' jj 
 
 Glass Jl5J 
 Book. 
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 COP1RJGHT DEPOStT. 
 
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History of 
 
 Corporal 
 Fess Wkitaker 
 

 
 ►CtAH I 23 J ? 
 
r 
 i 
 
 COPYRIGHT 191S 
 FESS WHITAKER 
 
 JAN -2 1919 \S 
 
 The Standard Printing Co. 
 
 incorporated 
 
 Louisville, Kentucky 
 
CORPORAL FESS WHITAKER 
 February 12. 1898, to August 22. 1904 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 AMONG the people of Letcher County no other 
 man has so remarkable history as Fess Whit- 
 aker; none other is so well worthy of being 
 carefully studied by all who find pleasure in the past 
 history and particularly by Letcher's own people. In 
 the winning - of friends he stands first; in the upbuild- 
 ing of the county his influence has been strongly ex- 
 erted; as a soldier on the battlefield he stands firm. 
 While the moonshiners and ku-klux were provoking 
 the country in my early boyhood as though led by an 
 inscrutable hand were finding their way over the 
 mountains and preparing to establish themselves as 
 the outguard of civilization that they might become 
 the possessors of all the sons of Letcher County, the 
 good mountain mothers, almost unaided, not only 
 stood like a wall of fire to forbid such conduct of the 
 men, but made good their footing, which soon after- 
 ward made their loving Christian homes a pleasure. 
 
 The strong characteristics of the men and women 
 who, with unexampled courage, endurance and patri- 
 otic devotion achieved so much with so little means 
 and in the face of obstacles so great, could but impress 
 themselves upon the people of Letcher County. From 
 
History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 the first mothers they have escaped that sign of 
 Athenian decadence, the restless desire to be ever 
 hearing' and telling some new thing to show what 
 good people Letcher County has. 
 
 This book claims to be but an epitome of the His- 
 tory of Fess Whitaker; but it will be found to contain 
 a general account, to which interest he has taken by 
 an uneducated man. special and particular incidents, 
 etc. The adult or educated mind will read far more 
 between the lines than is found in the book. The 
 author trusts that he has imparted to the short stories 
 something of that spirit which should be impressed 
 upon the people whose minds and character are still 
 in the formative state — an admiration of their own 
 country and a pride in its past, the surest guarantees 
 that in the future her fair fame will be enhanced, her 
 honor maintained and her progress in all right lines 
 be steadily and nobly promoted. 
 
HISTORY OF CORPORAL 
 FESS WHITAKER 
 
 FESS WHITAKER was born June 17, 1880, in 
 Knott County, Kentucky. Knott County is lo- 
 cated in the mountains of Kentucky between 
 the Big Sandy River and the north fork of the Ken- 
 tucky River. There are no railroads in Knott County, 
 but there is lots of fine coal (what is known as the 
 Amburgey seam), and lots of fine timber. Hindman 
 is the county seat. Knott County has fine churches 
 and schools and good roads, and, no doubt, the best 
 farming county in the mountains. 
 
 When I was only six years old my father swapped 
 farms with Tood Stamper and put the Whit- 
 akers together in Letcher County and the Stampers 
 together in Knott County. My mother was old Kelly 
 Hogg's daughter, and in time of slavery my Grand- 
 father Hogg swapped a foolish negro to Mr. Mullins, 
 of Knott County, for a good farm worth $10,000 to- 
 day, known as the Black Sam Francis farm now. Mr. 
 Mullins thought lots of his little negro and called him 
 his Shade, meaning that he could rest and the negro 
 could work. But when the greatest man that ever has 
 been elected President of the United States of Amer- 
 ica, Abraham Lincoln, Said slavery was not right and 
 
s History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 released the shackles from four million slaves, Mr. 
 Mullins lost his farm and his little negro "Sam Hogg 
 Mullins," too. 
 
 When f was six years old my parents went back to 
 Rockhouse, a tributary to the north fork of the Ken- 
 
 
 
 
 1 m mt 
 
 
 
 
 -a* ■ Til 
 
 Vp ,4 mf I t --r -* 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 ^^^^•PPfcWSIH". *^ 
 
 
 
 REV. JIM T. WHITAKER 
 Pastor Indian Bottom Church 
 
 tucky River, now one mile from the little town of 
 Blackey, or the old Indian Bottom Church. The 
 same year that my parents moved to Rockhouse my 
 father, who was the late I. I). Whitaker, Jr., died. He 
 was the son of S. A. Whitaker, known so well in Ken- 
 tucky and Missouri. After the death of my father 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 my mother was left with eight poor little orphan 
 children to raise, six boys and two g'irls. The boys' 
 names are very funny; they are, according - to name 
 and age : Fred and Fess, Little and Less, Gid and Jim, 
 and all the rest. And all the rest were the two girls, 
 Julia and Susan. 
 
 My mother was left with a very good farm of about 
 125 acres, and the Rockhouse Creek ran right through 
 the center of it. During those days every spring we 
 had what was known as big tides. The late Bill Wright 
 was the greatest logger and splash-dam man in the 
 mountains of Kentucky. The next year after my 
 father died Mr. Wright had rive big splash-dams in 
 the head of Rockhouse and Mill Creek and had 
 between ten thousand and fifteen thousand big poplar 
 saw logs in the dams, and when he turned those five 
 dams loose there was no land or fence left below. So 
 that same spring he cleaned our farm on both sides of 
 Rockhouse and in about ten days here he came with 
 twenty-eight big, strong mountain men. bedding all 
 the logs that lodged. 1 will never forget what hap- 
 pened. The) - were all eatin' dinner at mother's and 
 one man, by the name of Sol Potter, was eatin' big 
 onion blades and he got choked and got his breath all 
 that evenin' through the onion blade, but by good 
 luck Mr. Potter is a real rich man in coal land below 
 Hemphill leased to Parson Brothers and Big Jim 
 Montgomery, and in that bunch of log-bedders was 
 Henry Potter, of Kona, another rich man of the 
 mountains, and a brother to Sol Potter and also a 
 brother-in-law of ex-Jailer Hall. Mr. Wright, the 
 owner of the logs and dams, was murdered by Noah 
 Reynolds just above his home, now Seco. Reynolds 
 
10 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitqker 
 
 was sent to the penitentiary for life and served 
 
 seven years and was paroled by Governor Beckham. 
 Reynolds is now a Baptist preacher and lives 
 in Knott County. The Southeast Coal Company 
 is now operating on Mr. Wright's land at Seco, Ky. 
 
 After the big tide and all the rails gone and big saw- 
 logs laying out in the bottoms in the corn in April, 
 we had no money, so us boys finished making the crop 
 and minded the stock out of our corn with the dogs 
 until fall. There was no such a thing those days as 
 wire fences, and in the fall we went to the mountains 
 and cut and hauled in rail timber and made rails back 
 out of big white oak trees or black oaks worth $25 
 per tree now. We would cut and saw the cuts in 
 make the rails out of about eight feet, would split and 
 burst them open with two good wood gluts and iron 
 wedges and a good old seasoned hickory mall, weigh 
 ing about thirty pounds. After we got our corn and 
 fodder laid up for winter the people would go many 
 miles to an old horse mill to get cornmeal ground. 
 Everyone would take their turn grinding. They 
 would ptit their horse into the mill, put their corn in 
 the hopper and then get a >witch and start the old 
 horse around. And in about one hour he would have 
 about one bushel of good meal. There were only 
 three mills within fifty miles square. Old Levi 
 Eldridge had one on Rockhouse, and old Pud P>reed- 
 ing had one on Breeding's Creek, and old Fighting 
 George I son one on Line Fork. 
 
 When ! was eight years old my mother started un- 
 to an old water mill with two bushels of corn to get 
 meal and put me on an old mule named "John," put 
 a spur on my right heel to make the old mule go if 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life n 
 
 lie took the studs. So 1 was just going across Burton 
 Hill and, like a boy, I wanted ray mule to trot, so 1 
 applied my spur and he started and I began to bounce 
 around on the saddle, and the tighter I clinched mv 
 legs the faster the old mule got, so he ran through a 
 big ivy and laurel patch and threw me off. By luck I 
 only got skinned up a little hit, so I finally caught old 
 "John" and took off my spur and got back on the old 
 mule. It was a very cool, frosty morning, so I went 
 up about two miles to where the late 'Esquire Whit- 
 aker lived and I got down to warm. I hitched my old 
 mule to the gate and fixed my corn on better and went 
 into the house. After I got warm J went back out 
 and got on my old mule and went on to the mill at 
 Ben Back's, f got down to take my corn off and 
 there w r as no corn, so I took back down the road 
 huntin' for my sack of corn. I went back to where I 
 warmed and there I found my sack torn all to pieces. 
 While I was warming the old cows pulled it off of my 
 saddle and the hogs drug it over a cliff of rocks and 
 eat it all up. So I went home and mother sure did fix 
 my back, and then w^e shelled another sack of corn 
 and mother took it, because it was noon and no bread 
 and a houseful of children and no bread to eat. 
 
 I never spoke a word until I was nine years old. I 
 only clucked and motioned for wdiat I wanted Lots 
 of people thought I was an idiot because I could not 
 talk. I may have looked like one, for I was a little old 
 country boy that never cut my hair in those days only 
 about twice a year, and T wore a big checked cotton 
 shirt and old jeans pants made by my mother and old 
 yarn socks, and 70-cent stogie shoes with brass toes. 
 This was my winter suit and my summer suit was 
 only a big yellow factory shirt and no hat or shoes. 
 
12 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 At the age of ten 1 was taken by my mother and 
 uncle, Gid Hogg, to Whitesburg, ky., the county seat 
 of Letcher County, a distance of about eighteen miles. 
 We rode an old mare named "Kate," without any 
 saddle, and when I was taken off I could not walk I 
 was so stiff, and that made everybody think I was an 
 idiot sure enough. So when Judge 11. C. Lilley 
 opened court on Monday, February 12, they taken 
 
 THE AUTHOR, AGE 10 
 
 me before the judge. The judge ordered old Black 
 Shade Combs, then the sheriff, to summons twelve 
 jurors and two doctors. One doctor thought \ had 
 been born an idiot, and I )r. S. S. Swaingo, of Jackson, 
 held out that I was all right of mind, and so the cast- 
 was ]>ut off until 10 a. m. Tuesday. Then Dr. Swaingo 
 got old Dr. McCray and gave me a thorough exam- 
 ination. The doctors found by examining my neck, 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 13 
 
 where the small tits in one's neck are, that the tit 
 in my neck had grown together. After the doctors 
 cut the tit loose in my neck 1 began to talk and to 
 have a good joke. The doctors took me to a one-horse 
 barber shop and had my hair cut and fixed me up and 
 presented me on Tuesday morning to Judge Lilley, 
 and he was surprised beyond reason that I was Fess. 
 So that was Fess's first miracle. Later on they have 
 all been worked out to the present. 
 
 When my mother took me back home everybody 
 was surprised and people came miles and miles to see 
 the boy that was so much talked about and to see the 
 boy that had been made to speak after ten years of 
 worthless tongue. 
 
 I was put in school at the age of ten years and was 
 known as the funny schoolboy. The children would 
 all laugh at me because I could not talk plain, but it 
 did not take me very long to learn how to stand ahead 
 in my classes. I was very fast to learn in all the books 
 they had those days except arithmetic. The first 
 school I ever went to was in an old log house dobbed 
 with mud, with an old-fashioned chimney made out 
 of mud and sticks of wood. The late \Y. T. Haney, 
 who was murdered on the head of Little Carr, of 
 Knott County, for $30.00, was the teacher. He was 
 known one day as being the best-read man and no 
 doubt the best educated man in Eastern Kentucky 
 those days. He was the father of John Haney, of 
 Chicago, the expert railroad man, and the stepfather 
 of George M. Hogg, one of the leading men in East- 
 ern Kentucky. Mr. Haney, after hearing all of the 
 children's lessons in the afternoon, would lay down 
 in an old country wash trough for a nap of sleep. The 
 
14 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 trough was made out of a fine large yellow poplar, 
 
 eight feet long, and hauled out of the mountains with 
 a yoke of steers. The log was hewed square on one 
 side with a sixteen inch broadax, then eight inches 
 left at each end and the remainder was hulled out to 
 a big trough, then two holes were bored in the bottom 
 of each end of the trough and four wooden lei's, made 
 by hand, were driven into the trough and set up. In 
 the inside of the trough at one end at the bottom was 
 a hole bored and a pin made to tit so that it could lei 
 the water out. The water was "hit" and put in the 
 tub and when the "wimen" began to wash they would 
 have what was known as battling sticks and they 
 would apply the water and soap on the clothes and lay 
 them on the eight-inch end of the trough and begin 
 t" battle. The old troughs have about all played out 
 ot fashion, as the galvanized tubs were brought in and 
 have taken the day; still there is many a one used up 
 to the present daw The soap they used those days 
 was the best of soap. The men folks would cut and 
 haul in out of the mountains so many white oak and 
 hickory trees. They would cut and saw them up and 
 pile them up in a big pile and burn them to get the 
 ashes. After the ashes were cooled off they took them 
 and poured them into a gum called those days that 
 was sitting on some boards that the gum was made to 
 lean on. After staying nine days, on the old moon, wat- 
 er was poured in the gum on the ashes and the red lye 
 began to drop and run out of the bottom into another 
 trough, made like the washin' trough but smaller. 
 After the lye leaked out good and got all the strength 
 out oi the ashes, the lye was put in an old country 
 fashion pot and the hogs' guts that had been washed 
 and dried and strung on a pole in the corner of the old 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 15 
 
 chimney was taken down and put in the pot with the 
 lye. The lve was so strong it soon ate up the hogs' 
 guts and boiled to a jelly-like substance and taken off 
 and put in old big round gourd raised on the farm. 
 The gum that held the ashes was a hollow tree cut 
 down and burnt out inside and sawed into about four- 
 foot lengths for gums. 
 
 The second school that I went to. was taught by 
 little Sammie Banks, of Big Cowen. Sammie boarded 
 with my mother, and after the live months' term of 
 school was out Preacher Jim Caudill made up a sub- 
 scription school at the mouth of Rockhouse at SI. 00 
 each and mother signed for five, and she had no 
 money, but had a good nerve. The first week I went 
 mother took me up in her lap and tried me in arith- 
 metic where the teacher had me, and I knew nothing 
 about it. The teacher was pushing me too fast. 
 Mother told me that she would try me one more week 
 and if I could not do anything in the arithmetic by 
 the next Friday that she would give me a good whip- 
 ping. So the next Friday came and I had not learned 
 anything, so I played off sick about 11 o'clock that 
 morning at school and went out of the schoolhouse 
 and began to play off crazy, and my sister Julia, now 
 Airs. J. D. Stamper, of Big Springs, Tex., ran after 
 mother. There being no medical doctor within forty 
 
 miles, they brought a charm doctor, Andy C . 
 
 who rubbed me and charged mother five dollars for it 
 and claimed I had been poisoned very bad, so by Mon- 
 day I was ready for school. And mother told me what 
 would happen Friday if I could not do anything with 
 my arithmetic. So I tried, and Friday evening mother- 
 tried me and I was in long division, but I could not 
 do anything. She got me up in her lap and tried her 
 
L6 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 best to show me, !>ui all in vain. So she put me down 
 and laid the hook upon the table and took me by the 
 hand and led me to a large cedar tree and broke her 
 a good switch and began whipping me. She whipped 
 me until she gave out, and sat down on a large rock- 
 pile to rest and stood me up and talked to me while 
 
 EDDIE BROWN 
 The good-natured schoolmaster 
 
 she was resting. After she got through resting she 
 raised and gave me the same dose again; then she 
 took me hack in the house and got me up in her lap 
 and began to show me about my lesson, and it jumped 
 in mv head like a falling star, and from that time until 
 the, present date I challenge the State of Kentucky 
 in the arithmetic. That was my second miracle. 
 
 The third school I went to was taught by Eddie 
 Brown, on Burton Mill, in a new lo<j- house, with, no 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 chimney and no floor in the house and a big fire in the 
 middle of the house. I always had the rest of the chil- 
 dren beat by this time. 1 was twelve years old and 
 past and had begun to get to be a pretty mean boy on 
 account of so many people picking at me. Eddie 
 Brown, the teacher, told us children if we were not 
 good children that the "Old Bugger Man'* would 
 come and get us. So the "Bugger Man" sure did 
 come the next school. I was thirteen years old then, 
 and Wesley Banks had been employed to teach the 
 school, and by this time the school had the name of 
 having the meanest lot of boys in it of any other school 
 in Letcher County. I was called the leader. There were 
 four of us called bad — Mason Whitaker, Ben Mcln- 
 tar, Print Ison and myself. Mr. Banks took charge 
 of the school on July 5, and all the children's parents 
 came in to see the new teacher. So the teacher gol 
 up to talk and open his school. He was a very homely 
 mountain man, and the first thing he said was: "This 
 school has an awfully bad name and I understand that 
 Mr. Eddie Brown teached this school last year and 
 told you all that the "Bugger Man'' would come if you 
 were not good school children. Now, I am the 'Bug- 
 ger Man.' " 
 
 When he said that ever}- child threw its eyes on him. 
 
 "Next one \ call their name please come around to 
 where I now stand," said the teacher. 
 
 The first name called was Fess, then Print. Mase 
 and Ben. So we all went around to where the teacher 
 was and he said: "Boys, I have bin told that you four 
 boys have bin very bad boys in school, so I am going 
 t< I turn a new leaf." 
 
ls History of Corporal f : ess Whitaker 
 
 My heart was in my neck, for I knew that Mr. 
 Hanks had already brought in twelve long green oak 
 switches before opening school. 
 
 "Fess," said he. "it's reported to me that you are 
 the meanest." and he took me by the hand and sure 
 did like to beat me to death, and when he got through 
 
 UNCLE WESLEY BANKS 
 The "Buggar Man" school master 
 
 with me he told me to take my seat. Then he took 
 Print next and gave liini the same, then Mase, and 
 while he was whipping Mase a large splinter flew off 
 the switch and across a twenty-foot house and stuck 
 in under the shoulder blade of the back of Less, a 
 brother of Fess. Then he had to take a pair of old 
 home-made tooth pullers that had been made in a 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 19 
 
 blacksmith shop by big Jim Back, of Caudill's Branch, 
 and pull out the splinter. After all that he gave Ben 
 
 the same dose as he did us. He then said that the 
 school had opened, and gave us our lessons. He only 
 had to apply his new rule once. After the free school 
 was out the same old Baptist preacher, Jim Caudill, 
 got up a subscription school again that winter. My 
 
 CRISS BROWN 
 The wooden pistol hero 
 
 mother had rented part of her farm to Joe Brown, of 
 Cumberland River, and he had eight hoys, and one, by 
 the name of Criss, was very bad. Along during the 
 second week Criss done something and the teacher 
 went to whip him and he bucked on the teacher, so the 
 good old teacher, about sixty years old. put the whip- 
 ping off until he could see the father of Criss. So that 
 
20 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 night Criss made him a wooden pistol and wired a big 
 forty-four cartridge hull on the end of it and made 
 a fuse hole in the end of it and rilled it with black 
 powder and drove a stick in on the powder and took 
 it with him to school. The teacher had seen the boy's 
 father and told him about the trouble and the father 
 said to he sure and whip him, so he called for Criss to 
 come around and get his whipping, and instead of 
 going up he ran out of the house and the teacher fol- 
 lowed him, but all in vain. So the teacher came back 
 into the schoolhouse and sat down in the chair and 
 started giving out a spelling lesson. The schoolhouse 
 was on old-fashioned log house dobbed with mud. and 
 some of the mud had fallen out of the cracks of the 
 schoolhouse. With his big forty-four cartridge hull 
 loaded he sighted it right at the teacher's old bald 
 head and struck a match and touched it to the fuse 
 hole and the old wooden gun went off and the wooden 
 bullet struck the old man right in the head. lie 
 jumped up and dismissed t lie school, very badly scared 
 and bleeding, and never did teach another school. S< > 
 the next year they got the "Bugger Man" teacher 
 again and everybody came out to see him open his 
 school the same as they did before. 
 
 Wesley Hanks, at the age of thirty, did not know a 
 letter in the book and began going to school, and at 
 the age of thirty-three received a third class certifi- 
 cate and began teaching and now has taught forty- 
 six schools in Letcher County thirty-seven years in 
 succession without missing, and very near whipped 
 ever)- boy in Letcher County. He was at one time 
 called the best teacher in Letcher Count v. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 21 
 
 At the age of fourteen I became head of the family, 
 as my older brother, Fred, became grown at the age 
 of sixteen and, there being no father to make him 
 mind, he ran around the country one year, doing no 
 good. At the age of eighteen R. B. Bentley, with both 
 legs off, then County Court Clerk of Letcher 
 County, took him into his home and finished his edu- 
 cation for him. He is now a well-to-do-farmer and 
 stockman of Richmond, Ky. 
 
 After T became head of the family mother went off 
 one Sunday and myself and the four younger boys 
 run a year-old colt in the stable and we had just killed 
 some hogs, so we got the hogs' bladders off of the 
 hogs' guts and blew them up and filled them up with 
 white beans and they sure would rattle. So T tied three 
 bladders to the colt's tail and opened the door and 
 turned the colt out. There was a large apple orchard 
 all around the barn, it being about four acres square. 
 So the colt started, its tail in the air, then under its 
 belly, then between its legs, scared to death, and just 
 simply burning the wind. ' Ton my honor," when it 
 got to the other end of the orchard it turned to come 
 back and its tail hit an apple tree, causing one of the 
 bladders to burst. Talk about jumping! The colt went 
 up in the air about ten feet, and when it hit the ground 
 it made an awful funny noise and started for the barn. 
 Us boys got out of the way and when it got within 
 ten feet of the barn it made a long jump for the door, 
 and just as it went to go through the door it struck 
 its hip against the side of the door and knocked one 
 of its hips out of place. 
 
22 History o f Corporal Fcss Uliitaker 
 
 Just as soon as mother came home the other boys 
 told on me. SO I ^ure did get some more of that oak 
 tea just like Wesley Banks gave me, and my mother 
 sure was mad. 
 
 My mother was a Hogg before her marriage, and 
 sure could whin and whip with a good constitution. 
 
 I am now fifteen years old and in school and the best 
 attendant in Letcher County. There were about 
 twenty young men and thirty young girls in my elass. 
 The school was mostly composed of Bankes, Isons. 
 Fraziers, Caudills, Backs, Hoggs and Whitakers. 
 Burton Hill is located about two and one-half miles 
 from the mouth of Rockhouse. It is a beautiful place 
 and about twenty acres square and all level, covered 
 with large black pines, cedars, ivy and laurel and lot- 
 of mountain tea grows there. It lies in the bend of 
 Rockhouse Creek, and the creek runs very near all 
 around it. It is now owned by Less, brother of Fess, 
 of Amarillo. Tex. That is where the late Wesley Col- 
 lins and Daw Adams built the first church in the 
 lower end of the county. And the first preacher I ever 
 saw was then. 
 
