Note: Samuel James was Mahala James’ Father and Pernina Dean James was her Mother. Samuel died when Mahala was six. Abner James was her step-brother and was appointed her guardian when she was sixteen. He is listed as her Father on her marriage license to John Priest. Mahala James was Monterville Priest’s Mother and Ellen Priest DeYoung’s Grandmother.
Mountain Kinsmen Ride
A Story of the James Family
By Henry P. Scalf
1956
Talk to the two old ladies and they turn the pages of Eastern Kentucky history for you. One will attain in four months four score and ten, the other approaches the century mark. Mrs. Miranda Caroline McCoy, 94 of Crum, W. Va., and Mrs. Mary Elizabeth Honaker, 89, of Pikeville, are cousins who have not seen each other for years. They are natives of Floyd county and the only surviving grandchildren of Samuel James, pioneer settler of Johns Creek.
Mrs. McCoy knew Frank James, the bandit, for her folks gave him protection while he was hiding on Johns Creek with a bullet wound in his hip. Each of them knew personally Pernina Dean James, their grandmother, a native of North Carolina. Mrs. James told them stories of the settlement of early Floyd county, talked of men and women settlers long since dead, have been dead so long they creeping myrtle and the molding leaves hide forever the ancient, unmarked graves.
Their grandfather Samuel was born in 1774 in Massachusetts, and was thus a year-old babe when the “embattled farmers” at Lexington opened the Revolutionary War. He died, June 15, 1836 on Johns Creek, lies buried beside the road near the Tom McCoy place where he was drowned. He was only 62 when he died, but in these years he lived a bit of history, was a part of the restless (sic) migatory America that was ever challenging new horizons to the south or west.
When Samuel James was very young, he went south, either in the company of his parents or other relatives. Evidently other members of the James family were on this southward trek, for many records of the family are not extant in the North Carolina courthouses, particularly in Ashe, Orange, Rowan and Guilford counties. These references as official books down there are of Abner, a Revolutionary soldier, and of many others who gave their names to the James family of the Big Sandy.
Genealogists think Abner James, the North Carolina soldier, was a first cousin of Samuel James, the Floyd county settler. Be the relationship whatever it was, Samuel named one of this 16 children after him and this namesake, the two old ladies relate, figured in the story of a gallows, of a ride by Billy McCoy from the Mountains to the Bluegrass, a wild dash back and a cheated hangman who never “sold his rope.”
While living in North Carolina, Samuel James went on a hunting trip into Tennessee, met Sarah, orphan daughter of William Charles, a Quaker. [note: Sarah Charles was Hans Michael and Catherine Charles’ daughter] This family had come down from Rhode Island to (sic) Perquimens county, N.C., lived there awhile and later removed to Guilford County. William who was a large landowner and cabinet-maker on the Deep River, near Jamestown, N.D., died in 1796. It may be that Sarah and her widowed mother Leah Charles, who lived until 1813, were visiting relatives in Tennessee when Samuel James appeared. He (sic) askd Sarah’s hand from the mother and the church, the peculiar sect granting permission in its peculiar way for the marriage of one of its daughters outside the church. Sarah, born Feb. 14, 1779, was thus 22 years old when married in 1801. Samuel was 27, both marrying at a later age than was usual on the backwoods edge of the frontier states.
Samuel and Sarah set up housekeeping in North Carolina, but stories of Eastern Kentucky filtered back to Ashe County from friends and neighbors who had become restless and moved again. One was the John Dean family which had left Surrey County and came to Johns Creek. In 1810 Samuel and Sarah left North Carolina, and with a slow moving-ox drawn wagon loaded with pioneer tools and the necessities of life in a new land, started for Johns Creek. In the wagon, or walking by the team, besides Samuel’s mother, Mary, were six children – John, Isaac, Abner, Daniel, Celia and Mary. A second ox drawn wagon carried the family of William Charles, brother of Sarah, which consisted of his wife and child.
But for Pernina Dean, grandmother of Mrs. McCoy and Mrs. Honaker, we would have no knowledge of the events of that terrible journey. (Pernina married Samuel James as his second wife.) Sarah Charles James became ill on the road, and died in a few days. Samuel, his brother, and brother-in law William Charles, assisted by the dead woman’s teenage sons, dug a grave and buried Sarah along the way, the place now unknown. When Samuel James arrived at the mouth of Brushy Creek he faced the task of building a cabin, clearing the fields, tending a crop and rearing six children. He worked at it during that year, hunted a wife, married Pernina Dean, daughter of his North Carolina neighbor, who now lived higher up on Johns Creek. The date of their Floyd County marriage was June 30th 1810.
