History of
Corporal
Fess Whitaker
COPYRIGHT 1918
FESS WHITAKERTHE STANDARD PRINTING CO.
INCORPORATED
LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY
Page 5
AUTHOR'S PREFACE
AMONG the people of Letcher County no other
man has so remarkable history as Fess Whitaker;
none other is so well worthy of being carefully
studied by all who find pleasure in the past history and
particularly by Letcher's own people. In the winning of
friends he stands first; in the upbuilding of the county
his influence has been strongly exerted; as a soldier on
the battlefield he stands firm. While the moonshiners
and ku-klux were provoking the country in my early
boyhood as though led by an inscrutable hand were
finding their way over the mountains and preparing to
establish themselves as the outguard of civilization that
they might become the possessors of all the sons of
Letcher County, the good mountain mothers, almost
unaided, not only stood like a wall of fire to forbid such
conduct of the men, but made good their footing, which
soon afterward made their loving Christian homes a
pleasure.
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
Page 6the 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.
Page 7
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
Page 8released 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
Page 9my 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
Page 10was 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
Page 11he 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.
Page 12
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,
Page 13where 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
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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
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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
Page 16
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
Page 17
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."
Page 18
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
Page 19
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
Page 20
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.
Page 21
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.
Page 22
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
Page 23
Page 24
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
Page 25
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
Page 26
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
Page 27
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.
Page 28
Page 29
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
Page 30
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
Page 31
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
Page 32
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."
Page 33
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
Page 34
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
Page 35
Page 36
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,
Page 37
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
Page 38
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.
Page 39
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.
Page 40
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
Page 41
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
Page 42
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
Page 43
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
Page 44
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
Page 45
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'.
Page 46
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
Page 47
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
Page 48
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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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."
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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 the river into Old Mexico to a big
bull fight. It sure was something awful to look upon. I
will try and explain it to you as I saw it.
It was a holiday, celebrating the big day of Republic,
the fifth day of May. They put three bulls imported from
Spain against four native bulls. The owners from Spain
were artists when it come to butchering horses. If they
had killed a few of the ignorant and cruel Mexicans who
were riding the poor beasts up to be gored to death they
would have won my applause. One horse was injured six
times and each time ridden to be gored again, until
finally killed by the bull. It was enough to disgust old
"Villa," whom General Pershing run out of Mexico in
1915 -16, and still men and women and little children
went wild and shouted for joy at the sight of blood and
the suffering of the dumb brutes.
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The engineer was an American and had been born
in Louisville, Ky., but was working for the Mexican
National Railroad and had been hurt in a wreck and had
a six months' layoff. After the bull fight we visited the
noted Church of Guadalupe, which is said to have been
built by Montezuma in memory of the angel Guadalupe.
After going through the church and seeing the "sirape"
(blanket) which this angel saint wore on her flying trip
from Heaven to Mexico City, we climbed the hill to the
graveyard where all the noted warriors are buried. It
covered a couple of acres, and a guard with a rifle and
sword is kept on duty night and day. On coming to old
General Santa Anna's grave I thought of poor Davy
Crockett and his brave followers, who met their fate in the Alamo
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at San Antonio, Texas, through the inhuman blood craving
of this same old general. The earth mound where he
sleeps was plastered over with all kinds of fancy many
colored pieces of broken chinaware. One particular
pretty piece took my eye and I told the engineer, Mr.
Dovis, that it would be in my cabinet of curiosities if it
should cost me a heavy fine. The engineer said, Fess, that
it would mean possibly death or a long term in a Mexican
dungeon if I were caught stealing from this "big chief's"
grave, but when he found that I was determined to risk it
with this copper-colored son of old Montezuma he
agreed to assist me by steering the guard away to another
part of the graveyard and try and keep his back towards
me by asking him questions about the city, which lay at
our feet in plain view. The guard stood in sight with the
seat of his white cotton pants. towards me when I
climbed over the sharp painted, tall iron pickets and
secured the piece. I wondered if poor old Davy Crockett
turned over in his grave to smile at me.
David Crockett's parents died when he was a very
small boy and he had seven brothers older than him and
he soon learned to use his mouth and fist. Poor little
Crockett when a boy had nobody to sing him to sleep or
teach him a prayer. Davy Crockett was born August 17,
1786, in Limestone, Tenn. He was born in a little old log
hut with no floor in it.
Crockett's ambition was to "go ahead." He was made
Colonel during the Indian war, then he was sent to the
Legislature. David Crockett was a great bear hunter.
When war broke out with Texas and Mexico he pulled
out for the West.
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After he got to Fort Worth he bought him a Mustang
pony and rode all over the plains and had many a good
race with buffaloes, as Texas was well covered with all
kinds of wild animals then. After hunting about two
months he pulled straight for San Antonio, Texas, and
soon was in the Fortress of Alamo, where the great fight
lasted for sixty days. He was received in the fort with
shouts of welcome. They had all heard of Col. Crockett
through the influence of the Texas rangers. Most of them
from the United States had declared their independence
of Mexico rule and had set up a government of their own.
Col. Travis was in command of the fortress. They only
had one hundred and fifty men in the fort and had to go up
against the whole Mexican army. The Mexican army fired
on the fort in February with President Santa Anna at the
head, whose grave I stole my pieces of chinaware off of.
One morning Crockett was awakened by a shot against
part of the fort in which he was sleeping. He dressed in
a hurry and before they took the fort he had shot six
gunners dead from behind a cannon that had been placed
in the front of the Alamo. Day by day the fortress of the
besieged grew darker and darker. There was no hope of
aid, food and water, all had failed them. David Crockett
kept a journal of the daily happenings in the fortress. On
the sixth day of March the entire Mexican army attacked
the Alamo and the resistance was desperate. When the
fort was taken only six men of its defenders were living.
Poor little David Crockett was one of them. He was
found in an angle of the building behind a breastwork of
Mexicans whom he had slain.
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It is said that in the assault upon the Alamo the
Mexicans lost more than a thousand men. The six
prisoners were taken before Santa Anna, President of
Mexico. Crockett strode along, fearless and majestic.
Santa Anna was displeased that the prisoners had been
spared so long, frowned and said that he had given other
orders concerning them. The swords of his men gleamed
and they rushed upon the unarmed prisoners. The
dauntless Crockett gave the spring of a tiger toward the
dark leader, Santa Anna, but before he could reach him he
had been cut down by a dozen swords. Crockett's last
words were, "Liberty and independence forever." At the
death of Crockett he was not quite fifty years old.
Forty years ago there was lots of trouble and feuds in
Letcher County. Will try and give the public a true story
about two killings by the same man and both men that
was killed were Banks'. Link Banks was killed forty years
ago by J. H. Frese, and William Banks eleven months ago
by J. H. Frese. I now have Mr. Frese in my jail under a
sentence of life waiting to hear from the Court of
Appeals.
Early in the eighties Letcher County, Ky., now a very
rich and flourishing mountain county, was the scene of
innumerable feuds. So bitter was the feeling that the
Judge of the Circuit Court and the Commonwealth's
Attorney did not dare punish any of the feudists, knowing
that a vigorous prosecution and a conviction of the
member of either faction would be followed by their
own murder at the hands of the adherents of that party.
Cases were on the docket that had to be tried, and the
Governor appointed Judge William L. Jackson, of Louisville
Page 94
to try them. It was understood that there was not a lawyer in
the district who would act as Commonwealth's Attorney on
these trials, and that it would be necessary to procure a
Commonwealth's Attorney from some other district, and Judge
Jackson announced that he would appoint Major W. R. Kinney,
of the Louisville bar, to act as prosecutor.
In those days there were no shorthand writers in any part
of Kentucky except Louisville, and it was arranged for one to
go along so that in the event of a conviction and the necessity
for a bill of exceptions it could be easily and promptly made.
A party of six men started from Louisville. The court never did
know what the other three went for, but inferred they were a
bodyguard, as they were all members of the State militia.
Railroads are now running through Letcher County, and the
boom town of Jenkins is just across the mountains from
Whitesburg, then, as now, the county seat. But in those days
they had to ride horseback 100 miles across the country to get
here. They went from Richmond to Paintsville, to Prestonburg
and up the Big Sandy Valley to Whitesburg, and going up every
man of them wanted the best looking horse to ride. Coming
back they all fought for the quietest looking mule. Traveling in the
Kentucky mountains a sure-footed mule is a jewel; but they
didn't know that when they started out.
