Days of Darkness (21 page)

On the same day, Craig Tolliver was indicted for beating Sue Martin,
John Day for burning the Martin house, and Humphrey and Pearce for conspiracy to kill. On November 10, 1885, Pearce was given seven years for a robbery in Greenup County. Alvin Bowling got twenty-one years for killing his father-in-law. The records imply that the others went free.

As usual, the peace was brief. In the following months, Wiley Tolliver was killed by Mack Bentley, and John G. Hughes was killed by an organization of men calling themselves Regulators, formed when law enforcement broke down. Early in 1886 Whit Pelphrey was killed by Tom Goodin, brother of S.B. Goodin, brother-in-law of Bud, Craig, and Jay Tolliver.

A curious note: Toward the end of 1885 Craig Tolliver went to Cincinnati, where he was arrested and jailed for robbery but tried and acquitted. While he was awaiting trial, he was shot by Asbury Crisp “in a fit of jealousy.” Apparently Craig had been romancing the wrong woman. He got home in time for the elections, which caused trouble, as usual.

Though no longer sheriff, Cook Humphrey still rode at the head of a considerable force of men, and occasionally they would parade through Morehead as if to challenge the Tollivers. On July 2, 1886, Craig Tolliver handed Sheriff Ramey a warrant for the arrest of Cook Humphrey, who was in town for court day. Ramey found Humphrey at the store of H.M. Logan and attempted to arrest him. Humphrey apparently laughed at Ramey, one or the other drew a pistol, friends of both joined the fight, and bullets raked the street. When the firing stopped both the sheriff and his son were seriously wounded, and W.O. Logan, the young son of H.M. Logan, was dead.

Both sides retreated to their headquarters, and the town braced for another all-out fight. But the county judge, afraid of the gathering violence, had again wired Governor Knott for help, and as people peered from behind blinds, the state militia again marched down Railroad and Water Streets to the reassuring notes of the bugle. They remained through the session of Circuit Court.

Once again an effort was made to bring some sanity to the situation in Morehead. When Circuit Court convened, the state was represented by Asher Caruth, Commonwealth's attorney of Jefferson Circuit Court in Louisville. Caruth took a long look at conditions and tried to find a compromise. In a letter to Circuit Judge A.E. Cole of Rowan Circuit Court, Caruth recommended that all charges against Craig Tolliver and Cook Humphrey be dropped, and that in return both men be required to sign an oath that they would leave the county, never to return except to attend a family funeral, and then only for
the day of the ceremony. They would further be required to agree that, should they violate the agreement and return to Morehead, all charges against them would again be prosecuted.

Both men agreed. Tolliver signed the following document:

Asher G. Caruth

Commonwealth's attorney pro tempore
14th Judicial District:—

I request you to suspend any further proceedings in the cases now pending in the Rowan Circuit Court against me, and promise that I will remain away from the county of Rowan permanently. Should I ever return to said county I am willing that the cases shall be redocketed and the trials proceed. I will leave said county on or before the 8th day of August 1886. In this agreement I reserve the right, in the event of the death of any of my immediate relatives, to return to attend their burial, but I must immediately thereafter leave the county to permanently remain away.

[signed] Craig Tolliver

Attest: D.B. Logan.

Cook Humphrey signed an identical document. It is interesting to note that Caruth had the documents attested by D.B. Logan, indicating that he was one in whom the authorities placed some trust.

Caruth's efforts were well intended but naive. All the agreement did was relieve Craig Tolliver of the charges against him. Its fatal flaw lay in the assumption that both men would keep their word, which was a total misunderstanding of Craig Tolliver. Cook Humphrey, true to his word, left Rowan, saying he was going out West to start a new life. As far as the record shows, he kept his word. He returned to Morehead only after Craig Tolliver was dead, and then briefly on business. One version of the feud holds that Humphrey returned to marry Sue Martin, but there is no record of the marriage.

The Caruth agreement played directly into the hands of Craig Tolliver, who saw his opportunity and took it. With Humphrey out of the way, the anti-Tolliver faction crumbled, and after staying in Cincinnati until the indictments against him were dismissed, Tolliver rode back into Morehead and took over. He had agreed, of course, that when he returned, the cases against him would be redocketed, but there was no one who dared redocket them. Craig established himself as county judge, and though D.B. Logan managed to get elected police judge, John Manning, a Tolliver ally, was elected town marshal.