 Mother had washed us all up and put a clean shirt 
 on us hoys and taken us up to church. Mr. Collins 
 opened up the church like the old Regular Baptists do 
 nowaday-. After church was opened Mr. Adam- was 
 the first preacher. lie was then about forty years old 
 and had been married seven times and stood about six 
 feet and four inches on the ground, and holds the 
 world's champion horse-swapping medal, lie had 
 two big Long cowboy spurs, one on each foot, and his 
 boots had the pictures of the moon and stars on top 
 of them. So Mr. Adams opened the song book and 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 23 
 
24 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 gave out an old-fashioned song - and asked everybody 
 to help sing, and after the s< mg he took his text. 1 )on't 
 reinemher just what it was. hut according to his faith 
 Adams was carried off in a trance and he was squat- 
 ting and yelling and said "Brothers and sistern, if this 
 doctrine is from the Lord it's all risfht, and if it's from 
 
 DAW ADAMS 
 Mountain Champion Horse Swapper 
 
 Daw A. it's no good," and about that time he drove 
 those two big cowboy spurs into his thighs and he 
 gave a great yell and everybody had to laugh. So Mr. 
 Adams never got up to preach any mure from that 
 day until this, hut he is a good old Baptist Christian 
 and professed a hope a Few years ago and was bap- 
 tized at Mayking, Ky.. where he was horn and reared 
 up. Mr. Adams belongs to one of the largest genera- 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 tions in the country and is well liked and thought of 
 by everybody. His great-grandfather came over here 
 the same time that Daniel Boone did, and Boone 
 settled at Kona and Adams at Mayking. Those days 
 times were rough in Letcher Count)-; a moonshine 
 still was in very near every hollow and a blind tiger 
 everywhere. And Adams was a big-hearted fellow 
 and fell on the church that da}' to get to skin some 
 good old man out of his horse or mule. 
 
 Mr. Collins, the other preacher, died some years 
 ago in the asylum at Lexington. He died in good 
 faith and died a regular Baptist, and belonged to a 
 large generation of people and good parents. One of 
 his sisters sailed from New York on February 23. 
 1918, as head of the Salvation Army in France. ^ on 
 will always find the Collins' trying to live in the faith 
 and always doing something good for their neighbors. 
 Those were the first preachers T had ever seen. I had 
 never been taught anything about churches or Sun- 
 day-schools, but since that day I have seen all kinds 
 of churches. 
 
 Just before the end of school the late Elijah Banks, 
 who lived on the head of Montgomery Creek on the 
 north fork of the Kentucky River that empties into 
 the river in Perry County, in the great coal fields of 
 Eastern Kentucky, had four grown boys in school, so 
 they set in begging my mother to let me go home with 
 them on Friday evening, and at last my mother con- 
 sented to let me go. So after school was out Friday 
 evening we all started for Montgomery Creek, about 
 eight miles through the mountains. 
 
 We went down to the mouth of Caudill Branch at 
 
 the three big cliffs of rock, up Caudill Branch to the 
 
26 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 month of Whitaker Branch, and up Whitaker Branch 
 and across a big mountain well covered with white 
 oak, chestnul oak, red oak and chestnuts and three 
 big coal veins under same: No. 3 veins four feet thick, 
 \o. 4 veins six feel thick, and No. 7 veins seven feel 
 and eighl inches thick. Over in head of right-hand 
 
 fork ot Elk Creek down we go, and down that fork 
 
 to the mouth at Uncle Dave Back's and then up a 
 
 steep hill to the top, and there we fouhd a nice level 
 country, 2,097 feet above sea level, and one of my 
 father's sisters lived there, Aunt Peggie Dixon. All 
 
 of them came out t<» see me, and after we left there we 
 went around through the Mat woods, and as we wenl 
 through the Mat woods the Banks boys told me thai 
 Thomas Gent, a big, rough nineteen year old hoy, had 
 
 knocked out Tress I lenslcv's black cow's eye and they 
 wanted me to win']) him and they would give me 
 twenty five cents for it. I told them I would do it. ! 
 had the twenty five cents on my mind, and it was my 
 first piece of money to get, should I win. I made up 
 my mind to win. So now we were around in the flat 
 woods to where Press Hensley lived. The Banks boys 
 
 Called <>ut I lensley and asked aboul his old black cow 
 getting her eye knocked out. I Ic went on and told all 
 about it. and it sure did go in on my brain, so we had 
 t<> go down a little steep place through a big chestnut 
 orchard to where the G. boy lived. I went in and 
 asked where the hoys were and the old folks said that 
 the} were around in the Rich dap field. That pleased 
 the Banks hoys, so just as we got in sight of the field 
 I met Thomas, a very big man, weighing aboul I40or 
 150 pounds. I asked him about knocking the cow's 
 eye out, and, like a mountain man. he said he did. Jusl 
 as he said it I struck him in the stomach with mv left 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life ^ 
 
 hand and on the chii rij^ht hand and he 
 
 struck the ground, rind onto him \ went and into hi- 
 inned it in a t! I up 
 
 and asked for my price of twenty-fi\ • which 
 
 gladly paid. We all 'he hil! 
 
 • here the b 
 
 \ never had a ime in my life than f 
 
 trip, and \ ■ The 
 
 ther had thirty-six bif and Iv- 
 
 an old ra^ and tied it on a ^tick 
 
 and r< 
 =:ken out a anfull of tine linn ho: 
 
 Aur. 
 mad II mold- 
 
 olenty 
 of hi I 
 
 W 
 
 VI 
 
 to V 
 
 .• - 
 - 
 
 about I I 
 
 courtin'. '. 
 
 I 
 no mo- 
 rn each ot: 
 
 rner 
 
28 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 MATILDA WHITAKER 
 The authors mother. Born February 13, 18-18. Died Oetober 30, 1918 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 29 
 
 So Sunday evening we all went hack over the 
 mountain to our school. That was one great trip that 
 will never he Eorgtten., and my first trip away from 
 home. T learned on that trip to have a nerve and to 
 have faith in myself. 
 
 After the free school was out my mother took me 
 up to old Shade Combs', sixteen miles up on Rock- 
 house, to a winter school. Shade Combs was a first 
 cousin to my mother, and he remembered the time 
 when he was the sheriff and they had brought me to 
 Whitesburg to try and get me on the county, and we 
 had some good jokes about it. Mother stayed all 
 night and next morning she put me in school. Pro- 
 fessor C. C. Crawford was the teacher, and T .made 
 myself at home and liked school fine and done well in 
 school. 
 
 T am now sixteen years old and out of school, grub- 
 bing and fencing and clearing land, trying to keep my 
 brothers in school, which I did by hard work. T was 
 known those days as the father of my brothers. 
 During that year my sister, Julia Stamper, now of Big 
 Springs, Tex., was plowing an old yoke of oxen 
 named Dick and Mon, and Little, now Dr. Whitaker, 
 of Blackey, Ky., was driving the old oxen, and I hid 
 behind a big rockpile, wrapped up in a big white sheet, 
 and when they came around the rockpile 1 jumped at 
 the old oxen and it simply scared them to death. 
 Their tails went in the air and they went across that 
 field just a-flying, and old Dick got the bottom plow 
 stuck in his side and died from the effects of it. Julia 
 and Little ran to the house and told mother what had 
 happened, not realizing it was me that had scared the 
 poor old steers. So I owned it up, and I do believe 
 
30 History of Corporal Fess U'hitaker 
 
 thai was the hardest whipping that my mother ever 
 gave me. It was funny, but I guess 1 sure did need it. 
 
 The same year during mulberry time on Saturday 
 we all came in about 11 o'clock in the morning for 
 
 dinner. We had a large mulberry tree down next to 
 the gate and it was awfully full and just getting ripe. 
 So we all made a dive for the tree, five of us boys. We 
 
 
 
 Dr. Gid Whitaker and Rev. Jim Whitaker 
 at ages 7 and 9 
 
 Twin brothers. Little and Less 
 at age 1 1 
 
 all got right in the top of it and began to eat. After 
 getting what we wanted I began to shake the tree 
 with the hoys and they all got seared and fell out. 
 Less got two ribs broken. Little threw his left arm 
 out of place, Gid broke his left leg, and Jim got his 
 tailbone broke, and poor old Fess fell out at the same 
 time and got my left thigh broke. That was an awful 
 sight to see five brothers broke up like we were. Those 
 days there was not a doctor in forty miles of mv 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 31 
 
 mother's. She put splits on our limbs and put them 
 in boxes to keep them straight. The boxes were made 
 out of six-inch lumber. It did not take over thirty- 
 three days until we were all out to work again. We 
 were all hurt that time, so mother could not whip or 
 quarrel at me. 
 
 In the same year, but in the fall, mother went to 
 catch "Old John," the old mule I went to mill on. Just 
 as she went to put the bridle bits in the old mule's 
 mouth he turned the other end and mother jumped 
 back to keep the old mule from kicking her. Just as 
 she jumped she stepped on a slantin' rock and fell and 
 broke her right leg square in two. We had our mother 
 carried home and her leg dressed like she did us boys, 
 and she could not use that leg for seventy-four days. 
 The old main stake was sick this time and we got in 
 the hole very bad and in debt, so I had to lay up my 
 education upon the mantle (made out of an old oak 
 board), and on November 1 I took me a piece of raw 
 middling meat, a piece of corn bread and two big 
 onion heads and pulled out to look for me a job. I 
 pulled for Stonega, as that was the nearest railroad, 
 and no job there for a boy like me, so I went on down 
 Callahan Creek to Mudlick and tried, and there I got 
 me a job — the first job — and it was seventy-five cents 
 per day, and board fifty cents per day. This job was 
 wheeling dust from a band sawmill. After working 
 one day and a half I white-eyed on account 
 of the dust and they could not pay me un- 
 til payday, so I took script for my pay. I then 
 paid my board and bought canned beef and 
 crackers with the rest. That night [ caught a boxcar 
 of coke and the train left Appalachia, Va., at 8:40 
 p. m. for Corbin Ky., and I began then my first 
 
32 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 hoboing. T was on my first train, and on the third 
 day T was set off at Knoxville, Tenn., so [ began hol- 
 lering and sonic stranger broke the seal, as I heard 
 them call it then, and got me out of the car and took 
 me to a machine shop and told me to wash myself, 
 and [ did. I was just as dirty as a black man not to 
 be black. After the whistle blew for dinner I walked 
 it]) to the upper end of the yard watching and trying 
 to find out how to catch a train that would take me 
 back to Stonega, \ a., for T was sure tired of hoboing. 
 So late that evening' I met a colored man walking up 
 through the yard and I asked him where he was going 
 and he told me he was going to try and catch a 
 through drag of empty coke cars for Stonega, and 
 that pleased me to death, and I asked him how far We 
 were from Stonega and he replied about 350 miles. 
 So he said for me to go with him, and I did, and when 
 we got to the upper end of the yard we met another 
 white man headed for Cumberland Gap on our road. 
 So when night came we all went up a little ways out 
 of the yard and made us a bed down by a pile of rail- 
 road ties and made a Tire and were going to catch the 
 first freight that went up the hill that night. So my two 
 partners asked me to go out to some of the houses and 
 beg us something to eat. 1 went and knocked on the 
 first door 1 came to and a nicely dressed lad}' came to 
 the door and asked me what I wanted and I told her 
 a nice story that I had learned from my partners. The 
 good lady went and brought me a little wooden tray 
 lull and some nice biscuits baked out of baking pow- 
 der, which are line while they are hot. and after the) 
 get cold the} are not like sour milk bread, the}' are 
 hard. So the good lad)- said to me: "Young boy, \ 
 am not giving you these biscuits for your sake. 1 am 
 giving them to you for Christ's sake." 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life x > 
 
 T thanked her and looked her right in the eye and 
 said, "For God's sake put a little butter on those bis- 
 cuits for me." 
 
 The good lady laughed at me and took my name., 
 which I gave her, and she gave me some very 
 good advice, and it is still in my heart today. I bade 
 her good-bye and went back to my partners. They 
 were very well pleased, and after we had supper we 
 talked awhile and they taught me how to hobo, or 
 catch a freight train, and told many hobo stories. 
 around the firelight. 
 
 We all laid down about 9 o'clock that night on the 
 ground by a good fire. It was getting cool, that being 
 in the early part of November. When I woke up my 
 two partners were gone and T ran just as fast as I 
 could up the hill after a passenger train. After I 
 came to myself \ could hardly believe I had clone what 
 T had, so [ went back down the track to where our 
 cam]) fire was burning, and there I found the colored 
 man's old cap and my hat gone, so of course I put the 
 old cap on. I did not know what to do, so I decided 
 to make a start back towards Knoxville. I was then 
 about three miles out of the city, and right in the 
 upper end of the yard I met two men. They tried to 
 raise a talk with me and went out to one side and 
 talked and 'then came back to me and asked me some 
 more questions and finally they took me with them 
 and stopped behind an old dark house about two hun- 
 dred yards from where they met me and began to 
 whisper, and I believe as I am living today they meant 
 to kill me. And in less than a second it turned as 
 bright as the brightest day you ever saw all around 
 me about three feet square. And those two men just 
 
^ History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 simply flew, and just that minute it turned dark again 
 and I flew the other way and in about two hours day- 
 light broke and I walked down in the yard to where 
 a large train was made up, as they are called. I 
 crawled into one of the big hoppers and in about ten 
 minutes they coupled a large engine to it and I heard 
 the engine blow two long whistles and about that 
 time a man stuck a big pistol right in my face and told 
 me to get out of there and to get out d — n quick. I 
 bounced the ground in a hurry and begging and roll- 
 ing on the ground playing that I had sprained my 
 ankle. The man tried to make me walk, but I still 
 played off cripple. He told me to sit down and he 
 asked me what I was doing there and I simply told 
 him the truth and he got sorry for me and told me 
 that he would turn me loose this time, but watch out 
 for the second time. I asked him to get me a walking 
 cane, which lie did. and I started hopping along up 
 through the yard. Just as soon as I got out of sight ! 
 threw my cane away and sat down and took a good, 
 long, hearty laugh and then got up and walked seven 
 miles to the nearest railroad station, and while there 
 I met an old soldier making his way for Stonega and 
 when the train stopped it happened to be a water tank- 
 station, and while they were taking water my soldier 
 partner broke the seal and it was a carload of hay for 
 Stonega. We both jumped in and the next morning 
 we were setting in front of the Big Red Stable at 
 Stonega. I got me a place to board and the second 
 day got a job in the mines trapping at 90 cents per 
 day. hater on I got a job driving a hard-tail, or a 
 mule, in the mines at $1.30 per day. On the 20th day 
 of February I went home on a visit and took mother 
 and the four boys in the lower room and poured out 
 
36 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 on the bed $23.00, all in one-dollar bills. Thev were 
 all scattered out on the bed. Everybody thought that 
 was some sight. That much money those days and 
 money was scarce. I told mother that it was for them 
 all and for her to keep the boys in school and T would 
 go hack to my job and make some more. 
 
 On the seventh day of May the mine foreman put 
 me to running' an old-fashioned Jeffries motor. T 
 worked one month on that job and went home again. 
 It was thirty-three miles across the big Black 
 Mountains and across the Cumberland River and then 
 across the Pine Mountains to old Uncle Oby Fields' 
 on the head of Big Cowan Creek, then across a small 
 hill onto the head of Kingdom Come (the creek which 
 John Fox, Jr., wrote his two books on), and down 
 Kingdom Come to the mouth of it and then flown the 
 river seven miles to my mother's at the mouth of 
 Rockhouse. That was a pretty good walk for a boy 
 only seventeen years old. 
 
 I gave ni}- mother on this trip $45.00 and she was 
 awfully pleased witli me and said: "Fess, we need the 
 money bad enough, but you air gittin' long bad in 
 yer education, and I can't hardly stand ter see yer do 
 "that." 
 
 "After I get the other boys where they can take 
 care of theirselves 1*11 finish my education,*' I replied. 
 "I am now going to jine the army." 
 
 During the Spanish-American War, February 12. 
 
 1<X ( )X, I enlisted for two years' or long as the war 
 lasted. I was signed to Company L, Fourth Ken- 
 tucky Volunteers, and was stationed at Lexington. 
 After I had been signed to my company there was a 
 big fellow come around and asked something smart. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 37 
 
 thinking he was one of those smart fellows, and before 
 he could think I had knocked him down with a big 
 garbage bucket and I had him whipped before he 
 found it out. That built my reputation during my 
 service in Company L. 
 
 My Captain was Ben B. Golden, of Barbourville, 
 Ky., and before time to discharge us volunteers after 
 peace was made the Captain resigned and H. J. Cock- 
 ron was signed as Captain of Company L. And when 
 the First Sergeant, James Day, of Whitesburg, Ky., 
 made out all the discharges for the Captain to sign 
 the Captain came in the office at Anniston, Ala., where 
 we were discharged, to sign the discharges and he 
 took up with the Sergeant alphabetically and asked 
 about each man whom he did not know personally 
 When he came to my name he asked the Sergeant if 
 that was the man that laughed so much and the Ser- 
 geant told him it was, so he had me put down excel- 
 lent character. Then Captain Cockron signed the dis- 
 charges. 
 
 During the time we were in camp at Lexington 
 some of the boys in my company got body lice all over 
 them and I got scared and took my dog tent and 
 stretched it up under some hedge trees next to the 
 railroad track, and the first night the train went by 
 at 11 o'clock and she whistled some awfully large 
 yells and scared me and I jumped up in my sleep and 
 tore my dog tent all to pieces. T thought the train 
 was running over me. So the next day I fixed my 
 tent up and got me some wheat straw and made me 
 a bed and ditched the water around my tent and it 
 sure did do some raining that spring and my bed rot- 
 ted. Sleeping in so damp a place I took the fever and 
 
^ History of Corporal Fcss ll'lritaker 
 
 was taken to a hospital. After three days I was taken 
 out of that hospital and put in a division hospital, 
 where I just did live. After three months in the hos- 
 pital some of the boys told me if I could make my tem- 
 perature register 98 degrees three times in succession 
 I could get out, and the same fellow told me how to 
 do. He said when the thermometer was put in my 
 mouth and I caught the doctor looking off to draw 
 my breath hard so as to cool the thermometer, which 
 I did, and on the fourth day the doctor ordered the 
 nurse to bring in my uniform and to let me set up 
 some. So when they brought that dear old uniform 
 it was rolled up in a dear old American flag that I had 
 offered to sacrifice my life for. The doctors had given 
 me up to die and had ordered the nurse to wrap my 
 clothes up in the flag so it would be placed with me. 
 It was over one-half of the time that r did not know 
 anything, but when I did come to myself mother was 
 the first I thought about. She had been notified, but on 
 account of being so poor, no money and so many miles 
 away from the railroad she could not come, but waited 
 in great patience to hear from me. The first letter I 
 received after I could tell the nurse who my mother 
 was and her address I got a letter in return in a few 
 days and it is still written upon my heart in large 
 American tears like the dear old mothers are shedding 
 for their loved ones who are in France today in those 
 cold trenches and dugouts and mud and water up to 
 their waists and the top of the earth covered with 
 snow and ice nine feet thick, fighting for the freedom 
 of America, which we are sure to win if God lets this 
 world stand, and I believe we will win this war 
 during 1918. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 39 
 
 After I got my uniform and put it on with many 
 wrinkles in it after being" rolled up for about four 
 months, I sure did look funny. I was so thin the sun 
 shined through me. After about twelve days I got 
 able to go and I was put in an ambulance and taken 
 to the Southern Depot at Lexington and transported 
 to Anniston, Ala., where I was signed back to my old 
 company. When I walked up through my company 
 street there was the worst surprised set of young men 
 I ever saw. They all thought I was dead and had for- 
 gotten me, but when they realized it was sure Fess 
 they all sure did rejoice. 
 
 As soon as I got strong enough to do guard duty 
 I was put on guard over at Division Headquarters. 
 I was put on the third relief and I dreaded to see night 
 come. But about 11 :30 that night the corporal of the 
 guard woke me up and said: "Get up, third relief." 
 
 I got up, straightened myself up and got my belt 
 and gun. 
 
 "Outside, third relief," he said, and lined us up and 
 started around with us. I was put on first post. My 
 beat was from the guardhouse to the end of No. 2 
 post, where there was a large tent stretched up. On 
 the inside were two big dry goods boxes and a dead 
 man stretched on each box covered with a white sheet. 
 The corporal and the man I relieved told me that I 
 was not to let any dogs or cats eat on those men, and 
 every round I was to go in and look at them. That 
 made the cold chills run all over me and my hair stood 
 straight up. 
 
 It was in the latter part of May and the wind was 
 blowing and it was cloudy. The clouds were running 
 like thev do lots of times when the moon is shining. 
 
40 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 My post was up on a ridge and the railroad yard was 
 down on one side and the engine was running' up and 
 down through the yards and the old bells ringing and 
 on the other side was an old coralle and every once in 
 awhile you could hear an old mule blowing his whistle 
 sounding' just like "How are you, Fess?" On my sec- 
 ond round when I got up in about ten feet of the tent 
 and the flaps were flapping awfully and scared me 
 very bad, but \ went in and looked at the dead men. 
 When I started back, walking very fast, an old cat 
 about twenty feet of me went "meow." I am 
 sure I could have heard it one-half mile and it just 
 simply scared me to death, and when I got to the 
 guardhouse T loaded my gun and got my back up 
 against the tent and there I stood until 1 saw the first 
 relief coming to relieve me. Nobody knows how good 
 T felt when \ saw the light coming down the ridge to 
 relieve me. 
 
 I came oft" post duty at 10 o'clock and 1 was asked 
 to stay and assist the doctors in operating upon those 
 two dead men. which T did. \ had to light their cigars 
 and put them in their mouths while they were cutting 
 them up. They took their insides out and put them 
 in a dishpan, cut their heads open and took their 
 brains out separately and took their backbones out 
 and cut into twenty-four pieces. The soldiers were 
 dying from a disease called spinal meningitis and they 
 were trying to stop it. After the operation their 
 bodies were put back together and well dressed and 
 put in caskets and shipped home. After I got my rest 
 on guard I was picked out of the company and put in 
 the kitchen to help John Gibson cook, which job I held 
 until discharged in 1899. After I was discharged in 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 41 
 
 1899 I returned to my old Kentucky home back in the 
 mountains, forty miles from the railroad, which I had 
 to walk. 
 
 After I spent thirteen days with my mother I 
 slipped oft" and walked to Jackson, Ky., a distance of 
 sixty-five miles, and enlisted for two years and was 
 sent to Cuba and was signed to Col. Teddy Roose- 
 velt's brigade. That was where Teddy and I first met. 
 He soon took a liking to me, and after the Battle of 
 Santiago Teddy, without a wound and I with a bullet 
 wound in my left arm, took me by the hand and said: 
 "Fess, we have gained a great battle for our country. 
 
 THEODORE ROOSEVELT 
 
 You or I will be the next President of the United 
 States, and if you get the nomination I am for you, 
 and if I get the nomination I want you to be for me, 
 for you have a great influence in the United States." 
 We shook hands and parted. So Teddy was from 
 the North and had more votes than the South and 
 beat me to the nomination. But I was for him and 
 am still for him. 
 
