The Boy With the U.S. Census by Francis Rolt-Wheeler
page 23 of 288 (07%)
page 23 of 288 (07%)
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"All of them were mixed up in each other's feuds in that Turner family,"
the Kentuckian replied, "but the 'Turner War' or the 'Hell's Half-Acre' feud was in Bell County, an' it started over some question o' water rights in Yellow Creek. It was a sayin' down in Bell County that it couldn't rain often enough to keep Hell's Half-Acre free from stains o' blood." "It is a fearful record, Uncle Eli, when you put them together that way," the boy said. "An' I haven't even mentioned the worst o' them, the Hargis-Cockrill feud in Breathitt County. That lasted for generations, an' started over some election for a county judge. I don' know that any one rightly remembers the time when Breathitt County wasn't the scene of some such goin's on." "But they are all over now, aren't they?" "I was jes' goin' to tell yo'. They're all over but one, an' that one is sometimes called the Baker-Howard or the Garrard-White feud, for all four families were mixed up in it. Not so very long ago I was talkin' to the widow o' one o' the men slain in that fightin', an' sayin' to her how good it was that the feelin' had all died out, an' she said--thar was a lot of us thar at the time--'I have twelve sons. Each day I tell them who shot their father. I'm not goin' to die till one o' them shoots him.' I'm reckonin' to hear o' trouble in Clay County mos' any time, but I really think that is the last o' them." "What started that?" |
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