse and Caudill's Branch for him and helped to lease the No. 4 coal for him, and they have one big lease at the mouth of Rockhouse known as the Rockhouse Coal Company, owned by three real fine men, Mr. McClanahan, of Charleston, W.Va., one of the nicest men I ever met as a business man, and the other two are

just fine big business men, Wallbolt and Arthur, of Toledo, O. Next comes the Marion Coal Company, at the mouth of Caudill's Branch. The managers are old big, fat, happy-go-lucky men, John Gorman, of Hazard, and William Morrison, of Jellico, who are splendid gentlemen. With the coal experience then comes the Caudill Branch Coal Company on the head of Caudill Branch; same stockholders as the Rockhouse Coal Company. All of this lies in two miles and a half of Blackey, Ky., and the new L. & N. branch comes in at Blackey.

        Blackey has one of the best colleges in the State of Kentucky. It is managed by Prof. E. V. Tadlock. The college was built by Dr. Gurant, of Wilmore, Ky., and the land was donated by Jeff Ison. Blackey has one large coal operation going on now. The managers are a bunch of real nice gentlemen with experience and are P. J. Cross and J. P. Jones.

        The next big coal company is on Smoot Creek. The first company is known as the Smoot Creek Coal Company, managed by one of the Knoxville, Tenn., big- hearted fellows, who has an open hand for everybody, a nice big smile and who has written some excellent lectures for Tennessee, Mr. C. P. Price. Next are the West Virginia and Kentucky Coal Company, managed by two brothers of Virginia with that good, clear, good- hearted disposition. Harry is a whole-souled man. If you were broke and he had a dime he would give you a nickel of it. The other brother, T. P., has that good old fighting look on, and he put in his part in the Spanish-American War. Next are the Amburgey Coal Company, managed by two of the real Kentucky blood, Mr. Mathews and

Mr. McCluren, of Covington, Ky. Mack is just a dandy only he gets his politics mixed up. All three of the coal companies on Smoot Creek are working. The Amburgey seam, which is about eight feet without a parting. Rockhouse companies are working that good old No. 4 seam, 56 inches coal, 4 inches parting and 11 inches coal.

        After this was all done I resigned from the Kentucky River Coal Corporation and announced myself as a candidate for Jailer of Letcher County, subject to the action of the Republican party, August 4, 1917. There were already fifteen candidates on the track for Jailer and I made the sixteenth man. We all met at Whitesburg to draw to see who come first on the ballot and I told them all if I drew number seven they just as well quit, so we all drew and by good luck I got my old lucky number seven. I set out campaigning and made a speech on Line Fork, then I started for the coal fields. I first spoke at Kona, next at Seco, both on Sunday, and I met one real nice gentleman who was manager of the Southeast Coal Company, Mr. Pfenning, who was and is operating the late Wright's coal I wrote about in the beginning. Seco is a real nice little city. No colored people nor foreign people are allowed there. Next was at Fleming, Ky. I had a big crowd. Lots of other candidates were there and everybody spoke. During my speaking Judge Day was setting upstairs in the hotel with the manager of the Elkhorn Coal Company. After I had carried Dick off in a trance he whispered to Judge Day, "Lest just elect that d-n fool," and after the votes were cried at Fleming I had received two hundred and thirty-four votes out of two hundred and thirty-five. Mr. Coal is a clean-hearted gentleman and