His enemies charged that Tolliver was operating the town without regard for law; his saloons were open and operating without the formality
of licenses. He was accused of running the American Hotel as something of a whorehouse, but no one brought him to court on the charge. If anyone gave Craig trouble, the troublemaker was notified that the date of his funeral had been chosen; he usually chose to leave before that date arrived. But, as if to rebut his enemies, on June 6, 1887, Craig applied for a liquor license for the American Hotel.

Curiously, during all of this violence, Craig Tolliver maintained a home near Farmers, where his wife and children lived unaffected by the furor in Morehead. Mrs. Tolliver was said to be a mild-mannered woman, loving wife, and attentive mother, and Craig was known as a loving father and husband. Mrs. Tolliver apparently did not inquire too closely about his work.

And it should be noted that not everyone in Rowan County, by any means, was opposed to Tolliver. The citizens of Farmers, the county's largest town, were satisfied with the way Craig ran things, as were most of the Democrats living out in the county. And the more fun-loving element in Morehead did not object to the wide-open manner in which the town was being operated.

But the lawlessness was taking a toll. At night, the Tolliver faction made a practice of shooting up the town, not to injure anyone necessarily but to show that there was no one to stop them. Gradually, business in Morehead withered. In 1883 H.C. Powers had planned to build a new opera house. A new high school was begun, and there had been talk of a new church. But between August 1884 and July 1887, twenty men were killed and more than half of the town's population left. In 1885 Morehead listed more than 700 citizens; by 1887 that had shrunk to 296.

Many of those who remained were enemies of the Tollivers, and Craig Tolliver seemed determined to get rid of them. Mrs. Martin was indicted for sending a poison turkey to a friend of the Tollivers. H.M. Keeton, Morehead constable, was shot and killed by Bud Tolliver. W.N. Wicher was shot and killed by John Trumbo, a Tolliver ally. In February 1887, Dr. Henry S. Logan, R.M. McClure, John B. Logan, W.H. Logan, and Lewis Rayburn were indicted for conspiring to murder Judge A.E. Cole and Z.T. Young, both known to favor the Tollivers. All the indicted men were hustled off to the Lexington jail for “safekeeping.”

The indictments were part of a pattern. Craig Tolliver had apparently decided that D.B. Logan was the man in the county most likely to give him trouble. He began to move against him but overplayed his hand in a bit of viciousness that outraged the county.

While John Logan remained in jail in Lexington, his two sons
were released on bail and returned to their home a few miles outside of Morehead. Eighteen-year-old Jack Logan was studying for the ministry; twenty-five-year-old Billy was ill with tuberculosis. Knowing that the boys would be their father's chief witnesses at the trials of the Tollivers and their allies, Tolliver decided to get rid of them. On June 7, 1887, Hiram Cooper, a vagrant drunk and Tolliver hanger-on, swore out a warrant charging the two Logan boys with conspiring to murder him. Craig Tolliver issued the warrants to marshal John Manning, who rode with a posse of ten men out to the Logan home. In the posse were Deputy Sheriff Hogg, Hiram Cooper, and Jay, Bud, Cal, and Craig Tolliver.

The Logan boys had their first warning of danger when the posse began shooting out all the windows of the house. Terrified, the boys crept upstairs, but when John “Bunk” Manning and Craig Tolliver went after them, Jack grabbed a shotgun and shot Manning, injuring but not killing him. Tolliver helped Manning outside, and the posse set fire to the house. Deputy Hogg then went into the house and told the boys to surrender or burn to death, assuring them that Craig Tolliver had promised that their lives would be protected. With this assurance the boys came out with their hands up.

It made little difference. They were going to die one way or another. Once outside, their hands were tied, they were marched to a spring about fifty feet from the house, and there their bodies were riddled with bullets. Manning then trampled the bodies, probably trying to make them unidentifiable, and the posse rode back to More-head. On the outskirts of town, Craig Tolliver halted the posse and ordered every man to swear that the boys had been armed, had been shot resisting arrest, and that their killing had been absolutely necessary.

