It was a bleak day in December, 1884, following the August election in Rowan County when John Martin was struck on the head, that he and his wife Lucy and two of their small children climbed into their jolt wagon out on Christy Creek and rode into town. While his wife and the children went to do some trading at a general store down the road, John met Sam Gooden, John Day, and Floyd Tolliver. Words passed between Martin and Tolliver after which John went into Carey's saloon. As he stood at the bar Floyd Tolliver came up and repeated what he had said to Martin outside--something to the effect that Martin had been wanting to bulldoze him. Martin denied the charge but Tolliver repeated, "Yes, by God, you have, and I am not going to permit it." To which Martin answered, "If you must have a fight, I am ready for you." At this Floyd put his hand in his pocket. Martin, thinking, so his wife and son told me, that Floyd Tolliver was about to draw his gun, drew his own in self-defense. Though Martin was quicker on the trigger than Tolliver, who now had his gun out of the holster, Martin did not have time to get his weapon completely out of his pocket. He shot through it, killing Floyd Tolliver almost instantly. "Boys," Floyd managed to gasp, turning his eyes toward friends who rushed into the bar, "remember what you swore to do. You said you would kill him and you must keep your word." Martin gave himself up to the law. By this time a mob, friends of both sides, had gathered around and Martin was hurried, half dragged, across the road to the jail behind the courthouse. In order to protect the prisoner from violence he was taken to the Winchester, Kentucky, jail next day. But he had been there only six days when a band of five men presented themselves to the jailer with an order, apparently signed by the proper authorities, commanding Martin's return to Rowan County. He pleaded with the jailer not to surrender him. "It is only a plot to kill me," he cried. That day Martin's wife had been to see him in his cell. She took him some cornbread and a clean shirt and socks. Little did she dream when she got on the train to return to Morehead that night that her husband sat handcuffed in the baggage coach ahead. Around the prisoner stood his five captors: Alvin Bowling, Edward and Milt Evans, a man named Hall, and another by the name of Eastman. When the train was within five miles of the county seat of Rowan, at a village called Farmers, it was boarded by several masked men who rushed into the baggage car and shot John Martin, helpless and handcuffed, to death. "They've killed him!" Lucy Trumbo Martin screamed at the sound of the first shot, though until that moment she had not known her husband was on the train. "I knew they had killed John," she told her friends at the time and often afterward.