stands by his men and his county. He is liked by everybody. My next speaking was at Haymen. I spoke to the colored people. There were about four hundred of them and we had prepared a real good supper for them. Had a fine barrel of beer and had some good speakers, Congressman John W. Langley, Commonwealth Attorney R. Monroe Fields, Mr. Noah Bentley, of Jenkins, and others. I was late getting in. I reached Haymen about 11 p. m. and the crowd was coming out. Some run in and told them I had come. So the bell was rung and everybody went back in and I had to make a different speech if I got the crowd stirred up. So there was a big Negro with a palm beach suit got up and introduced me. I says: "Gentlemen, I am real glad to be with you tonight, but sorry that I am late, but I want to say to you colored brothers I am your Jailer for the next four years and I am going to be the Jailer. Nobody is going to tell me how to run my jail. Instead of making prisoners out of you I am going to make Christians," and everybody said "Amen" and shouted. I am going for everybody to read the Bible. "Amen," they shouted again, and if they don't by G-d, I will make them read it. "Amen," and great cheers went up. All the negroes and speakers began to look at me and I told them I was going to put the colored men in the colored department and the white men in the white department. I was talking to a gentleman the other day, your Commonwealth Attorney, R. Monroe Fields, the way I was going to handle my prisoners, and he said, "Fess, that won't do; Bill Hall tried that and he let some bad negroes get out of the negro department." Gentlemen, I mean what I say; if the jail won't hold them in by G-d, let the county build a jail

that will hold them in. Everybody shouted amen to that and yelled "Fess for Jailer." I bluffed off six of my opponents that night. Next we all were billed for Hemp Hill, another regular negro speaking night. We had about six hundred negroes out and so I had to wait until my turn came as all of the speakers had to speak. My turn came about 1:30. Everybody had heard of me and they were all waiting for my time, so I set with patience, and just as I got up I looked over the crowd and believe me there were about four hundred negroes

assembled. Something run all over me. Something said, "Fess, wake them up," and I started pounding it to them like Billie Sunday preaching. I saw that I had them going my way and finally I walked off of the stage and down the aisle to where an old gray-headed man who had served in slavery time. I began to pat his head kindly, hugged him up and told him what our dear old friend Lincoln had done and I told them that Lincoln was a man of nature; he had picked his education from the moon and the stars and little rippling streams. His ambition was to be elected President of the United States so he

could free the slaves of witches. He was, and he released the shackles from four million slaves by this time. I had them going my way then and I took the younger class and began to tell them what the Ninth and Tenth Cavalry and Twenty-fourth and Twenty-fifth Infantry done in 1898 in Cuba when Roosevelt and I had made such a fight and that old Ninth and Tenth Cavalry cut the wire fence and let Col. Roosevelt through the fence and up the hill with his rough riders and the old Ninth and Tenth Cavalry cutting their heads off with sabers, and there were twenty-four pieces in the Twenty-fourth Infantry that played the band that won the United States a great battle. After we had planted Old Glory on top of the little log house there were only two men left in the band: one was lying on the ground with a leg broke playing "Marching Through Georgia," and the other had his left arm off and was playing "Yankee Doodle." By this time I had the crowd shouting and hollering. If a man had ever stirred up a crowd I had.

        I and Miss Martha Jane Potter were both to speak at Jenkins and the auditorium was running over, full of white people and negroes, and they had a splendid band. I took Jenkins with a storm, and after Miss Potter, daughter of Henry Potter, the coal magnate of Letcher County, delivered her speech I was next introduced by Professor Greer. I told them in a very funny way that I had to peal to Jenkins very hard because she had the votes at Dunham, Burdine and Jenkins proper, and that I had none at home because I lived in the only Democratic precinct in the county and that I had five brothers, forty-three uncles, two hundred and seventy-one first cousins, and Jeff Ison, my father- in-law, and all were Democrats and I was

the only Republican, so of course you will all want to know how come me to be such a strong Republican, so I will tell you. My father died when I was very small and left my mother with a house full of little orphan children and no money. Mother had two old milk cows named Blackey and Whitey, and every year prior to Cleveland's administration she would sell the two little calves off of the cows and buy all of us boys a pair of brass-toed shoes, but "God bless your soul" during Cleveland's administration they failed to have any calves and we all had to go barefooted, so I have been a Republican ever since.