Perina Dean James, who lived until 1880, related to Mrs. McCoy and Mrs. Honaker how she and her father came by themselves to Johns Creek and built a cabin. They journeyed horseback, father and daughter, through the wilderness in 1808, a year before the James and Charles families arrived. Pernina was 14 years old. It took time to build a cabin and both labored hurriedly, for the father wanted to bring the rest of the family from North Carolina before winter came along.
He and Pernina talked of the return trip and [the] decision was made for her to stay at the cabin until he returned. To construct a safe sleeping place, a frame-work was swung to the cabin rafters and food to last for his absence was stored in the swinging haven. At night she climbed in and slept, food lying beside her, safe from prowling animals. She told her descendants, over and over again the story of the terrible nights alone in the swinging bed, of how the wild beasts would scream and she would cry from loneliness and fear.
When John Dean arrived back in Surrey county and (sic) hold how he had left his 14-year-old daughter in a cabin on Johns Creek, the mother was distraught and her lashing tongue drove family preparations for the trip to the new country. They left hurriedly, left also many h=things they should have brought as necessary to their convenience in the Johns Creek cabin, because Mrs. Dean wouldn’t take the time to pack. Only arrival at the cabin and finding Pernina safe allayed the anger and fear of Mrs. Dean. “In never expected to see you alive,” she told her daughter.
Samuel James and Pernina Dean James raised, in addition to the six children by his former marriage, ten children of their own. These were Samuel, called Little Samuel, David, Daniel, Hannah[,] Mahala, Tamsey, Miranda, Sallie, Pernina Ann and Rachel. Samuel Sr. and his older sons Abner and Isaac interested themselves in acquiring and trading land. Tract after tract of the primitive wilderness of Johns Creek and on the headwaters of the tributary streams of the Tug Fork passed through their hands. Titles covering the Johns Creek bottoms were warranted to the grantees “against John Preston and his heirs but none other,” indicating that the John Preston surveys made by John Graham cast many a shadow.
Samuel built a water-mill at the mouth of Brushy Creek, and did custom grinding for his settler friends. The McCoys, Roops, Fraleys, and others came to the primitive mill. Mrs. Smith says her grandmother Pernina told her that Samuel inquired whether his wife would rather have the mill as a gift or the sum of $500.00 he had saved. Pernina took the mill. After her husbands death she and her stalwart sons operated it. “That mill raised my children, several grandchildren and great-grandchildren,” Pernina James told Mrs. Honaker.
Evidently Samuel James had a premonition of an early death. Perhaps he was ill when he inquired of his wife about the disposition of the mill and money. He was 62 years old when the flood waters of Johns Creek claimed his life. Both Mrs. Honaker and Mrs. McCoy explained that the bed of the stream back a hundred years ago pushed against the north side of the creek, now near the home of Tom McCoy. It was here that Samuel James was drowned on 15 June 1836. He lies buried on the sloping hill near where he met his death. His will was probated July 15th 1868 in Floyd County.”
Pernina James, with the help of her sons and the water-mill raised the children, and as she said afterwards, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, John and Isaac James, two sons of the marriage of Samuel and Sarah, went west as did Little Samuel, her son, who migrated to Minnesota. The daughters married into the early settler families. Miranda, said to be a beautiful woman by those who remembered her, married Hugh Harkins, of Prestonsburg, Sallie, mother of Mrs. McCoy married William (Billy) McCoy, Pernina Ann, the youngest and mother of Mrs. Honaker, married John Smith, Malinda married John Roop, Rachael married Ira Russell and moved to Big Blaine Creek.
The John Dean family moved away. John died in Wayne county, West Virginia, but Pernina Dean James continued to live at the old homestead on Johns Creek until [the] she died in 1880 and was buried at the mouth of Brushy. Her life was one long regret, as she expressed it “for the beautiful blue mountains of North Carolinas.” She lived long enough to see her children and several of her grandchildren established in homes of their own and to pass on to her descendants the story of a section that was a little bit of our mountain annals.
Billy and Sally McCoy were living on the head of Wolf Creek, now Martin county, then Floyd, when Miranda Caroline was born, June 6, 1861. Mary Elizabeth Smith (Honaker) was born, April 30, 1866 at Brushy Creek, was raised to womanhood there, but after her marriage to Henry C. Smith, they moved to Big Creek in Pike county. Miranda McCoy was 12 years old when her parents moved from Wolf to Brushy, just above the Dug Point. She married John B. McCoy, a cousin, in 1883, on the Peter Cave Fork of Wolf, at the home of Joseph Blackburn. So both Miranda and Mary Elizabeth married without changing their names. Mrs. Smith re-married after the death of her husband to Landon Honaker, Pikeville jeweler.
