Blood Feud

by Lisa Alther

  The next day, both families were working on their rafts. The Bakers went home for lunch, while the Howards cast off their raft for its journey downriver. Then the Howards headed home on their horses for lunch, too. As they rounded a bend, a volley of rifle fire killed two of them. Bal Howard was also shot, and his horse bolted and carried him down the road. He fell from his saddle, still alive, and was later retrieved by his relatives.

  Big Jim Howard, oldest son of Bal Howard and a one-time schoolteacher, rode toward his father’s house to visit his wounded father, only to be shot at from the woods. Trying another route, he was shot at again. He returned to a nearby post office in a rage, trying to figure out how to visit his father without getting killed himself.

  Suddenly Baldy George Baker, patriarch of the Baker family, rode into town. Spotting him, Big Jim Howard grabbed his rifle. Baldy George jumped down to take cover behind his horse. Big Jim’s bullet went through the horse’s neck and lodged in Baldy George’s bowels. Carried into a nearby store, he was laid on the counter. Two doctors stitched up his torn intestines, but he died anyway.

  Big Jim Howard turned himself in to Deputy Sheriff Will White and was released on his own recognizance. Forty armed guards took position around Bal Howard’s house, while anonymous gunmen shot into the yard from the surrounding forest. Since Baldy George Baker had had fifteen sons and Bad Tom Baker had thirteen, the less prolific Howards direly needed these outside reinforcements.5

  When the Howards arrived at their family cemetery a couple of days later to bury their two murdered kinsmen, bullets whizzed all around them from the woods. Not believing violence possible on such a solemn occasion, the Howard men had foolishly left their guns at home. Carrying their coffins, they retreated to another cemetery several miles away.

  Back in Manchester, the Garrards and Bakers demanded that Big Jim Howard stand trial for the murder of Baldy George Baker, and the Whites and Howards demanded that Bad Tom Baker stand trial for the murder of the two Howards and the wounding of Bal Howard. Virtually everyone carried arms all the time, and few dared to venture into the streets at night. Though it seems hardly possible, the men in town were drinking more than ever to quell their stress.

  As Deputy Sheriff Will White passed the former courthouse office of Baldy George Baker one morning, he said, “Well, I guess old Baldy George is roasting in hell by now.”6 Regrettably, a Baker son—in the office, cleaning out Baldy George’s belongings—overheard this remark and reported it to his brother Bad Tom.

  A few days later, when Deputy Sheriff Will White was collecting delinquent taxes, he ran into Bad Tom Baker. Apart from Will’s indiscreet remark about Baldy George’s spiritual destination, Bad Tom hated Will for having arrested him for burning down Deputy Sheriff Howard’s house and for sheltering Big Jim Howard after he killed Baldy George Baker. So Bad Tom killed Deputy White—insisting that White had drawn on him first.

  Bad Tom Baker was acquitted of murdering the two Howard kinsmen after witnesses swore he was miles away at the time. Then Big Jim Howard stood trial for the murder of Baldy George Baker. But the case was abandoned because Big Jim had been arrested in the meantime for the assassination of George Goebel, the Democratic governor elect of Kentucky, in a scenario that would require an entire book to explain.7 Found guilty of murdering the governor elect, Big Jim Howard spent two years in prison before receiving a pardon.

  Meanwhile, Bad Tom Baker went to Manchester to stand trial for the murder of Deputy Sheriff Will White. Bad Tom had refused to come unless state militia ensured his safety. He also refused to stay in the local jail. So the militia pitched a tent for him on the courthouse lawn. As Bad Tom stood outside his tent posing for newspaper photographs, someone shot him. The killer was never identified.

  At Bad Tom Baker’s wake late the next night, as his family sat around his open coffin, there was a scratching at the door. When someone opened it, a large turtle lumbered in and headed for the coffin. It startled those who recalled the murder of the peddler, whom Bad Tom had thrown into the creek saying, “Let the turtles have him.” A mourner grabbed the turtle, carried it outside, cut its throat, and threw it back into the creek.8

  Representatives of the Whites and Garrards negotiated and signed a truce on March 8, 1901.9 If you count the start of the feud from the cattle wars of 1806, it had lasted ninety-five years. Somewhere between 100 and 150 people died. The murders in Clay County didn’t cease in 1901, but the older members of the feuding families appear to have become exhausted by their lifetimes of mindless violence. They turned the feud over to younger, even dumber, hands, in which it sputtered along for another three decades.

