More than a score of years were spent in the collection of this material, involving tedious and painstaking investigations. The greatest difficulty was experienced in separating truth from falsehood. Often the most vital facts could be obtained solely from the actors in the bloody dramas. The feudists and their relatives proved, quite naturally, partial or prejudiced, and at all times were reluctant to admit any fact detrimental to their side, or favorable to their enemies. I believe, however, that I have succeeded, with the aid of court records, legislative investigations and official military reports, in my task of producing a strictly authentic history of Kentucky's Famous Feuds and their attending tragedies. I trust that the publication of this volume will serve its designed purposes:--to make crime odious; to illustrate the havoc that may be wrought anywhere through the lax, inefficient or corrupt administration of justice; to arouse the people, not of Kentucky only, but of the country at large to the necessity of dealing sternly with crime and faithless officers. CHAS. G. MUTZENBERG. Harlan, Ky., September, 1916. INTRODUCTION A brief review of the history of Kentuckians may assist the reader to understand why they, a kind, hospitable people to the stranger, have so long borne the reputation of ready fighters who often kill upon the slightest provocation, and deserve that reputation in a large measure. It is "bred in the bone" for a Kentuckian to quickly resent an insult or redress an injury. Long before the advent of the white man Kentucky, then Fincastle County, Virginia, had been the vast hunting grounds of the Cherokees, Creeks, Chickasaws and Catawbas of the South, and of the more hostile tribes of Shawnees, Delawares and Wyandots of the North. These tribes, when chance brought them together on their annual hunts, engaged in conflicts so instant, so fierce and pitiless that the territory became known as the Dark and Bloody Ground. It was indeed a hunter's paradise. Dense forests covered the mountains. Cane brakes fringed the banks of numerous beautiful streams, while to the west lay immense undulating plains. Forest, cane brake and plain were literally alive with bear, deer and the buffalo; the woods teemed with innumerable squirrels, pheasants, wild turkeys and quail. The fame of this hunting ground had attracted bold and adventurous hunters long before Daniel Boone looked upon one of the most beautiful regions in the world from the crest of Cumberland Mountain. These hunters, upon their return home, gave glowing accounts of the richness and fertility of the new country, and excited powerfully the curiosity and imagination of the frontier backwoodsmen east of the Alleghenies and of North Carolina.