Well, they blew in on Saturday night and were all so dead
beat that they wanted to get to sleep as soon as they could. Just
before they went to bed the proprietor of the hotel (Jim S--)
came to the room for something and saw them standing in front
of a couch with long white nightshirts on. He stared at
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them and seemed stupefied. Finally he managed to ask them
what that was they had on.
"A nightshirt," one said.
"Do men sleep in them thar things whar you come from?"
One assured him that they did.
"Well, I'll be damned!" he said, and the next day they found
he had surreptitiously taken their nightshirt out of their room to
show some of his friends what the "furriners from down below"
slept in.
They got up in the morning, and, stepping out of the building
which by courtesy they called a hotel, they saw a mountaineer
named Bill D-- with his trousers in his boots, the typical long,
fierce-looking mustache, and his pistol hanging at his left side.
They had not been shaved since they left Louisville. They had
been on the road about a week and needed a shave badly, and,
addressing the mountaineer, one said:
"I beg your pardon, sir, but will you kindly tell me where the
barber shop is?"
When he turned his face on them they almost started to run
from him. They did not know that they had said anything to
provoke anger, but in all their life they had never seen as vicious
a look as he gave them as he bellowed:
Barber shop? Hell! You know thar hain't no barber shop in
this country, and we don't 'low for you'uns to come up to this
place and make fun of we'uns."
They hastened to assure the gentleman that it had never
occurred to them that there was any place where they didn't
have a barber shop, and they said to him:
"You see we need a shave, and we must have one. How
on earth can we get shaved?"
"Shave yourself," he said.
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"But," said we, "there are two reasons why we can't
shave. We haven't any razor, and in the second place we
can't."
"Well," he said, "go over and see Jim Frese."
He directed us to Mr. Frese's place and we went over
there and found a nice-looking gentleman about thirty-
five years of age, whose very appearance put us at ease.
We stated to Mr. Frese the object of our errand, told him
that we did not know there were no barber shops here and
we had not brought a razor. He said he had just finished
shaving, which sounded good to us after our experience
with the mountaineer on the hotel porch, and that he
would be delighted to let us use his razor. We took the
utensils, lathered up one man and began shaving. He
watched the process. About every three pulls he made
with the razor he cut himself twice. We remember it
was a very keen razor, too. He noticed the poor job he
was making and said to him:
"You are not accustomed to shaving yourself?"
"No," said he, "I have never shaved myself in my life
before."
He offered to shave the crowd and we thanked him and
told him we would be pleased to have him do it and he
leaned one of the men back in an ordinary high chair,
stretched his head back and Mr. Frese began shaving
him.
Mr. Frese's house was well kept, neat and clean,
much more so than that of any other mountaineer with
whom we had come into contact in the journey across
the country, and his language was well chosen and
grammatical. His whole appearance
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betokened a man of affairs in the community. We
thought it a splendid time to commence getting
information.
We remember distinctly that he used the word
"murder" instead of "killings." He was pulling the razor
over our taut neck just about the jugular vein, and he
said:
"Well, the last man who was killed, I killed him."
We gave a start, and it was quite a bit of luck that he
was not cut, so great had been our involuntary jerk.
Immediately he said:
"Do you want a close shave?"
"No, just once over," he responded hurriedly.
It afterward turned out that Mr. Frese was, as we had
sized him up, one of the leading citizens of that whole
section. For anything you wanted or anything you wanted
to know, you had to apply to Jim Frese. And this very
thing had gotten him into trouble.
One morning Link Banks, a mountaineer, came into
Whitesburg, tanked up on moonshine whisky, and,
meeting Black Shade Combs, another mountaineer, said
to him:
"I came in to kill somebody this morning, and I just
believe I'll kill you."
The prospective corpse was not "heeled," as he was not
in any feud just then, and was not expecting trouble, but
he knew that he would have to act, and quickly, by his
wits, or he would be shot, and he turned on the fellow
and said carelessly:
"Oh, pshaw, don't kill me; kill Jim Frese."
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"Well, I believe I will," and Link Banks, the killer, staggered
over to Jim Frese's store. He had never had a particle of trouble
with Mr. Frese, as nobody else up in the section had ever had,
but he walked into the store where Mr. Frese was behind the
counter and raised his gun and cut loose at him. He missed the
first shot and Frese dropped down behind the counter, ran some
twelve or fifteen feet, grabbing his pistol as he went, and rising
that distance from where Link Banks, the mountaineer, expected
him to rise, got the drop on the latter before he could change the
direction of his pistol and killed him.
The Circuit Court was in session and a majority of grand
jurors were in Mr. Frese's store at the time and saw the whole
occurrence. Upon the convening of court the grand jury
requested the Commonwealth's Attorney to draw up an
indictment against James Frese for manslaughter and submit
it to them. This was done, and about ten minutes after the
grand jurors went to their room they returned and said they
had a partial report to make and handed back the indictment
against James Frese for manslaughter with the word across it
"Dismissed." Frese was never further brought before the court
on the charge.
But we did not know all this when Mr. Frese was calmly
pulling that razor over one of the men's neck and saying:
"The last man who was killed, I killed him."
Even in those feud days there were a great many law-abiding
Christians in the mountains, and it was our endeavor to cultivate
friendly relations with as many of these as we could. Judge
Jackson had sternly admonished our whole party to pursue this
course.
Page 99
One Saturday evening when court adjourned early to allow
the witnesses to get out to their homes for Sunday, we noticed
in an end of the town which I had not yet explored, a long, low,
wide building, and I inquired of R. B. Bentley, one of the
residents sitting near me, what that building was.
"That," he said, "is a church house."
"A church! Why, do you ever have services up in this
section?"
"Yes," he said, "about eight or ten months ago thar was a
circuit rider come along and we had meetin'. We only have
meetin's when somebody comes along. We hain't got no
regular preacher."
"Well," said one, anxious to get solid with all churchgoers,
"we are going to have services tomorrow morning."
"Who's gwine to preach?" he said.
One of them said: "Major W. R. Kinney, the Prosecuting
Attorney, teaches a Bible class at home. He is the finest talker in
the United States, bar nobody, and I will get him to preach."
We were not speaking in hyperbole when we were telling
him of Major Kinney's attainments as a orator. We have reported
all orators of the past quarter of a century, and we have never
heard his equal. He had the vocabulary of a Proctor Knott or
President Lincoln. He had diction and voice equal to W. C. P.
Breckinridge. He had the dramatic instinct of John P. Irish and
Bourke Cochran, and as to fluency of speech William Jennings
Bryan is tongue-tied compared with him. This was the character
of orator that was going to turn loose on that mountain
congregation.
Page 100
So the news was spread that we were going to have
"meetin'" next morning. Saturday evening we went over to
the church house - everything in the mountains is a
house. The court is a courthouse, the jail is a jailhouse,
the hotel is a tavernhouse, etc.
They had a small organ in it and we tried to find the
organist and choir. We learned they did not have an
organist, but they had about eight or ten big strong-voiced
singers, and, as they played the organ after a fashion, we
took the bunch over and we rehearsed four or five hymns.
The next morning at service we had a very good crowd.
In fact, everybody in the town was there. Before the
preaching it occured
to us that the Major, being such a
dyed-in-the-wool Methodist and so well posted on the
tenets and dogmas of that faith, the temptation would be
for him to preach a doctrinal sermon. We knew that the
Baptists and Presbyterians were the strong
denominations up in that section and we did not think
Arminian doctrines would appeal to Calvinists, so we
took the Major to one side and told him that no doctrinal
sermon went; that Christ crucified to save sinners was all
that he should preach, and he agreed to it and preached a
sermon the only equal of which he preached later that
day.
When the services were over very few went to the
Major; they all came to thank the remainder of us for the
wonderful sermon we had procured for them and
immediately requested that we have "meetin'" again that
night. Of course we agreed.
Page 101
To this day those two sermons are discussed and gone
over by the old residents.