  The feud inexplicably ceased in 1936 after the shooting of a son of Bad Tom Baker by an unknown assailant as Baker drove a Garrard into Manchester. Big Jim Howard had, meanwhile, become a traveling shoe salesman who carried a pistol in a shoulder holster. As he bent over one day, the pistol fell to the ground and shot a bullet into his back. He recovered, however, and went on to live a long and otherwise peaceful life, never responding to the question of whether or not he had actually assassinated the governor elect.

  The Strong-Little Feud

  During the Civil War, Capt. William Strong was a leader in the Union Home Guard of Breathitt County, Kentucky, clashing with several other Home Guards over the division of spoils from bushwhacking raids on civilians. After the war, Captain Strong continued his role as guerrilla chief, holding courts-martial in the middle of the night and condemning opponents to execution by his lieutenants.10 Fellow Home Guards who had opposed his decisions concerning the bushwhacking spoils were murdered in this fashion.

  In 1878, an attorney named Burnett was elected county judge with the support of Captain Strong—and in spite of opposition from the Little family, who favored another candidate. Burnett soon made the gruesome discovery that Jason Little’s dead wife lay buried beneath the Little house, and he ordered her dug up. The Littles responded that she would be dug up over their dead bodies. Once disinterred, she was found to be pregnant, her body riddled with bullet wounds patched with beeswax.11 Burnett sent Jason Little to the Lexington jail to await trial.

  A deputy sheriff who was a cousin of Jason Little got a court order for his return to Jackson, the Breathitt County seat. Learning of his deputy’s intentions, Sheriff Hagins hurried to Lexington and retrieved Jason himself.

  Back in Jackson, Captain Strong’s group, who wanted Little hanged for murdering his pregnant wife, occupied a log building near the courthouse. Among his seventeen supporters was his top killer, Hen Kilburn, who had named his rifle The Death of Many. Also in Captain Strong’s party were a former slave named Nigger Dick Strong and two mulatto brothers named William and Daniel Freeman.

  The Littles arrived in Jackson, too, with their strongman, Big John Aikman, who detested Captain Strong. Both groups lounged just down the street from one another. Daniel Freeman made the unfortunate mistake of walking up to Big John Aikman, however, and asking him what he wanted.

  “I’ll take a dead nigger,” Big John replied, shooting Daniel in the back as he turned to run. William rushed to help Daniel and was also shot.12

  The Strongs retreated to their log building. The Littles took over the courthouse. Everyone else left town.

  The Strongs and Littles shot at each other all afternoon. Someone finally dared to go into the street to rescue the two wounded Freemans. Daniel soon died, but William, shot in the back and thigh, recovered.

  At nightfall, the Littles left for a barbecue at someone’s house in the country. Deputy Sheriff Little arrived at the barbecue and announced that he had been unable to rescue Jason Little, who was now en route to the Jackson jail with Sheriff Hagins.

  A group of fifty Littles stationed themselves in town to intercept Sheriff Hagins—but Hagins took a side road and locked Little into a jail cell before his relatives realized that he had arrived. As Burnett and Hagins wal
ked from the jail to their boardinghouse, a Little supporter shot and killed Burnett.

  Meanwhile, other Littles set about breaking down the door of the jail to free their kinsman. One of Little’s cousins pleaded with his relatives not to take the law into their own hands, so someone shot and killed him. Everyone else withdrew: Captain Strong’s men to their log house, the Littles to the courthouse, Sheriff Hagins to a hotel. They all started shooting, not knowing at whom or why, until the liquor ran out. Then everyone sobered up and went home.

  Jason Little stood trial for the murder of his pregnant wife and was sentenced to life in prison. He was pardoned after five years.

  The governor ordered Big John Aikman apprehended and tried for several murders. He received a twenty-year sentence but was pardoned after just one. Prison pardons were common in those years, in return for election support from prisoners’ kinsmen. “A life sentence was often little more than an extended vacation away from home,” as John Ed Pearce puts it.13

  About a hundred people died in the Strong-Little feud, with nothing much having been accomplished.14

  By the early 1880s, Captain Strong had aged and mellowed, and was known now as “Uncle Bill.” But he was still conducting his deadly midnight courts-martial. During one, he assigned his top gun, Hen Kilburn, to kill a respected local farmer. Kilburn hid in the bushes with The Death of Many and shot the farmer as he rode into town.

