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

come, and one must wonder now why they stopped among the sharp, steep hills and narrow valleys of the central Cumberlands instead of going a little farther west into the rich and gentle Bluegrass region. From the first they faced the handicap of isolation. Until 1840, when a road was completed from the village of Jackson to War Creek, all merchandise had to be brought up the Kentucky River from a landing at Clay’s Ferry, near Lexington. Not until 1890 did the Kentucky Union Railroad extend its line from the Red River to Elkatawa, and in 1891 to Jackson, the county seat. As late as 1930 there was one black-topped road in the county.
    From its founding in 1807, Breathitt County grew slowly. In 1809 it contained 8,705 people, in 1900, 14,320. It was not an easy place in which to make a living. The rich river bottomland was good for farming but flood prone, and settlers were soon clearing timber from the hills to create farmland and pastures. On the steep slopes grew more than a hundred species of trees, but the land made cutting difficult, and the logs had to be floated down the swift, swirling waters of the Kentucky River at flood tide to sawmills fifty miles away. When the big lumber companies such as Mowbray-Robinson finally arrived in 1908, they were warmly welcomed for the payrolls and purchases they brought, but they were not an unmixed blessing. They stripped the hills, leaving them prone to erosion that silted the creeks and added to river flooding.
    When and why the fighting began that gave this scenic mountain land the unwanted nickname “Bloody Breathitt” is hard to pinpoint. But apparently it began with the Civil War. During that disastrous conflict, army officers, Union and Confederate, were often obliged to live off the land and sent foraging parties out into the countryside to round up whatever food they could find. According to law, they were supposed to pay or give promissory notes for what they took. In practice, they seldom did, taking what they could find and making foraging parties the dread of the mountain citizens, regardless of their sympathies. Such men were referred to as bushwhackers—they whacked the bushes to drive out livestock, cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens—which they then appropriated. Soon the name would be applied also to those who lay in the bushes and ambushed and robbed passers-by.
    It was assumed, of course, that the foragers would take the livestock and farm produce back to the troops. Again, it didn’t always work out that way. Frequently the leaders, especially leaders of the Home Guard (regular or irregular troops who were supposed to protect citizens of a stipulated area from enemy troops or robbers) simply rounded up the stock and divided it among themselves, with top dog getting the biggest bone. That is apparently what took place among the Union army units of the Home Guard representing Breathitt and neighboring counties. Captain William Strong, of Company K of the Fourteenth Regiment, had a falling out with Lieutenant Wiley Amis of Company I over such a divison of spoils. Wiley Amis and his men had been scouting the northern half of Breathitt, while Captain Strong, with other Amises and Wilson Callahan, were robbing the Lost Creek Section. According to his men, Captain Strong took more than his share, the Amises and Wilson Callahan protested, and the incident led to the Strong-Amis feud, which lasted well into the 1870s. It fairly well ended when John Amis, the leader of the family, was killed in 1873 and the other Amises, or most of them, moved out of the county. But before it ended, it involved the Littles, another large family, when a gunfight broke out in the Breathitt courtroom in which Bob Little, a nephew of Captain Strong, was killed and five others wounded. In that same year a fire destroyed much of the courthouse in Jackson, the county seat, including most of the county records. There are few things more convenient than a good courthouse