Days of Darkness (24 page)

Map 3

But hunting was still a popular way to replenish the family larder, and in the early fall of 1806 a group of men living on the South Fork of the Kentucky River (now Clay County) went over to the Middle Fork (now Leslie and Perry Counties) to hunt elk. They found not only elk but, on an upland meadow above the river, a herd of cattle, apparently abandoned or left to graze by Middle or North Forkers. Adopting the convenient view that finders were keepers, they killed and dressed one cow for food and were driving the rest home when North Forkers appeared and took exception to their casual roundup. A gun-fight ensued in which one man on each side was killed, several were wounded, and the South Forkers were obliged to retreat. But bitter resentment had been planted, gunfights between the two settlements continued for years, and until the Civil War travel through the area was often a risky business.

It is hard to say how many people fell in the Cattle Wars, since the warriors seldom appealed to the courts, preferring to settle matters the way they began. In eastern Clay County there is a memorial highway named for John Gilbert, who led the South Forkers in the battle of Hanging Rock against North Forkers under the command of two men named Callahan and Strong, names that would later figure prominently in the notorious Breathitt County feuds. The South Forkers were reportedly headed for an ambush when Gilbert spotted the glint of sunlight on a rifle barrel in the brush above Hanging Rock, gave the alarm, and then led a flanking attack that saved the day. Like many of the mountain feudists who in old age repented of their wild ways, Gilbert later became a preacher, as did North Fork leader William Strong.

There is no accurate list of casualties in either the Cattle Wars or the Clay County War, or feud, that reached a climax of violence near the turn of the century. Tom Walters, a Clay County native now a retired school official in Florida, has a list of fifty-five people killed in the northeastern part of the county alone, including some, he believes, killed in the feuds. Walters also has a list, compiled by a friend's uncle, from memory in the early 1950s, of over one hundred people “all of them murdered” in the feuds. Stanley DeZarn, another
Clay County native, now living in Hamilton, Ohio, estimates that “over one hundred” died in the feuds. And James Anderson Burns (“Burns of the Mountains”), who was himself involved in the feuds and who founded Clay's Oneida Institute, declared that the feuds, not counting the Cattle Wars, took more than 150 lives. There were dozens of newspaper and magazine articles written about the feuds at the time, but most of them, especially those in the eastern press, were sensational to the point of being ludicrous, and invariably exaggerated the deaths.

This was a time of great movement and ferment along the western border. Though the Appalachian frontier was still raw and primitive, substantial numbers of settlers were pushing their way into the hills and beginning to establish the institutions of stable society—churches, schools, public offices. The Indian wars were, for the most part, finished east of the Mississippi. Daniel Boone, Simon Kenton, George Rogers Clark, and their heroic kind had cleared the way and moved on. It was time for roads, towns, and the structure of law. But in Clay County, the Cattle Wars had left a poisonous precedent, creating an atmosphere of hatred and bitterness that invited violence, and establishing a pattern of conduct that made violence an accepted way of settling disputes and protecting property.

As the frontier yielded, entrepreneurs were drawn into Clay. Prominent among these were the Garrards and Whites who, around 1809, began shipping salt, a vital mineral on the frontier for flavoring and preserving food, curing hides, and mixing home remedies. Until the great salt domes farther west were discovered, wells such as those in Clay County were veritable gold mines. Both Whites and Garrards made fortunes, built fine homes, sent their children away to college, and helped develop the community.

These were not the one-gallus dullards of mountain stereotype. They were educated, enterprising, interesting people, the kind needed to make a frontier flourish. Daniel Garrard, the son of James Garrard, governor of Kentucky from 1796 to 1804, moved to Clay County around 1805 and in 1808 married Lucinda Toulmin, a New Orleans (and Mobile) belle whose father had been secretary of state under Governor Garrard. Daniel and Lucinda had six children, all of whom attended the grade school built near Manchester through the efforts of Garrard, Hugh White (who had thirteen children, one of whom married Mary Garrard), Thomas Johnson, and Abner Baker Sr., Clay's first court clerk.

Theophilus Toulmin (T.T.) Garrard, who was destined to play a major role in the development of Clay County, was the third child of
Daniel and Lucinda. Born June 7, 1812, he attended the school near Manchester until, when he was twelve, his father bundled all the children off to Danville, where they attended Centre College, which at that time included the equivalent of high school and was considered the finest school in the South. While there, they boarded with the family of Josh Bell, who later became a noted state legislator and for whom Bell County, south of Clay, was named. T.T. was being groomed to take his place among the prominent men of Kentucky.