 After eighteen months in Cuba I was discharged 
 and returned to my same old Kentucky home. When 
 Teddy raised the standing army from twenty-five 
 thousand to sixty-five thousand I became a soldier 
 again. I was then twenty-one years old, that being 
 August 23, 1901. For three years I served. I was 
 
^ History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 signed to the Fort Slocum (New York) Recruiting 
 Station, and thirty days later I was signed to the 
 "114th Company, Coast Artillery," Fort Totten, N. 
 Y., under Capt. John W. Ruckman, Lieut. Balentine 
 and Kesling. After I had been in that company for 
 a few months the Top Sergeant made me chief cook, 
 which job I held for six months. Then I asked the 
 Top Sergeant to take me out of the kitchen, which 
 he did. Then I had to go doing guard duty again. I 
 soon began to be an expert orderly bucker, which I 
 was hard to beat on. One time I know two of us boys 
 were picked to do orderly, so we took our bayonets 
 and cut the guard manual. McGlofin cut "C" and I 
 cut "T" and I was beat and was given No. 2 post. 
 The next day about 8 o'clock in the morning Capt. 
 Landers walked up on me and said, "Why don't you 
 arrest those two men?" 
 
 I presented arms to him and came to port arms and 
 asked, "What two men, sir?" 
 
 "What two?" 
 
 "Yes, sir," I replied. 
 
 "Those two men going yonder," he said. 
 
 "What for, sir?" I again asked. 
 
 "For being drunk," he replied. 
 
 "They are not drunk," I said. 
 
 "I am going to prefer charges against you," he 
 told me. 
 
 "Very well, sir," I replied, presenting arms again 
 to him. 
 
 He went on down to the guardhouse to prefer 
 charges against me, and sure enough he met two 
 drunken men that No. 1 had let in. Old Toomy was 
 walking No. 1 post, so the captain had his belt pulled 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life ^ 
 
 and put him in the guardhouse and I saw the corporal 
 of the guard coming* with one man and I knew that 
 my time was coming next. 
 
 So the corporal came up and said to me, "Turn over 
 your orders," which I did. "Give me your gun and 
 belt." I also did that. "Forward march and down to 
 the guardhouse." 
 
 I went, and at noon on Sunday everybody in my 
 company was very much surprised to see me in the 
 guardhouse after I had been beat for orderly. So in 
 the afternoon the Sergeant of the Guardhouse sent 
 me and Toomy to our quarters under heavy guards 
 to get our old fatigue suits and to put our good clothes 
 away. Monday morning I was taken out with the 
 rest of the prisoners and lined up and counted and 
 then signed to do certain work. I was put on the slop 
 cart and a guard over us. We had to go to all the 
 quarters and mess halls and get the slop and haul it 
 off. I and Toomy were to be tried at 10 o'clock and 
 it was raining something awful. My old campaign 
 hat had leaked and my face was all striped with dirt, 
 so when we got over to headquarters they put Toomy 
 on trial first and the court placed Toomy's fine at $10 
 and ten days in the guardhouse. They called me in 
 before the court and the judge read the charges to 
 me and asked me what I had to say. 
 
 "Not guilty, sir," was my reply. 
 
 The judge asked me if I wanted any witnesses, and 
 I told him I did, so he took the names of the witnesses 
 and the commanding officer's orderly was called in 
 and the judge told him what to do. So we started in 
 on my case. The men that tried me were commis- 
 sioned officers and I was only an enlisted man, but 
 
44 History of Corporal Fess Whitqker 
 
 we were all working for Uncle Sam, so we started in 
 on the case and I stood in with them. After taking 
 the proof I asked the judge to give me ten minutes to 
 argue my case. The judge was surprised, but accord- 
 ing to the arm}- rules he had to grant me that priv- 
 ilege, and if I ever did put up an argument that was 
 one time I did, and I soon won my case, and right 
 there I started building myself in the army. Just 
 after I got out of the guardhouse my old-time partner, 
 Teddy Roosevelt, the President of the United States 
 and always doing something good for someone, had 
 an order issued from the War Department stating 
 that all non-commissioned officers must be first-class 
 gunners. All of the companies were lined up and 
 asked by the Captains how many wanted to go up for 
 the examination. I stepped out and all of the rest of 
 the company laughed at me. I was put in school at 
 Fort Totten for a while and soon was taken out of 
 school at Fort Totten and sent to Fortress Monroe, 
 Va., to a fine army school, and from there I was sent 
 to Governor's Island, X. Y., and from there to Fort 
 McKinley, Maine. So after the officers thought that 
 the\- had me alright I was examined under orderly 
 No. 52-189 and was qualified as a first-class gunner. 
 I was examined on a 14-inch gun at Fort McKinley, 
 Maine. My target was pulled by a tugboat making 
 sixteen knots per hour and the distance was 
 twenty-two miles out in the ocean and 1 hit the target 
 four shots out of five. The target was only 12 feet 
 square at the bottom and 6 inches at the top, canvas 
 stretched all around it and a 6-inch black stripe 
 painted around the target. One of my shots struck 
 the small target. The bullet which I used weighed 
 2,250 pounds and the powder charge weighed 640 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 45 
 
 pounds. I had to load and fire that gun every sixteen 
 seconds. Fort McKinley is located on the banks of 
 the Casco harbor, main channel to the Atlantic ocean, 
 what is known to the War Department as the "She 
 Big Bar." I was examined at Fort Totten, N. Y., on 
 the rest of the examination, which are lots. On Long 
 Island Sound there is one of the best army instruct- 
 ing schools in the army today. After I had qualified 
 as a first-class gunner then I was promoted to a non- 
 commissioned officer and signed back to my same old 
 "114th Company," then I was appointed by my Cap- 
 tain as an instructor. I was picked out of the New 
 York harbor of 19,000 men and put on the recruiting' 
 service on a salary of $65.00, board and railroad fare 
 and traveling expenses and going over the country 
 getting men for the army, which job I held until I 
 was discharged. 
 
 I was discharged out of the army August 22, 1904. 
 I now hold two discharges of excellent character, 
 first-class gunner and non-commissioned officer's war- 
 rant. Soon as I was discharged I bought me a ticket 
 for Norton, Ya., from Norton to my old mining and 
 railroad station, Stonega, Ya., and then I pulled across 
 the Big Black Mountain through the same old way 
 as I had traveled when a boy to my mother's home. 
 
 Soon as I got home all of the girls began to come 
 in to see me and I sure could court some. All the girls 
 were struck on me because I was a soldier, and after 
 a man has been a soldier for four or five years and 
 gets back home and there being so many pretty girls 
 he wants to marry. So I got struck on four real pretty 
 girls, Susan Cornett, Tina Breeding, Mary Amburgey 
 and the one that made the winning, Mantie Ison.. 
 When I made up my mind which one I loved best I 
 sure set in to courtin'. 
 
46 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 I first got struck on my wife it was down on Cau- 
 dill's Branch to "old Stiller Bill" Caudill's funeral. 
 He had made so much moonshine that he bore the 
 name of "Stiller Bill." He had been dead ten years 
 and had 12 grown children, 187 grandchildren and 91 
 great-grandchildren to mourn his death. His funeral 
 was preached by the old regular Baptist and Tra 
 Combs was up preaching. It was then that I looked 
 under a big beech tree and I saw a big, fine looking 
 country girl. She weighed about 160 pounds, had blue 
 eyes, black hair and big. fine, red, rosy cheeks that 
 God had given her and she had a nose as large as a 
 banana. 
 
 Something went down in my heart and it really 
 smothered me so I kept my eyes on her, and the more 
 that I looked at her the prettier she got. Finally she 
 got up and went out to an old country spring to get 
 a drink, so I got up and went out to follow her. I went 
 right to her and said. "Mantie, I am struck on you." 
 
 "Now you are just trying to make fun of me," she 
 said. 
 
 "No, I mean what I say,'' said I, and so we began 
 to talk and she and I went back down to where thev 
 were preaching. 
 
 After the meeting was over I asked her what she 
 "was riding and where her horse was. She told me she 
 was riding "old George." The horse had built a good 
 reputation by being a good horse to tram logs. So I 
 rode by her side home and after we got home we 
 began sparking and after months courtin' we one 
 Sunday were sittin' in an old-fashioned country rock- 
 ing chair out in the back porch. I had her talked 
 down and all she could do was just rock and nod her 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 47 
 
 head to what I said. She had never seen a railroad or 
 a train of any kind and she had never been to Whites- 
 burg - , the county seat of Letcher. She had been kept 
 out of school to help her father run his farm. She 
 could not talk up with me, so I got her head to nod- 
 ding to everything I said, and I asked her what she 
 thought about us getting married. She nodded right 
 into it and I went home that evening tickled to death, 
 I was so well pleased I couldn't sleep a wink that 
 night. 
 
 The next morning about 4 o'clock I got up and got 
 my horse and pulled for Whitesburg to the County 
 Clerk's office. It was a distance of about eighteen 
 miles and was on December 13, and the worst old 
 sloppy, muddy time ever was, but I didn't care, for I 
 was goin' to git married. 
 
 After I got my license I pulled back down the river 
 and got to her home just before daybreak and went in. 
 They all slept in one room, had five big feather beds 
 and my sweetheart was laying in one of them. I told 
 her to get up, that I had them. 
 
 "Got what?" she said. 
 
 "The license," I told her. 
 
 She just laughed at me, and don't you know I had 
 to set in and court her about ten more days before she 
 would agree to marry me. 
 
 After she agreed the second time we set the day. 
 About seventy-five or a hundred people came in to 
 help eat the wedding dinner, and the biggest part o£ 
 them stayed for the dance. When we all started 
 around on Elk Creek to get married I turned my 
 horse over to my wife to ride and her father brought 
 out an old mule for me to ride. She had the name of 
 
4S History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 being the meanest mule in Letcher Count}'. Her 
 name was "Dinah." S<> I put the saddle on and she 
 only humped up a little, but when 1 put my foot in the 
 stirrup and threw my leg across the saddle the old 
 mule started right around the hill with me bucking 
 and jumping. And mother began shouting and my 
 wife liked to fainted and had to be taken off my horse 
 After we all got straightened out we all went down 
 on Elk Creek and the late Jim Dixon, founder of the 
 old Regular Baptist Church of Indian Bottom, told 
 us to stand up and to look him straight in the eye and 
 said don't neither one of you laugh or cry. And the 
 good old man went on and married us. Soon after 
 our marriage we moved out to keep house in an old 
 schoolhouse on Burton Hill. 
 
 Mother gave me six hens and one rooster, one old 
 sow and one pig, one cow and calf, one big- feather 
 bed and two pillows and my wife got the same from 
 her folks. 
 
 We started out living very nice and happy, but my 
 mind was on rambling, as I had been traveling. On 
 
 January 7 my wife became sick and T had to go after 
 Dr. Roark on Montgomery Creek, about eighteen 
 miles. All my father-in-law's mules were gone to 
 Stonega after a load of goods except old "Dinah," and 
 T was compelled to ride her. So 1 saddled her up 
 about 4 o'clock in the afternoon and a man held her 
 until 1 got on. then I struck out down the river and 
 up Elk Creek across a big ' mountain and on to the 
 head of Bull Creek, up Bull Creek apiece and across 
 another hill on to the head of Montgomery and down 
 Montgomery to the mouth of Dr. Roark's Branch, 
 Up the branch to Dr. Roark's house. 1 got there about 
 
^ History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 10:45 that night. Dr. Roark could not come and fixed 
 me some medicine and I started back and went out 
 to the fence to where I had hitched old Dinah and 
 when I went to get on her she started down the branch 
 kicking and bucking. I finally stopped her and got 
 her started out O. K. down the branch, and as I went 
 back across the mountain at the head of Montgomery 
 it was very dark and my old friend "Dinah" got out 
 of the road and we got lost in the top of the mountain. 
 I got off of my old mule, took the bridle in my hand 
 and started for the bottom of the hill and I came to a 
 little log house dobbed with mud and a board loft, 
 nowadays called the ceiling. I yelled and yelled and 
 finally a man came to the door and said, "What do 
 you want?" I asked him who lived there and he told 
 me John Hall. I got down and went into the house 
 and he took one of the boards out of his house loft and 
 split it up and made a torchlight and told me how to 
 go and went out to the fence with me. I got on old 
 Dinah and the man handed me up the torch, made out 
 of boards, and when I started the sparks from the 
 torch began to fall on the old mule and she began to 
 run and kick. After a little distance I had to throw 
 the torch down and I was in the dark again and in the 
 mountain. I had to let the old mule be the boss, as 
 she could see and I could not. Finally she got in the 
 road again and didn't stay no time until she got in 
 under some pines where it was awfully dark and got 
 lost again. Along about 2 o'clock in the morning I 
 rode up to another log hut. After yelling several 
 times someone came to the door and I asked him who 
 lived there, and he said Jorin Hall. There we were 
 back to the same place again. I asked Mr. Hall if 
 there was not another road I could take that would 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life ol 
 
 get me out of there. He told me how to go through 
 the hill to Preacher Jim CaudiU's, my old school 
 teacher. And I started off, and after about one hour 
 I got on top of the hill and got lost again. It was so 
 dark and I could not find my way out, as there were 
 no moon and stars shining. So I got down and took 
 my bridle in hand and made for the bottom and just 
 before daylight I came to another house and hollowed 
 and a woman came to the door and asked me what T 
 wanted. I inquired who lived there and she told me 
 John Hall. Now, I thought I had come to a new 
 house on account of the woman, but when she told me 
 John Hall lived there I thought I would fall off of 
 that old mule I was so surprised and I simply got 
 down and went into the house and waited until it 
 began to break day. 
 
 After it got light I started and finally got out of the 
 head of Bull Creek and got back home just as they 
 were eating breakfast. My wife very much improved. 
 
 My father-in-law, Jeff Ison, had been elected Justice 
 of the Peace, and J. P. Lewis had been elected Judge, 
 and as yet no Constable had been elected, so my 
 father-in-law began to beg me to let him have me 
 sworn in as his Deputy Constable. My wife cried and 
 made fun of me, but Jeff and I got on our mules and 
 rode to Whitesburg to court, and Judge Lewis, now 
 Secretary of State, swore me in for the office. The 
 first raid I got in was the arrest of twenty-two men 
 and women, known as Barlows and Engles. After I 
 got the warrants I did not summons anybody to help 
 me. I played Johnnie Wise and got all the dope I 
 could on them. There were three bunches of them. 
 I got one man to help me one night and I had to cross 
 
52 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 <i very big mountain, and about 11 o'clock in the night 
 T was right in the head of Island Branch and T slipped 
 up to a little old board or log house that stood on the 
 side of the hill. Tt had board doors and no windows 
 and one old big chimney and puncheon floor made out 
 of chestnut wood. I had a mall in my hand and two 
 good guns on me. The first thing I did was to hit the 
 old board door with the old hickory mall with all my 
 strength, and when I hit the door flew open just like 
 lightning had struck it. I was in the house before you 
 could tell how I got in, and I summoned everybody 
 under arrest. Four men and three women came out 
 of those old shuck beds just like wild hogs and come 
 right at me. My man I had summoned to help me 
 had got scared and run oft and left me. T began shoot- 
 ing at them, not to kill, but to scare them. I knocked 
 down two of the men and while T was putting hand- 
 cuffs on them one man by the name of Nathan Engle 
 went up the chimney and got away. 
 
 So I brought my two men and three women over 
 to George Whitaker'.s, at the head of 'Poison Creek, 
 and got breakfast. I then took them down to Jeff 
 1 son's and fastened them up in one of his rooms ! 
 then set out to catch Nathan Engle, the one that had 
 got away from me. So I waylaid a small road on the 
 top of Campbell's ridge and just as he passed I nailed 
 him and took him and put him in the same room with 
 the rest of them. 
 
 The next morning I went down to Lower Caudill's 
 Branch and got all of them except Mary Engle. She 
 had taken refuge in a large cave just opposite Jeff 
 J son's on top of a high ridge. Her mother was a very 
 poor woman and she came up and told Jeff if he would 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 53 
 
 give her ten pounds of side meat she would tell 
 where Mary was. So they traded and Mr. Ison told 
 me. *I summoned Gid Hogg to help me make the 
 arrest. I placed Hogg in the county road at the foot 
 of the hill and as I was going up Elk Creek I got in 
 behind her and was in twenty feet of her before she 
 knew it. She made for the cave and I fired at her. 
 Before I got to the cave I saw two bright objects back 
 in the cave about sixty feet. I ordered her out three 
 times and the last time began firing in the cave. T 
 saw her start. The mouth of the cave was full of 
 smoke and she ran by me and took right down the 
 mountain. I took right out after her. She ran over 
 rocks, brush, and a straight line to where I had Hogg 
 placed. When she saw him she whirled on me and 
 made for her bosom. About that time I nailed her 
 and told Mr. Hogg to search her and he took a .3R 
 bulldog pistol out from under her arm beneath her 
 dress waist. She was so mad her teeth just rattled. 
 She had a red calico dress on, which cost about five 
 cents per yard, and a twenty-rive-cent boy straw hat 
 on which was painted red out of poke berries and 
 three chicken feathers dyed blue in the right side of 
 her hat. She was barefooted and her feet were all 
 scratched up where she had been hiding and running 
 around in the woods so long. So I took her in and 
 the next da}' we tried them and they all were con- 
 victed and found guilty. I took them all to Whites- 
 burg, a distance of eighteen miles, one day walking 
 and had them all locked up in jail. 
 
 Two years ago the same Nathan Engle betrayed 
 his father-in-law, Billie Combs, and told him that he 
 would go with him down in Perry County and help 
 get his wife back, who was known as the famous horse 
 
:>4 
 
 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 thief of Kentucky for a woman. So poor old Billie 
 got him a piece of meat and bread and went with him. 
 Nathan put him under a cliff and told him to stay and 
 he would go around to one of the Sloans', who had 
 taken Billie's wife, and get her to come and talk with 
 Billie. The old man fell asleep and Nathan slipped 
 back and shot out the old man's brains and come 
 through that night to his mother's. The old man was 
 found dead on the third day by an old man cow hunt- 
 ing. He was brought back home that day for burial, 
 and Nathan met the train to help take care of his dead 
 father-in-law, whom he had killed. When the train 
 stopped at Blackey the Sheriff stepped off and cap- 
 tured Nathan and he was taken to Hazard and put 
 in jail and tried and sent to the pen for life. 
 
 In April, 1905, I was plowing a yoke of steers in 
 the old bent field on Burton Hill and there was noth- 
 ing but saw briers. My w r ife was helping me; she 
 was driving. About 10 o'clock the old steers took a 
 notion to go to the river. They raised their heads and 
 started. My wife had a rope on one of them and tried 
 to hold them and got her foot hung under a bunch of 
 those saw briers and fell down. She cried awhile and 
 then I helped her up and we quit work. The birds 
 and the toad frogs were singing and my mind became 
 rambling and I pulled for Texas, the old Lone Star 
 State, and stopped in Big Springs, Texas. I soon got 
 a job with the carpenters 1 working some three months 
 there. I was employed by the Connell Lumber Com- 
 pany, which job I held until the panic of 1907. After 
 I was out of a job and no money, and having a wife 
 and one child, I began to realize what I had to do. 
 So the T. & P. Railroad shop was there and Mr. 
 Potten was master mechanic of the shops. I laid 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 55 
 
 away for him one evening and hit him for a job. I 
 had been told by Fred Leper when I shook hands with 
 Mr. Potten to hold tight to his hand and tell him 
 about Teddy and myself in Cuba and I would be 
 granted a job. So I did what Fred told me to, and it 
 worked just like a clock. A job there was sure worth 
 something. A man had to work in the shop those 
 days when the times was good about eighteen months 
 before he could get out on the road or ever be able to 
 fire the engine for old Uncle Johnnie. I began on 
 Monday; one week and ten days I had worked out of 
 the pits to a bell cleaner and I was cleaning a bell one 
 day on one of those big Western Blair engines and 
 George Tamset, the roundhouse foreman, come to me 
 and told me to go out there and fire the switch engine 
 for Uncle Johnnie. There had been a wreck up at 
 Midland and the fireman had been taken off of the 
 switch engine and sent to help bring in the wrecked 
 train. So I got on the switch engine one day and Mr. 
 Davis got mad at me because Mr. Tamset had run me 
 around all of the roundhouse men and I was not to 
 blame. I done the work and done it right and looked 
 after all of the company stuff. So Mr. Davis began 
 to say dirty things about me and finally Homer 
 Scragins told me that Davis was carrying a gun for 
 me and had threatened my life and would not speak 
 to me. 
 
 I went home and got me a good .44 pistol and put 
 it under my overalls while I worked and at dinner I 
 would beat the other boys back to our room. Three 
 of us boys were using the same box to keep our dirty 
 clothes in and put our soap and towels in. When the 
 boys would open the box there was the .44 there. 
 
56 
 
 History of Corporal /'ess Whitaker 
 
 When they got their snap and towels and go on wash- 
 ing I would slip the .44 hack in my pocket for protec- 
 tion. One day I passed where Davis was working on 
 the engine and I heard him say, "There goes that 
 
 d r ." I had my gun on me and as I went back 
 
 to where 1 was working- he struck at me with a 
 monkey wrench. Then the shooting" began. I put 
 everyone out of the roundhouse. Billie Lee, assistant 
 foreman, jumped in the turntable pit, and Davis ran 
 through into the blacksmith shop and ran over the 
 blacksmith foreman and got away and never has been 
 heard of since. Of course, T lost my job for fighting 
 on duty and got tried for shooting Davis. 
 
 Davis failed to appear against me and the judge dis- 
 missed the case. I got tried for the pistol, was prose- 
 cuted by County Attorney Brooks, now in France, 
 and defended by Marson & Marson, and I beat the 
 case. They never could prove when I put the pistol 
 on me. They proved I had it in the box and I proved 
 I had the right because my body had been threatened. 
 1 lost my job and beat my cases. I couldn't get 
 another job and so I had enough of money to buy my 
 wife a ticket, so I bought a ticket for her home in Ken- 
 tucky by the way of Louisville and Stone'ga and 
 thirty-five miles on a mule home. 
 
 I then started on another hobo trip looking for a 
 job. T went to the yardmaster in the Big Springs 
 yard, whose railroad name was Bawley and told him 
 I wanted to go to Aboline, Texas, on a freight, so he 
 put me away in the old yard shanty and told me I 
 would get out about 11 o'clock that night. But I 
 failed to get out until 4 in the morning. He put me 
 in the third car from the engine, and when I got in 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life ^ 
 
 the car there were two more hoboes in the car, and 
 by the time we got to Sweetwater, Texas, there were 
 eleven of us all in the same car, all hoboes. So we 
 pulled into Aboline about 3 o'clock the next day. I 
 soon found out that there would be a madeup passen- 
 ger train out of there over the Wichita Valley Rail- 
 road to the Fort Worth & Denver Railroad, so I went 
 to the baggage man and showed him that I belonged 
 to the I. O. O. F. and W. O. W. and was dead broke 
 and got him to agree to carry me, and he told me to 
 go up to the water tank and hide in a bunch of 
 mesquite bushes on the right, and when the engineer 
 or Hog Head, known among railroad men nickname 
 lor engineers, would look back for the flagman's high- 
 ball and rim and get between the water tank and bag- 
 gage car and after he got a chance he would open the 
 baggage door and let me in. I done all he had told 
 me to do, but when I jumped out of that bunch ol 
 bushes to rim for the train there were three more men 
 doing the same thing. So we all caught the baggage 
 car. After a little bit my old baggage friend opened 
 the door and just as he did one of the hoboes jerked 
 it back. So we all rode the end of the baggage car 
 and put our feet on the water tank to rest our legs. 
 We stopped over to take water and, it being very dark, 
 the fireman did not see us. Xext to the last stop the 
 negro porter caught us and put us all off. But just 
 as the train started on apast me I caught the rear end 
 of the train and got on top of the coaches. They went 
 about tw r o miles and found out I was on to]) of the 
 train and stopped the train and the flagman climbed 
 up on top after me, but as he was climbing up on top 
 I was going down the left side of the baggage car. I 
 jumped off and run out in the prairie. They looked all 
 
.IS 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 around and could not find me, so they pulled out 
 again. Just about the time they had got away from 
 me I went under the car on the rods and the fireman 
 saw me and stopped very quick. I jumped off and hit 
 the prairie again. This time the old Hog Head had 
 released his engine and was helping the flagman and 
 conductor look for me. They were all highballing 
 the old Hog Head and got away from me, so I started 
 out walking after the train and in about half an hour 
 I walked into Wichita Falls, Texas. 
 
