Days of Darkness (22 page)

Logan called for Craig Tolliver to come out and surrender. Craig replied with a burst of gunfire, and was at once joined by a dozen of his followers. Logan's men rose up from bushels and ditches and from behind railroad cars and lumber stacks and closed in. If they had been decent shots, they would have slaughtered the Tolliver gang in the first minute. They weren't. But they did hit Bud Tolliver in the knee with the first fusillade. He crawled into the garden behind a nearby home. Jay and Craig, caught in the open, made a run for the Gault House but were caught in a crossfire before they could reach it. Jay headed for a row of bushes but was hit before he could make cover. Craig raced for the railroad station but was downed by a bullet in his leg. He got up and made it across the tracks, where a dozen men closed in on him, and he was hit again. Again he got up and tried to run, but this time a bullet knocked him down for good. Some say that, knowing he was doomed, he pulled off his boots, having always sworn that he would not die with his boots on. As he sat up, possibly to pull off the last boot, two bullets blew his skull apart.

Little fourteen-year-old Cal Tolliver stood in the road in front of
the hotel, blazing away with two .44s, with twelve-year-old Cate standing bravely by his side; the Tollivers may have been bullies, but there were no cowards among them. When Craig went down, Cal ran to him and took his watch and wallet and ran again toward the hotel. He got a bullet in his buttocks as he dived under a house, a painful but not fatal wound. Cal was only a boy, and small for his age, and Boone Logan gave the order not to kill him. The same went for little Cate.

A barrel of whiskey in the hotel storeroom exploded in the blaze started by a stray bullet, and the fire spread to the nearby livery stable. Jay Tolliver was found and killed in a weed patch. Three men found Bud behind a store and killed him. Andy Tolliver managed to get away, but he had been hit twice and later died of his wounds. Hiram Cooper hid in a wardrobe in Z.T. Young's hotel room, but Logan's men found him, dragged him out, and killed him. The battle lasted for the better part of two hours. The Tollivers never had a chance. While the battle was raging, mainly along Railroad Street and between the depot, the American Hotel, and the Gault House, the train approaching from Farmers was halted to protect the passengers from stray bullets. When some women passengers asked why they were stopped, it was explained that a gun battle was in progress but that the train would proceed as soon as it was over.

The bodies of the Tollivers were put on a wagon and hauled down the road to Craig Tolliver's home, where Mrs. Tolliver, trying to control her grief, called for her kinsmen to come and, in keeping with custom, help to wash and prepare the bodies for burial. The others were left on the courthouse lawn for relatives to come and claim.

Boone Logan called a meeting at the courthouse and announced that he had acted in accordance with instructions from Governor Knott, which was true in a sense—a very broad sense. Actually, what he had done was not only illegal but brutal murder, though probably the only logical response to the Tolliver tactics. He warned that law and order would prevail and that orderly elections would be held in due time. He also announced the formation of the Law and Order League, which kept the peace until state troops under Colonel W.L. McKee arrived—somewhat tardily, Logan thought—on August 1.

Most people seemed pleased. A week after the battle, some of the young people of the town gave a dance. It was the first social event of its kind to be held in Morehead in three years.

But the trouble was not over. A lot of Tolliver sympathizers were still around. They looked on Logan and his crowd as murderers and as cold-blooded as the Tollivers. Others saw them as vengeful Republicans
who had killed good Democrats. Z.T. Young, probably bitter over the defeat of the Tollivers, indicted Pigman and Perry for the murder of Craig Tolliver. After a seven-day trial, the jury was instructed by Judge A.E. Cole, a Tolliver faithful, to bring in a guilty verdict. The jury refused. Without leaving the jury box, it agreed on a verdict of not guilty, an indication of the division within the county. Boone Logan, for some reason, was not tried.

General Sam Hill, sent to Morehead by Governor Simon B. Buckner to report on affairs there, made his report to the governor on November 22, 1887. In it, he recommended that the act establishing Rowan County be repealed, that the county be made part of another judicial district, and that all persons indicted for violence on June 22, 1887, be pardoned. He also recommended, in pointed language, that Judge Cole's conduct on the bench be made the subject of legislative review and that he be replaced with a judge from an adjacent circuit.

The subsequent legislative investigation of Rowan County resulted in four formal conclusions that were submitted to the legislature. The findings were that:

(1) County officials were not totally inefficient, but most of them were “in the warmest sympathy with crime and criminals,” going so far as to “rescue criminals from the custody of the law.” The investigation singled out Judge Cole for siding with the Tollivers, but doubted that “any judge in the Commonwealth could … have enforced the law in that county.” Attorney General Hardin heaped coals of fire on the Rowan grand jury which, he said, “was organized, I know, to shield the strong and guilty and punish the weak and helpless.”

(2) There was a “want of moral sentiment” in the county.

(3) “The portion of the county attached to law and order has been so long domineered by the criminal element that they are incapable of rendering any assistance in maintaining the law, so greatly that a reformation cannot be hoped for if left to their own resources.”

(4) “During the social chaos since August, 1884, spirituous liquors have been sold, with and without license, adding fury and venom to the minds of murderers.”

The investigation did not propose, however, that the county be abolished, as General Hill had recommended, though his report had not gone unnoted. But suddenly the people of Rowan saw how poorly they were regarded and what their reputation might cost them. They moved to change their image, and one of their first moves was to encourage development of the Normal School. Allie Young, Z.T.'s son, became a state senator and was instrumental in gaining financial support for the school that eventually became Morehead State
University. Perhaps the school can be said to have grown out of the feud.