When he was twenty, T.T. married Nancy Brawner. (A curious note: They were married in the home of Alexander White, implying that relations between the families were not as hostile as they would become, and possibly implying also that the county as yet had no church.) They had two children, one of whom died in infancy before Nancy herself died in 1838.

T.T. was left at loose ends. An outgoing, action-loving man, he found the salt business boring, decided to get into politics, and in 1841 ran for state representative against Daugherty White. Like all of the Garrards, T.T. was a Democrat, just as the Whites were Whigs (Republicans after 1860). T.T. lost, but the loss didn't stop him. In 1843 he ran against Josiah Combs for the state senate and won, and the next election he was elected without opposition.

The 1841 election was the first instance of political rivalry between the Whites and Garrards, though it was not the first time their interests had collided. Beginning around 1815 the Whites started cutting the price of salt five cents on the bushel. The Garrards responded with a similar cut. The Whites cut another five cents, and so on, until the Garrards gave up the business and closed their furnaces. But they soon came back. The salt business was extremely profitable, and it was about the only industry in or around Clay. The family still owned a well when T.T. wrote his memoirs in 1899.

Like the Garrards, the Whites had come to Kentucky shortly after the turn of the century. Patriarch John White, whose family had come over from Scotland and Ireland before the revolution, was given a land grant in Pennsylvania for his part in the war. But he was a slave owner, and when abolitionist pressure built in Pennsylvania, he moved his family to Virginia, where he farmed and made salt near Abingdon. From there he moved west to Tennessee and in 1803 moved north to Kentucky, settling on Yellow Creek in what is now Bell County. After hearing reports of the rich salt deposits on Goose Creek, he moved north again to what is now Clay County.

There John's son Hugh, who had been U.S. senator from Tennessee when the territory became a state, formed a partnership with his
brother-in-law Samuel Baugh, making salt on Collins Fork. His son Alex went into the same business with Hugh's brother James, and they made a fortune hauling salt across the mountains to southwest Virginia and floating it down the Powell River to Huntsville, Alabama, where it brought five dollars a bushel. With some of his profits, James bought a plantation in Arkansas and two more in Alabama, and at his death he was perhaps the richest man in Kentucky. The salt business was so attractive that young boys were apprenticed to well owners to learn the trade. In 1830, for instance, young Bowling Baker was bound to Daugherty White to learn the trade but got into a fight with Morgan DeZarn, killed him, and fled the county. A portent of things to come.

Hugh White also prospered and soon became a rich man, head of a large, influential clan. His son Hugh II drowned in 1856 while taking a boatload of salt down the Kentucky River. One of Hugh's sons, John, was five times elected to Congress and became Speaker of the House. Hugh's son Beverly was elected circuit judge, and other Whites became powers in local and state politics.

They were not without scandal. Shortly before the Civil War, Hugh's son William killed a woman with a butcher knife in what was said to have been a crime of passion in an illicit romance. Nothing was done about it. And then there was John Edward, who was a little strange and at times a little dangerous. Benjamin Franklin White, Hugh's twelfth child, married Alabama Taylor, daughter of John Edward Taylor of Tennessee, and their son John Edward, named for his maternal grandfather, was born in 1838. He caused the family some anxious moments.

For instance, on March 1, 1859, Dillon (or Dillion) Hollin was born to a mulatto woman of that name. Everyone knew, and the principals did not deny, that John Ed was the father. Their back-door romance had been going on for some time, and John Ed wanted to marry her, but the Whites begged, threatened, and raised so much trouble that John Ed finally gave up the idea, though he admitted paternity and supported Dillon.

He was not a constant lover, however. Ten days after Dillon was born, John Ed recovered from his infatuation and married Elizabeth Garrard Brawner, a niece of T.T. Garrard. The Brawners, who lived in Owsley County but were preparing to move to Texas, disapproved hotly/probably because of the illegitimate son, so after a brief courtship John Ed and Elizabeth eloped. Dashing off into the night, they rode 125 miles to Tazewell, Tennessee, stopping only to rest the horses, were married, and shortly afterward left to join the Brawners
in Texas, the parental objections apparently resolved. But they didn't think much of Texas and within a few months, though Elizabeth was pregnant, they left and walked and rode back to Manchester. They were warmly welcomed, probably because Elizabeth was due to produce another White child.