 I went down to the yard and met the yard crew and 
 told them what a trip I had and that I was dead broke 
 and I had a brother that was master mechanic for the 
 Fort Worth & Denver Railroad at Amarillo, Texa^. 
 They looked up the record and found that I was right, 
 so they took me to the restaurant and gave me a nice 
 breakfast and told me that I could not catch a through 
 freight for Amarillo before 9 p. m. The first No. 19 
 would be due at 9 p. m., so I stayed around there until 
 noon and hit the day crew for dinner. They were glad 
 to give me dinner because I could tell a tale to suit 
 anybody. I met a brother I. O. O. F. and I had a real 
 happy day at Wichita Falls, Texas, waiting for the 
 first Xo. 19 through freight. 
 
 About 8 p. m. I goes down in the yard and meet my 
 same old night bunch all sitting around talking. They 
 soon knew that I was the same fellow. One of them 
 asked me where I was from. I told him that I was 
 from Kentucky, and he replied: Kentucky, first 19 is 
 two hours late, and said just lay down and we will 
 get you up in time. One of the boys put an old rain- 
 coat over me and at lip. m. sharp they called me and 
 told me to get in the first car next to the engine: that 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 59 
 
 it was loaded with lumber for Amarillo, Texas. I got 
 in at the small window in one end and put the win- 
 dow together and put the key in so no one could see 
 me. The next day about 4 p. m. we landed in 
 Amarillo. I took my key out and opened my window 
 and climbed out; I pulled right straight across town 
 and met an old man with a black oilcan made like the 
 railroad cans. He was old Uncle Johnnie, the city 
 pumper, and I asked him if he knew a man by the 
 name of Less Whitaker and could he tell me where he 
 lived. He took me to his home and I had never seen 
 him for thirteen years, as he had been out West for 
 his health seven years before I went to the army and 
 I served six years in the army. So I knocked on the 
 door and a nice looking Western lady came to the 
 door whom I had never seen before, as my brother 
 had got married in Big Springs, Texas. Of course, 
 I was very black and dirty and had an old dirty suit 
 of overalls on. 
 
 I said: "Lady, is Less here?" stepping up to her. 
 "You mean Mr. Whitaker?" she asked. 
 "Yes, mar'm," I said. 
 "He is at the shop" she replied. 
 "Don't you know me?" I asked, stepping a little 
 closer. 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 "You don't? Don't you know Fess?" 
 
 "You are not Mr. Whitaker's brother, are you?" 
 
 "Yes, mar'm." 
 
 She reached out her hand and asked me to come in 
 and I thanked Uncle Johnnie and he went back. 
 
 I told her the little story that I had been telling. I 
 had sent my grip by express on ahead of me and could 
 
,i(l History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 LESS WHITAKER AND FAMILY 
 Assessor and tax collector Potter County, Texas, 1916-20 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 61 
 
 not get it out that night, so I washed up, took a good 
 hath and put on one of Less' suits, and while I was 
 doing this Ethel got me supper. After supper Ethel 
 and T struck out for the roundhouse and found Less 
 in the office. He knew me in a moment, and we 
 stayed until he got all of his men to work and he put 
 Parker as foreman and we all went to the city and had 
 a real fine time. The next day I told my brother all 
 my troubles and he told me promotion was awful slow 
 on the Denver railroad, and a man can never work 
 himself out of the shop. He also told me that he could 
 get me a job firing on the Santa Ee if T could play the 
 game and he said that the Santa Ee made more fire- 
 men and engineers than any other railroad in the 
 world. I told him Santa Ee for me. He took me out 
 to the Denver shop and let me stay two or three days 
 and he told me all he knew and showed me how to fill 
 the lubricator, work the injector, shake the grates and 
 explained the engine thoroughly. But there are some 
 differences to a dead engine and one heated up. 
 
 He took me on the fourth day to the Santa Ee shops 
 and took me to the officer and introduced me to Mr. 
 j. R. Cook as his brother and as an old experienced 
 fireman of the L. & N. Railroad. So Mr. Cook replied 
 that he had just promoted ten men and was needing 
 firemen. So he took me down to have me examined 
 and reported back. I got by the doctors all right and 
 Mr. Cook gave me a blank to fill out, and of course 
 my brother filled it out and told me how to do and 
 what to say. Mr. Cook passed me and took my name 
 and hung me up on the extra board. T was seventeen 
 times out. it was about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I 
 left the number of the house where I would be so the 
 
62 
 
 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 callboy could find me, and of course I did not sleep 
 any that night for thinking about my new job. So the 
 next morning about 11 o'clock I saw the callboy and 
 he called me for a double-header engine 182 for Plain- 
 view, Texas. My brother happened to be by when I 
 was called, and after I signed the book he began to 
 tell me how to play the game, so I got dinner and got 
 my things and pulled for the roundhouse. My train 
 was already made up and engines 180 and 182 coupled 
 together in the yard. I climbed up in the cab and 
 there was a very nice looking gentleman filling the 
 lubricator. He asked me my name and I told him 
 Whitaker, and I asked his. He said George Scurry. 
 About that time he began to screw his plug back in 
 the lubricator and he turned the steam on too quick 
 and the plug flew out and he had enough lubricating 
 oil on him looked like to fill ten more just like that. 
 He was very mad, as he had been promoted to a Hog 
 Head the day before and he had bought a nice new 
 railroad suit and it was awful to look at. He looked 
 straight at me and replied, "Are you a new man or an 
 old head h— 1?" 
 
 "I am an old head." 
 
 "What road are you off of?" 
 
 "The L. & N/" I replied. 
 
 "Good," he said. 
 
 So at 1 p. m. sharp the two Hog Heads coupled our 
 two engines onto our train and Scurry and I got sec- 
 ond engine onto our train. The conductor counted 
 his cars and got the crew's names and the orders. I 
 stood and listened to them read these just as if I knew 
 what they meant, but I did not know anything about 
 what they were reading, as my brother failed to tell 
 me anything about a train order or time card. So 
 
Kent itck v Mountain Life 
 
 03 
 
 FESS AND LESS WHITAKER 
 When railroading in Texas 1906-12 
 
64 History of Corporal f : css Whitakcr 
 
 when everything was in readiness we pulled out. 
 When the front engineer blew highball \ took a large 
 red handkerchief out of my pocket and tied it to one 
 side of my cab and every time \ would throw in a 
 scoop of coal I would pretend to wipe the sweat off 
 my face just as if 1 was an old head. When I started 
 I had 160 pounds of steam and when we went through 
 Zita 1 only had (SO pounds, only a distance of six miles. 
 
 Of course, 1 knew nothing of how to scatter my 
 coal with the scoop and let the draft place it. F just 
 put it in at the door and very soon had a large black 
 place in my fire, and after we got past Zita he looked 
 at the steam gauge and said, *'I thought you was an 
 old head." 
 
 "Hell! I am used to those big baffle doors; I don't 
 know nothing about how to lire this little cook stove. 
 If you will show me 1 will burn her up for you." I said. 
 
 "Get Up here on my seat," he said, "and I will show 
 you." 
 
 So he got down and look his scoop and scaled his 
 lire and told me to look, then he took the clinker hook 
 and got the coal all scattered and picked her up to 160 
 pounds again. He scaled his lire the second time and 
 told me to look, then he showed me how to scatter my 
 coal with the scoop and I thanked him, and by that 
 time we were going through llanny Dawn the hill 
 to the water tank. After we left the main line for 
 I Main view, 102 miles, I held my engine at 160 pounds 
 .-old when we got to Plain view the second engine was 
 cut out for a switch engine to load cattle and we 
 stayed there fifteen days and 1 showed Scurry that 1 
 had learned to be a good fireman on those class of 
 ensrines by that time. We grot orders on the fifteenth 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 G5 
 
 day to bring what loads we had and come in, so the 
 engine could be washed out, and when I got in I got 
 bumped off of my little engine and the next day I 
 caught one of them big kind, and as soon as I got on 
 the engine I had a new Hog Head and I told him just 
 plainly that I knew nothing about how to fire one of 
 those big battleships and if he would show me I would 
 keep the putty for him. I told him I was used to the 
 small engines and he told me to wait until he blew the 
 highball out of Amarillo, Texas, for Wellington, 
 Kan., and then he would show me, and he did, and I 
 kept the putty at 220 pounds and had seventy-six cars 
 of sheep and cattle tied to us. Before I got back on 
 that trip of about eight days I was getting to be a 
 pretty good fireman. It only took me about three 
 months until I held a regular engine and was signed 
 to a big compound engine, 1186, which I held until I 
 was promoted to an engineer in May, 1910. 
 
 On one trip to Cloris, New Mexico, my engineer 
 laid off and a man by the name of Brisley was signed 
 to my engine 1186. We were called for 5 o'clock that 
 night, so I was on time and reported at the round- 
 house and went on and got my engine and began to 
 clean her up. In about forty minutes the engineer 
 came. We run our engine out of the roundhouse on 
 the turntable and turned her for the west end and 
 pulled up and took water and coal and soon coupled 
 onto the train. The engineer blew his sign to test 
 the air and in about fifteen minutes two car knockers 
 reported the air O. K. and sixty-seven cars. Pretty 
 soon the conductor came over with the orders and 
 read them and he also had a slow order over the 
 bridge west of Hanny and not exceed eight miles per 
 hour. About that time I noticed my clinker hook was 
 
m History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 gone, so I had to go back to the roundhouse to get 
 one, and after I got my clinker hook I went up by the 
 caboose to let the conductor know 1 got one. They 
 was about ten old passenger engineers in the caboose 
 
 The author when firing for the Sante Fe R. R. and Engineer Brisley 
 
 dead-heading to Cloris to take the examination on air 
 and pumps, as the air car and instructor was at Cloris. 
 So when I got on the engine I told Brisley that we 
 had a caboose full of old hog heads or engineers dead- 
 heading to Cloris. He said: "I'll show them dam 
 rascals how to run an engine." 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 67 
 
 My engineer began to tell me that the Brotherhood 
 of Locomotive Firemen and the Brotherhood of Loco- 
 motive Engineers were having trouble over him. He 
 went on to say that while he was firing he joined the 
 firemen's brotherhood and after he had been promoted 
 to an engineer that the engineers wanted him to drop 
 out of the firemen's brotherhood and join the Brother- 
 hood of Locomotive Engineers and he had refused 
 and the engineers were knocking on him. He had 
 been married and one of the brakemen had stolen 
 Brisley's wife and ran away with her, and I was told 
 later that Brisley had a real fine looking wife and he 
 was grieving very much and had took to drinking. 
 So he was mad, drinking and in trouble and 102 miles 
 in front of him, and so he called for a highball from 
 the rear and received it and I will say he sure did blow 
 a highball that time. As we went through Zita we 
 were making sixty-one miles per hour and only seven 
 miles to Hanny, where they always shut the throttle 
 off and hook up his Johnson bar. When we hit the 
 switch at Hanny T noticed Brisley dropped his John- 
 son bar two notches and pulled his throttle out some 
 more and he had my fire just dancing on the grate. 
 I thought he was getting ready to shut the engine off, 
 as there was a very large mountain at the west end of 
 the Hanny switch where they always shut oft" their 
 engines and every once and a while take off five and 
 six pounds of air. So it was only about three miles 
 to the bridge to where we had the slow orders' so 
 when we passed over the hill at Hanny he did not shut 
 the engine off. T jumped down and went to throw in 
 a scoop of coal. About that time we hit a steep curve 
 to the left and the coal went in the engineer's lap 
 instead of the boiler. He was running so fast and so 
 
68 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 many stiff curves that I first threw the coal in the 
 fireman's seat and then the engineer's lap and he said, 
 "Damn it! throw it in the boiler, not in my lap." T 
 growled at him and told him to shut her off and put 
 en the air, and he said no, that he was showing the 
 Hog Heads in the caboose how to run an engine. T 
 knew in another moment we would be dead and I sure 
 began to get ready to die. By this time my lights 
 were all shook out of the racks and my clinker hook 
 and shaker bar had done fell out of the racks. I 
 climbed up and got on my seat and fastened my arms 
 in the little windows and tried to hold myself on the 
 seat, expecting to die any moment. About this time 
 we had hit the bridge and just as the engine hit the 
 bridge she jumped up about three inches and by good 
 luck when the engine came down it hit the rails all 
 O. K. and at the foot of the hill there was a water 
 tank and we were compelled to take water, so on 
 account of the rate of speed she was running she run 
 ahead of the water tank about one-half a mile, and 
 just as he got her stopped before he could reverse her 
 those ten Hog Heads come out of the caboose just 
 like they had been shot out a 14-inch gun. And after 
 he got her reversed he backed up to the water tank 
 and took water and after he got water T simply told 
 Brisley I was not afraid, but I did not want to be 
 killed by a fool and refused to go, so he set in to beg 
 me to go and I could see every inch of the road in my 
 mind, and from there on it was uphill and I knew he 
 could not run any more. Not thinking of coming 
 back, I agreed to go on, so we pulled out and reached 
 Texico about 11:50 p. m. There he got one pint of 
 whisky and we pulled on over into Cloris and cut off 
 from our train and put our engine away, washed up 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 69 
 
 and went to bed. We should have been called at 10 
 a. m. next morning, but the callboy could not find us, 
 so we were called for 2 p. m. We got on our engine 
 and the head brakeman took us over to the stock pens 
 and picked up four cars of sheep and took us back in 
 the yard to No. 7 track and coupled us up to forty- 
 seven more cars of sheep and cattle, and Smyers, 
 trainmaster for the A., T. & S. F., came up to our 
 engine and said to Brisley: "Brisley you have been 
 reported up three times for fast running and I don't 
 want to hear of it any more, but I want those cattle 
 and sheep in Canadian, Texas, before the dog law 
 gets you/' 
 
 He could run without the trainmaster giving him 
 any hints, and I began to get scared, for I knew it 
 was all down hill from Cloris, N. M., to Canadian, 
 Texas, except two hills which w r e had to go up. 
 
 So we received our orders and pulled out. After w r e 
 left Texico I don't remember very much what hap- 
 pened. He was running so fast I could not think, as 
 he was running faster than I could think. Every town 
 on that road of three hundred and nine miles was 
 cleaned of all the dust. What he did not blow out he 
 sucked out with the speed of our train. After I got 
 over the awful scare I noticed everybody sure did 
 sidetrack for him, and just as we called for the Cana- 
 dian station he ran over a flag and through a train, 
 splitting six cars of sheep and one car of cattle square 
 in two. There were sheep in every man's house, lot 
 and yard in Canadian, but by good luck our engine 
 run out in the sand and turned over and neither one 
 of us hurt. So Brisley got his walking papers and the 
 last time I heard from him he was in Mexico working 
 for the Mexican Central Railroad. 
 
70 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 I was promoted to an engineer in 1910, which job 
 I held until [ resigned, November, 1911. I then 
 returned to Kentucky and went in the mercantile 
 business at Goard and during the building of the L. 
 & X. Railroad from Jackson, Ky., to McRoberts, Ky., 
 and after the road was put through I sold out my 
 mercantile business and went to Lexington to get a 
 job. The business was very dull and the company did 
 not need any engineers and Mr. Kishhammer, the 
 trainmaster, gave me a job as brakeman, Lexington 
 to McRoberts. I gave my whole attention to the 
 company's business, and any time I was asked about 
 anything I could tell it and after braking nine months 
 I was taken off the road and made depot, freight, 
 ticket and express agent and operator at Blackey, Ky., 
 which job I held for three years, when I resigned to 
 run for Circuit Court Clerk. 
 
 I ran against two large generations of people, S. P. 
 Combs, who was the Circuit Court Clerk at that time 
 and who understood tricks in an election, and my 
 other opponent was G. B. Adams, a young lawyer and 
 a Regular Baptist preacher. X T ot knowing anything 
 about politics, I was defeated by thirty-six votes. 
 There were eleven voting precincts and I carried nine 
 of them. 
 
 After the election in 1915 I went to work for Mr. 
 D. S. Dudley, president of the Kentucky River Coal 
 Corporation. I bought all of the land on Rockhouse 
 and Caudill's Branch for him and helped to lease the 
 Xo. 4 coal for him, and they have one big lease at the 
 mouth of Rockhouse known as the Rockhouse Coal 
 Company, owned by three real fine men, Mr. Mc- 
 Clanahan, of Charleston, W.Ya., one of the nicest men 
 T ever met as a business man, and the other two are 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
72 
 
 History of Corporal I'css Whitaker 
 
 just fine big business men, Wallbolt and Arthur, of 
 Toledo, O. Next conies the Marion Coal Company, 
 at the mouth of Caudill's Branch. The managers are 
 old big, fat, happy-go-lucky men, John Gorman, of 
 Hazard, and William Morrison, of Jellico, who are 
 splendid gentlemen. With the coal experience then 
 comes the Caudill Branch Coal Company on the head 
 of Caudill Branch ; same stockholders as the Rock- 
 house Coal Company. All of this lies in two miles 
 and a half of Blackey, Ky., and the new L. & X. 
 branch comes in at Blackey. 
 
 Blackey has one of the best colleges in the State of 
 Kentucky. It is managed by Prof. E. V. Tadlock. 
 The college was built by Dr. Gurant, of AYilmore, 
 Ky., and the land was donated by Jeff Ison. Blackey 
 has one large coal operation going on now. The man- 
 agers are a bunch of real nice gentlemen with experi- 
 ence and are P. J. Cross and J. P. Jones. 
 
 The next big coal company is on Smoot Creek. 
 The first company is known as the Smoot Creek Coal 
 Company, managed by one of the Knoxville, Tenn., 
 big-hearted fellows, who has an open hand for every- 
 body, a nice big smile and who has written some 
 excellent lectures for Tennessee, Mr. C. P. Price. 
 Next are the West Virginia and Kentucky Coal Com- 
 pany, managed by two brothers of Virginia with that 
 good, clear, good-hearted disposition. Harry is a 
 whole-souled man. If you were broke and he had a 
 dime he would give you a nickel of it. The other 
 brother, T. P., has that good old fighting look on, and 
 he put in his part in the Spanish-American War. 
 Next are the Amburgey Coal Company, managed by 
 two of the real Kentucky blood, Mr. Mathews and 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 73 
 
 HON. W. S. DUDLEY 
 President Kentucky River Coal Corporation 
 
74 
 
 History of Corporal Fess JV hi taker 
 
 Mr. McCluren, of Covington, Ky. Mack is just a 
 dandy only he gets his politics mixed up. All three 
 of the coal companies on Smoot Creek are working - . 
 The Amburgey seam, which is about eight feet with- 
 out a parting'. Rockhouse companies are working 
 that good old Xo. 4 seam, 56 inches coal, 4 inches 
 parting and 11 inches coal. 
 
 After this was all done I resigned from the Ken- 
 tucky River Coal Corporation and announced myself 
 as a candidate for Jailer of Letcher County, subject 
 to the action of the Republican party, August 4, 1917. 
 There were already fifteen candidates on the track 
 for Jailer and I made the sixteenth man. We all met 
 at Whitesburg to draw to see who come first on the 
 ballot and I told them all if I drew number seven 
 they just as well quit, so we all drew and by good luck 
 I got my old lucky number seven. I set out campaign- 
 ing and made a speech on Line Fork, then I started 
 for the coal fields. I first spoke at Kona\ next at Seco, 
 both on Sunday, and I met one real nice gentleman 
 who was manager of the Southeast Coal Company, 
 Mr. Pfenning, who was and is operating the late 
 Wright's coal I wrote about in the beginning. Seco 
 is a real nice little city. Xo colored people nor for- 
 eign people are allowed there. Xext was at Fleming, 
 Ky. T had a big crowd. Lots of other candidates were 
 there and everybody spoke. During my speaking; 
 judge Day was setting upstairs in the hotel with the 
 manager of the Elkhorn Coal Company. After I had 
 carried Dick off in a trance he whispered to Judge 
 Day, "Lest just elect that d — n fool," and after the 
 votes were cried at Fleming I had received two hun- 
 dred and thirty-four votes out of two hundred and 
 thirty-five. Mr. Coal is a clean-hearted gentleman and 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 stands by his men and his county. He is liked by 
 everybody. My next speaking was at Haymen. I 
 spoke to the colored people. There were about four 
 hundred of them and we had prepared a real good 
 supper for them. Had a fine barrel of beer and had 
 some good speakers, Congressman John W. Langley, 
 Commonwealth Attorney R. Monroe Fields. Mr. 
 Noah Bentley, of Jenkins, and others. I was late get- 
 ting in. I reached Haymen about 11 p. m. and the 
 crowd was coming out. Some run in and told them 
 I had come. So the bell was rung and everybody went 
 back in and I had to make a different speech if I got 
 the crowd stirred up. So there was a big Negro with a 
 palm beach suit got up and introduced me. I says: 
 "Gentlemen, I am real glad to be with you tonight, 
 but sorry that I am late, but I want to say to you col- 
 ored brothers I am your Jailer for the next four years 
 and I am going to be the Jailer. Nobody is going to 
 tell me how to run my jail. Instead of making prison- 
 ers out of you I am going to make Christians," and 
 everybody said "Amen" and shouted. I am going for 
 everybody to read the Bible. "Amen," they shouted 
 again, and if they don't by G — d, I will make them 
 read it. "Amen," and great cheers went up. All the 
 negroes and speakers began to look at me and I told 
 them I was going to put the colored men in the col- 
 ored department and the white men in the white 
 department. I was talking to a gentleman the other 
 day, your Commonwealth Attorney, R. Monroe 
 Fields, the way I was going to handle my prisoners, 
 and he said, "Fess, that won't do; Bill Hall tried that 
 and he let some bad negroes get out of the negro de- 
 partment." Gentlemen, I mean what I say; if the jail 
 won't hold them in by G — d. let the countv build a jail 
 
76 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 HON. J NO. W. LANG LEY 
 The author's political friend 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 77 
 
 
 LETCHER COUNTY JAIL, BUILT 1908 
 
^ History of Corporal Fess JVJiitakcr 
 
 that will hold them in. Everybody shouted amen to 
 that and yelled "Fess for Jailer." I bluffed off six of 
 my opponents that night. Xext we all were billed for 
 Hemp Hill, another regular negro speaking- night. 
 We had about six hundred negroes out and so I had 
 to wait until my turn came as all of the speakers had 
 to speak. My turn came about 1 :30. Everybody had 
 heard of me and they were all waiting - for my time, 
 so I set with patience, and just as I got up I looked 
 over the crowd and believe me there were about four 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 hundred negroes assembled. Something run all over 
 me. Something said, "Fess, wake them up," and I 
 •started pounding it to them like Billie Sunday preach- 
 ing. I saw that I had them going my way and finally 
 I walked off of the stage and down the aisle to 
 where an old gray-headed man who had served in 
 slavery time. I began to pat his head kindly, hugged 
 him up and told him what our dear old friend Lincoln 
 had done and I told them that Lincoln was a man of 
 nature; he had picked his education from the moon 
 and the stars and little rippling streams. His ambition 
 was to be elected President of the L nited States so he 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 79 
 
 could free the slaves of witches. He was, and he 
 released the shackles from four million slaves by this 
 time. I had them going* my way then and I took the 
 younger class and began to tell them what the Ninth 
 and Tenth Cavalry and Twenty-fourth and Twenty- 
 fifth Infantry done in 18 ( >8 in Cuba when Roosevelt 
 and I had made such a fight and that old Ninth and 
 Tenth Cavalry cut the wire fence and let Col. Roose- 
 velt through the fence and up the hill with his rough 
 riders and the old Ninth and Tenth Cavalry cutting 
 their heads oft' with sabers, and there were twenty- 
 four pieces in the Twenty-fourth Infantry that played 
 the band that won the United States a great battle. 
 After we had planted Old Glory on top of the little 
 log house there were only two men left in the band: 
 one was lying on the ground with a leg broke playing" 
 "Marching Through Georgia," and the other had his 
 left arm off and was playing "Yankee Doodle." By 
 this time I had the crowd shouting and hollering. 
 If a man had ever stirred up a crowd I had. 
 
