And now Miss Sallie is gone too. She died on July 28, 1941, at the age
of ninety-three and loving hands place mountain flowers on her grave and
that of Levicy Hatfield far across the mountain.
TAKING SIDES
Some took sides in the feuds that have been carried on throughout the
Blue Ridge Country and thereby got themselves enthralled, while others,
more tactful, managed to keep aloof and remain friends with the
belligerents.
There's Uncle Chunk Craft on Millstone Creek in Letcher County. Enoch is
his real name. There's nothing he likes better than to tell of the days
when he was one of Morgan's raiders. Then, when he was only twenty-two,
that was in 1864, Uncle Chunk slept in a cornfield near Greenville,
Tennessee, the very night General John Hunt Morgan, who had taken
shelter in a house a couple of miles away, was betrayed by the woman of
the house and shot to death by Unionists.
"We were tuckered out," he said, "had tramped through rain and mud and
finally rolled in our blankets, if we were lucky enough to have one, and
fell asleep wherever it was. I burrowed in with a comrade. But we didn't
get much rest. For, first thing you know, seemed I'd just dozed off,
someone come shoutin' through the cornfield that the General had been
killed. We shouldered our muskets and stumbled off through the field,
grumbling and growling that we'd 'tend to the ones that had betrayed
him. But even if the woman had been found I reckon we'd a-shunned
killin' her. There's a heap that goes on in war that a man don't like to
think on."
Uncle Chunk was proud to own, however, that he saw hard fighting through
Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky and was glad enough when the war was
ended. He came back, married Polly Ann Caudill, and settled down in
Letcher. It wasn't long until another war started. This time between his
neighbors. But with all the carryings-on between John Wright and Clabe
Jones in the adjoining counties of Floyd and Knott, Enoch Craft managed
to stay friends with both sides. Whichever side happened to round in at
his home, hungry and footsore from scouting in the woods for the other
faction, found a welcome at Uncle Chunk's and plenty to eat. "Fill up
the kittle, Polly Ann," he'd call to his wife, as he went on digging
potatoes. "Here comes some of John Wright's crew." Or, "Put on the
beans, I see Clabe Jones's men comin'!"
And fill up the kettle Polly Ann did.
After the belligerents had eaten their fill, Uncle Chunk would try to
reason with them to let the troubles drop. "A man thinks better on a
full gut than a empty one," he argued. And at last, through his help,
the Clabe Jones-John Wright feud ended.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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