But it was another White marriage that caused serious trouble.

Drawing the Lines

Because of the burst of bloodletting between the Bakers and Howards in 1898, many people accept that date as the beginning of the Clay County War. Actually, aside from the Cattle Wars of 1806-1850, the trouble started in 1844 when young Abner Baker Jr. married Susan White, James White's daughter.

The Whites objected strenuously, though at first glance it didn't seem such a bad match. Abner Baker Sr. was a respected man, having been asked by a committee of citizens to move from Boyle to Clay County in 1806, when the county was formed, to be the county's first court clerk. He had a reputation for honesty, was an experienced surveyor, and, being an outsider, was considered more likely to be unbiased in disputes over property lines.

Several families or “sets” of Bakers came into Kentucky during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Most of them came through North Carolina, where they had settled after coming over from England and Ireland (though E.B. Allen of Rockcastle County, Kentucky, says that the Clay County Bakers came from New England, where Ethan Allen, of the famed Green Mountain Boys, was half Baker). The Clay County Bakers settled around Boston Gap and on Crane Creek, where they claimed or bought a large tract of land.

The first of the Bakers, Judah Robert, called Juder Bob, came into Clay shortly after the turn of the century. His son Robert (Boston Bob) was born in Lee County, Virginia, in 1800. No one knows where the Boston in Boston Bob originated; it may have been a hint of the New England ancestry mentioned by E.B. Allen. The Bakers originally lived in or near Boston Gap, and many are buried in the Boston Gap cemetery.

Boston Bob gained a measure of local fame by whipping a bulldog. The owner of the bulldog boasted that his dog, a fierce, thick-set beast, could “whip anything that moves.” Boston Bob was skeptical. He went to the man's home on Sexton Creek, got down on all fours, and crawled through the front gate of the dog's domain. With a vicious
(and probably puzzled) growl, the bulldog charged. Boston Bob charged. Grabbing the dog by the throat, he fastened his teeth on the brute's ear and hung on. The strangling dog twisted and snarled, but he could not get a grip on Boston Bob as long as Bob had a tooth-hold on his ear. At one point, Bob bit through his ear, but he got a fresh bite and lightened his grip on the dog's throat. A cluster of neighbors looked on, shouting encouragement to the growling gladiators. The dog thrashed about. Finally Bob released his grip. The dog fled under the porch, and Boston Bob had established a reputation.

It was Boston Bob's son George W. (Baldy George) and George's son Thomas (Bad Tom) who collided with the Whites and Howards in the climax of the Clay County War. The origins of the nickname Baldy George, like that of Boston Bob, are lost in the fog of history. Even Jess Wilson of Possum Trot in Clay County, a prominent Kentucky genealogist and himself part Baker, is not sure. Neither does he know when Thomas came to be known as Bad Tom. He had a reputation as something of a brawler from boyhood but was referred to as Thomas in the newspapers at the time of his death.

But to get back to the wedding.

Abner Baker Sr. was cousin of Boston Bob, though not as rough in personal habits. Young Abner was not unpopular, but he had a reputation for erratic behavior and a bad temper, and the Whites made plain their disapproval when he began courting Susan. He was known to slam out of a room in a rage when he lost at cards or in an argument and seemed to suffer a strong streak of paranoia. Even his friend and later defender Dan Garrard said of him, “Dr. Baker was always very suspicious in little games of cards. When the witness [Garrard] and Dr. Baker were playing, Baker would always shuffle the cards over again, fearing they might be put up on him.”

Born in 1813, Abner Jr. grew into a slender, dark-haired, handsome young man. He attended East Tennessee College in Knoxville for three years but quit and returned home where, with his father's help, he was elected county court clerk. But this bored him. He quit and served a hitch in the navy but resigned after an altercation with his superior officer. He then opened a store in Lancaster, Garrard County, but it failed in less than a year and he enrolled in the new Louisville College of Medicine, from which he received a diploma in 1839. For a few months he practiced in Knoxville, but he quit to return once more to Manchester. At the time, a Knoxville friend advised his brothers that Abner was showing disturbing signs of instability. He was nevertheless able to court and marry Susan White in 1844, though his success may have been due to a scarcity of eligible young men in Manchester.