  Unfortunately, Kilburn had failed to take into account that this farmer belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Hen was arrested and thrown into jail, along with a black friend who had brought him food while he was in hiding. As midnight approached, hundreds of Klan members surrounded the jail. They forcibly removed the jailer when he refused to give them the keys to Kilburn’s cell. Then they chopped down the door with axes and dragged Kilburn and the black man to nooses hanging from the courthouse doorway. The bodies remained there until the next morning, by order of a message posted on the courthouse door by the Klan.15

  His chief henchman dead, Captain Strong realized that his days of power had ended, so he mostly stayed quietly at home, dandling his grandchildren. One day, with a grandson behind him, he rode his mule to a store, where he bought a few items and chatted for a while. As grandfather and grandson rode home, Big John Aikman and two others ambushed them. They killed Uncle Bill and his mule—but they spared his young grandson, who lay screaming in the road as they emerged from the bushes to riddle Uncle Bill’s body with more bullets.16

  The Martin-Tolliver Feud

  A store owner in Morehead, Kentucky, and a clerk for Rowan County, John Martin lost his store over gambling debts. When he falsified records in an 1878 election, he lost his clerkship as well. He went to live at the home of George Underwood, whose sons had been Union Home Guards during the Civil War. A neighbor named Holbrook accused Martin and an Underwood son of stealing some horses, but Underwood denied it.

  George Underwood was shot through the shoulder in his yard one afternoon. When one of his sons emerged from hiding to help him, the son was shot through a lung and died. That night, a dozen Holbrooks arrived at the Underwood house, their faces blackened to conceal their identities. They demanded to search the house for John Martin, the horse thief. Not finding him, they shot old man Underwood a second time, killing him as he sat beside his dead son, holding his granddaughter’s hand. Martin escaped, survived, and went on to become a moonshiner with a major role in the next feud to ignite in Rowan County.

  After a dance in a Morehead, Kentucky, hotel in 1884, two years after the Pawpaw Murders, Lucy Trumbo got tired and went up to her room. Unfortunately, she went into the room of an itinerant timber merchant by mistake. When he returned to find her lying on his bed, he tried to profit from the situation. She screamed and fled.17

  At yet another drunken election day, Lucy’s husband demanded a public apology from the timber merchant. The merchant refused, saying he had only done what any man would have done upon finding an attractive woman in his bed. A fight erupted. When the town marshal tried to stop it, someone hit him in the head with a rock.

  During this fight, Floyd Tolliver knocked down John Martin (of the previous Underwood-Holbrook feud). Martin brandished his pistol, as did Floyd Tolliver. After the dust settled, Martin and another man were wounded, and a friend of Martin had died. Since no one could figure out who had shot whom, Martin, Tolliver, and the sheriff were all indicted. While awaiting trial, Martin and Tolliver, both drunk, ran into each other at the Morehead hotel. Tolliver drew his gun, but Martin shot him first, with his gun still in his pocket, which ruined his jacket but killed Tolliver.18

  Craig Tolliver had learned to fire a gun at an early age, after watching his father killed in bed during a robbery. He later vowed vengeance against John Martin, who had killed his brother Floyd. From Days of Anger, Days of Tears, courtesy of Juanita Blair and Fred Brown

  Floyd’s brother Craig Tolliver vowed vengeance, so the judge moved John Martin to a jail in Winchester, Kentucky. Six feet tall, with blue eyes, brown hair, a full mustache, and sometimes a goatee, Craig Tolliver had learned to fire a gun at an early age, after watching his father be killed in bed during a break-in, the robbers seizing a large sum of money the Tolliver father had received from the sale of his farm in North Carolina prior to moving to Kentucky.19

  Acting on his vow of vengeance against Martin, Craig Tolliver sent two of his henchmen to the Winchester jail with a forged order instructing the jailer to turn Martin over to them for transport back to the Morehead jail. Martin begged the jailer not to release him, but he did anyway.