        After the speaking I met some of the nicest gentlemen I believe I ever met, such as Mr. Dunlap, Johnson, Kegon and the general manager of the Consolidation Coal Company, Mr. Gellete, and the right arm of the B. & O. Railroad were on the ground making a hard fight for me. Mr. McLaughlin will never be forgotten by me. I also had sixty-three traveling men between Jenkins and Cincinnati that were doing all they could for me. They had tried me at Blackey for agent for three years and I had a regular traveling men's meeting at the Whitesburg Hotel and I made a strong promise to them: "Gentlemen, if you will stand by me and should one of you get in jail I will treat you nice and give you three good square meals per day and when your time is up I will turn you out," so they stood, and when you get the traveling men for you I will say you have won, and I won it by the biggest majority any man ever was elected, five hundred and six, over Sol Wright, of McRoberts. I received more votes than any man ever did. There were eighteen voting precincts in the county and I

carried seventeen of them and lost the other one by one vote and I received six votes more than all of my ten opponents together.

        I am now the Jailer of Letcher County and have thirty-two prisoners in jail. I have Sunday-school every Sunday in my jail and preaching twice per month; had four conversions and they told some great experiences. I have had my living and prisoner department cells painted and water works put in and I challenged the State of Kentucky Jailers to cleanliness, and everybody has got to take their hat off to my Courthouse Square. I am now having moonlight schools in my jail and I have turned out three young men who did not know a letter in the book, can write, read and spell.

        I am sure the Jailers of Kentucky can do some great work in the moonlight schools, and as we handle the toughs and the uneducated and after we can teach a man to read he can read where many a man has made a mistake. The people have been so nice to so many Jailers. About one hundred and twenty jails in Kentucky, so lets us promise the people of one hundred and twenty counties that we will do something good for some poor boy or girl. My jail is a nice stone building with four bedrooms, dining and cook room, woman department, a nice dining-room for the prisoners and only one prisoner department for white and colored together, as the colored department was destroyed before I got in charge of the jail.

        Letcher County can brag on three things that the whole United States and world can't beat. First, she has the name of raising the largest man in the world, Martin Van Buren Bates, better known as Brother

Bates. He was born twelve miles above Whitesburg at the mouth of Boone Fork, where Daniel Boone first settled. The property is now owned by Henry Potter. When Brother Bates was seventeen years old he fought side by side with bad John Wright in the cavalry. The first battle they were in was fought on Licking River near Salyersville, Ky. Brother Bates rode a big white horse give up to be the whitest horse in the Civil War. After the close of the Civil War Brother Bates come back and lived with his father, John W. Bates, at the mouth of Boone.

        Brother Bates' father came from Washington County, Va. At the age of twenty-four Brother Bates weighed four hundred and eighty-five pounds and stood seven feet and four inches tall, and one of his boots, number 23, held one-half bushel of shelled corn. He joined a circus when he was twenty-eight years old and traveled all over the world. He got married in Canada and on one of his trips while in England the King and the Queen presented each one of them a fine watch. The watches were about the size of a saucer. Brother Bates has retired from the circus business and is a well-to-do farmer at Seville, Ohio. His wife weighed five pounds more than he did. They had one child born to them and it weighed twenty pounds at its birth and died seasick crossing the Atlantic Ocean. Brother Bates is eighty-one years old now and has only one brother living, Robert Bates (better known as Old Rob), who lives on the head of Rockhouse. He is the richest man in Letcher County and Knott County. He is worth over one hundred thousand dollars. He was ninety-three years old August 5, 1918. Uncle Rob is the oldest champion daddy at ninety- three. His oldest

child is fifty-seven and youngest seven. Uncle Rob has twenty- four children. His descendants are well over a hundred. Some say that there are many great-grandchildren alone not counting the grandchildren of the great-grandchildren, of whom there are at least ten. Uncle Rob confesses that he can't count his flock. Outside his children he has thirteen children at home yet. The other eleven are married and their families are scattered. Uncle Rob has been married twice. At home this remarkable Kentucky father is still the unquestioned master. His politics are the household's. He lives by rule and by rule he governs. It don't pay to pamper youngsters. Bring children up to respect you and they will respect themselves. Children have got to be taught to save. A good wife is the best of all; a man can't get ahead without her. Women should help their husbands.