Early in the month of November, 1918, William
Banks, of Smoot Creek, came to Whitesburg to give
his depositions in a suit filed against J. H. Frese for
destroying his peace. Mr. Banks had sued Mr. Frese
for $10,000 damages. His lawyer, Mr. Lewis, of Hyden,
Ky., was in town, and Mr. Banks walked up and into the
courthouse and went in the Sheriff's office and asked
about Mr. Lewis, if he was in town. He was informed that
he was in Mr. Hawks' office, which was somewhere in the
Bank building. Mr. Banks walked out of the courthouse,
up the sidewalk about fifteen feet and across Main street
towards the First National Bank building, where the
lawyer was. Just as he got in front of Lewis Brothers'
store Mr. Banks slapped his hand on his breast and
hollowed and ran into Lewis' store and fell. He died in
about five minutes with a thirty by fifty bullet hole square
through him, hitting him in the back just under the
shoulder blade out in front by the left nipple.
Nobody saw the shooting, but the bullet came very
near killing Judge Sam Collins, and lodged in the window
sill of the First National Bank. In about ten minutes
Sheriff Charlie Back, Commonwealth's Attorney R.
Monroe Fields and County Attorney F. G. Fields located
the bullet in the window sill and, searching its range, it
proved to be the shot fired from the back door of Frese's
store building. So they went in Mr. Frese's store and he
was sweeping and they told him they wanted to search
for the gun. He told them to help themselves. So on
searching they found two big forty-five pistols and a
regular army rifle, and
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not one of them had been fired. So they took the weapons with
them and put a guard around the Frese store. They went and cut
the bullet out of the window sill in the First National Bank and
the ball was so large it would not fit any gun that could be found
in Whitesburg.
So the Commonwealth's Attorney, R. Monroe Fields, was
not satisfied with the search in Frese's store and went in the
second time, and on arriving the second time he told Mr. Frese
he was not satisfied with the search and wanted to search again.
Mr. Frese told him to search all he wanted to, but he was sure
there were no more guns in the store. Mr. Frese had fired the
deadly weapon and had made a regular pocket under his
counter to hide the gun when he got the chance to fire his deadly
shot into Banks after he had taken Mr. Banks' wife.
The Commonwealth's Attorney searched good the second
time and was about to find the gun and Mr. Frese began to get
scared and tried to lead him away from the spot and to look
behind the hats on top of the shelves, so this made Mr. Fields
know he was close to the gun, and after moving three planks he
pulled her out of her deathly hidden hole. The gun was still hot
and the powder was in the barrel and the bullet that was taken
out of the window sill just fit the gun that was found last, thirty
by fifty.
By this time Mr. Jesse Day, Justice of the Peace, had issued
a warrant for Mr. Frese, accusing him, and he was placed in jail.
On the next day, November 10, the examining trial was held by
Judge H. T. Day and he was held over to answer such indictment
that the grand jury may return without bond. January term
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the Judge, John F. Butler, was sick, and when the April term of
Circuit Court came Mr. Frese was indicted for willful murder in
the first degree and his case was continued until the August term.
An order was made to bring the jurors from Clark County, as
Frese swore that he could not get a fair trial in Letcher County
and a change of venue overruled.
So Mr. Jim Tolliver, the Sheriff of Letcher County, brought
seventy good men from Clark County, and a splendid jury of
twelve men was selected from that body of men. Now, our
Circuit Judge, J. F. Butler, became sick again, as he is in bad
health and had to quit again, so all the lawyers of the bar and the
attorneys on both sides agreed to appoint the Hon. H. C.
Faulkner, of Hazard, Ky., to try the Frese case. The jury
selected was:
- W. G. Butler,
- W. A. Judy,
- A. F. Mastin,
- Zack Brown,
- Elburge Babor,
- Zane Ellis,
- W. B. Sudduth,
- J. H. Riggs,
- M. L. Mareland,
- B. C. Taylor,
- W. E. Rice,
- W. C. Taylor.
The prosecuting
attorneys were Hon. Grant Forrester, of
Harlan, Ky.; Commonwealth's Attorney R. Monroe Fields and
County Attorney F. G. Fields. The attorneys for the defendant
were: Lawyer Floyd Byrd, of Lexington; W. K. Brown, Whitesburg;
Senator Ed Hogg, Paris; Judge Benton, Winchester; D. D. Fields,
Dug Day and David Hayes, Whitesburg; W. C. Dearing, Louisville,
and Hon. Bill May, Jenkins, Ky.
The Commonwealth finished in four days and taking the
proof of the defendant's side finished in
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three days. Then the argument began, of which Judge
Benton was first, then F. G. Fields, Senator Hogg, Grant
Forrester and Judge Byrd. Then R. Monroe Fields
finished. The argument from the defendant's side was
very poor. The attorneys left the case completely and all
they done was to make fun of Letcher County and its
officers. The attorneys for the Commonwealth stayed
with the case and the proof and a verdict was rendered in
about fifty minutes for life in the pen.
The first vote was seven for the chair, four for life and
one for two to twenty-one years. When the jury asked the
Judge for pen and ink to write the verdict with the
Judge ordered me to bring out the prisoner. The
courthouse bell was rung and the courthouse was full in
ten minutes. The jury came out of the jury room and took
their seats in the jury box and the Judge asked them if
they had a verdict and they answered, "We have," and the
Judge ordered them to read it and it was read. If I ever
saw an intelligent jury in my life that was one. After the
verdict was read the attorneys for Frese asked for a new
trial and a change of venue, which was overruled by Judge
H. C. Faulkner. Then the attorneys for Frese took the
case to the Court of Appeals for a new trial and change
of venue and were granted sixty days to hear from the
Court of Appeals.
Mr. Frese is a very wealthy man. He owns all kinds of
coal and timber land.
The Letcher County docket stands clear without a
murder case on the book now - thank God for that -
and I am glad I have lived to see old Letcher stand
ahead in law and order. We must give the Hon. J.
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F. Butler, Judge of the Thirty-fifth district, and also our
Commonwealth's Attorney, R. Monroe Fields, credit for
nine-tenths of it.
R. Monroe Fields was born on the head of King's
Creek at the foot of the Laurel Mountains. He never
was in college, but got what education he has in a
very homely schoolhouse. He was granted law
license to practice law when he was eighteen years
old. Mr. Fields' first case was a very funny case.
William McIntire, merchant at the mouth of Rockhouse,
had sued Andy Crase for $300 for store account.
When the case was called Mr. Fields stated to the court
that you could not bring a suit in a magistrate's court over
$200, so Mr. McIntire agreed to knock off one hundred
dollars. Mr. Fields claimed that he had paid the account
in full and also claimed limitation on all the account
except ten cents' worth of horseshoe nails which had
been bought inside of two years. Mr. Fields showed the
court where an account was over two years old you could
not bring suit, and so Mr. Dixon, the magistrate, took Mr.
McIntire out and read him the law and he agreed to knock
off the other $200, as he did not want to get stuck for the
costs, and he agreed to law it out for the ten cents' worth
of horseshoe nails. A jury was called and the court began
to take the proof. The case lasted something like two
hours. The case got very hot. Both parties accused each
other of swearing lies and the court threatened to fine
them if they did not hush up that talk. So finally the case
was finished and both sides of the case was argued on.
One side was argued on by Mr. Fields and the other by
Mr. McIntire, an uneducated merchant.
Page 107
After the argument was over the instructions were
given the jury, and after being out about one hour the jury
came in and reported that they could not agree. The court
then sent them back in the jury room the second time to
make a verdict, if possible. After something about one-half
an hour they reported the second time that they could
not agree, so the court sent them back the third time
and asked them, if possible, to agree. They were out
this time only about fifteen minutes and reported that
they could not agree, as there were only three and three.
So the jury was dismissed and both sides agreed to pay
his part of the costs and the suit to be settled, which was
agreed upon. So Mr. Fields won his case for his client,
Mr. Crase, and received his five ($5) dollar fee out of a
ten-cent suit for horseshoe nails.
Since that time Mr. Fields has won some very large
cases in different Circuit Courts and the Government
courts and has been elected once County Attorney and
twice Commonwealth's Attorney of the Thirty-fifth
Judicial District of Letcher County, which was cut off of
Perry County.
The first County Judge was Nat Collins, son of Tim
Collins, and a very strong preacher, who came here in
1806 from North Carolina and was making his way for
the Bluegrass section. There were eight men and women
and Preacher Collins led the bunch. They had come by
the way of Cumberland Gap and did not know how to get
across the Stone Mountain into the Bluegrass region.