The next day D.B. Logan, along with Hiram Pigman and Apperson Perry, went to the Logan home and retrieved the boys' bodies for burial. When they returned to town they received warning that they would be killed if they attended the boys' funeral. D.B. Logan was told to leave Rowan County. He was promised that if he left peacefully his wife would be made a domestic servant in a Tolliver home so that she might support their children. That was too much for Boone Logan.

He, Pigman, and Perry quietly began enlisting the support of citizens throughout Rowan County who were outraged by the Tolliver conduct. Logan made it a point that the three of them were never to be seen together, and for several days they met secretly, often in the evening. Logan swore out warrants for all members of the murderous posse but could not get them served.

The Tollivers had every road patrolled, but on the night of June 16 Boone Logan and Ap Perry managed to slip through the cordon and catch the train for Frankfort, where Logan obtained an audience with Governor Knott. In precise, legal detail, he recounted the crimes and depredations of the Tollivers, pointing out the murders of his own kin, the unreported or unsolved killings, and the flight of most of its inhabitants from Morehead. It was an impressive presentation. There was only one trouble: Knott had heard it before and, as he reminded Boone Logan, he had several times sent troops into Rowan County, had spent more than $100,000 of the taxpayers' money, and had accomplished nothing. As soon as the troops left, the violence commenced all over again. Troops, he said, could do little in the face of corrupt officials, lawless lawmen, corrupt juries, and corrupt judges. The people of Rowan County, he added, would have peace and justice as soon as they threw out the crooks and elected honest men.

“Well then,” said Logan, “will you lend me fifty or a hundred rifles from the state Armory? It is hard to elect honest men when the dishonest men have guns and use them to keep people from the polls, and to make them afraid to run for office.”

Again Knott offered sympathy, but pointed out that state law would not permit him to give away state property or arm private citizens. “You are going to have to settle your own affairs,” he said. “You know, of course, that a private citizen can arrest a man if a warrant is issued charging him with a felony?”

Boone felt frustrated and angry but held his temper in check. The governor's suggestion seemed to encourage armed action.

“Governor,” he said finally, “I have but one home. From this I have been driven by these outlaws and their friends. They have murdered my kinsmen. I have not before engaged in any of their difficulties. But I now propose to take a hand and retake my fireside or die in the effort.”

With that, Boone Logan left the governor's office and walked across the Capitol lawn to the train station. He had not gotten the help that he had hoped for, but he had learned what he must do. He caught the train to Cincinnati, where he bought fifty Winchester rifles, assorted shotguns and pistols, and two thousand rounds of ammunition. He then returned to Morehead and called his forces together.

To Boone's surprise, he found that he, Pigman, and Perry could count on over one hundred men to stand with them against the Tolliver crowd. He and Pigman divided these into four squads, each under an appointed leader, and gave each instructions for the coming showdown. Somehow he managed to get warrants issued for Craig,
Jay, Andy, Bud, and Cal Tollier, Bunk and Jim Manning, Bill, Tom, and Boone Day, John Rogers, Sam Goodin, and Hiram Cooper for the murder of the Logan boys (Boone Logan may have forged these himself) and finally persuaded Deputy Sheriff Hogg to serve the papers at an appointed time on the morning of June 22.

On the night of June 21, Logan and twenty of his men rode to Farmers (Otis Rice says the guns were shipped to Gates Station), where they took delivery of two wooden crates labeled as farm merchandise. They then rode back and joined the rest of their group a mile south of Morehead. The rifles and bullets were handed out. The four squads were directed to take positions at points north, south, east, and west of town and fan out to the right until they made contact with the next squad, thus encircling the town. At eight o'clock the next morning, Sheriff Hogg would serve the papers on the Tollivers at the American Hotel, giving the operation some pale patina of legality. Then Boone Logan would give the signal for the attack, which would begin as soon as he called on the Tollivers to come out and surrender. He did not anticipate that they would surrender peaceably.

During the night the Logan forces surrounded the town and slowly closed in. But no good plan ever goes according to blueprint. Somehow, either because Deputy Hogg got cold feet or because Craig Tolliver in the American Hotel became suspicious when a man named Byron ran across the street carrying a rifle, the fight started before the warrants could be served.