        Children are seldom sick in the mountains and Uncle Rob says give them a dose of sassafras tea is medicine enough. Uncle Rob has not been sick a day in his life. He is five feet and eight inches tall and weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. He stands straight and walks with splendor. He has the shoulders and chest of a perfect built man. He does not smoke or drink. Uncle Rob says he has gone hungry many a time to save a quarter and has never been sorry of it. One would expect a man who owns most of the mountains in his section and who is worth one hundred thousand dollars to live in a fine house, but Uncle Rob prefers the old house and bare floors like the old schoolhouse on Burton Hill.

        The house which Uncle Rob lives in has been built seventy-eight years at the writing of this book. Uncle

Rob is on his way to Mount Sterling with a drove of cattle, a distance of two hundred miles, horseback. Uncle Rob never did have a suit of underwear on and never did wear a collar and very fine socks. His wife makes his socks and shirts.

        The second thing Letcher County can brag about is a real mountain dog raised by Henry Mullins on the head of Cumberland. The dog was as large as a real mountain cow. He was sold to Sells Brothers' show, Big Stone Gap, Va., in 1880 for seven hundred dollars. He was taken all over the world and won the champion medal, king of all dogs.

        The third was a real pumpkin raised by old Jim Hogg of all at the mouth of Tolson Creek. The pumpkin weighed one hundred and ninety-six pounds. After cutting both ends off any ordinary man could crawl through it.

        One of the most peculiar men ever Letcher County had was old fighting George Ison, on Line Fork, whom we wrote about in the first of the book. In the time of the Civil War the Yankees had stolen all of Uncle George's horses and cattle except one old black and white pided cow. When spring came he would have one of his negroes, named Wesley, to plow the old cow and cultivate the land. He would put one-half yoke on the old cow and a home-made plow stock and plow from one-half of an acre to one acre per day. He would milk his old cow every morning and evening and make the gravy for his slaves.

        He stayed full of moonshine whisky very near all of the time after he lost his first wife. He left Line Fork to go courting above Whitesburg to see Aunt

Vina Adams. He had a brinnal cow bringing to Whitesburg to be shot for and the old cow would not lead very well and he wanted to get up to Aunt Vina's home before dark, so he tied his cow to his old horse's tail and put the spur to his old horse, which was well known in Letcher County by the name of Blue Jack, and just as he crossed the river at Whitesburg the old cow got stuck up in the quicksand, and the old man, feeling so good and his mind on his "sweetheart," then about fifty years old; he looked back to see his cow about the time he hit the main street of Whitesburg and he noticed that his cow was gone and also old "Blue Jack" had lost his tail completely.

        He got James H. Frazier to look after his cow and he got one quart as he went through Whitesburg and went on to see Aunt Vina. The next day he came back to Whitesburg and some man had heard of him being such a fighter and told him that he had come over two hundred miles to fight him. So he got down off of "Blue Jack" and in about fifty minutes old man Ison had him well whipped. That was the biggest fist and scull fight that was ever fought in the mountains of Kentucky. After the fight was all over old man Ison set his opponent up a glass of good apple brandy and they drank friendly and shook hands and parted.

        Old man Ison and Gudson Ingram, both of Line Fork, two large, strong men, uneducated, and when Letcher County was cut off of Perry County, Letcher County had to have a jail house, so the contract was let to be built twenty by thirty, and those two big strong men took the contract to deliver all of the windows and doors and iron fixtures. There were no

roads, no teams hardly and a very few wagons, so they carried all of the iron on their backs from Lexington. They walked every step over the mountains and every step each way. They made three trips in one month from Whitesburg to Lexington and returned and only got thirty-seven dollars for the whole job. They averaged one hundred and forty pounds apiece per load. On the first trip to Lexington they enjoyed theirselves fine and everybody that saw them enjoyed themselves. They was the pure typical mountain type; wore home-made shoes, called moccasins, old jeans pants and coat made by their wives on the old-fashioned looms, and flax shirts.