There was no Cumberland Gap tunnel then or any
railroads, only a wild wilderness. The bunch came up
Powell's River to where Wise, Va., is now, and struck out
through the Pound Gap
Page 108
Page 109
and on to the head of Kentucky River and down the river
to where Whitesburg is now located. There was not a
family living in Letcher County then, as Daniel Boone
had left his camp at the mouth of Boone's Fork and went
to the fort at Boonesborough, so they passed through
where Whitesburg now is and up Sandlick Creek and over
a hill on to Camp Branch. It was just before Christmas
and they all went up a small drean under a cliff and laid
out. The next morning the snow was six feet deep and
they were all covered with snow. The snow lasted about
three months, so they lay up all winter and the men
would kill deer and wildturkey and they all had a very
good time camping out.
The next spring Jim Collins settled at the mouth of
Camp Branch, known as Colson, Ky. His son, Nat
Collins, was Letcher County's first County Judge, and
Judge Nat Collins had a son named Madison Collins, Jr.,
who died at Colson, Ky., a year ago at a ripe old age.
Old Judge Nat Collins is a great-great-grandfather of
our present County Judge, Sam Collins. Old Judge Nat
Collins was a great man during his day. He represented
twenty mountain counties in Congress and in the Senate.
Stephen Hogg, a great-uncle of my mother, was the
first Sheriff of Letcher County. Hiram Hogg donated ten
acres of land to the county where Whitesburg now
stands to build the courthouse and jail, to draw the town
back down the river one mile from where Judge Nat
Collins held his court, which was held in one of the old
mountain log cabins built by the old settlers in
1806 -1807 -1808.
Page 110
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Page 112
After Letcher was cut off from Perry and made a
county, Hiram Hogg was the first representative of
Letcher County to be sent to the State Capitol as a
lawmaker. Letcher County's present courthouse was built
in 1898. We have a beautiful courthouse and square. Our
present County Judge is young Sam Collins, who has
done more for Letcher County in the way of morals and
bringing old Letcher to the front than any man in the
county. He was Deputy Collector and Commissioner for
years and he sure put the moonshiners out of Letcher
County, and since he has been Judge he has sure put the
whisky out of the county. I went in office the same day
he did and there were thirty-seven prisoners turned over
to me by ex-Jailer Bill Hall. Judge Collins kept me a
good bunch of boarders, as many as eight moonshiners
per day, until he proved to them and to the people of
Letcher County that moonshining could not be carried
on in Letcher County as long as he was County Judge,
and by his noted work he has cut my boarding house
down only to two prisoners.
He is doing lots for Letcher County and is spending
lots of money on the county roads. That is the kind of a
Judge we need during this awful war for freedom. He is
always sure he is right and then goes ahead.
I will try and describe the log house that my poor old
widowed mother worked so hard to keep us and to raise
and educate her eight children. We are all pleased to
know that we had a mother who could see the future as
she did. Her great ambition was to educate us and then
we could be some use to her and to the world. The time
has come that unless you have an education you are
left out.
Page 113
Page 114
The house is made out of two double log rooms, sixteen by
eighteen feet. The rooms are eight by sixteen feet. The logs
are hewed and the cracks were daubed with mud, but you will
notice the mud has all about fell out of the cracks and nobody
there to help mother put it back, as all of the children are married
and gone from the old home. You will notice the hand-split
boards, or shingles, made with a frow and hand mall: You will
also notice the old-fashioned chimney. This dear old typical
Kentucky mountain log house is where I spent my best boyhood
days. There is nothing like Mother and Home. You will notice
the author in the front yard near the cedar tree, where my dear
old mother cut the switches and gave me such a whipping and
put long division running through my brain that has caused me to
be a man.
One room has a window in it. This we all called the lower
room. That was the room in which I gave my mother and four
brothers the money that I worked out for them at Stonega. My
mother sometimes has nightmares in her sleep, and Dr. Gid
Whitaker, of Whitesburg, Ky., has the same thing sometimes.
After we all got grown our sister, Julia, came home on a visit
from Texas and we all would sit up and talked until about 11
o'clock in the night and then we all went to bed, and this is the
way we slept:
My wife and I in the lower room, Dr. Little and wife also in
the same room, and Dr. Gid and his wife in one bed, mother and
Jessie, daughter of Julia, in one bed, and Julia in the other bed.
All three of the last beds were in the upper room. So about 2
o'clock Dr. Gid got to dreaming about getting his head hung
Page 115
in the iron bed at the head of the bed and it turned into a
nightmare. And Dr. Gid began hollowing, "Oh, ma!" and his wife
nailed him by his nightshirt and about that time Dr. Little nailed
him and they turned the table over and broke up all of the
dishes, and by that time mother and Julia were scared to
death, and finally I got to him and got him quiet. After the scare
got off of us all we had a good laugh and never did go back to
bed again that night. And Julia said that she did not want to see
any more nightmares.
There is but one mountain fugitive left. The above picture
is the likeness of John Combs Barlow, one of the men I caught
thirteen years ago on the head of
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Island Branch. Up until yet he is still an outlaw. I now
have him in my jail under an indictment for an awful
crime. When the Commonwealth gets through with him
he will be quiet and a good, law-abiding citizen.
In the time of the Civil War there was only one real
battle fought in Letcher County. It was fought on Crase's
Branch, one and one-half miles from the mouth of
Rockhouse. The rebels had gathered at Branson's up
in a big flat about one-fourth of a mile up on the branch.
They had taken refuge in an old typical Kentucky
mountain log cabin with only one door and one chimney.
They had prepared in that cabin to fight until the end,
like Colonel Travis and Crockett did in the Alamo. The
reader will take notice of the bullet holes in the old log
house around the window and the door.
This house was built in 1849, but the old roof has all
decayed and has been covered again with galvanized
roofing, but the old mud chimney and the log walls are
just the same.
The following picture is Sheriff James Tolliver and
the moonshine still that was raided by Judge Sam Collins
and Sheriff Jim Tolliver on September 15, 1918. It was
found on the head of Bottom Fork, tributary to the north
fork of the Kentucky River, which empties in at
Mayking, Ky. The still is a fifty-gallon still. It was a fine
outfit, five big hodges of beer and a real big trough cut
out in a big tree which had fallen to slop the hogs in.
Page 118
Sheriff Tolliver is doing some real good work as a Sheriff.
He and his deputy sure have put the moonshiners to running.
I want to say that the people of Letcher County were the
worst surprised set of people that ever was when the Negroes,
Italians, Dagoes, dump carts and mules and horses began to pull
into Whitesburg from Stonega and Appalachia, Va., in 1910 to
begin
Page 119
work on the L. & N. Railroad, which was a new construction
from Jackson to McRoberts, to the greatest coal fields in the
world. The railroad right of way had been surveyed many times,
but the good old citizens never thought it could be built, and
finally they got a bunch of men to get the right of way, which the
biggest part of the citizens had signed up for $50 per acre. So it
was good for one year, and finally the contract was let to build
the road, and then here came the people.
There were no colored people in Letcher County or any
foreign immigrants of any kind, and when they began to drop in
like birds the good old citizens did not know what was going to
happen. In the month of November, when the trees were
shedding their leaves and going back to dust like we all will some
time, there came an awful and terrible roaring up the dear old
Kentucky River in Letcher County, and what could it be only
Conductor Spot Combs on the first train that ever was run into
Letcher County. It was a work train laying the first steel into the
county. It was on Friday and the news went all over the county
just like wildfire. So there was a large bridge to be set in south
of Ulvah the following Sunday and I believe there were three
thousand people gathered to see the train come to set in the
bridge. They had rode horseback and in wagons, which were
pulled by the old-fashioned oxen, and lots of old people in sleds.
They had brought horse feed and grub for themselves. They
were all sitting around the bridge, scattered upon the hill under
the beech trees and ivy and laurel, and about 10:50 the work
train came. She was making speed at the rate of about five miles
per hour, and when the engine blew
Page 120
for the bridge the old women threw their pipes down and started
to run, also many of the twenty-year-old men did the same thing.
The biggest part of the horses got scared and run away, some in
wagons and some in sleds. I believe that was the biggest day I
ever saw in Letcher County. A train is an old thing now. I can
only call to my memory two people who have never seen a train
or rode on one, and they live in about five miles of Blackey, and
they don't want to see or ride on it.