 I and Miss Martha Jane Potter were both to speak 
 at Jenkins and the auditorium was running over, full 
 of white people and negroes, and they had a splendid 
 band. I took Jenkins with a storm, and after Miss 
 Potter, daughter of Henry Potter, the coal magnate 
 of Letcher County, delivered her speech' I was next 
 introduced by Professor Greer. I told them in a very 
 funny way that I had to peal to Jenkins very hard 
 because she had the votes at Dunham, Burdine and 
 Jenkins proper, and that I had none at home because 
 I lived in the only Democratic precinct in the county 
 and that I had five brothers, forty-three uncles, two 
 hundred and seventy-one first cousins, and Jeff Ison, 
 my father-in-law, and all were Democrats and I was 
 
80 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 the only Republican, so of course you will all want 
 to know how come me to be such a strong Repub- 
 lican, so I will tell you. My father died when I was 
 very small and left my mother with a house full of 
 little orphan children and no money. Mother had two 
 old milk cows named Blackey and Whitey, and every 
 year prior to Cleveland's administration she would 
 sell the two little calves oft" of the cows and buy all 
 of us boys a pair of brass-toed shoes, but "God bless 
 your soul" during Cleveland's administration they 
 failed to have any calves and we all had to go bare- 
 footed, so I have been a Republican ever since. 
 
 After the speaking I met some of the nicest gentle- 
 men I believe I ever met, such as Mr. Dunlap, John- 
 son, Kegon and the general manager of the Consoli- 
 dation Coal Company, Mr. Gellete, and the right arm 
 of the B. & O. Railroad were on the ground making 
 a hard light for me. Mr. McLaughlin will never be 
 forgotten by me. I also had sixty-three traveling 
 men between Jenkins and Cincinnati that were doing 
 all they could for me. They had tried me at Blackey 
 for agent for three years and I had a regular travel- 
 ing men's meeting at the Whitesburg Hotel and I 
 made a strong promise to them: "Gentlemen, if you 
 will stand by me and should one of you get in jail I 
 will treat you nice and give you three good square 
 meals per day and when your time is up I will turn 
 you out," so they stood, and when you get the travel- 
 ing men for you I will say you have won. and I won 
 it by the biggest majority any man ever was elected. 
 five hundred and six, over Sol Wright, of McRoberts. 
 I received more votes than any man ever did. There 
 were eighteen voting precincts in the county and T 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 81 
 
 carried seventeen of them and lost the other one by 
 one vote and I received six votes more than all of my 
 ten opponents together. 
 
 I am now the Jailer of Letcher Comity and have 
 thirty-two prisoners in jail. I have Sunday-school 
 every Sunday in my jail and preaching twice per 
 month ; had four conversions and they told some great 
 experiences. I have had my living and prisoner 
 department cells painted and water works put in and 
 I challenged the State of Kentucky Jailers to cleanli- 
 ness, and everybody has got to take their hat off to 
 my Courthouse Square. I am now having moonlight 
 schools in my jail and I have turned out three young 
 men who did not know a letter in the book, can write, 
 read and spell. 
 
 I am sure the Jailers of Kentucky can do some great 
 work in the moonlight schools, and as we handle the 
 toughs and the uneducated and after we can teach a 
 man to read he can read where many a man has made 
 a mistake. The people have been so nice to so many 
 Jailers. About one hundred and twenty jails in Ken- 
 tucky, so lets us promise the people of one hundred 
 and twenty counties that we will do something good 
 for some poor boy or girl. My jail is a nice stone 
 building with four bedrooms, dining and cook room, 
 woman department, a nice dining-room for the pris- 
 oners and only one prisoner department for white and 
 colored together, as the colored department was 
 destroyed before I got in charge of the jail. 
 
 Letcher County can brag on three things that the 
 whole United States and world can't beat. First, she 
 has the name of raising the largest man in the world, 
 Martin Van Buren Bates, better known as Brother 
 
® History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 Bates. He was born twelve miles above Whitesburg 
 at the mouth of Boone Fork, where Daniel Boone first 
 settled. The property is now owned by Henry Pot- 
 ter. When Brother Bates was seventeen years old he 
 fought side by side with bad John Wright in the 
 cavalry. The first battle they were in was fought on 
 Licking River near Salyersville, Ky. Brother Bates 
 rode a big white horse give up to be the whitest horse 
 in the Civil War. After the close of the Civil War 
 Brother Bates come back and lived with his father, 
 John W. Bates, at the mouth of Boone. 
 
 Brother Bates' father came from Washington 
 County, Va. At the age of twenty-four Brother Bates 
 weighed four hundred and eighty-five pounds and 
 stood seven feet and four inches tall, and one of his 
 boots, number 23, held one-half bushel of shelled corn. 
 He joined a circus when he was twenty-eight years 
 old and traveled all over the world. He got married 
 in' Canada and on one of his trips while in England 
 the King and the Queen presented each one of them 
 a fine watch. The watches were about the size of a 
 saucer. Brother Bates has retired from the circus 
 business and is a well-to-do farmer at Seville, Ohio. 
 His wife weighed Uvq pounds more than he did. 
 They had one child born to them and it weighed 
 twenty pounds at its birth and died seasick crossing 
 the Atlantic Ocean. Brother Bates is eighty-one 
 years old now and has only one brother living, Rob- 
 ert Hates (better known as Old Rob), who lives on 
 the head of Rockhouse. He is the richest man in 
 I, etcher Count}' and Knott County. He is worth 
 over one hundred thousand dollars. He was ninety- 
 three years old August 5, 1918. Uncle Rob is the 
 oldest champion daddy at ninety-three. His oldest 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 83 
 
 child is fifty-seven and youngest seven. Uncle Rob 
 has twenty-four children. His descendants are well 
 over a hundred. Some say that there are many great- 
 grandchildren alone- not counting the grandchildren 
 of the great-grandchildren, of whom there are 1 at least 
 ten. Uncle Rob confesses that he can't count his 
 flock. Outside his children he has thirteen children 
 at home yet. The other eleven are married and their 
 families are scattered. Uncle Rob has been married 
 twice. At home this remarkable Kentucky father is 
 still the unquestioned master. His politics are the 
 household's. He lives by rule and by rule he governs. 
 It don't pay to pamper youngsters. Bring children up 
 to respect you and they will respect themselves. 
 Children have got to be taught to save. A good wife 
 is the best of all; a man can't get ahead without her. 
 Women should help their husbands. 
 
 Children are seldom sick in the mountains and 
 Uncle Rob says give them a dose of sassafras tea is 
 medicine enough. Uncle Rob has not been sick a day 
 in his life. He is five feet and eight inches tall and 
 weighs one hundred and eighty pounds. He stands 
 straight and walks with splendor. He has the shoul- 
 ders and chest of a perfect built man. He does not 
 smoke or drink. Uncle Rob says he has gone hungry 
 many a time to save a quarter and has never been 
 sorry of it. One would expect a man who owns most 
 of the mountains in his section and who is worth one 
 hundred thousand dollars to live in a fine house, but 
 Uncle Rob prefers the old house and bare floors like 
 the old schoolhouse on Burton Hill. 
 
 The house which Uncle Rob lives in has been built 
 seventv-eight vears at the writing of this book. Uncle 
 
84 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 Rob is on his way to Mount Sterling with a drove of 
 cattle, a distance of two hundred miles, horseback. 
 Uncle Rob never did have a suit of underwear on and 
 never did wear a collar and very fine socks. His wife 
 makes hfs socks and shirts. 
 
 The second thing Letcher County can brag about 
 is a real mountain dog raised by Henry Mullins on 
 the head of Cumberland. The dog w r as as large as a 
 real mountain cow. He w r as sold to Sells Brothers' 
 show, Big Stone Gap, Va., in 1880 for seven hundred 
 dollars. He was taken all over the world and won the 
 champion medal, king of all dogs. 
 
 The third was a real pumpkin raised by old Jim 
 Hogg of all at the mouth of Tolson Creek. The 
 pumpkin weighed one hundred and ninety-six pounds. 
 After cutting both ends off any ordinary man could 
 crawl through it. 
 
 One of the most peculiar men ever Letcher County 
 had was old fighting George Ison, on Line Fork, 
 whom we wrote about in the first of the book. In the 
 lime of the Civil War the Yankees had stolen all of 
 Uncle George's horses and cattle except one old black 
 and white pided cow. When spring came he would 
 have one of his negroes, named Wesley, to plow the 
 old cow and cultivate the land. He would put one- 
 half yoke on the old cow and a home-made plow stock 
 and plow from one-half of an acre to one acre per 
 day. He would milk his old cow every morning and 
 evening and make the gravy for his slaves. 
 
 He stayed full of moonshine whisky very near all 
 of the time after he lost his first wife. He left Line 
 Pork to go courting above Whitesburg to see Aunt 
 
Ken tucky Mountain Life ^ 
 
 Vina Adams. He had a brinnal cow bringing- to 
 Whitesburg to be shot for and the old cow would not 
 lead very well and he wanted to get up to Aunt Vina's 
 home before dark, so he tied his cow to his old horse's 
 tail and put the spur to his old horse, which was well 
 known in Letcher County by the name of Blue Jack, 
 and just as he crossed the river at Whitesburg the old 
 cow got stuck up in the quicksand, and the old man, 
 feeling so good and his mind on his "sweetheart," 
 then about fifty years old; he looked back to see his 
 cow about the time he hit the main street of Whites- 
 burg and he noticed that his cow was gone and also 
 old "Blue Jack" had lost his tail completely. 
 
 He got James H. Frazier to look after his cow and 
 he got one quart as he went through Whitesburg and 
 went on to see Aunt Vina. The next day he came 
 back to Whitesburg and some man had heard of him 
 being such a fighter and told him that he had come 
 over two hundred miles to fight him. So he got down 
 off of "Blue Jack" and in about fifty minutes old man 
 Ison had him well whipped. That was the biggest 
 fist and scull fight that was ever fought in the 
 mountains of Kentucky. After the fight was all over 
 old man Ison set his opponent up a glass of good 
 apple brandy and they drank friendly and shook hands 
 and parted. 
 
 Old man Ison and Gudson Ingram, both of Line 
 Fork, two large, strong men, uneducated, and when 
 Letcher County was cut off of Perry County, Letcher 
 County had to have a jail house, so the contract was 
 let to be built twenty by thirty, and those two big- 
 strong men took the contract to deliver all of the win- 
 dows and doors and iron fixtures. There were no 
 
86 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 roads, no teams hardly and a very few wagons, so 
 they carried all of the iron on their backs from Lex- 
 ington. The}- walked every step over the mountains 
 and eveiw step each way. They made three trips in 
 one month from Whitesburg to Lexington and re- 
 turned and only got thirty-seven dollars for the whole 
 job. They averaged one hundred and forty pounds 
 apiece per load. On the first trip to Lexington they 
 enjoyed theirselves fine and everybody that saw them 
 enjoyed themselves. They was the pure typical 
 mountain type; wore home-made shoes, called moc- 
 casins, old jeans pants and coat made by their wives 
 on the old-fashioned looms, and flax shirts. 
 
 Letcher County boasts of having the pure Anglo- 
 Saxon language and the pure typical mountain form 
 and ways of life and the people of Letcher County 
 through its scientific management is at the root of 
 successful present enterprise and intelligence in not 
 only the lives of bygone men and women but youths 
 are looking for a foremost day. 
 
 ! will try and describe one of the most peculiar men 
 that was ever raised in the mountains, Elisha Ingram. 
 Elisha Ingram was born at the mouth of Kingdom 
 Come Creek in the year of 1865. When a boy he was 
 a peculiar turned boy. When he was about twenty 
 years old he could eat more than ten men. He wore 
 number thirteen shoes. He lived in the woods most 
 of his time and was reported one time to the revenue 
 people to be a moonshiner and there were seven mar- 
 shals who came from down in the State and made the 
 raid. He hid in one of those big caves in the head of 
 Line Fork. The marshals went in the cave at 8 o'clock 
 in the morning and came out about 2 o'clock in the 
 afternoon with Mr. Ingram. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life _^ 
 
 They found that he was not a moonshiner, but a 
 merchant or a hardware man. When they came out 
 they brought twenty-three big- guns and thirty-one 
 trunks full of old rags. Mr. Ingram has been seen 
 with as many as three trunks on his back at the same 
 time, bringing them across the big Black Mountains 
 and taking them to his cave or store, as it may be 
 called, in the top of the Cumberland Mountain, which 
 is one of the world's great sceneries, as well as the 
 Mammoth Cave down in the State. 
 
 During the Civil War in the year of 1864 Daw 
 Adams, who preached on Burton Hill, was making 
 his way through the mountains from his home, three 
 miles above Whitesburg, the county seat of Letcher 
 County. He stopped over night on the head of Kings 
 Creek and stayed with Mr. D. D. Fields, now one of 
 the best known lawyers in the mountains of Ken- 
 tucky. Mr. Adams had a real bench-legged dog and 
 Mr. Fields wanted the dog and so Mr. Adams gave 
 him the dog. The dog's name was Swad Dink. Mr. 
 Adams never told Mr. Fields that there was anything 
 peculiar about this dog. So Mr. Fields was well 
 pleased over his dog and the next morning Mr. Fields 
 wanted to try his dog and so he set him on a hog, and 
 instead of the dog going forwards and running the 
 hog he ran it backwards by turning the other end. 
 Time makes changes, so Mr. Fields is now the son- 
 in-law of Mr. Adams and has one pretty little girl 
 named Danola. 
 
 There has been some great men and women raised 
 in Letcher County and they have been some very. 
 very strange people raised in Letcher County and 
 some very bad men and done some awful crimes, but 
 
vs 
 
 History of Corporal Fess JJhitaker 
 
 what more could be expected of some people who have 
 had such a poor chance as men and women born in the 
 mountains of Kentucky. There has been lots said 
 and wrote about Letcher County and its people that 
 is not true. The moonshiners have given dear old 
 Letcher a black eye, but thank God that day has 
 passed. 
 
 Old Letcher stands first in wealth. If the whole 
 united world would shut down all of their coal mines 
 Letcher County could furnish the whole united world 
 coal for thirty years. We have more timber in 
 Letcher County than in any other county in Ken- 
 tucky. We have twenty-six big mountains in Letcher 
 County well covered with timber, such mountains as 
 the Black and Cumberland and others. 
 
 We have some of the richest corporations and com- 
 panies in the United States, such as the Consolidation 
 Coal Company at Jenkins, Kentucky and the Elkhorn 
 Coal Company at Fleming, Ky. As to schools, 
 Letcher stands first. Letcher can boast of the best 
 of schools and churches. You don't see any of those 
 old log schoolhouses any more, but they are the latest 
 styles. Likewise are the churches. As to language, 
 there is but a very few people who use any more of 
 that good old bygone days language. The old spin- 
 ning wheels and looms are about all played out. We 
 have three large beautiful streams of water flowing 
 through Letcher County, the Cumberland River, the 
 north fork of the Kentucky River and Rockhouse 
 Creek. We have the purest water in the world. The 
 air is just fine. Many people come to the mountains 
 to get fresh air. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 We don't have any wild animals in our mountains. 
 We have some poison snakes, such as the copperheads 
 and rattlesnakes. Clint Cornett last year killed seven- 
 teen copperheads and rattlesnakes each on Pigeon 
 Ridge of Line Fork, all under one edge of a rock all 
 rolled and coiled up together in the same bed just 
 •ike owls, prairie dogs, cotton tails and rattlesnakes 
 do in Texas in the prairie dog towns. 
 
 While I was in Texas and before I went to railroad- 
 ing on the trains an old passenger engineer and I went 
 to Davis Mountain bear hunting. We killed two 
 black bears and caught one young bear. W 7 e saw 
 quite a few droves of antelope and it was a very heavy 
 fine to kill one, but we did, and we had some real 
 good eating. We was in the western part of Texas 
 and came in at El Paso, Texas, on Friday. We went 
 over the river into Old Mexico to a big bull fight. It 
 sure was something awful to look upon. I will try 
 and explain it to you as I saw it. 
 
 It was a holiday, celebrating the big day of Repub- 
 lic, the fifth day of May. They put three bulls im- 
 ported from Spain against four native bulls. The 
 owners from Spain were artists when it come to 
 butchering horses. If they had killed a few of the 
 ignorant and cruel Mexicans who were riding the 
 poor beasts up to be gored to death they would have 
 won my applause. One horse was injured six times 
 and each time ridden to be gored again, until finally 
 killed by the bull. It was enough to disgust old 
 "Villa," whom General Pershing run out of Mexico 
 in 1915-16, and still men and women and little chil- 
 dren went wild and shouted for joy at the sight of 
 blood and the suffering of the dumb brutes. 
 
90 
 
 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 The engineer was an American and had been born 
 in Louisville,, Kv., but was working for the Mexican 
 National Railroad and had been hurt in a wreck and 
 had a six months' layoff. After the bull fight we 
 visited the noted Church of Guadalupe, which is said 
 to have been built by Montezuma in memory of the 
 angel Guadalupe. After going through the church 
 
 FESS WHITAKER 
 
 and seeing the "sirape" (blanket) which this angel 
 saint wore on her riving trip from Heaven to Mexico 
 City, we climbed the hill to the graveyard where all 
 the noted warriors are buried. It covered a couple of 
 acres, and a guard with a rifle and sword is kept on 
 duty night and day. On coming to old General Santa 
 Anna's grave I thought of poor Davy Crockett and 
 his brave followers, who met their fate in the Alamo 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 91 
 
 at San Antonio, Texas, through the inhuman blood 
 craving of this same old general. The earth mound 
 where he sleeps was plastered over with all kinds of 
 fancy many colored pieces of broken chinaware. One 
 particular pretty piece took my eye and I told the 
 engineer, Mr. Dovis, that it would be in my cabinet 
 of curiosities if it should cost me a heavy fine. The 
 engineer said, Fess, that it would mean possibly 
 death or a long term in a Mexican dungeon if I were 
 caught stealing from this "big chief's" grave, but 
 when he found that I was determined to risk it with 
 this copper-colored son of old Montezuma he agreed 
 to assist me by steering the guard away to another 
 part of the graveyard and try and keep his back 
 towards me by asking him questions about the city, 
 which lay at our feet in plain view. The guard stood 
 in sight with the seat of his white cotton pants 
 towards me when I climbed over the sharp painted, 
 tall iron pickets and secured the piece. I wondered 
 if poor old Davy Crockett turned over in his grave to 
 smile at me. 
 
 David Crockett's parents died when he was a very 
 small boy and he had seven brothers older than him 
 and he soon learned to use his mouth and fist. Poor 
 little Crockett when a boy had nobody to sing him 
 to sleep or teach him a prayer. Davy Crockett was 
 born August 17, 1786, in Limestone, Tenn. He was 
 born in a little old log hut with no floor in it. 
 
 Crockett's ambition was to "go ahead." He was 
 made Colonel during the Indian war, then he was 
 sent to the Legislature. David Crockett was a great 
 bear hunter. When war broke out with Texas and 
 Mexico he pulled out for the West. 
 
92 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 After he got to Fori Worth he bought him a Mus- 
 tang pon}' and rode all over the plains and had many 
 a good race with buffaloes, as Texas was well covered 
 with all kinds of wild animals then. After hunting 
 about two months he pulled straight for San Antonio. 
 Texas, and soon was in the Fortress of Alamo, where 
 the great fight lasted for sixty days. lie was received 
 in the fort with shouts of welcome. They had all 
 heard of Col. Crockett through the influence of the 
 Texas rangers. Most of them from the United States 
 had declared their independence of Mexico rule and 
 had set up a government of their own. 
 
 Col. Travis was in command of the fortress. They 
 only had one hundred and fifty men in the fort and 
 had to go up against the whole Mexican army. The 
 Mexican army fired on the fort in February with 
 President Santa Anna at the head, whose grave 1 
 stole my pieces of chinaware off of. One morning 
 Crockett was awakened by a shot against part of the 
 fort in which he was sleeping. He dressed in a hurry 
 and before they took the fort he had shot six gunners 
 dead from behind a cannon that had been placed in 
 the front of the Alamo. Day by day the fortress of 
 the besieged grew darker and darker. There was no 
 hope of aid, food and water, all had failed them. 
 David Crockett kept a journal of the daily happen- 
 ings in the fortress. On the sixth day of March the 
 entire Mexican army attacked the Alamo and the 
 resistance was desperate. When the fort was taken 
 only six men of its defenders were living. Poor little 
 David Crockett was one of them. He was found in 
 an angle of the building behind a breastwork of Mex- 
 icans whom he had slain. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life °^ 
 
 It is said that in the assault upon the Alamo the 
 Mexicans lost more than a thousand men. The six 
 prisoners were taken before Santa Anna, President 
 of Mexico. Crockett strode along-, fearless and 
 majestic. Santa Anna was displeased that the pris- 
 oners had been spared so long, frowned and said that 
 he had given other orders concerning them. The 
 swords of his men gleamed and they rushed upon the 
 unarmed prisoners. The dauntless Crockett gave the 
 spring of a tiger toward the dark leader, Santa Anna, 
 but before he could reach him he had been cut down 
 by a dozen swords. Crockett's last words were, "Lib- 
 erty and independence forever." At the death of 
 Crockett he was not quite fifty years old. 
 
 Forty years ago there was lots of trouble and feuds 
 in Letcher County. Will try and give the public a 
 true story about two killings by the same man and 
 both men that was killed were Banks'. Link Banks 
 was killed forty years ago by J. H. Frese, and William 
 Banks eleven months ago by J. H. Frese. I now have 
 Mr. Frese in my jail under a sentence of life waiting 
 to hear from the Court of Appeals. 
 