  John Martin’s wife, who had just visited her husband in the Winchester jail, was on the train back to Morehead. Without her knowledge, Craig Tolliver’s fake deputies put her shackled husband on the same train—but in a different car. As the train pulled into a station just outside Morehead, Craig Tolliver and ten henchmen entered John Martin’s car. Martin tried to run but was shot and fell to the floor. Hearing the commotion, Martin’s wife ran to her husband’s car and found him bleeding in the aisle. She took him back to Morehead, where he died the next morning.20

  Craig Tolliver and his supporters were Democrats, and the Martins and their backers, Republicans. Craig got himself elected town marshal. Republican sheriff Cook Humphrey and some Martin supporters exchanged harsh words with a couple of Tolliver men in a hotel one day, the two groups shooting at each other until their ammunition ran out. Tolliver reinforcements arrived and shot up the town until the Humphrey contingent fled. Then the Tollivers patrolled the streets, brandishing rifles, while the townspeople cowered behind barricaded doors.

  Many citizens understandably moved out of Morehead, some to nearby towns, others out West. Lawyers, businessmen, and county officials asked the governor of Kentucky to intervene. He summoned the two groups—the Republicans led by Cook Humphrey and the Democrats represented by Craig Tolliver—to Louisville to work out a truce. Both sides agreed to cease hostilities and received amnesty.21 Craig Tolliver was reelected town marshal.

  Later, Humphrey and a friend were staying at a Martin house inhabited by only women and girls, the men and boys having fled to Kansas after death threats from Craig Tolliver. Tolliver and his henchmen surrounded the home and demanded that the visitors surrender. When they declined, Tolliver crept into the house and up the stairs, where he encountered Cook Humphrey, who shot him in the face with a shotgun. Tolliver survived but was badly scarred for the rest of his short life.

  A Martin daughter fled the house and careened into Craig Tolliver in the yard, his face covered with blood. He told her he would kill her if she went to Morehead for reinforcements. Ignoring his threat, she ran toward town. Craig shot at her but missed. When she reached the town seeking help, a Tolliver deputy promptly jailed her.

  Back at the Martins’, meanwhile, Tolliver threatened to burn down the house if Humphrey and his friend didn’t surrender. The two dashed out the bac
k door, jumped a fence, and raced across a cornfield. The friend was shot down as he ran, but Humphrey made it to the far woods and escaped.

  Frustrated, Tolliver burned down the Martin house anyway. Another Martin daughter fled the flames and also ran to Morehead for help, where she quickly joined her sister in jail. The remaining Martin women spent the night under a tree by the burnt-out carcass of their home.22

  When 150 state militia arrived in Morehead, the Martin girls were released, and Craig Tolliver and his supporters were arrested. But one of the magistrates, a Tolliver supporter, announced that there was no cause for a trial, so the Tolliver faction was released.

  Craig Tolliver later bought the Morehead hotel at a bargain price from a Martin supporter who had made the mistake of clashing with one of Craig’s brothers. The law required a liquor license for the hotel, but Tolliver, who had also opened a dry goods store, couldn’t be bothered to get one.

  Cook Humphrey, no longer sheriff, still paraded around Morehead with a band of men. Tolliver gave the new sheriff a warrant for Humphrey’s arrest. When the sheriff delivered it to Humphrey, he jeered at the sheriff. Once again, everyone started shooting. The sheriff and his son were wounded, and one young Martin man was killed.

  The state militia came back, and a truce was negotiated in which Craig Tolliver and Cook Humphrey signed oaths to leave the county and never return, except for funerals, in exchange for dropping the charges against them.

  Humphrey kept his word and moved out West. Tolliver went to Cincinnati until the indictments against him were dropped. Then he returned to Morehead and installed himself as county judge. The charges against him were reinstated, but most of the town officials were Tolliver men, so no one pursued them.

  Tolliver’s saloon, running without a liquor license, also operated as a brothel.23 Whenever anyone complained, Tolliver notified him of the date selected for his funeral, and the plaintiff usually decided to leave town before said date. The Tollivers routinely shot up the town at night, so other downtown businesses dried up. More than half the citizens moved away. The Martin woman whose house Tolliver had burned sent a poisoned turkey to a Tolliver ally.24