There have been many changes in Letcher County since 1911.
It doesn't seem like the same country. So many new towns,
people and coal companies. We have about twenty through
freights daily and two locals and four passengers, except on
Sundays, and since the war we have only had two passenger
trains, for the purpose of saving coal. We have splendid
passenger service and have some of the kindest and jolliest
passenger conductors in the whole country, such as Spot
Combs, who was born at Jackson, Breathitt County.
Spot has a big heart and you will always find him right. Next is
Conductor Bradshaw, who has always been all right, but he is
pretty fat to get about. He has only one son-in-law, Dick Davis,
who can get about for him, and Dick says, "A man who has a
father-in-law and can't use him just as well as have no father-in-
law." Next is Conductor Atcherson, who is just a dandy. He is a
slim fellow and can see anything that happens on his train. Then
comes a small fellow with a few freckles on his face and a nice
railroad smile, who is ready to change any time if required to and
can suit anybody. They call him Conductor Bocook.
Page 121
I will say with nine years of railroad experience they don't
make any nicer conductors than the ones whom I have just
wrote about. Then just think of that bunch of extra passenger
conductors, Hop Daniels who has a heart as big as a groundhog
and he does his work just like Gen. Pershing does his job. Then
comes Conductor Short, and he is just as fat as he is "Short." He
can't get around with that extra smile on like Hop, but Short can
get over the road. Then comes Conductor Tommie Hammons.
He doesn't say very much of anything to anybody. All he does is
just look at his time card from the time he leaves Lexington until
he gets to McRoberts, and when the time card is due at
McRoberts Conductor Hammons is there "Johnnie on the spot"
with his train. We have another conductor who is off of the L. & A.
and holds his seniority over some of the boys. The traveling
public say they can tell just as soon as they see the engine when
Conductor Ills is on, as the engine begins to pop off; they will
know Conductor Ills will pop next.. As to the engineers on
passengers, they are the best, and the flagmen are just a nice set
of young boys.
There are only a very few more of the good old-fashioned
grandmas left in Eastern Kentucky who hold onto the old-
fashioned clothes with a large pocket tied to their hip to carry
their old-fashioned pipe.
In the above picture is old Grandmother Hughes. She was
Cleburn Hicks' daughter, of Russell County, Virginia, and came
to Kentucky in the year of 1866 and was married to Mr.
Hughes by David Calhoun. Grandma Hughes is now eighty-nine
years old and
Page 122
washes every day and by hard work has saved up over
$100 and has it in the First National Bank of
Whitesburg, Ky., to take care of her when she gets so
old she can't work. Grandma Hughes joined the
old Regular Baptist Church at the age of twenty-three
years and has kept the faith ever since. Everybody, old
and young, loves her.
I am going to close my book very soon and I want to
present to the public a small picture of my four brothers,
whom I helped to educate. The first two
Page 123
are Gid and Jim at the age of nine and seven. Gid is
sitting down and Jim standing. They are dressed up. They
are barefooted, have home-made pants and shirts. You
can see from the: picture the way their hair looked and
tell how often they got it cut.
This tintype picture was made twenty-four years ago.
My idea is to show the boys' pictures in real life when
they lived in a country undeveloped, no railroads, no
business of any kind, and then I will show them after
they have been educated and through college. Both city
and country life and Letcher County have grown in
refinement and development and good morals and in
langauge
schools and religion, as the two pictures
show.
The first picture is Dr. Gid Whitaker, of Whitesburg,
Ky., who is a successful doctor and business man. This
picture was taken twenty-four years after the first. The
second picture is Jim Whitaker, wholesale feed man, of
Blackey, Ky., and pastor of the Indian Bottom Church,
the oldest church in Letcher County, which was founded
by James Dixon.
I will now present to you a tintype picture of Little and
Less, taken the same time. You can see very plainly how
mother made their pants and shirts twenty-four years
ago. I now furnish you the picture of Dr. Little Whitaker,
of Blackey; Ky., who is a successful doctor and coal
man. Less, when a boy, had the asthma, and mother sent
him West, where he was cured. I will present to you the
photo of Less Whitaker, who is Assessor and Tax
Collector of Potter County, Texas, on the Democratic
ticket and a real successful oil man in Oklahoma.
Page 124
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Page 127
I now present to you the picture of my family on our way
from Blackey to Whitesburg on muleback to take charge of the
county jail. You will notice that my wife is leading the mule and
my four children and a cousin to my wife, who made her home
with us, are riding on the mule and can see very plainly the Jailer
pushing the old mule along. My wife thinks this was the best
way of getting to Whitesburg and she knew it was the safest
way. We sure had a splendid trip over the land. I did not want
to go over the land on muleback and push a mule that far, but
my wife said that it would be all right, that I would soon get used
to pushing the prisoners up the stairs and just as well fall in line
now and learn how to push.
My wife's cousin is now married to F. F. Pendleton, who is
time and bookkeeper for the Smoot Creek Coal Company at
Dalna, Ky.
Page 128
SKETCH OF WORK AND WORDS OF
WOODROW WILSON.
Opening Statement.
NO BOOK is hardly complete in the year 1918
without some part of it bearing on the great world
war. It seems perfectly proper to give a few pages
here to that subject in which all readers are of a right
so much interested.
The writer of this book claims to be as loyal as any
citizen of the United States to the great Government
which is waging war with all its might on the enemies of
liberty. He claims to live in a section of the country
where all the people have always felt the same way, and
who are now doing a noble part in this nation's biggest
task. Letcher County's hundreds of young men sent to the
colors with not a word
Page 129of murmur from its citizens; her heavy oversubscription
of every quota of every war loan and charitable
enterprise connected with the war; her great contribution
to the war industries of the nation through her millions
of tons of "black diamonds," and the keen interest shown
in every phase of the war in every part of the county -
all these things go to prove that the people who will read
this book are as loyal as any and will be glad to have
something about the war, along with the other things,
funny and serious, which are offered.
When people in every part of the country are doing so
much to carry on the gigantic enterprise of the war it is
but natural that they should ask, if not aloud, then deep
down in themselves, the reason for it all. Why must the
war go on, calling for the sacrifice of the lives of many
in every community, and added burdens of taxes; war
loans and high prices of everything used. This is the
most natural of questions and will be asked countless
times the coming winter and spring and summer.
The writer of this book thinks the answer can be found
in the Work and Words of President Woodrow Wilson.
Therefore he takes the space and trouble to offer in
these pages the facts and statements which sum up the
matter, as he sees it.
Page 130
Main Facts in Life of Woodrow Wilson.
Woodrow Wilson was born sixty-two years ago at Staunton,
Va. He came of fine old Virginia stock, the same kind which
came across the mountains into Kentucky seventy-five years
earlier.
His early life was not greatly different from that of many
others of the same class of people who were well enough off to
give their children a good education. The people among whom
he lived were cultured and had high ideals of life, so that he got
a good education, graduating at the age of twenty-three from
Princeton College, one of the leading schools of the country. His
opportunities were good and he took advantage of them by
getting an education as good as the land afforded.
Being of a studious turn of mind, he pursued his studies
further after his graduation at the leading universities of the
section, specializing in the study of law, the science of
government and the great principles by which man lives with his
fellow man. Here was the foundation work on which Woodrow
Wilson rose to being the leading citizen of the world forty years
later.
In the years 1882 and 1883 he began the practice of law in
Atlanta, Ga. But the field was too narrow and he soon realized
that he was by nature a scholar and interested in broader fields
than the practicing of the profession which had led to the
careers of nearly all the great statesmen up to that time. In the
period embracing the next twenty years, until he was well up in
the forties, his time was spent as a teacher, author of histories
and books on government and as a profound student of
American affairs.
Page 131
By this time he was recognized as one of the leading
educators of the whole country and as an authority on the
history and theory of government of America, the leading
republic of the world. He was chosen head of Princeton
University in 1902, in which position he remained until 1910,
following in general the same lines of work and adding further to
his reputation as an authority on state affairs.
