Breaking out of The "Sticks": Being the Chronicle of a Young Kentucky Mountaineer

Josiah H. Combs about 1913 47 BREAKING OUT OF THE "STICKS' Being the Chronicle of a Young Kentucky Mountaineer by JOSIAH H. COMBS The writer of this little chronicle does not by any means make bold to assume that he has already entered "fast company ", to use the language of the baseball fan. Several years ago he did break out from cover of the tall timber and the sagegrass , to see what was outside the Kentucky mountains. He found such a strange world, such a different world from the one he had been accustomed to, that he feels like telling the story. I was born at Hazard, Perry County, Kentucky. While I was still in my "gumand -sheepskin days" (a highland phrase for childhood) the French-Eversole feud broke out. Brilliant and shrewd Joe Eversole , almost a dwarf in stature, was pitted against the crafty and cunning B. FuIt. French, who later figured in the Hargis troubles, in Breathitt County. Hazard speedily became an armed camp, the "cock-pit" of the county. My father was "high sheriff" of the county at the time. The feudists went about their preparations with method and precision, bringing in large supplies of guns and ammunition. It was difficult to see how my father and his kinsman were to keep out of the trouble. It was an instance in which the neutral party was likely to become the object of the hatred and ill will of all the belligerents. Two things, however, conspired to save the situation for my embarrassed father. One of my older brothers had been named for B. FuIt French, and I had been named, in part, for Joe Eversóle. Our family also had warm friends and kinsmen on both sides. And so we forced ourselves to remain aloof from the French-Eversole feud. Yet my father's continued neutrality cost us much trouble from time to time. The fact that he was an officer of the law made him a natural enemy of some of the feudist outlaws. Upon one occasion these outlaws shot and killed one of his deputies, and immediately laid siege to our home. Father was in bed sick. Bullets were crashing into the timbers of our home quick and fast. Something had to be done, and quickly, at that. Mother hurried the five children of us down into the basement of the house. Then she hastily seized father's revolver and drove the intruders away at the point of it. Quite "nervy" for a woman perhaps. But not for a mountain woman. My mother witnessed fight after fight "killing-off after killing-off". She stood in the doorway of our home one day, and beheld a spectacular duel on the street, in which Joe Eversole shot down one of the French men. On another occasion she beheld a strange fight between the two factions. The Eversole men had taken refuge in the courthouse, and the French men were attacking them from the town "grave-yard," located on the "backwoods " nearby. All the windows on that side of the courthouses were soon beaten out by a hail of bullets. "Bad" Tom Smith1 (my second cousin) deliberately took aim from a tombstone, and an Eversole clans48 man in the courthouse immediately dropped to the floor dead. Even these gruesome scenes were not without their humor, at times. One day an Eversole adherent was slowly walking up Main Street, alone. His Argus-eye suddenly caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a French follower, standing on the "backwoods ." Raising his Winchester to his shoulder he took aim and fired. At the sound of the gun a large, red calf rolled off the hill dead. In the midst of these troublesome times in and about the little town on the Kentucky River, my parents soon came to the conclusion that Hazard was not the place in which to rear up their children. We then removed to Carr's Fork of the Kentucky River, in Knott County, which had been created shortly before this time, and named for J. Proctor Knott, of "Duluth" fame. I do not remember these happenings , but my mother has told them to me so often...