        Letcher County boasts of having the pure Anglo-Saxon language and the pure typical mountain form and ways of life and the people of Letcher County through its scientific management is at the root of successful present enterprise and intelligence in not only the lives of bygone men and women but youths are looking for a foremost day.

        I will try and describe one of the most peculiar men that was ever raised in the mountains, Elisha Ingram. Elisha Ingram was born at the mouth of Kingdom Come Creek in the year of 1865. When a boy he was a peculiar turned boy. When he was about twenty years old he could eat more than ten men. He wore number thirteen shoes. He lived in the woods most of his time and was reported one time to the revenue people to be a moonshiner and there were seven marshals who came from down in the State and made the raid. He hid in one of those big caves in the head of Line Fork. The marshals went in the cave at 8 o'clock in the morning and came out about 2 o'clock in the afternoon with Mr. Ingram.

        They found that he was not a moonshiner, but a merchant or a hardware man. When they came out they brought twenty-three big guns and thirty-one trunks full of old rags. Mr. Ingram has been seen with as many as three trunks on his back at the same time, bringing them across the big Black Mountains and taking them to his cave or store, as it may be called, in the top of the Cumberland Mountain, which is one of the world's great sceneries, as well as the Mammoth Cave down in the State.

        During the Civil War in the year of 1864 Daw Adams, who preached on Burton Hill, was making his way through the mountains from his home, three miles above Whitesburg, the county seat of Letcher County. He stopped over night on the head of Kings Creek and stayed with Mr. D. D. Fields, now one of the best known lawyers in the mountains of Kentucky. Mr. Adams had a real bench-legged dog and Mr. Fields wanted the dog and so Mr. Adams gave him the dog. The dog's name was Swad Dink. Mr. Adams never told Mr. Fields that there was anything peculiar about this dog. So Mr. Fields was well pleased over his dog and the next morning Mr. Fields wanted to try his dog and so he set him on a hog, and instead of the dog going forwards and running the hog he ran it backwards by turning the other end. Time makes changes, so Mr. Fields is now the son-in-law of Mr. Adams and has one pretty little girl named Danola.

        There has been some great men and women raised in Letcher County and they have been some very, very strange people raised in Letcher County and some very bad men and done some awful crimes, but

what more could be expected of some people who have had such a poor chance as men and women born in the mountains of Kentucky. There has been lots said and wrote about Letcher County and its people that is not true. The moonshiners have given dear old Letcher a black eye, but thank God that day has passed.

        Old Letcher stands first in wealth. If the whole united world would shut down all of their coal mines Letcher County could furnish the whole united world coal for thirty years. We have more timber in Letcher County than in any other county in Kentucky. We have twenty-six big mountains in Letcher County well covered with timber, such mountains as the Black and Cumberland and others.

        We have some of the richest corporations and companies in the United States, such as the Consolidation Coal Company at Jenkins, Kentucky and the Elkhorn Coal Company at Fleming, Ky. As to schools, Letcher stands first. Letcher can boast of the best of schools and churches. You don't see any of those old log schoolhouses any more, but they are the latest styles. Likewise are the churches. As to language, there is but a very few people who use any more of that good old bygone days language. The old spinning wheels and looms are about all played out. We have three large beautiful streams of water flowing through Letcher County, the Cumberland River, the north fork of the Kentucky River and Rockhouse Creek. We have the purest water in the world. The air is just fine. Many people come to the mountains to get fresh air.

        We don't have any wild animals in our mountains. We have some poison snakes, such as the copperheads and rattlesnakes. Clint Cornett last year killed seventeen copperheads and rattlesnakes each on Pigeon Ridge of Line Fork, all under one edge of a rock all rolled and coiled up together in the same bed just like owls, prairie dogs, cotton tails and rattlesnakes do in Texas in the prairie dog towns.

        While I was in Texas and before I went to railroading on the trains an old passenger engineer and I went to Davis Mountain bear hunting. We killed two black bears and caught one young bear. We saw quite a few droves of antelope and it was a very heavy fine to kill one, but we did, and we had some real good eating. We was in the western part of Texas and came in at El Paso, Texas, on Friday. We went over