Only a few years ago, even since 1900, it seemed that our
Government was falling more and more into the hands of the
politicians, and that the great educators of the land were missing
the mark, so far as their work concerned practical things. Men
like Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University were thought all
right as school men and authors, but too flighty and theoretical
for governmental affairs. Now that is all changed in America,
and the story of Woodrow Wilson's entry into public life and his
undisputed success is the story of that change.
In the years before 1910 the State of New Jersey was
generally known as the home of corrupt politics and of rich
corporations which wished to escape the law for their evil
practices. For a long time the Republican party had been in
charge of affairs. With the hope of winning the State election
the Democrats nominated Professor Wilson, not because
they wanted him especially, but because it would appeal to the
people strongly to vote for a man who was not a politician and
against whom not a word could be said. Though New Jersey is
normally Republican by some thousands of votes, Wilson was
elected, and the experiment of having a man with no political
experience in the highest office of the State was on.
Page 132
All the Nation watched to see what would happen - whether
the professor's bookish ideas would work out in a State where
there were many great problems for the Governor to deal with.
By the hardest kind of work and most careful treatment of each
of the problems which came up for settlement, fitting each to
great principles which were worked out years before, he made a
record which the people of his State and the people of the
whole country generally decided was good. It was granted that
the Wilson ideas would work - in a State.
The spring of 1912 brought the campaigns for nominations
for President. There was the big contest in the Republican
party between President Taft and ex-President Roosevelt,
representing the "Stand Pat" and "Progressive"wings,
respectively. At the National Convention Taft was nominated,
bringing the split, when Roosevelt and his followers drew apart
and founded a new party.
When the Democratic convention came on a good campaign
had been made for the nomination of Wilson, but he lacked
some hundreds of sufficient delegates to nominate. Then
followed a long deadlock in the voting, no candidate having
enough votes to nominate him. William Jennings Bryan turned
the tide at the critical moment, contending that the party must
nominate a man unmistakably progressive in his ideas, or be
defeated by Roosevelt in November. The Democrats were
hardly willing to offer the Professor to the Nation, whatever his
record in New Jersey, and besides there were strong elements
in the party bitterly opposed to Wilson or any other man known
as a reformer and progressive. But there
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seemed nothing else to do, and Bryan's advice prevailed -
Wilson was offered to the Nation, with just two years of actual
experience in governmental affairs, that in a small State! It was a
thing hardly to be believed, without parallel in American history!
The election of Woodrow Wilson was easy, because of his
getting more votes than either Taft or Roosevelt in most of the
States, though he lacked more than a million of getting half the
popular votes. His electoral majority was greater than that
received by a President since Monroe.
Everyone is familiar with the events in the life of Woodrow
Wilson since he was elected President in 1912, and only the
matters of greatest importance in bringing him into the position
of head of the affairs of the world will be mentioned briefly
under the next head.
Woodrow Wilson as President.
In practice the Government of the United States is run by the
party in power, and in theory the President of the United States
is the head of the majority party. Such being the facts, it is the
first task of a new President to line up the support of his own
party. The only other Democratic President since the Civil War
had failed utterly in this respect and made a poorer record than
the real ability of the man led the people to expect.
Many people wondered if Wilson could control the
discordant elements in his own party after he took office, or if
he would fail right at the beginning, as did Cleveland. But the
doubters did not have to wait long. Wilson's study of our system
of government
Page 134
taught him that the President of the United States is
the head of the party which elects him, just as much as he is
President, and that all other loyal members of that party must
support him on matters to which the party is pledged, whether it
suits the particular tastes of any individual officer or not. He was
careful to make it clear at the very beginning that the will of the
people as expressed in the election of 1912 should be attained
through the Democratic party, then in power, and that he would
carry the case of any man who withheld his support in making
good those pledges back to his own people.
Wilson declared that the Constitution made him the head of
the executive department of the Government, but that through
the practical working out of our governmental system he was
responsible for the acts of the legislative branch also, as the
head of the party in power. In that sense he was the head of the
legislative as well as the executive department. From the day he
took office and called Congress into special session to revise the
tariff he has taken a leading part in all legislation. It has become
almost a proverb in this country now to speak of him as the
schoolmaster holding the rod over the heads of the school of
Congress.
His first experience is typical of all the others in dealing with
Congress. The Democrats were pledged to reduce the tariff to
the basis of producing revenue only. But when Congress started
working each member figured only for the direct interests of
himself and his little district, and there followed the endless little
bargains and swapping of support, the old "log-rolling" business.
It was the same thing which
Page 135
happened under Taft in 1909, when the Republicans, pledged
to lower the tariff, actually raised it by trying to listen to the pleas
of each interest which wanted a particular item raised. Wilson
called a halt. He said each Democrat must work to lower the
whole tariff to the basis promised the people, which could not
be done if each fellow held to his own pet schedule, and that if
they did not follow his advice the name of each Congressman
who was to blame for the failure should be made known to the
remotest nook of the country. It worked; nearly all opposition
passed away, and a fairly satisfactory downward revision was
finally made. The Democrats who opposed Wilson to the end
are now occupying positions in private life.
It was so with the money legislation, railroad regulation, the
trust problem and all the other many problems which came up
under Wilson's first Congress, so that when the two years were
over a real attempt had been mace to enact laws covering every
pledge in 1912. To this day there has been only one failure to
have a recommendation of Woodrow Wilson enacted into law,
that the submission of the woman suffrage amendment, by the
narrowest of margins; and even that will probably be passed
before this book is read. It is a record for getting laws passed
that no other President, not even Roosevelt, has equaled.
At the beginning of Wilson's administration the vexing
problem of Mexico, then in a state of revolution and anarchy,
was a big problem. Wilson did not follow the advice of those
who wanted to annex Mexico, nor of the others who said we
must keep our
Page 136
hands strictly off. He took the position that the United States
must deal with the problem or the European nations would,
but held that Mexico should be allowed to work out her own
affairs as far as possible. He proposed that friendly help of the
great nation just to the north be extended, and even proper
chastisement if she did not respect our rights and property on
the border, but that we should take the smallest actual part in
Mexican affairs to protect our own interests and insure respect
for our efforts by other interested nations. For the rest he
adopted the plan of waiting for Mexico to act, thereby gaining
for his policy the name, well known at the time, of "watchful
waiting." Time has shown the wisdom of that policy, even if we
did have to send a military and naval expedition into Mexico
and still have to keep a guard on the border, while Mexico
herself brings order out of her confusion.
The problems referred to briefly in the above paragraphs
were enough to make a full program for a President, but with
the breaking of the world war in Europe in 1914, all American
questions became more or less connected, for every nation of
the world in the Twentieth Century is pretty closely connected
with every other. The question with us in the autumn of 1914
was how to carry on our affairs and not become involved in the
war, which we looked upon as belonging to Europe. This was
Wilson's problem as the head of a great peace-loving nation.
Again our leader lived up to his policy of avoiding
international entanglements so much that his "watchful waiting"
reputation grew. He insisted that the warring nation should fully
respect our
Page 137
rights as the most powerful neutral nation, and sent endless
notes, messages and reasonable demands to both Great Britain
and Germany. Often the results were slow to appear, but always
the offender made full satisfaction. Most of the people of the
United States came to believe that Wilson could go on seeing
that we got our rights and still keep us out of the war. This was
through the years 1914, 1915 and 1916.
One incident, the sinking of the British steamer Lusitania
in May, 1915, with many prominent American citizens lost,
came nearest to upsetting the peace program. But Germany
apologized, promised to make amends and changed her policy
toward us for the rest of 1915 and 1916. Many people of
America thought we should go to war at once when this vessel
was sunk on the high seas, but Wilson and the majority decided
it was better to wait. We have no way to know how Wilson
really felt about the matter at the time, but time has shown that
the American people were not ready to go into the great war at
that time, and as the leader of the Nation it would have been
folly for him to force us in. Democratic nations do not make war
so.
The election of 1916 came on. Wilson was the proven leader
of the Democrats and was given the nomination by acclamation
in the most harmonious convention the party ever held, for he
was the candidate and the molder of the issues at the same time.
The breach in the Republican party was partially bridged over
and Justice Hughes was chosen to oppose Wilson. The two
issues in the campaign became Wilson's record and the attitude
toward the
Page 138
great war. Not much could be made of the opposition in
attacking Wilson's home-affairs record, and the main
issue became the war question. In the light of the
prominent part Wilson is now taking in the pushing of
the world's greatest war, it seems strange that he was
regarded as a pacifist just two years ago. But such was
the case. Probably enough people believed he would and
could keep us out of the war to elect him. On the other
hand there were the many who saw no chance for us to
keep out and were afraid of him as a war leader.
