Days of Darkness by John Ed Ed Pearce Read Free Book Online

don’t believe in this business of bravado. But I will die like a man, and an innocent man. So, now, goodbye.”
    On the gallows on the morning of August 4, 1894, Wilse, asked ifhe had anything to say, said, “Only that I hope to meet you all in heaven.”
    Back in Harlan, the hatreds that had fueled the feud eventually cooled if they never actually burned out. Life returned to something approaching normal. The Howards were eager to forget the feud. In the 1910 Harlan Business Directory, four doctors were listed in the town—a Howard, a Cawood, a Martin, and G. Pearl Bailey. Listed as teachers in the public school were a Howard, a Turner, and two Ca-woods. A Hall and two Howards were listed as engineers, and there were two Turners, three Howards, and a Hall among the lawyers. A haircut could be had from John Hall or from Daniel or Elijah Howard. In 1915 Dr. W.P. Cawood and Dr. E.M. Howard built a two-story building on the corner of Second and Mound Streets now known as the Smith-Howard Building.
    A century after the Turner-Howard feud ended, few of the old resentments remained. Life had taken its course. Turners, Howards, Halls, and Lewises had intermarried. Except for genealogist Holly Fee, it is hard to find anyone who remembers who Devil Jim Turner was. Or Wilse Howard, for that matter.
    Not that the feud did not exact a price. Like the other Eastern Kentucky feuds, it left an image, a reputation for violence, and the nickname “Bloody Harlan” that today is undeserved. In fact, it is a very hospitable town to visit.

BREATHITT COUNTY
    A Talent for Violence

Almost a Romantic Journey
    In the summer of 1780, while the Revolutionary War still raged along the American seaboard, a group of young Virginians walked and rode down the Shenandoah Valley, through southwest Virginia and the Pound Gap in the Cumberland Mountains into the wilderness of Kentucky. Though they were very serious in their search for a new life beyond the mountains, free of the strife between the restless colonists and the British crown, their journey had about it almost the air of a lark. They were very young—none was over twenty—and there was something youthful and romantic about their idealistic journey. Some had recently taken formal marriage vows, some had simply decided to set off together toward a new life in the mysterious, fabled territory of Kentucky.
    Most were of the good English yeoman stock common on the frontier, with few possessions besides the skill of their hands, a few tools, and a blessed ignorance of the toils that lay ahead. Their surnames would be among those living in the mountains two centuries later: Nathan and Virginia (Neace) Noble; William and Enoch (strange name for a girl) Noble; Austin and Melinda (Allen) Neace; Henry Neace. Most were close kin. Others with them or following close behind bore other names still familiar in and around the region where they settled: Haddix, Combs, Hurst, Bach, Turner, Strong, Watts, Reynolds.
    They were not the first white people to view what became Breathitt County. John Finley had crossed the Kentucky River near what is now Jackson in 1752. Christopher Gist, the Virginia surveyor, soldier, and scholar who later served as a guide for the young George Washington, came about the same time, probably in 1751. Washington himself may have come through the Pound Gap, though the indications are that they stopped north and east of that point.
    Through the gap and what are now Letcher and Perry Counties they trudged, finally deciding, late in the summer, to settle along Lost Creek, Quicksand, and Frozen Creek. A group of them made ahome that first winter in a rock house, a shallow cave actually, above Lost Creek, walling off the front with logs, building a fireplace—a remarkably dry, warm home until the men could get some cabins built. There, in November of 1780, young Virginia Noble gave birth to a baby girl. The baby died.
    It was a rough land into which they had