 Early in the eighties Letcher County, Ky., now a 
 very rich and flourishing mountain county, was the 
 scene of innumerable feuds. So bitter was the feel- 
 ing that the Judge of the Circuit Court and the 
 Commonwealth's Attorney did not dare punish 
 any of the feudists, knowing that a vigorous prosecu- 
 tion and a conviction of the member of either faction 
 would be followed by their own murder at the hands 
 of the adherents of that party. Cases were on the 
 docket that had to be tried, and the Governor 
 appointed Judge William L. Jackson, of Louis- 
 
94 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 ville, to try them. It was understood that there 
 was not a lawyer in the district who would act as 
 Commonwealth's Attorney on these trials, and that 
 it would be necessary to procure a Commonwealth's 
 Attorney from some other district, and Judge Jack- 
 son announced that he would appoint Major W. R. 
 Kinney, of the Louisville bar, to act as prosecutor. 
 
 In those days there were no shorthand writers in 
 any part of Kentucky except Louisville, and it was 
 arranged for one to go 'along so that in the event of a 
 conviction and the necessity for a bill of exceptions 
 it could be easily and promptly made. A party of six 
 men started from Louisville. The court never did 
 know what the other three went for, but inferred they 
 were a bodyguard, as they were all members of the 
 State militia. Railroads are now running through Let- 
 cher County, and the boom town of Jenkins is just 
 across the mountains from Whitesburg, then, as now, 
 the county seat. But in those days they had to ride 
 horseback 100 miles across the country to get here. 
 They went from Richmond to Paintsville, to Preston- 
 burg and up the Big Sandy Valley to Whitesburg, 
 and going up every man of them wanted the best look- 
 ing horse to ride. Coming back they all fought for the 
 quietest looking mule. Traveling in the Kentucky 
 mountains a sure-footed mule is a jewel ; but they 
 didn't know that when they started out. 
 
 Well, they blew in on Saturday night and were 
 all so dead beat that they wanted to get to sleep as 
 soon as they could. Just before they went to bed the 
 
 proprietor of the hotel (Jim S ) came to the room 
 
 for something and saw them standing in front of a 
 couch with long white nightshirts on. He stared at 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 95 
 
 them and seemed stupefied. Finally he managed to 
 ask them what that was they had on. 
 
 "A nightshirt," one said. 
 
 "Do men sleep in them thai* things whar you come 
 from?" 
 
 One assured him that they did. 
 
 "Well, I'll be damned !" he said, and the next day 
 they found he had surreptitiously taken their night- 
 shirt out of their room to show some of his friends 
 what the "furriners from down below" slept in. 
 
 They got up in the morning, and, stepping out 
 of the building which by courtesy they called a hotel, 
 
 they saw a mountaineer named Bill D with 
 
 his trousers in his boots, the typical long, fierce-look- 
 ing mustache, and his pistol hanging at his left side. 
 They had not been shaved since they left Louisville. 
 They had been on the road about a week and needed 
 a shave badly, and, addressing the mountaineer, one 
 said: 
 
 "I beg your pardon, sir, but will you kindly tell me 
 where the barber shop is?" 
 
 When he turned his face on them they almost start- 
 ed to run from him. They did not know that they had 
 said anything to provoke anger, but in all their life 
 they had never seen as vicious a look as he gave them 
 as he bellowed: 
 
 Barber shop? Hell! You know thar hainVno barber 
 shop in this country, and we don't 'low for you'uns 
 to come up to this place and make fun of we'uns." 
 
 They hastened to assure the gentleman that it had 
 never occurred to them that there w T as any place where 
 they didn't have a barber shop, and they said to him : 
 
 "You see we need a shave, and we must have one. 
 How on earth can we get shaved?" 
 
 "Shave yourself," he said. 
 
90 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 "But," said we, "there are two reasons why we can't 
 shave. We haven't any razor, and in the second 
 place we can't." 
 
 "Well," he said, "go over and see Jim Frese." 
 
 He directed us to Mr. Frese's place and we went 
 over there and found a nice-looking gentleman about 
 thirty-rive years of age, whose very appearance put 
 us at ease. We stated to Mr. Frese the object of our 
 errand, told him that we did not know there were no 
 barber shops here and we had not brought a raz< >r. He 
 said he had just finished shaving, which sounded good 
 to us after our experience with the mountaineer on 
 the hotel porch, and that he would be delighted to let 
 us use his razor. We took the utensils, lathered up one 
 man and began shaving. He watched the process. 
 About every three pulls he made with the razor he cut 
 himself twice. We remember it was a very keen razor, 
 too. He noticed the poor job he was making and said 
 to him : 
 
 "You are not accustomed to shaving yourself?" 
 "No," said he, "I have never shaved myself in my 
 life before." 
 
 He offered to shave the crowd and we thanked him 
 and told him we would be pleased to have him do it 
 and he leaned one of the men back in an ordinary high 
 chair, stretched his head back and Mr. Frese began 
 shaving him. 
 
 Mr. Frese's house was well kept, neat and clean, 
 much more so than that of any other moun- 
 taineer with whom we had come into contact in the 
 journey across the country, and his language was 
 well chosen and grammatical, llis whole appearance 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life ^ 
 
 betokened a man of affairs in the community. We 
 thought it a splendid time to commence getting in- 
 formation. 
 
 We remember distinctly that he used the word 
 "murder" instead of "killings." He was pulling the 
 razor over our taut neck just about the jugular vein, 
 and he said: 
 
 "Well, the last man who was killed, I killed him." 
 
 We gave a start, and it was quite a bit of luck that he 
 was not cut, so great had been our involuntary jerk. 
 Immediately he said: 
 
 "Do you want a close shave?" 
 
 "No, just once over ," he responded hurriedly. 
 
 It afterward turned out that Mr. Frese was, as we 
 had sized him up, one of the leading citizens of that 
 whole section. For anything you wanted or anything 
 you wanted to know, you had to apply to Jim Frese. 
 And this very thing had gotten him into trouble. 
 
 One morning Link Banks, a mountaineer, came into 
 Whitesburg, tanked up on moonshine whisky, and, 
 meeting Black Shade Combs, another mountaineer, 
 said to him : 
 
 "I came in to kill somebody this morning, and I 
 just believe I'll kill you." 
 
 The prospective corpse was not "heeled," as he was 
 not in any feud just then, and was not expecting 
 trouble, but he knew that he would have to act, and 
 quickly, by his wits, or he would be shot, and he 
 turned on the fellow and said carelessly: 
 
 "Oh, pshaw, don't kill me; kill Jim Frese." 
 
H - - - iml Fess Whitaker 
 
 "Well, I believe I will," and Link Banks, the killer, 
 £ger« "to Jim I He had n 
 
 had a particle uble with Mr. 
 
 up in the n had ever had. but he walked 
 
 here } as behind the 
 
 and raised his gun and cut loose at him. He mi- 
 the and Frese dropped down behind the 
 
 counter, ran some twelve or rif: _ ng his 
 
 1 as he went, and g :hat distan m where 
 
 Link Banks, the mount ted him 
 
 g :he drop on the latter before he could change the 
 direction of his pistol and killed him. 
 
 The Circuit Court was in session and a majority 
 
 grand jurors were in Mr. re at the time and 
 
 saw the whole occurrence. L'pon the convening 
 
 rt the grand jury requested the Commonwealths 
 
 raw up an indictment against Jame^ 
 
 Frese for manslaughter and submit it to them. Thi;< 
 
 - done, and about ten minutes after the grand 
 jurors went to their room they returned and said they 
 had a partial report to make and handed back the 
 indictment against James manslaughter 
 with the word ;. it "Dismissed." Frese was 
 never further brought before the court on the ch: _ 
 
 But we did not know all this when Mr. Fr<.~ 
 calmly pulling that razor over one of the men's neck 
 and saying 
 
 "The last man who was killed. I killed him." 
 
 Even in those feud days there were a great many 
 law-abiding Christians in the mountains, and it 
 
 - our endeav cultivate friendly rela: 
 with as many of thes - we could. Judge 
 Tacks* »n had sternly adm isl le par: 
 pursue this c 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 99 
 
 I >ne Saturday evening when court adjourned early 
 to allow the witnesses to get out to their homes for 
 Sunday, we noticed in an end of the town which I had 
 not yet explored, a long, low, wide building, and I 
 inquired of R. B. Bentley, one of the residents sitting 
 near me, what that building was. 
 
 "'That," he said, "is a church house." 
 
 "'A church! Why, do you ever have services up 
 in this section?" 
 
 "Yes." he said, "about eight or ten months ago thar 
 was a circuit rider come along and we had meetin'. 
 We only have meetin's when somebody comes along. 
 We hain't got no regular preacher." 
 
 "Well." said one, anxious to get solid with all 
 churchgoers, "we are going to have services tomor- 
 row morning." 
 
 "Who's gwine to preach?" he said. 
 
 ( me of them said: "Major \Y. R. Kinney, the Prose- 
 cuting Attorney, teaches a Bible class at home. He 
 i- the finest talker in the United States, bar nobody, 
 and T will get him to preach." 
 
 We were not speaking in hyperbole when we were 
 telling him of Major Kinney's attainments as a ora- 
 tor. \Ye have reported all orators of the past quarter 
 of a century, and we have never heard his equal. He 
 had the vocabulary of a Proctor Knott or President 
 Lincoln. He had diction and voice equal t<» \\ . C. P. 
 kinridge. He had the dramatic instinct of John P. 
 rrish and Bourke Cochran, and as to fluency of speech 
 William Jennings Bryan is tongue-tied compared 
 with him. This was the character of orator that 
 § >ing to turn loose on that mountain congrega- 
 n. 
 
100 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 So the news was spread that we were going to have 
 "meetin' " next morning. Saturday evening we went 
 over to the church house — everything in the 
 mountains is a house. The court is a courthouse, the 
 jail is a jailhouse, the hotel is a tavernhouse, etc. 
 
 They had a small organ in it and we tried to find the 
 organist and choir. We learned they did not have an 
 organist, but the}- had about eight or ten big strong- 
 voiced singers, and, as they played the organ after a 
 fashion, we took the bunch over and we rehearsed 
 four or five hymns. 
 
 The next morning at service we had a very good 
 crowd. In fact, everybody in the town was there. 
 Before the preaching it occured to us that the 
 Major, being such a dyed-in-the-wool Methodist and 
 so well posted on the tenets and dogmas of that faith, 
 the temptation would be for him to preach a doctrinal 
 sermon. We knew that the Baptists and Presbyteri- 
 ans were the strong denominations up in that section 
 and we did not think Arminian doctrines would ap- 
 peal to Calvinists, so we took the Major to one side 
 and told him that no doctrinal sermon went; that 
 Christ crucified to save sinners was all that he should 
 preach, and he agreed to it and preached a sermon the 
 only equal of which he preached later that day. 
 
 When the services were over very few went to the 
 Major; they all came to thank the remainder of us for 
 the wonderful sermon we had procured for them and 
 immediately requested that we have "meetin' " again 
 that night. Of course we agreed. 
 
K e ntucky Mountain Life ^1 
 
 To this day those two sermons are discussed and 
 gone over by the old residents. 
 
 Early in the month of November, 1918, William 
 Banks, of Smoot Creek, came to Whitesburg to give 
 his depositions in a suit filed against J. H. Frese for 
 destroying his peace. Mr. Banks had sued Air. Frese 
 for $10,000 damages. His lawyer. Air. Lewis, of 
 Hyden, Ky., was in town, and Air. Banks walked up 
 and into the courthouse and went in the Sheriff's 
 office and asked about Mr. Lewis, if he was in town. 
 He was informed that he was in Air. Hawks' office, 
 which was somewhere in the Bank building. Air. 
 Banks walked out of the courthouse, up the sidewalk 
 about fifteen feet and across Alain street towards the 
 First National Bank building, where the lawyer was. 
 Just as he got in front of Lewis Brothers' store Air. 
 Banks slapped his hand on his breast and hollowed 
 and ran into Lewis' store and fell. He died in about 
 five minutes with a thirty by fifty bullet hole square 
 through him, hitting him in the back just under the 
 shoulder blade out in front by the left nipple. 
 
 Nobody saw r the shooting, but the bullet came very 
 near killing Judge Sam Collins, and lodged in the 
 window sill of the First National Bank. In about ten 
 minutes Sheriff Charlie Back, Commonwealth's At- 
 torney R. Alonroe Fields and County Attorney F. G. 
 Fields located the bullet in the window sill and, 
 searching its range, it proved to be the shot fired from 
 the back door of Frese's store building. So they went 
 in Mr. Frese's store and he was sweeping and they 
 told him they wanted to search for the gun. He told 
 them to help themselves. So on searching they found 
 two big forty-five pistols and a regular army rifle, and 
 
102 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 not one of them had been fired. So they took the 
 weapons with them and put a guard around the Frese 
 store. They went and cut the bullet out of the win- 
 dow sill in the First National Bank and the ball was 
 so large it would not lit any gun that could be found 
 in Whitesburg. 
 
 So the Commonwealth's Attorney, R. Monroe 
 Fields, was not satisfied with the search in Frese's 
 store and went in the second time, and on arriving 
 the second time he told Mr. Frese he was not satis- 
 fied with the search and wanted to search again. Mr. 
 Frese told him to search all he wanted to, but he was 
 sure there were no more guns in the store. Mr. Frese 
 had fired the deadly weapon and had made a regular 
 pocket under his counter to hide the gun when he got 
 the chance to fire his deadly shot into Banks after he 
 had taken Mr, Banks' wife. 
 
 The Commonwealth's Attorney searched good the 
 second lime and was about to find the gun and Mr. 
 Frese began to ge\ seared and tried to lead him away 
 from the spot and to look behind the hats on top of 
 the shelves, so this made Mr. Fields know he was 
 close to the gun, and after moving three planks he 
 pulled her out of her deathly hidden hole. The gun 
 was >till hot and the powder was in the barrel and 
 the bullet that was taken out of the window sill jusl 
 fit the gun that was found last, thirty l>v fifty. 
 
 By this time Mr. Jesse Day, Justice of the Peace. 
 had issued a warrant for Mr. Frese, accusing him. and 
 lie was placed in jail. ( hi the next day. November 10, 
 the examining trial was held by Judge 1 1 T. Day and 
 he was held over to answer such indictment that the 
 grand jury may return without bond, [anuary term 
 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 103 
 
 the judge, John F. Butler, was sick, and when the 
 April term of Circuit Court came Air. Frese was in- 
 dicted for willful murder in the first degree and his 
 case- was continued until the August term. An order 
 was made to bring the jurors from Clark County, as 
 Frese swore that he could not get a fair trial in 
 Letcher County and a change of venue overruled. 
 
 So Mr. Jim Tolliver, the Sheriff of Letcher County, 
 brought seventy good men from Clark County, and a 
 splendid jury of twelve men was selected from that 
 body of men. Now, our Circuit Judge. J. F. Butler, 
 became sick again, as he is in bad health and had to 
 quit again, so all the lawyers of the bar and the attor- 
 neys on both sides agreed to appoint the Hon. H. C. 
 Faulkner, of Hazard, Ky., to try the Frese case. 
 The jury selected was : 
 
 W. G. Butler, W. B. Sudduth, 
 
 W. A. Judy, J. H. Riggs, 
 
 A. F. Mastin, M. L. Mareland. 
 
 Zack Brown, B. C. Taylor, 
 
 Elburge Babor, W. E. Rice, 
 
 Zane Ellis, W. C. Taylor. 
 
 The prosecuting attorneys were Hon. Grant For- 
 rester, of Harlan, Ky. ; Commonwealth's Attorney R. 
 Monroe Fields and County Attorney F. G. Fields. 
 The attorneys for the defendant were: Lawyer Floyd 
 Byrd, of Lexington; W. K. Brown, Whitesburg; Sen- 
 ator Ed Hogg, Paris; Judge Benton, Yv nichester; D. 
 D. Fields, Dug Day and David Hayes, Whitesburg: 
 \Y. C. Hearing, Louisville, and Hon. Bill May, 
 Jenkins, Ky. 
 
 The Commonwealth finished in four days and 
 taking the proof of the defendant's side finished in 
 
104 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 three days. Then the argument began, of which 
 Judge Benton was first, then F. G. Fields, Senator 
 Hogg, Grant Forrester and Judge Byrd. Then R. 
 Monroe Fields finished. The argument from the 
 defendant's side was very poor. The attorneys left 
 the case completely and all they done was to make 
 fun of Letcher Count}- and its officers. The attorneys 
 for the Commonwealth stayed with the case and the 
 proof and a verdict was rendered in about fifty min- 
 utes for life in the pen. 
 
 The first vote was seven for the chair, four for life 
 and one for two to twenty-one years. When the jury 
 asked the Judge for pen and ink to write the verdict 
 with the Judge ordered me to bring out the prisoner. 
 The courthouse bell was rung and the courthouse was 
 full in ten minutes. The jury came out of the jury 
 room and took their seats in the jury box and the 
 Judge asked them if they had a verdict and they 
 answered, "We have," and the Judge ordered them 
 to read it and it was read. If I ever saw an intelli- 
 gent jury in my life that was one. After the verdict 
 was read the attorneys for Frese asked for a new trial 
 and a change of venue, which was overruled by Judge 
 H. C. Faulkner. Then the attorneys for Frese took 
 the case to the Court of Appeals for a new trial and 
 change of venue and were granted sixty clays to hear 
 from the Court of Appeals. 
 
 Mr. Frese is a very wealthy man. He owns all 
 kinds of coal and timber land. 
 
 The Letcher County docket stands clear without 
 a murder case on the book now — thank God for that 
 — and I am glad I have lived to see old Letcher stand 
 ahead in law and order. We must give the Hon. J. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 105 
 
 R. MONROE FIELDS 
 Commonwealths attorney, 35th Judicial District, Letcher and Pike^Counties 
 
lOi 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 F. Butler, Judge of the Thirty-fifth district, and also 
 our Commonwealth's Attorney, R. Monroe Fields, 
 
 credit for nine-tenths of it. 
 
 R. Monroe Fields was born on the head of King's 
 Creek at the foot of the Laurel Mountains. He never 
 was in college, hnt got what education he has in a 
 very homely schoolhouse. Me was granted law- 
 license to practice law when he was eighteen years 
 old. Mr. Fields' first case was a very funny case. 
 William Mclntire, merchant at the mouth of Rock- 
 house, had sued Andy Crase for $300 for store ac- 
 count. When the case was called Mr. Fields stated 
 to the court that you could not bring a suit in a magis- 
 trate's court over S200, so Mr. McTntire agreed to 
 knock off one hundred dollars. Mr. Fields claimed 
 that he had paid the account in full and also claimed 
 limitation on all the account except ten cents' worth 
 of horseshoe nails which had been bought inside of 
 two years. Mr. Fields showed the court where an 
 account was over two years old you could not bring 
 suit, and so Mr. Dixon, the magistrate, took Mr. Mc- 
 lntire out and read him the law and he agreed to 
 knock off the other $2(30, as he did not want to get 
 stuck for the costs, and he agreed to law it out for the 
 ten cents' worth of horseshoe nails. A jury was 
 called and the court began to take the proof. The 
 case lasted something like two hours. The case got 
 very hot. Both parties accused each other of swear- 
 ing lies and the court threatened in fine them if they 
 did not hush up that talk. So finally the case was 
 finished and both -ides of the case was argued on. 
 < )ne side was argued on by Mr. Fields and the other 
 by Mr. Mclntire. an uneducated merchant. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 107 
 
 After the argument was over the instructions were 
 given the jury, and after being out about one hour the 
 jury came in and reported that they could not agree. 
 The court then sent them back in the jury room the 
 second time to make a verdict, if possible. After 
 something' about one-half an hour they reported the 
 second time that they could not agree, so the court 
 sent them back the third time and asked them, if pos- 
 sible, to agree. The}- were out this time only about 
 fifteen minutes and reported that they could not 
 agree, as there were only three and three. So the 
 jury was dismissed and both sides agreed to pay his 
 part of the costs and the suit to be settled, which was 
 agreed upon. So Mr. Fields won his case for his 
 client, Air. Crase, and received his five ($5) dollar fee 
 out of a ten-cent suit for horseshoe nails. 
 
 Since that time Mr. Fields has won some very large 
 cases in different Circuit Courts and the Government 
 courts and has been elected once County Attorney 
 and twice Commonwealth's Attorney of the Thirty- 
 fifth Judicial District of Letcher County, which was 
 cut off of Perry County. 
 
 The first County Judge was Nat Collins, son of Jim 
 Collins, and a very strong preacher, who came here in 
 1806 from North Carolina and was making his way 
 for the Bluegrass section. There were eight men and 
 women and Preacher Collins led the bunch. They 
 had come by the way of Cumberland Gap and did not 
 know how to get across the Stone Mountain into the 
 Bluegrass region. There was no Cumberland Gap 
 tunnel then or any railroads, only a wild wilderness. 
 The bunch came up Powell's River to where Wise. 
 Va., is now, and struck out through the Pound Gap 
 
ias 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
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Kentucky Mountain Life 109 
 
 and on to the head of Kentucky River and down the 
 river to where Whitesburg is now located. There 
 was not a family living in Letcher County then, as 
 Daniel Boone had left his camp at the mouth of 
 Boone's Fork and went to the fort at Boonesborough, 
 so they passed through where Whitesburg now is and 
 up Sandlick Creek and over a hill on to Camp Branch. 
 It w r as just before Christmas and they all went up a 
 small drean under a cliff and laid out. The next 
 morning the snow was six feet deep and they were all 
 covered with snow. The snow lasted about three 
 months, so they lay up all winter and the men w r ould 
 kill deer and wildturkey and they all had a very good 
 time camping out. 
 
 The next spring Jim Collins settled at the mouth 
 of Camp Branch, known as Colson, Ky. His son, Nat 
 Collins, was Letcher County's first County Judge, and 
 Judge Nat Collins had a son named Madison Collins, 
 Jr., who died at Colson, Ky., a year ago at a ripe old 
 age. 
 
 Old Judge Nat Collins is a great-great-grandfather 
 of our present County Judge, Sam Collins. Old Judge 
 Nat Collins was a great man during his day. He 
 represented twenty mountain counties in Congress 
 and in the Senate. 
 
 Stephen Hogg, a great-uncle of my mother, was 
 the first Sheriff of Letcher County. Hiram Hogg 
 donated ten acres of land to the county where Whites- 
 burg now stands to build the courthouse and jail, to 
 draw the town back down the river one mile from 
 where Judge Nat Collins held his court, which was 
 held in one of the old mountain log cabins built by 
 the old settlers in 1806-1807-1808. 
 
11(1 
 
 History of Corporal Fess JVhitak 
 
 er 
 
 JUDGE SAM COLLINS 
 January 1st, 1918-22 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 in 
 
 LETCHER COUNTY COURT HOUSE, BUILT 1898 
 
112 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 After Letcher was cut off from Perry and made a 
 county, Hiram Hogg was the first representative of 
 Letcher County to be sent to the State Capitol as a 
 lawmaker. Letcher County's present courthouse was 
 built in 1898. We have a beautiful courthouse and 
 square. Our present County Judge is young- Sam 
 Collins, who has done more for Letcher County in 
 the way of morals and bringing old Letcher to the 
 front than any man in the county. He was Deputy 
 Collector and Commissioner for years and he sure 
 put the moonshiners out of Letcher County, and 
 since he has been Judge he has sure put the whisky 
 out of the county. I went in office the same day he 
 did and there were thirty-seven prisoners turned over 
 to me by ex-Jailer Bill Hall. Judge Collins kept me a 
 good bunch of boarders, as many as eight moon- 
 shiners per day, until he proved to them and to the 
 people of Letcher County that rnoonshining could 
 not be carried on in Letcher County as long as he was 
 County Judge, and by his noted work he has cut my 
 boarding house down only to two prisoners. 
 