But as Woodrow Wilson was great as leader of a
peaceful nation while neutral, so when America became
a belligerent he became at once the foremost of war
statesmen. No greater tribute could be paid him than to
say he has been the voice of over a hundred million
people both in peace, and when peace was no longer
endurable, in making war.
When Germany announced her unlimited submarine
war the last of January, 1917, on neutrals and enemies
alike, it was plain that she no longer respected our rights,
but was bent on conquering the world, including
America, by her brute force. The patience of America
was exhausted and she aroused from her peace sleep.
Woodrow Wilson, their chosen leader, must have felt
the insult and threat more deeply than the rest, for had he
not labored to his utmost for two and a half long years to
avoid the war for America? It is true he went steadily on
with his diplomatic moves to do what he could, but to
Wilson and America it was plain, from the day the
submarines went on the high seas to kill guilty and
innocent alike and the German Minister at Washington
Page 139
was sent home, that it was only a matter of
weeks until we would be one of a set of peace-loving
nations in a war-mad world striking blows for ourselves
when other means had failed.
As America was the greatest force in the world not
already in the war, the nations allied against Germany
welcomed her to them in their time of great need. As the
leader of America Wilson was given the opportunity to
stand with the highest in Allied councils. But his record
in America had already marked him as one of the ablest
men in the world, and he was not long in proving he
measured up to the best in Europe. Almost from the day
he entered the war Wilson has been the spokesman for
the Allied world. He speaks and they approve, because he
speaks the essence of democracy and freedom for which
the world is fighting. His voice is the loudest in the
world!
We are coming now to the purpose of this sketch, to
answer the real questioning of the average American
citizen, particularly of the mountains of Kentucky, about
the great war, in the words of President Wilson. From
this sketch we can see how he as a student of men and
governments rose to the highest success in American
affairs. The American ideal of government, a government
of the people, is about to become the ideal of the
civilized world. The words of Woodrow Wilson about
the war and its purposes, as the spokesman for the
civilized world and a product of democracy, will make
clear what it is all about and what we are to get in return
for our sacrifices.
Page 140
Several selections from his war utterances, with a few
notes of explanation of time and circumstances, will follow
in the next division.
Extracts From Wilson's War Speeches.
There were many strong statements by President Wilson
before the war began defining America's position and the aims
she held dear. For lack of space we do not give any of them
here, but come to the more striking ones after the war began.
In the light of what has taken place we know now that it was
never possible for America to stay permanently out of the world
war, and perhaps no one knew this better than our President.
But he and we hoped that while we were at peace we might
remain peaceful, not in any sense dodging our duty if national
honor called us. It should be "peace at any price, except the
price of dishonor."
But when it became clear beyond a doubt that we must go
to war with the enemy of freedom and civilization, President
Wilson called Congress into special session and told them in no
uncertain terms that we must take the step. He was no longer a
pacifist at the head of a peaceful people, but the commander-in-
chief of an aroused and militant American manhood. The closing
paragraph of his address to Congress, April 2, 1917, ranks with
the best oratory of the world, yet states America's position. It
follows:
"It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war,
into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself
seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than
peace, and
Page 141
we shall fight for the things which we have always carried
nearest our hearts-for democracy, for the right of those who
submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments -
for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal
dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring
peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last
free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and fortunes,
everything that we are and everything that we have, with the
pride of those who know that the day has come when America
is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles
that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has
treasured. God helping her, she can do no other."
Perhaps there are those who think we still might have
remained neutral by humbling ourselves a little, which would
have been better than the awful destruction of the war, by acting
as some of the small nations of Europe have acted, we might
have kept out. Perhaps we might have withdrawn our ships from
the high seas, which belong as much to us as to any nation, and
kept all our citizens at home thus avoiding the war. This is the
rallying ground of all the pacifists.
To do so would have taken the strongest nation of the world
out of any part in the affairs of the world, which is preposterous
on the face of it. Then as surely as Germany conquered France
and Great Britain, which now seems must have taken place in
1918 but for the help of America, she would have taken charge
of our helpless and peaceful country as the greatest reservoir of
wealth and raw material in
Page 142
the world. For Germany was determined to conquer the
world - let there be no mistake about that. As we went to
the war for the principles we held dear, so we had to
meet Germany with a force greater than her own, the
only thing under the sun that could stop that war-mad
nation, bent on conquest Hear President Wilson on this
point in his speech launching the Third Liberty Loan at
Baltimore, April 6, 1918, for no one has put the point
stronger than he:
"I accept Germany's challenge. I know that you accept
it. All the world shall know that you accept it. It shall
appear in the utter sacrifice and self-forgetfulness with
which we shall give all that we love and all that we have
to redeem the world and make it fit for free men like
ourselves to live in. This now is the meaning of all that we
do. Let everything that we say, my fellow-countrymen,
everything that we henceforth plan and accomplish, ring
true to this response till the majesty and might of our
concerted power shall fill the thought and utterly defeat
the force of those who flout and misprize what we honor
and hold dear. Germany has said that force, and force
alone, shall decide whether justice and peace shall
reign in the affairs of men, whether Right as America
conceives it or Dominion as she conceives it shall
determine the destinies of mankind. There is, therefore,
but one response possible from us: Force, force to the
utmost, force without stint or limit, the righteous and
triumphant force which shall make Right the law of the
world and cast every selfish dominion down in the dust."
But it is well to state the precise aims for which we
are fighting, and the satisfaction of which would
Page 143
bring peace from us. In general we are fighting for the
American principles of freedom and justice and are
combating Germany's force with greater force as a
means of self-protection. But there is the bigger
program of applying these principles to world affairs, so
that all nations and peoples shall be free and live in peace
after the war is over forever. But the case can be stated
more precisely than this.
As the spokesman for the nations allied against
Germany, President Wilson announced fourteen terms
on which we would be willing to make peace last winter.
Six of them have to do with general conditions which
will apply to all nations alike: freedom of the seas,
reduction of armies, open treaties, equal trade conditions
for all nations, colonial claims, and a league to enforce
peace and settle disputes between nations. The other
eight provide for changes in boundaries or governments,
one or both, in France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Austria,
Turkey, Russia, Poland, and the Balkan States on a basis
of freedom and justice to the people of each country. It
is the program on which peace will finally be made and
guarantees that the "world will be made safe for
democracy." The program is too long to state here in its
original form.
Many times later Wilson has made further statements
bearing on our war aims. Some of these statements are
brief and clear enough to be put down here, since they
are another way of stating the fourteen peace conditions.
In addressing Congress February 11, 1918, the President
said they could be put under four heads, as follows:
Page 144
"First - Each part of the final settlement must be based upon
essential justice to bring a permanent peace.
"Second - Peoples and provinces are not to be bartered
about like chattels to establish a balance of power.
"Third - Territorial settlements must be for the benefit of the
peoples concerned and not for the adjustment of rival States'
claims.
"Fourth - Well-defined national aspirations must be
accorded the utmost satisfaction."
At no time has the President made a finer statement of the
issues involved in the war than in his speech of September 27,
1918, in opening the Fourth Liberty Loan at New York. It must
be quoted somewhat at length, with the idea that it is a further
definition and application of the fourteen terms of peace. It can
best be given in Wilson's own words:
"We accept the issues of the war as facts, not as any group of
men here or elsewhere has defined them, and we cannot accept
any outcome which does not squarely meet and settle them. The
issues are these:
" 'Shall the military power of any nation or group of nations be
suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they
have no right to rule, except the right of force?
" 'Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak nations and
make them subject to their purpose and interest?
" 'Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in their own
internal affairs, by arbitrary and irresponsible force or by their
own will and choice?
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" 'Shall there be a common standard of right and
privilege for all peoples and nations, or shall the strong do as
they will and the weak suffer without redress?
" 'Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by casual
alliance, or shall there be a common concert to oblige the
observance of common rights?'