Morehead recovered, to become a regional market and educational center. Interestingly, a niece of Craig Tolliver, Cora Wilson Stewart, became nationally known for her leadership in establishing “moonlight schools” for regional adults, the first organized move toward adult literacy education. Another Rowan Countian, Dr. Louise Caudill, began a clinic that grew into the hospital that is now a regional medical center and the second largest employer, next to the university, in the county.

Boone Logan did not stick around to see how the drama played out. He had had enough. He moved with his family to Pineville, where he became one of the most respected and probably one of the wealthiest men in that growing county. He organized financing for and built the Pineville Hotel, luxurious for its day. With his son Ben he owned the Pineville Water Supply Company and was president or director of five coal companies, the K-A Bridge Company, and the Pineville Investment Company. His sister became the mother of the well-known Bell County attorney Logan Patterson. His grandson, another Boone Logan, married Pauline Asher, of the prominent Asher family descended from the pioneer Dillion Asher.

Daniel Boone Logan died in St. Petersburg, Florida, in November 1919 and is buried in Pineville. There remains no trace of him in Morehead—except perhaps Morehead itself.

CLAY COUNTY

The Hundred-Year War

The Incident at the Courthouse

The sun had pushed its way above the jagged hills of Clay County, melting the mists over the waters of the South Fork of the Kentucky River, sucking up the fog from the dark hollows when, on the morning of June 9, 1899, Bad Tom Baker and thirty of his mountain kinsmen and followers rode into the Clay County seat of Manchester, Kentucky. People along the road into town and along the steep street leading to the hilltop courthouse watched with uneasy glances as the silent men rode up Anderson Street, turned and stopped in front of the two-story courthouse where soldiers, members of the Kentucky State Militia, stood in small groups around tents pitched on the courthouse lawn.

The soldiers shifted uncertainly as the horsemen drew up and formed a ragged line on either side of their leader, who sat for a moment, not speaking, looking with what seemed to be amused contempt at the youthful militiamen. He, Thomas Baker, sometimes called Bad Tom, was the reason the soldiers were there, just as the soldiers were the reason he was there. With an unhurried glance right and then left, and a nod as if in approval of what he saw, Baker dismounted, hitched his horse to the top rail of the low fence, and turned toward the courthouse.

Twice in recent months Tom, leader of the Baker clan in its lingering feud with the Howard and White families, had been accused of brutal murders, the most recent the killing of Deputy Sheriff Will White. In keeping with mountain custom, county officials had sent word to Tom, his son James and his brother Wiley to come in and face trial. Tom had declined the invitation, repeating his belief that he could never hope for a fair trial in courts that he said were controlled by his feud enemies, the Howards and Whites. Local lawmen, knowing that the Bakers could summon fifty men in minutes to defend the clan if need be, were not eager to go up on Crane Creek and bring Tom in.

Map 2

Based on information from Jan R. Walters provided by Tom Walters.

1. Bill Marcum house, later a boarding house where Big Jim Howard lived in his last years.

2. Beverly White house, from which Tom Baker was shot.

3. County jail

4. Dr. D.L. Anderson home

5. First National Bank

6. Pitt Stivers home

7. Rev. Francis R. Walters home

8. Livery stable

9. John A. Webb Hotel, owned before 1896 by Calvin Coldiron

10. Dr. Monroe Porter's drugstore

11. Post Office

But Tom had also sent word that he would come in if Governor William O. Bradley would send troops to protect him and guarantee him a fair trial. He added, however, that he would not be put into “that stinking rathole of a jail”; he demanded a room in the nearby hotel. And he warned that he and his men would surrender their guns only if the Whites and Howards were disarmed first. Col. Roger D. Williams, in charge of the troops, had sent word the previous day that this would be done, and now in the humid morning of the mountain summer, Bad Tom Baker and Colonel Williams faced each other, polite but unsmiling, on the walkway leading to the courthouse.

Whatever he had expected, Colonel Williams confronted no cartoon stereotype of the shifty-eyed, tobacco-stained hillbilly. Almost six feet tall and solidly built (a young woman who once applied to Baker for a teacher's job described him as “a fine figure of a man”), with dark hair under his slouch hat, a full mustache, and gray eyes that regarded the soldier before him with a level gaze, Bad Tom was no simple ridgerunner. His dark broadcloth suit was rumpled from the ride in from Crane Creek but was in keeping with the styles of the day, as were his white shirt and black bow tie. Standing behind him, his son James and brother Wiley were similarly dressed, in contrast to the rough work clothes of the horsemen leaning on the fence, some holding rifles casually in the crook of their arms, most with long-barreled pistols stuck into their belts.

“Mr. Baker,” said Williams, nodding politely.

“Colonel.”

The officer shifted. He did not relish the role of peace officer.

“I am Col. Roger Williams, Mr. Baker,” he said. “I have been ordered by the court to place you under arrest.”

“Yes,” said Tom, curtly. “I know.”

“I also have orders to bring your son James and your brother Wiley into court.”

Tom half-turned to the two men behind him. “This is them,” he said.

“I'll have to ask you to surrender your weapons and accompany me into court,” said the colonel. Tom looked at him without moving.

“They said I wouldn't have to stay in the jail,” he said.

“Yes,” said Williams, “right here, sir.” He led the way to one of the tents pitched on the lawn, furnished with two cots, a lantern, and a table of sorts with a pitcher and wash basin on it. Baker glanced at it, expressionless. The soldiers standing nearby looked nervously at the notorious mountain feudist and his hard-faced followers.

“You'll be flanked by soldiers to protect you at all times,” Williams
continued. Baker nodded curtly, and again Williams had the unpleasant feeling that he was being put into the position of seeking the approval of this accused killer. His men, he knew, assumed that no one would dare attack the army, but he understood the danger in his position, miles from a road or railroad, his inexperienced troops surrounded by hardened marksmen.