 He is doing lots for Letcher County and is spend- 
 ing lots of money on the county roads. That is the 
 kind of a Judge we need during this awful war for 
 freedom. He is always sure he is right and then goes 
 ahead. 
 
 I will try and describe the log house that my poor 
 old widowed mother worked so hard to keep us and 
 to raise and educate her eight children. We are all 
 pleased to know that we had a mother who could see 
 the future as she did. Her great ambition was to edu- 
 cate us and then we could be some use to her and to 
 the world. The time lias come that unless you have 
 an education you are left out. 
 
114 
 
 History oj Corpora! ['ess Whitaker 
 
 The house is made out of two double log rooms, six- 
 teen by eighteen feet. The rooms are eight by six- 
 Teen feet. The logs are hewed and the cracks were 
 daubed with mud, but you will notice the mud has all 
 about fell out of the cracks and nobody there to help 
 mother put it back, as all of the children are married 
 and gone from the old home. You will notice the 
 hand-split boards, or shingles, made with a frow and 
 hand mall. You will also notice the old-fashioned 
 chimney. This dear old typical Kentucky mountain 
 log house is where \ spent my best boyhood days. 
 There is nothing like Mother and Home. You will 
 notice the author in the front yard near the cedar 
 tree, where my dear old mother cut the switches and 
 gave me such a whipping and put long' division run- 
 ning through my brain that has caused me to be a 
 man. 
 
 One room has a window in it. This we all called 
 the lower room. That was the room in which I gave 
 my mother and four brothers the money that T worked 
 out for them at Stonega. My mother sometimes has 
 nightmares in her sleep, and Dr. Gid Whitaker, of 
 Whitesburg, Ky., has the same thing sometimes. 
 After we all got grown our sister, Julia, came home 
 on a visit from Texas and we all would sit Up and 
 talked until about 11 o'clock in the night and then we 
 all went to bed, and this is the way we slept : 
 
 My wife and I in the lower room. Dr. Little and 
 wife also in the same room, and Mr. Gid and his wife 
 in one bed, mother and Jessie, daughter of Julia, in 
 "lie bed, and Julia in the other bed. All three of the 
 last beds were in the upper room. So about 2 (.'clock 
 Dr. Gid got to dreaming about getting his head hung 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 w: 
 
 in the iron bed at the head of the bed and it turned 
 into a nightmare. And Dr. Gid began hollowing. 
 "Oh, ma!" and his wife nailed him by his nightshirt 
 and about that time Dr. Little nailed him and they 
 turned the table over and broke up all of the dishes, 
 and bv that time mother and lulia were scared to 
 
 JOHN COMBS BARLOW 
 Letcher County's last fugitive 
 
 death, and finally I got to him and got him quiet. 
 After the scare got off of us all we had a good laugh 
 and never did go back to bed again that night. And 
 Julia said that she did not want to see anv more night- 
 mares. 
 
 There is but one mountain fugitive left. The above 
 picture is the likeness of John Combs Barlow, one of 
 the men I caus'ht thirteen rears agfo on the head of 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 117 
 
 Island Branch. Up until yet he is still an outlaw. I 
 now have him in my jail under an indictment for an 
 awful crime. When the Commonwealth gets through 
 with him he will he quiet and a good, law-abiding 
 citizen. 
 
 In the time of the Civil War there was only one 
 real battle fought in Letcher County. It was fought 
 on Crase's Branch, one and one-half miles from the 
 mouth of Rockhouse. The rebels had gathered at 
 Branson's up in a big flat about one-fourth of a mile 
 up on the branch. They had taken refuge in an old 
 typical Kentucky mountain log cabin with only one 
 door and one chimney. They had prepared in that 
 cabin to fight until the end, like Colonel Travis and 
 Crockett did in the Alamo. The reader will take 
 notice of the bullet holes in the old log house around 
 the window and the door. 
 
 This house was built in 1849, but the old roof has 
 all decayed and has been covered again with galvan- 
 ized roofing, but the old mud chimney and the log 
 walls are just the same. 
 
 The following picture is Sheriff James Tolliver and 
 the moonshine still that was raided by Judge Sam Col- 
 lins and Sheriff Jim Tolliver on September 15, 1918. 
 It was found on the head of Bottom Fork, tributary 
 to the north fork of the Kentucky River, which 
 empties in at Mayking, Ky. The still is a fifty-gallon 
 still. It was a fine outfit, five big hodges of beer 
 and a real big trough cut out in a big tree which had 
 fallen to slop the hogs in. 
 
Us 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 Sheriff Tolliver is doing sonic real good work as a 
 Sheriff. He and his deputy sure have put the moon- 
 shiners to running". 
 
 SHERIFF J. D. TOLLIVER 
 With a captured still 
 
 I want to say that the people of Letcher County 
 were the worst surprised set of people that ever was 
 when the Negroes, Italians. Dagoes, dump carts and 
 mules and horses began to pull into Whitesburg 
 from Stonega and Appalachia, Va., in 1 ( )10 to begin 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 119 
 
 work mi the L. & N. Railroad, which was a new con- 
 struction from Jackson to McRoherts, to the greatest 
 coal fields in the world. The railroad right of way 
 had been surveyed many times, hut the good old citi- 
 zens never thought it could he built, and finally they 
 got a hunch of men to get the right of way, which 
 the biggest part of the citizens had signed up for $50 
 per acre. So it w r as good for one year, and finally 
 the contract was let to build the road, and then here 
 came the people. 
 
 There were no colored people in Letcher Countv 
 or any foreign immigrants of any kind, and when 
 they began to drop in like birds the good old citizens 
 did not know what was going to happen. In the 
 month of November, when the trees were shedding 
 their leaves and going back to dust like we all will 
 some time, there came an awful and terrible roaring 
 up the dear old Kentucky River in Letcher County, 
 and wdiat could it be only Conductor Spot Combs on 
 the first train that ever was run into Letcher County. 
 It was a work train laying the first steel into the 
 county. It was on Friday and the news went all over 
 the county just like wildfire. So there was a large 
 bridge to be set in south of Ulvah the following Sun- 
 day and I believe there were three thousand people 
 gathered to see the train come to set in the bridge. 
 They had rode horseback and in wagons, which were 
 pulled by the old-fashioned oxen, and lots of old 
 people in sleds. They had brought horse feed and 
 grub for themselves. They were all sitting around 
 the bridge, scattered upon the hill under the beech 
 trees and ivy and laurel, and about 10:50 the work 
 train came. She was making speed at the rate of 
 about Uxc miles per hour, and when the engine blew 
 
120 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 for the bridge the old women threw their pipes down 
 and started to run, also many of the twenty-year-old 
 men did the same thing. The biggest part of the 
 horses got scared and run away, some in wagons and 
 some in sleds. I believe that was the biggest day 
 [ ever saw in Letcher County. A train is an old thing 
 now. I can only call to my memory two people who 
 have never seen a train or rode on one, and they live 
 in about five miles of Blacker, and they don't want 
 to see or ride on it. 
 
 There have been many changes in Letcher County 
 since 1911. It doesn't seem like the same country. 
 So many new towns, people and coal companies. We 
 have about twenty through freights daily and two 
 locals and four passengers, except on Sundays, and 
 since the war we have only had two passenger trains, 
 for the purpose of saving coal. We have splendid 
 passenger service and have some of the kindest and 
 jolliest passenger conductors in the whole country, 
 such as Spot Combs, who was born at Jackson, 
 Breathitt County. 
 
 Spot has a big heart and you will always find him 
 right. Next is Conductor Bradshaw, who has al- 
 ways been all right, but he is pretty fat to get about. 
 He has only one son-in-law, Dick Davis, who can get 
 about for him, and Dick says, "A man who has a 
 father-in-law and can't use him just as well as have 
 no father-in-law." Next is Conductor Atcherson, 
 who is just a dandy. He is a slim fellow and can see 
 anything that happens on his train. Then comes a 
 small fellow with a few freckles on his face and a 
 nice railroad smile, who is ready to change any time 
 if required to and can suit anybody. They call him 
 Conductor Bocook. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 121 
 
 I will say with nine years of railroad experience 
 they don't make any nicer conductors than the ones 
 whom I have just wrote about. Then just think of 
 that bunch of extra passenger conductors, Hop Dan- 
 iels, wdio has a heart as big as a groundhog and he 
 does his work just like Gen. Pershing does his job. 
 Then comes Conductor Short, and he is just as fat 
 as he is "Short." He can't get around with that extra 
 smile on like Hop, but Short can get over the road. 
 Then comes Conductor Tommie Hammons. He 
 doesn't say very much of anything to anybody. All 
 he does is just look at his time card from the time 
 he leaves Lexington until he gets to McRoberts, and 
 when the time card is due at McRoberts Conductor 
 Hammons is there "Johnnie on the spot" with his 
 train. We have another conductor who is off of the 
 L. & A. and holds his seniority over some of the 
 boys. The traveling public say they can tell 
 just as soon as they see the engine when Conductor 
 Ills is on, as the engine begins to pop off; they will 
 know Conductor Ills will pop next. As to the engi- 
 neers on passengers, they are the best, and the flag- 
 men are just a nice set of young boys. 
 
 There are only a very few more of the good old- 
 fashioned grandmas left in Eastern Kentucky who 
 hold onto the old-fashioned clothes with a large 
 pocket tied to their hip to carry their old-fashioned 
 pipe. 
 
 In the above picture is old Grandmother Hughes. 
 She was Cleburn Hicks' daughter, of Russell County, 
 Virginia, and came to Kentucky in the year of 1866 
 and was married to Mr. Hughes by David Calhoun. 
 Grandma Hughes is now eighty-nine years old and 
 
122 
 
 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 washes every day and by hard work has saved up 
 over S100 and has it in the First National Bank of 
 Whitesburg, I\y.. to take care of her when she gets 
 so «dd she can't work. Grandma Hughes joined the 
 
 FRANKIE HUGHES 
 Grandmother of all 
 
 old Regular Baptist Church at the age of twenty- 
 three years and lias kept the faith ever since. Every- 
 body, old and young, loves her. 
 
 I am going to close my hook very soon and 1 want 
 to present to the public a small picture of my four 
 brothers, whom I helped to educate. The first two 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 123 
 
 are Gid and Jim at the age of nine and seven. Gid 
 is sitting down and Jim standing. They are dressed 
 nj). They are barefooted, have home-made pants and 
 shirts. You can see from the picture the way their 
 hair looked and tell how often they got it cut. 
 
 This tintype picture was made twenty-four years 
 ago. My idea is to show the hoys' pictures in real life 
 when they lived in a country undeveloped, no rail- 
 roads, no business of any kind, and then I will show 
 them after they have been educated and through col- 
 lege. Both city and country life and Letcher County 
 have grown in refinement and development and good 
 morals and in langauge schools and religion, as the 
 two pictures show. 
 
 The first picture is Dr. Gid Whitaker, of Whites- 
 burg, Ky., who is a successful doctor and business 
 man. This picture was taken twenty-four years after 
 the first. The second picture is Jim Whitaker, 
 wholesale feed man, of Blackey, Ky., and pastor of 
 the Indian Bottom Church, the oldest church in 
 Letcher County, which was founded by James Dixon. 
 
 F will now present to you a tintype picture of Little 
 and Less, taken the same time. Yon can see very 
 plainly how mother made their pants and shirts 
 twenty-four years ago. I now furnish you the picture 
 of Dr. Little Whitaker, of Blackey, Ky., who is a 
 successful doctor and coal man. Less, when a bow 
 had the asthma, and mother sent him West, where 
 he was cured. I will present to you the photo <>t 
 Less Whitaker, who is Assessor and Tax Collector 
 of I 'otter Count}-, Texas, on the Democratic ticket 
 and a real successful oil man in Oklahoma. 
 
124 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 DR. GID WHITAKER 
 Graduate 1912 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 125 
 
 DR. LITTLE WHITAKER 
 Graduate 1912 
 
126 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 127 
 
 T now present to you the picture of my family on 
 our way from Blackey to Whitesburg on muleback 
 to take charge of the county jail. You will notice 
 that my wife is leading" the untie and my four chil- 
 dren and a cousin to my wife, who made her home 
 with us, are riding on the mule and can see very 
 plainly the Jailer pushing the old mule alone;. My 
 wife thinks this was the best way of getting to 
 Whitesburg and she knew it was the safest way. We 
 sure had a splendid trip over the land. [ did not want 
 to go over the land on muleback and push a mule 
 that far, but my wife said that it would be all right, 
 that I would soon get used to pushing the prisoners 
 up the stairs and just as well fall in line now and 
 learn how to push. 
 
 My wife's cousin is now married to P. F. Pendle- 
 ton, who is time and*f)ookkeeper for the Smoot Creek 
 Coal Company at Dalna. Ky. 
 
SKETCH OF WORK AND WORDS OF 
 WOODROW WILSON. 
 
 N 
 
 Opening Statement. 
 
 () BOOK is hardly complete in the year 1018 
 without some part of it bearing on the great 
 
 PRESIDENT WOODROW WILSON 
 
 world war. It seems perfectly proper to give a few 
 pages here to that subject in which all readers are of 
 a right so much interested. 
 
 The writer of this book claims to be as loyal as 
 any citizen of the United States to the great Govern- 
 ment which is waging war with all its might on the 
 enemies of liberty. He claims to live in a section of 
 the country where all the people have always felt the 
 same way, and who are now doing a noble part in 
 this nation's biggest task. Letcher County's hun- 
 dreds of young men sent to the colors with not a word 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 129 
 
 of murmur from its citizens; her heavy oversubscrip- 
 tion of every quota of every war loan and charitable 
 enterprise connected with the war; her great con- 
 tribution to the war industries of the nation through 
 her millions of tons of "black diamonds," and the 
 keen interest shown in every phase of the war in 
 ever}- part of the county — all these things go to prove 
 that the people who will read this book are as loyal 
 as any and will be glad to have something about the 
 war, along with the other things, funny and serious, 
 which are offered. 
 
 When people in every part of the country are 
 doing so much to carry on the gigantic enterprise of 
 the war it is but natural that they should ask, if not 
 aloud, then deep down in themselves, the reason for 
 it all. Why must the war go on, calling for the sacri- 
 fice of the lives of many in every community, and 
 added burdens of taxes, war loans and high prices of 
 everything used. This is the most natural of ques- 
 tions and will be asked countless times the coming 
 winter and spring and summer. 
 
 The writer of this book thinks the answer can be 
 found in the Work and Words of President Wood- 
 row Wilson. Therefore he takes the space and 
 trouble to offer in these pages the facts and state- 
 ments which sum up the matter, as he sees it. 
 
130 
 
 History of Corporal fcss Whitaker 
 
 Main Facts in Life of Woodrow Wilson. 
 
 Woodrow Wilson was born sixty-two years ago at 
 
 Staunton. Va. He came of tine old Virginia stock. 
 the same kind which came across the mountains into 
 Kentucky seventy-five years earlier. 
 
 His earl_\' life was not greatly different from that 
 of man_\- others of the same class of people who were 
 well enough off to give their children a good educa- 
 tion. The people among whom he lived were cul- 
 tured and had high ideals of life, so that he got a 
 good education, graduating at the age of twenty- 
 three from Princeton College, one of the leading 
 schools of the country, Ili^ opportunities were g< od 
 and he took advantage of them by getting an educa- 
 tion as good as the land afforded. 
 
 Being of a studious turn of mind, he pursued his 
 studies further after his graduation at the leading 
 universities of the section, specializing in the study 
 of law, the science of government and the great prin- 
 ciples by which man lives with his fellow man. Wwc 
 was the foundation work on which Woodrow Wilson 
 ro^e to being the leading citizen of the world forty 
 years later. 
 
 In the years 1882 and 1SS3 he began the practice 
 
 of law in Atlanta, Ga. But the field was too narrow 
 and he soon realized that he was by nature a scholar 
 and interested in broader fields than the practicing 
 of the profession which had led to the careers of 
 nearly all the great statesmen up to that time. In 
 the period embracing the next twenty years, until he 
 was well up in the forties, his time was spent as a 
 teacher, author of histories and hooks on govern- 
 ment and as a profound student of American affairs 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 131 
 
 By this time he was recognized as one of the lead- 
 ing' educators of the whole country and as an 
 authority on the history and theory of government 
 of America, the leading" republic of the world. He 
 was chosen head of Princeton University in 1902, in 
 which position he remained until 1910, following in 
 general the same lines of work and adding further 
 to his reputation as an authority on state affairs. 
 
 Only a few years ago, even since 1900, it seemed 
 that our Government was falling more and more into 
 the- hands of the politicians, and that the great edu- 
 cators of the land were missing the mark, so far as 
 their work concerned practical things. Men like 
 Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University were 
 thought all right as school men and authors, but too 
 flighty and theoretical for governmental affairs. 
 Now that is all changed in America, and the story of 
 Woodrow Wilson's entry into public life and his 
 undisputed success is the story of that change. 
 
 In the years before 1910 the State of Xew Jersey 
 was generally known as the home of corrupt politics 
 and of rich corporations which wished to escape the 
 law for their evil practices. For a long time the Re- 
 publican party had been in charge of affairs. With 
 the hope of winning the State election the Democrats 
 nominated Professor Wilson, not because they 
 wanted him especially, but because it would appeal 
 to the people strongly to vote for a man who was not 
 a politician and against whom not a word could be 
 said. Though Xew Jersey is normally Republican 
 by some thousands of votes, Wilson was elected, and 
 the experiment of having a man with no political 
 experience in the highest office of the State was on. 
 
132 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 All the Nation watched to see what would happen 
 — whether the professor's bookish ideas would work- 
 out in a State where there were many great problems 
 for the Governor to deal with. By the hardest kind 
 of work and most careful treatment of each of the 
 problems which came up for settlement, fitting each 
 to great principles which were worked out years be- 
 fore, he made a record which the people of his State 
 and the people of the whole country generally de- 
 cided was good. It was granted that the Wilson 
 ideas would work — in a State. 
 
 The spring of 1912 brought the campaigns for 
 nominations for President. There was the big con- 
 test in the Republican party between President Taft 
 and ex-President Roosevelt, representing the "Stand 
 Pat" and "Progressive" wings, respectively. At the 
 National Convention Taft was nominated, bringing 
 the split, when Roosevelt and his followers drew 
 apart and founded a new party. 
 
 When the Democratic convention came on a good 
 campaign had been made for the nomination of Wil- 
 son, but he lacked some hundreds of sufficient dele- 
 gates to nominate. Then followed a long deadlock 
 in the voting, no candidate having enough votes to 
 nominate him. William Jennings Bryan turned the 
 tide at the critical moment, contending that the parte 
 must nominate a man unmistakably progressive in 
 his ideas, or he defeated by Roosevelt in November. 
 The Democrats were hardly willing to offer the Pro 
 fessor to the Nation, whatever his record in New 
 Jersey, and besides there were strong elements in the 
 party bitterly opposed to Wilson or any other man 
 known as a reformer and progressive. But there 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 133 
 
 seemed nothing else to do, and Bryan's advice pre- 
 vailed — Wilson was offered to the Nation, with just 
 two years of actual experience in governmental 
 affairs, that in a small State! It was a thing hardly 
 to be believed, without parallel in American history! 
 
 The election of Woodrow Wilson was easy, be- 
 cause of his getting more votes than either Taft or 
 Roosevelt in most of the States, though he lacked 
 more than a million of getting half the popular votes. 
 His electoral majority was greater than that received 
 by a President since Monroe. 
 
 Everyone is familiar with the events in the life of 
 W r oodrow Wilson since he was elected President in 
 1912, and only the matters of greatest importance in 
 bringing him into the position of head of the affairs 
 of the world will be mentioned briefly under the next 
 head. 
 
 Woodrow Wilson as President. 
 
 In practice the Government of the United States 
 is run by the party in power, and in theory the Presi- 
 dent of the United States is the head of the majority 
 party. Such being the facts, it is the first task of a 
 new President to line up the support of his own 
 party. The only other Democratic President since 
 the Civil War had failed utterly in this respect and 
 made a poorer record than the real ability of the man 
 led the people to expect. 
 
 Many people wondered if Wilson could control 
 the discordant elements in his own party after he 
 took office, or if he would fail right at the beginning, 
 as did Cleveland. But the doubters did not have to 
 wait long. Wilson's study of our system of govern- 
 
134 History of Corporal < : css U'/iitakcr 
 
 ment taught him that the President of the United 
 States is the head of the party which elects him, just 
 as much as he is President, and that all other loyal 
 members of that party must support him on matters 
 
 to which the party is pledged, whether it snils the 
 particular tastes of any individual officer or not. He 
 was careful to make it clear at the very beginning 
 that the will of the people as expressed in the elec- 
 tion of 1912 should be attained through the Demo- 
 cratic part)', then in power, and that he would carry 
 the case of any man who withheld his support in 
 making good those pledges hack to his own people. 
 
 Wilson declared that the Constitution made him 
 tlie head of the executive department of the Govern- 
 ment, but that through the practical working oul of 
 our governmental system he was responsible for the 
 acts of the legislative branch also, as the head of the 
 party in power. In that sense he was the head of the 
 legislative as well as the executive department From 
 the day he took office and called Congress into 
 special session to revise the tariff he has taken a lead- 
 ing part in all legislation. It has become almost a 
 proverb in this country now to speak of him as the 
 schoolmaster holding the rod over the heads of the 
 school of Congress. 
 
 His first experience is typical of all the others in 
 dealing with Congress. The Democrats were pledged 
 to reduce the tariff to the basis of producing revenue 
 only. But when Congress started working each 
 member figured only for the direct interests of him- 
 self and his little district, and there followed the end- 
 less little bargains and swapping of support, the old 
 "log-rolling-" business, ft was the same thing which. 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 135 
 
 happened under Taft in 1909, when the Republicans, 
 pledged to lower the tariff, actually raised it by try- 
 ing to listen to the pleas of each interest which 
 wanted a particular item raised. Wilson called a 
 halt. He said each Democrat must work to lower 
 the whole tariff to the basis promised the people, 
 which could not be done if each fellow held to his 
 own pet schedule, and that if they did not follow his 
 advice the name of each Congressman who was to 
 blame for the failure should be made known to the 
 remotest nook of the country. It worked; nearly all 
 opposition passed away, and a fairly satisfactory 
 downward revision was finally made. The Demo- 
 crats who opposed Wilson to the end are now occu- 
 pying positions in private life. 
 
 It was so with the money legislation, railroad regu- 
 lation, the trust problem and all the other many prob- 
 lems which came up under Wilson's first Congress., 
 so that when the two years were over a real attempt 
 had been made to enact laws covering every pledge 
 in 1912. To this day there has been only one failure 
 to have a recommendation of Woodrow Wilson 
 enacted into law, that the submission of the woman 
 suffrage amendment, by the narrowest of margins; 
 and even that will probably be passed before this 
 book is read. It is a record for getting laws passed 
 that no other President, not even Roosevelt, Ins 
 equaled. 
 