"But these general terms do not disclose the whole
matter. Some details are needed to make them sound less like a
thesis and more like a practical program. These, then, are some
of the particulars, and I state them with greater confidence
because I can state them authoritatively as representing this
Government's interpretation of its own duty with regard to
peace:
"'First - The impartial justice meted out must involve no
discrimination. It must be a justice that plays no favorites and
knows no standard but the equal rights of all the peoples
concerned.
" 'Second - No special or separate interest of any
single nation or any group of nations can be made a basis of any
part of the settlement which is not consistent with the common
interests of all.
" 'Third - There shall be no leagues or alliance or special
covenants and understandings with the general and common
family of the league of nations.
"'Fourth - There shall be no special, selfish combinations
in the league, except as penalty by exclusion from the markets
of the world may be vested in the league of nations itself, as a
means of discipline and control.
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" 'Fifth - All international treaties and agreements of
any kind must be made known, in their entirety, to the
rest of the world.' "
President Wilson has repeatedly laid emphasis on the
statement that this is a war of the people for universal
human rights, as much as a war of nations for national
ends. Notice this extract from the same September 27,
1918, address at New York:
"This war has positive and well-defined purposes
which we did not determine and which we cannot alter.
No statesman or assembly created them; no statesman or
assembly can alter them. They have arisen out of the very
nature and circumstances of the war. The most that
statesmen or assemblies can do is to carry them out or
be false to them. They were perhaps not clear at the
outset, but they are clear now.
"The war has lasted more than four years and the world
has been drawn into it. The common will of mankind has
been substituted for the particular purposes of individual
States. Individual statesmen may have started the
conflict, but neither they nor their opponents can stop it
as they please. It has become a people's war, and peoples
of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and
variety of fortune, are involved in its sweeping processes
of change and settlement."
President Wilson has repeatedly taken the stand that
all autocratic rule by a king or small group of men must
end in every country as a necessary result of this war. It
is well known that the Kaiser and his little group of army
leaders educated, armed and trained Germany to conquer
the world through forty
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long years, and then deliberately set in motion the war
machine they had created in the summer of 1914. Our
President says as a necessary term of peace that all
possibility of such a thing ever happening again must be
removed by blotting out the cause. Among other results
to be attained before there can be a peace, there is this
remarkable statement, in a patriotic address at Mt.
Vernon, July 4, 1918:
"The destruction of every arbitrary power anywhere
that can separately, secretly and of its single choice
disturb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot be
presently destroyed, at the least, its reduction to virtual
powerlessness."
The above statements of terms are ample and cover
all the points which may arise out of the war. There has
been repeated and free discussion of them in this country
and Europe, and Mr. Wilson himself has not lost an
opportunity to explain their meaning in his own
matchless way. There is now no doubt of their meaning
or that the United States will struggle for them until they
are facts. Yet out of them arises a big question as to the
length of the war.
As early as February, 1918, Germany announced that
she could accept the fourteen principles laid down by
Wilson in the address of February 11. Many other times
since Germany has intimated that she could accept the
Wilson terms and was ready to open negotiations leading
to peace. These hints have been many since the war
turned for the Allies in the summer of 1918. Yet no
negotiations have been entered
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into up to the middle of October, 1918, as this is finished. Many
may wonder why there was not peace when the enemy is ready
to discuss with us our own announced terms. Wilson himself has
answered on this point many times, most strikingly in his answer
to the Pope's offer to make peace in August, 1917, and in the
address of September 27, 1918. The following is quoted from
the latter address:
"We are all agreed that there can be no peace obtained by
any kind of bargain or compromise with the governments of
Germany and her allies, because we have dealt with them
already, and have seen them deal with Russia and Rumania.
They have convinced us that they are without honor and do not
intend justice. They observe no covenants, accept no principle
but force and their own interest. We cannot 'come to terms' with
them. They have made it impossible. The German people must
by this time be fully aware that we cannot accept the word of
those who forced this war upon us. We do not think the same
thoughts or speak the same language of agreement.
"It is of capital importance that we should also be explicitly
agreed that no peace shall be obtained by any kind of
compromise or lessening of the principles which we have
avowed as the principles for which we are fighting. There should
exist no doubt about that."
Finally on October 12, 1918, Germany sent a message to
President Wilson saying they were willing to accept all the terms
he had laid down, and
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asked that he take the matter up with the Allies and arrange with
German representatives the terms of an armistice to stop the
fighting while peace was being made. This has always been the
regular procedure, and coming from any nation but Germany
would have meant that the war was over. President Wilson
immediately answered the proposal, and never has he spoken
with greater power or clearness than when speaking straight to
the arch-enemy for the first time since war started. If he had
not established himself long ago as the champion spokesman
for the liberty of mankind, this message would give him the
place. The three main points are here given, but the writer has
taken the liberty to add the numbers and put them in different
order:
1. "The President's word just quoted (the extract from
the Mt. Vernon speech quoted above) naturally constitutes a
condition precedent to peace, if peace is to come by the action
of the German people themselves. The President feels bound
to say that the whole process of peace will, in his judgment,
depend upon the definiteness and the satisfactory character of
the guarantees which can be given in this fundamental matter."
2. "It must be clearly understood that the process of
evacuation (of territory Germany had conquered) and the
conditions of an armistice are matters which must be left to the
judgment and advice of the military advisers of the United States
and the allied governments, and the President feels it his duty to
say that no arrangement can be accepted by the Government of
the United States which does not provide
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absolutely satisfactory safeguards and guarantees of the
maintenance of the present military supremacy of the
United States and the Allies on the field."
3."The President also feels that it is his duty to add
that neither the Government of the United States nor, he
is quite sure, the governments associated with the United
States, will consent to consider an armistice so long as
the armed forces of Germany continue the illegal and
inhumane practices which they still persist in."
It cannot be known surely what the outcome may be
when this is being finished, but it is plain that President
Wilson decreed the end of the Kaiser and his wicked
system, demanded a surrender such that Germany could
never make war again and in which she had no part in the
arrangement, and served notice on them once for all that
they must stop their hellish practices in the lands they
held captive, inferring that punishment would be meted
to them for what had already been done.
Whether they submit now or a month from now or a
year from now the terms of peace are known, and they
exist in the words of our own President Wilson. The end
of the old German system is at hand, and the reign of
peace in a world of freedom is just ahead. America and
her brave Allies, at the price of the blood of their
millions of young men, have put right and justice in a
free and peaceful world as the rule by which nations
must live in the future, and Woodrow Wilson has
translated that ideal into burning words which will
live forever.
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An Estimate of Wilson as a Statesman.
As Woodrow Wilson has already proven a tower of
strength in the time of the world's greatest need, his
opportunities for greatest service are just ahead. The
whole world trusts him and looks to him in the final
arrangements of world affairs at the end of the war.
There is no doubt that he will measure up to this greatest
opportunity ever accorded a human being to dispose of
the destinies of all mankind. Undoubtedly he will be the
head of the League of Nations which in the future is to
take the place of all wars and insure justice to all
peoples.
Woodrow Wilson is a product of America. No other
country could have produced him. He is a Democrat - a
product of democracy. Also he is America's first great
contribution to the list of truly world statesmen.
America's democracy has been called to the front in the
breakdown of all the old systems together in the
cataclysm of world war, and she offers a leader who
embodies in his life the principle for which the world
travails.
Lincoln was raised up by Almighty God to bring
America through her great trial of internal strife to a new
birth of freedom; just as truly He raised up Wilson to
pilot America through her struggle with a foreign foe,
and made him the leading exponent of the principles at
stake. Such men appear at great stress periods. Let us be
thankful.
A Kentucky poet, Cale Young Rice, has paid a
touching tribute to Mr. Wilson, and there seems no
more appropriate way to close this sketch and estimate
of our beloved leader than to quote his little poem:
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To President Wilson.
"Woodrow Wilson, master of patience,
Master of silence, master of speech;
Master amid the world's war-frenzy
Of clear wisdom's inward reach;
Watcher of raging civilizations
Till the one righteous hour arrives
When you can speak for all nations.
Great is your guidance now that shrives
Both friend and foe from base soul-gyves.
"Woodrow
Wilson, lofty listener
At the great heart of Destiny;
Hearing above all feverous hatred
Justice breathing what should be;
Still for a peace that shall not perish
Stand - for if ever a Providence
Comes to the Universe to nourish
Men in their woe, and lead them hence,
Near us now is its Immanence!"
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