 At the beginning of Wilson's administration the 
 vexing problem of Mexico, then in a state of revolu- 
 tion and anarch)', was a big problem. Wilson did 
 not follow the advice of those who wanted to annex 
 Mexico, nor of the others who said we must keep our 
 
^ History of Corporal Fcss irhitakcr 
 
 hands strictly off. lie took the position that the 
 United States must deal with the problem or the 
 European nations would, but held that Mexico 
 should be allowed to work out her own affairs as far 
 as possible. He proposed that friendly help of the 
 great nation just to the north be extended, and even 
 proper chastisement if she did not respect our rights 
 and property on the border, but that we should take 
 the smallest actual part in Mexican affairs to protect 
 our own interests and insure respect for our efforts 
 by other interested nations. For the rest he adopted 
 the plan of waiting for Mexico to act, thereby gain- 
 ing for his policy the name, well known at the time, 
 of "watchful waiting." Time has shown the wisdom 
 of that policy, even if we did have to send a military 
 and naval expedition into Mexico and still have t<> 
 keep a guard on the border, while Mexico herself 
 brings order out of her confusion. 
 
 The problems referred to briefly in the above para- 
 graphs were enough to make a full program for a 
 President, but with the breaking of the world war in 
 Europe in 1914, all American questions became more 
 or less connected, for every nation of the world in 
 the Twentieth Century is pretty closely connected 
 with every other. The question with us in the 
 autumn of 1914 was how to carry on our affairs and 
 not become involved in the war, which we looked 
 upon as belonging to Europe. This was Wilson's 
 problem as the head of a great peace-loving nation. 
 
 Again our leader lived up to his policy of avoiding 
 international entanglements so much that his 
 "watchful waiting" reputation grew. lie insisted 
 that the warring nation should fully respect our 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 137 
 
 rights as the most powerful neutral nation, and sent 
 endless notes, messages and reasonable demands to 
 both Great Britain and Germany. Often the results 
 were slow to appear, but always the offender made 
 full satisfaction. Most of the people of the United 
 States came to believe that AA^ilson could go on 
 seeing that we got our rights and still keep us out of 
 the war. This was through the years 1914, 1915 and 
 1916. 
 
 One incident, the sinking of the British steamer 
 Lusitania in May., 1915, with many prominent Amer- 
 ican citizens lost, came nearest to upsetting the peace 
 program. But Germany apologized, promised to 
 make amends and changed her policy toward us for 
 the rest of 1915 and 1916. Many people of America 
 thought we should go to war at once when this ves- 
 sel was sunk on the high seas, but Wilson and the 
 majority decided it was better to wait. We have no 
 way to know how Wilson really felt about the mat- 
 ter at the time, but time has shown that the Amer- 
 ican people were not ready to go into the great war 
 at that time, and as the leader of the Nation it would 
 have been folly for him to force us in. Democratic 
 nations do not make war so. 
 
 The election of 1916 came on. Wilson was the 
 proven leader of the Democrats and was given the 
 nomination by acclamation in the most harmonious 
 convention the party ever held, for he was the candi- 
 date and the molder of the issues at the same time. 
 The breach in the Republican party was partially 
 bridged over and Justice Hughes was chosen to 
 oppose Wilson. The two issues in the campaign 
 became Wilson's record and the attitude toward the 
 
138 History of Corporal Fess Whitak er 
 
 great war. Not much could be made of the opposi- 
 tion in attacking Wilson's home-affairs record, and 
 the main issue became the war question. In the light 
 of the prominent part Wilson is now taking in the 
 pushing of the world's greatest war, it seems strange 
 that he was regarded as a pacifist just two years ago. 
 I Jut such was the case. Probably enough people 
 believed he would and could keep us out of the war 
 to elect him. On the other hand there were the many 
 who saw no chance for us to keep out and were afraid 
 of him as a war leader. 
 
 But as Woodrow Wilson was great as leader of a 
 peaceful nation while neutral, so when America 
 became a belligerent he became at once the foremost 
 of war statesmen. Xo greater tribute could be paid 
 him than to say he has been the voice of over a hun- 
 dred million people both in peace, and when peace 
 was no longer endurable, in making war. 
 
 When Germany announced her unlimited sub- 
 marine war the last of January, 1917, on neutrals and 
 enemies alike, it was plain that she no longer re- 
 spected our rights, but was bent on conquering the 
 world, including America, by her brute force. The 
 patience of America was exhausted and she aroused 
 from her peace sleep. Woodrow Wilson, their 
 chosen leader, must have felt the insult and threat 
 more deeply than the rest, for had he not labored to 
 lus utmost for two and a half long years to avoid the 
 war for America? It is true he went steadily on with 
 his diplomatic moves to do what lie could, but to 
 Wilson and America it was plain, from the day the 
 submarines went on the high seas to kill guilt}- and 
 innocent alike and the German Minister at Wash- 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 139 
 
 ing'ton was sent home, that it was only a matter of 
 weeks until we would be one of a set of peace-loving 
 nations in a war-mad world striking blows for our- 
 selves when other means had failed. 
 
 As America was the greatest force in the world 
 not already in the war, the nations allied against 
 Germany welcomed her to them in their time of great 
 need. As the leader of America Wilson was given 
 the opportunity to stand with the highest in Allied 
 councils. But his record in America had already 
 marked him as one of the ablest men in the world, 
 and he was not long in proving he measured up to 
 the best in Europe. Almost from the day he entered 
 the war Wilson has been the spokesman for the 
 Allied world. He speaks and they approve, because 
 he speaks the essence of democracy and freedom for 
 which the world is fighting. His voice is the loudest 
 in the world ! 
 
 We are coming now to the purpose of this sketch, 
 to answer the real questioning of the average Amer- 
 ican citizen, particularly of the mountains of Ken- 
 tucky, about the great w r ar, in the words of Presi- 
 dent Wilson. From this sketch we can see how he 
 as a student of men and governments rose to the 
 highest success in American affairs. The American 
 ideal of government, a government of the people, is 
 about to become the ideal of the civilized world. The 
 words of Woodrow Wilson about the war and its 
 purposes, as the spokesman for the civilized world 
 and a product of democracy, will make clear what it 
 is all about and what we are to get in return for our 
 sacrifices. 
 
140 History of Corporal Fcss Whitaker 
 
 Several selections from his war utterances, with a 
 few notes of explanation of time and circumstances, 
 will follow in the next division. 
 
 Extracts From Wilson's War Speeches. 
 
 There were many strong statements by President 
 Wilson before the war began defining America's 
 position and the aims she held dear. For lack of 
 space we do not give any of them here, but come to 
 the more striking ones after the war began. 
 
 In the light of what has taken place we know now 
 that it was never possible for America to stay per- 
 manently out of the world war, and perhaps no one 
 knew this better than our President. But he and we 
 hoped that while we were at peace we might remain 
 peaceful, not in any sense dodging our duty if na- 
 tional honor called us. It should be "peace at any 
 price, except the price of dishonor." 
 
 But when it became clear beyond a doubt that we 
 must go to war with the enemy of freedom and 
 civilization, President Wilson called Congress into 
 special session and told them in no uncertain terms 
 that we must take the step. He was no longer a 
 pacifist at the head of a peaceful people, but the com- 
 mander-in-chief of an aroused and militant American 
 manhood. The closing paragraph of his address to 
 Congress, April 2, 1917, ranks with the best oratory 
 of the world, yet states America's position. It fol- 
 lows : 
 
 "It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful 
 people into w r ar, into the most terrible and disastrous 
 of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the bal- 
 ance. But the right is more precious than peace, and 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 141 
 
 we shall fight for the things which we have always 
 carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the 
 right of those who submit to authority to have a 
 voice in their own governments — for the rights and 
 liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of 
 right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring 
 peace and safety to all nations and make the world 
 itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate 
 our lives and fortunes, everything that we are and 
 everything that we have, with the pride of those who 
 know that the day has come when America is privi- 
 leged to spend her blood and her might for the prin- 
 ciples that gave her birth - and happiness and the 
 peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she 
 can do no other." 
 
 Perhaps there are those who think we still might 
 have remained neutral by humbling ourselves a little, 
 which would have been better than the awful de- 
 struction of the war, by acting as some of the small 
 nations of Europe have acted, we might have kept 
 out. Perhaps we might have withdrawn our ships 
 from the high seas, which belong as much to us as 
 to any nation, and kept all our citizens at home, thus 
 avoiding the war. This is the rallying ground of all 
 the pacifists. 
 
 To do so would have taken the strongest nation of 
 the world out of any part in the affairs of the world, 
 which is preposterous on the face of it. Then as 
 surely as Germany conquered France and Great 
 Britain, which now seems must have taken place in 
 1918 but for the help of America, she would have 
 taken charge of our helpless and peaceful country as 
 the greatest reservoir of wealth and raw material in 
 
142 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 the world. For Germany was determined to con- 
 quer the world — let there be no mistake about that. 
 As we went to the war for the principles we held 
 dear, so we had to meet Germany with a force greater 
 than her own, the only thing- under the sun that could 
 stop that war-mad nation, bent on conquest. Hear 
 President Wilson on this point in his speech launch- 
 ing the Third Liberty Loan at Laltimore, April 6, 
 1918, for no one has put the point stronger than he: 
 
 "I accept Germany's challenge. I know that you 
 accept it. All the world shall know that you accept 
 it. It shall appear in the utter sacrifice and self-for- 
 getfulness with which we shall give all that we love 
 and all that we have to redeem the world and make 
 it fit for free men like ourselves to live in. This now 
 is the meaning of all that we do. Let everything that 
 we say, my fellow-countrymen, everything that we 
 henceforth plan and accomplish, ring true to this 
 response till the majesty and might of our concerted 
 power shall fill the thought and utterly defeat the 
 force of those who flout and misprize what we honor 
 and hold dear. German)- has said that force, and 
 force alone, shall decide whether justice and peace 
 shall reign in the affairs of men, whether Right as 
 America conceives it or Dominion as she conceives it 
 shall determine the destinies of mankind. There is, 
 therefore, but one response possible from us: Force, 
 force to the utmost, force without stint or limit, the 
 righteous and triumphant force which shall make 
 Right the law of the world and cast every selfish 
 dominion down in the dust." 
 
 But it is well to state the precise aims for which 
 we are lighting, and the satisfaction of which would 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 143 
 
 bring- peace from us. In general we are fighting for 
 the American principles of freedom and justice and 
 are combating Germany's force with greater force 
 as a means of self-protection. But there is the bigger 
 program of applying these principles to world affairs, 
 so that all nations and peoples shall be free and live 
 in peace after the war is over forever. But the case 
 can be stated more precisely than this. 
 
 As the spokesman for the nations allied against 
 Germany, President Wilson announced fourteen 
 terms on which we would be willing to make peace 
 last winter. Six of them have to do with general 
 conditions which will apply to all nations alike: 
 freedom of the seas, reduction of armies, open 
 treaties, equal trade conditions for all nations, 
 colonial claims, and a league to enforce peace and 
 settle disputes between nations. The other eight 
 provide for changes in boundaries or governments, 
 one or both, in France, Belgium, Italy, Germany, 
 Austria, Turkey, Russia, Poland, and the Balkan 
 States on a basis of freedom and justice to the people 
 of each country. It is the program on which peace 
 will finally be made and guarantees that the "world 
 will be made safe for democracy." The program is 
 too long to state here in its original form. 
 
 Many times later Wilson has made further state- 
 ments bearing on our war aims. Some of these state- 
 ments are brief and clear enough to be put down here, 
 since they are another way of stating the fourteen 
 peace conditions. In addressing Congress Februarv 
 11, 1918, the President said they could be put under 
 four heads, as follows: 
 
144 History of Corporal Fcss Whit a k c r 
 
 "First — Each part of the final settlement must be 
 based upon essential justice to bring a permanent 
 peace. 
 
 "Second — Peoples and provinces are not to be bar- 
 tered about like chattels to establish a balance of 
 power. 
 
 "Third — Territorial settlements must be for the 
 benefit of the peoples concerned and not for the ad- 
 justment of rival States' claims. 
 
 "Fourth — Well-defined national aspirations must 
 be accorded the utmost satisfaction." 
 
 At no time has the President made a finer state- 
 ment of the issues involved in the war than in his 
 speech of September 27, 1918, in opening the Fourth 
 Liberty Loan at New York. It must be quoted some- 
 what at length, with the idea that it is a further 
 definition and application of the fourteen terms of 
 peace. It can best be given in Wilson's own words: 
 
 "We accept the issues of the war as facts, not as 
 any group of men here or elsewhere lias defined them, 
 and we cannot accept any outcome which does not 
 squarely meet and settle them. The issues are these: 
 
 " 'Shall the military power of any nation or group 
 of nations be suffered to determine the fortunes of 
 peoples over whom they have no right to rule, except 
 the right of force? 
 
 '" 'Shall strong nations be free to wrong weak na- 
 tions and make them subject to their purpose and 
 interest? 
 
 " 'Shall peoples be ruled and dominated, even in 
 their own internal affairs, by arbitrary and irrespon- 
 sible force or bv their own will and choice? 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 145 
 
 ' 'Shall there be a common standard of right and 
 privilege for all peoples and nations, or shall the 
 strong do as they will and the weak suffer without 
 redress? 
 
 ' 'Shall the assertion of right be haphazard and by 
 casual alliance, or shall there be a common concert 
 to oblige the observance of common rights?' 
 
 "But these general terms do not disclose the whole 
 matter. Some details are needed to make them sound 
 less like a thesis and more like a practical program. 
 These, then, are some of the particulars, and I state 
 them with greater confidence because I can state 
 them authoritatively as representing this Govern- 
 ment's interpretation of its own duty with regard to 
 peace: 
 
 ' 'First — The impartial justice meted out must 
 involve no discrimination. It must be a justice that 
 plays no favorites and knows no standard but the 
 equal rights of all the peoples concerned. 
 
 ' 'Second — Nc> special or separate interest of any 
 single nation or any group of nations can be made 
 a basis of any part of the settlement which is not con- 
 sistent with the common interests of all. 
 
 " 'Third — There shall be no leagues or alliance or 
 special covenants and understandings with the gen- 
 eral and common family of the league of nations. 
 
 ' 'Fourth — There shall be no special, selfish com- 
 binations in the league, except as penalty by exclu- 
 sion from the markets of the world may be vested in 
 the league of nations itself, as a means of discipline 
 and control. 
 
14(3 
 
 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 " 'Fifth — All international treaties and agreements 
 of any kind must be made known, in their entirety, 
 to the rest of the world.' " 
 
 President Wilson has repeatedly laid emphasis on 
 the statement that this is a war of the people for uni- 
 versal human rights, as much as a war of nations for 
 national ends. Xotiee this extract from the same 
 September 27, 1918, address at Xew York: 
 
 "This war has positive and well-defined purposes 
 which we did not determine and which we cannot 
 alter. Xo statesman or assembly created them: no 
 statesman or assembly can alter them. They have 
 arisen out of the very nature and circumstances of 
 the war. The most that statesmen or assemblies can 
 do is to carry them out or be false to them. They 
 were perhaps not clear at the outset, but they are 
 clear now. 
 
 "The war has lasted more than four years and the 
 world has been drawn into it. The common will of 
 mankind has been substituted for the particular pur- 
 poses of individual States. Individual statesmen may 
 have started the conflict, but neither they nor their 
 opponents can sir.]) it as they please. It has become 
 a people's war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of 
 every degree of power and variety of fortune, are 
 involved in its sweeping processes of change and 
 settlement." 
 
 President Wilson has repeatedly taken the stand 
 that all autocratic rule by a king or small group of 
 men must end in every country as a necessary result 
 of this war. It is well known that the Kaiser and his 
 little group of army leaders educated, armed and 
 trained Germany to conquer the world through forty 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 147 
 
 long years, and then deliberately set in motion the 
 war machine they had created in the summer of 1914. 
 Our President says as a necessary term of peace that 
 all possibility of such a thing ever happening again 
 must be removed by blotting out the cause. Among 
 other results to be attained before there can be a 
 peace, there is this remarkable statement, in a 
 patriotic address at Mt. Vernon, July 4, 1918: 
 
 ''The destruction of every arbitrary power any- 
 where that can separately, secretly and of its single 
 choice disturb the peace of the world; or, if it cannot 
 be presently destroyed, at the least, its reduction to 
 virtual powerlessness." 
 
 The above statements of terms are ample and 
 cover all the points which may arise out of the war. 
 There has been repeated and free discussion of them 
 in this country and Europe, and Mr. Wilson himself 
 has not lost an opportunity to explain their meaning 
 in his own matchless way. There is now no doubt 
 of their meaning or that the United States will 
 struggle for them until they are facts. Yet out of 
 them arises a big question as to the length of the war. 
 
 As early as February, 1918, Germany announced 
 that she could accept the fourteen principles laid 
 d< iwn by Wilson in the address of February 11. Many 
 other times since Germany has intimated that she 
 could accept the Wilson terms and was ready to open 
 negotiations leading to peace. These hints have been 
 many since the war turned for the Allies in the sum- 
 mer of 1918. Yet no negotiations have been entered 
 
148 History of Corporal Fess JJ'hitaker 
 
 into up to the middle of October, 1918, as this is fin- 
 ished. Many may wonder why there was not peace 
 when the enemy is ready to discuss with us our own 
 announced terms. Wilson himself has answered on 
 this point many times, most strikingly in his answer 
 to the Pope's offer to make peace in August, 1917, 
 and in the address of September 27, 1918. The fol- 
 lowing is quoted from the latter address: 
 
 "We are all agreed that there can be no peace ob- 
 tained by any kind of bargain or compromise with 
 the governments of Germany and her allies, because 
 we have dealt with them already, and have seen them 
 deal with Russia and Rumania. They have convinced 
 us thai the}- are without honor and do not intend 
 justice. They observe no covenants, accept no prin- 
 ciple but force and their own interest. We cannot 
 'come to terms' with them. They have made it im- 
 possible. The German people must by this time be 
 fully aware that we cannot accept the word of those 
 who forced this war upon us. We do not think the 
 same thoughts or speak the same language of agree- 
 merit. 
 
 "It is of capital importance that we should also be 
 explicitly agreed that no peace shall be obtained by 
 any kind of compromise or lessening of the princi- 
 ples which Ave have avowed as the principles for 
 which we are fighting. There should exist no doubt 
 about that." 
 
 Finally on October 12, 1918, Germany sent a 
 message to President Wilson saying the}- were will- 
 ing to accept all the terms he had laid down, and 
 
Kentucky Mountain Life 
 
 149 
 
 asked that he take the matter up with the Allies and 
 arrange with German representatives the terms of an 
 armistice to stop the fighting while peace was being- 
 made. This has always been the regular procedure, 
 and coming from any nation but Germany would 
 have meant that the war was over. President Wil- 
 son immediately answered the proposal, and never 
 has he spoken with greater power or clearness than 
 when speaking straight to the arch-enemy for the 
 first time since war started. If he had not estab- 
 lished himself long ago as the champion spokesman 
 for the liberty of mankind, this message would give 
 him the place. The three main points are here given, 
 but the writer has taken the liberty to add the num- 
 bers and put them in different order: 
 
 1. "The President's word just quoted (the extract 
 from the Mt. Vernon speech quoted above) naturally 
 constitutes a condition precedent to peace, if peace is 
 to come by the action of the German people them- 
 selves. The President feels bound to say that the 
 whole process of peace will, in his judgment, depend 
 upon the definiteness and the satisfactory character of 
 the guarantees which can be given in this funda- 
 mental matter." 
 
 2. "It must be clearly understood that the process 
 of evacuation (of territory Germany had conquered) 
 and the conditions of an armistice are matters which 
 must be left to the judgment and advice of the mili- 
 tary advisers of the United States and the allied gov- 
 ernments, and the President feels it his duty to say 
 that no arrangement can be accepted by the Govern- 
 ment of the United States which does not provide 
 
150 History of Corporal Fess Whitaker 
 
 absolutely satisfactory safeguards and guarantees of 
 
 the maintenance of the present military supremacy 
 of the United States and the Allies on the field." 
 
 3. "The President also feels that it is his duty to 
 add that neither the Government of the United States 
 nor, he is quite sure, the governments associated 
 with the United States, will consent to consider an 
 armistice so long as the armed forces of Germany 
 continue the illegal and inhumane practices which 
 they still persist in." 
 
 It cannot be known surely what the outcome may 
 be when this is being finished, but it is plain that 
 President Wilson decreed the end of the Kaiser and 
 his wicked system, demanded a surrender such that 
 Germany could never make war again and in which 
 she had no part in the arrangement, and served 
 notice on them once for all that they must stop their 
 hellish practices in the lands they held captive, infer- 
 ring that punishment would be meted to them tor 
 what had already been done. 
 
 Whether they submit now or a month from now 
 or a year from now the terms of peace are known, 
 and they exist in the words of our own President 
 Wilson. The end of the old German system is at 
 hand, and the reign of peace in a world of freedom 
 is just ahead. America and her brave Allies, at the 
 price of the blood of their millions of young men, 
 have put right and justice in a free and peaceful 
 world as the rule by which nations must live in the 
 future, and Woodrow Wilson has translated that 
 ideal into burning words which will live forever. 
 

 Kentucky Mountain Life lo1 
 
 An Estimate of Wilson as a Statesman. 
 
 As Woodrow Wilson has already proven a tower 
 of strength in the time of the world's greatest need, 
 his opportunities for greatest service are just ahead. 
 The whole world trusts him and looks to him in the 
 final arrangements of world affairs at the end of the 
 war. There is no doubt that he will measure up to 
 this greatest opportunity ever accorded a human 
 being to dispose of the destinies of all mankind. Un- 
 doubtedly he will be the head of the League of 
 Nations which in the future is to take the place of all 
 wars and insure justice to all peoples. 
 
 Woodrow Wilson is a product of America. No 
 other country could have produced him. He is a 
 Democrat — a product of democracy. Also he is 
 America's first great contribution to the list of truly 
 world statesmen. America's democracy has been 
 called to the front in the breakdown of all the old 
 systems together in the cataclysm of world war. and 
 she offers a leader who embodies in his life the prin- 
 ciple for which the world travails. 
 
 Lincoln was raised up by Almighty God to bring 
 America through her great trial of internal strife to 
 a new birth of freedom; just as truly He raised up 
 Wilson to pilot America through her struggle with 
 a foreign foe, and made him the leading exponent of 
 the principles at stake. Such men appear at great 
 stress periods. Let us be thankful. 
 
 A Kentucky poet, Cale Young Rice, has paid a 
 touching tribute to Mr. Wilson, and there seems no 
 more appropriate way to close this sketch and esti- 
 mate of our beloved leader than to quote his little 
 poem : 
 
^ History of Corporal Fcss Mliitakcr 
 
 To President Wilson. 
 "Woodrow Wilson, master of patience, 
 
 Master of silence, master of speech; 
 
 Master amid the world's war-frenzy 
 Of clear wisdom's inward reach; 
 Watcher of raging* civilizations 
 Till the one righteous hour arrives 
 When yon can speak for all nations. 
 
 Great is your guidance now that shrives 
 
 Both friend and foe from base soul-gyves. 
 
 "Woodrow Wilson, lofty listener 
 At the great heart of Destinv; 
 Hearing above all feverous hatred 
 
 Justice breathing what should be; 
 
 Still for a peace that shall not perish 
 
 Stand — for if ever a Providence 
 
 Comes to the Universe to nourish 
 
 Men in their woe, and lead them hence, 
 X'ear us now is its Immanence!"