The two grandchildren of Samuel James like to talk about their Uncle Abner James. He was short, heavy, blue-eyed and “balk-headed as he could be.” He told the two nieces, (sic) vaggishly, why he was bald, when he was old and a widower “You know when I went to see the young women I pulled the gray hairs out and when I went to see the old ladies, I pulled the black hairs out. Pretty soon I had no hair at all.” Which reminded his nieces he was married several times.
Abner first married Margaret, daughter of William and Nancy Woodward Campbell, of Pike county, April 20, 1823. She came from good stock, her Scotch lineage buried deep in the history of the Revolution and Southwestern Virginia. Her father, born June 25, 1768, in New Jersey, had married her mother, Feb 6, 1800, in Culpepper county, Virginia. William and Nancy Campbell moved early to Floyd county, now Pike, were there when the new county of Pike (sic) were formed in 1821. William was the first Justice appointed, performed the first marriage of record. He and his wife are buried in the old Chaney cemetery at the mouth of Chloe Creek, near Pikeville. Nancy Woodward Campbell, born Aug. 29, 1778, lived several years after her husband died in 1833. Margaret Campbell James, born April 29, 1804, lived until about 1850, a year or two after her husband escaped the gallows, and grieved herself to death. The staid, stable Scotch Campbell’s and the wild Irish Abner James were the antithesis of each other. She must have been supremely unhappy but she was loyal, stood by him in trouble, which was most of their married life.
It was Abner, the wild roisterer and principal in many an escapade, who brought grief to his wife and people. He was dangerous when enraged, would shoot to kill. His fits of temper are legends yet. Two serious brushes with the law and the consequences didn’t help a bit. “The third time,” Mrs. McCoy recalls, “he got quieter and settled down.” It was the third time he escaped the gallows only after a desperate effort made by his friends and relatives.
It is time for the story of Abner James escaping the hangman but Mrs. McCoy doesn’t tell the family history as you want it told. She pauses, is silent while her granddaughter combs her hair. That hair was red years ago, as only a McCoy head could be. You remember the phrase, “a red-headed McCoy.” As you watch the granddaughter comb it out.
The hair-dressing over, she begins again, not about Abner James but about the McCoys.
Billy McCoy and his wife, Sallie James McCoy, had 11 children. Four of them, including Miranda, lived to be over 90. Sarah McCoy, who married Colonel John Blackburn, Tansey Elizabeth, lived, unmarri4ed, to the age of 92. Martha Ann, who married John Fraley, attained the age of 94, same as Miranda’s now. Pleasant Peace McCoy lived also to the age of 94, died in Lawrence county and as winter had made the Johns Creek road a muddy and frozen trail, his body was “dept Up” until spring thawed and dried up the country-side. He was brought back to the mouth of Brushy, buried with his people. John Jackson McCoy was called Polite John, so named because he used good grammar and departed from the typical mountain drawl and the rolling of “r’s” in speech. He resided on Wolf Creek and many said it was his grammar that elected him county judge.
Then finally the story of Abner James, the wild uncle who was Irish—Irish clear through. He was born in North Carolina, had followed the ox-drawn wagon of his father to Johns Creek, had helped bury his mother on the way. He was a typical backwoodsman, loved the thrill of hand-to-hand, bite-and-gouge fight in which one was to emerge defeated and beaten. Usually it wasn’t Abner, who lay upon the ground while the victor, in backwoods fashion, imitated the flapping of a cock’s wings and crowed.
Abner grew tough with the years, had figured in two incidents that the law didn’t notice[d] too seriously perhaps because he was well-connected. His brother-in-law, Hugh Harkins, was the presiding Justice of Floyd county, another brother-in-law, Billy McCoy, was a deputy sheriff, others of the family, too, held connections with the law. Be that or not, Abner escaped the severity of justice.
The series of events that “quieted Abner down” began, far back in the backwoods of Wolf Creek, at the mouth of Pigeon Roost fork. In 1847 few people lived on Wolf. The country was a wilderness, filled with an abundance of game. Here lived a few hunter-settlers like a certain Howard, his first name unknown, who resided on Pigeon Roost. At the mouth of the creek lived Bill Pruitt. The Pruitt and Howard families hated each other over some trifling incident about a dog. (Mrs. McCoy didn’t say so but other oldsters of the James family always said someone killed a dog belonging to one or the other of the families and the bad blood stemmed from that.)
Mrs. McCoy, who had the story from her father, one of the principal[s] in the lurid affair, says that Bill Pruitt and his two sisters stripped the clothes from two of the Howard girls and sent them home, naked, in a deep snow. Others of the James family affirm that Bill Pruitt held the two Howard girls wile his sisters whipped them with [s]witches. Since the incident supposedly occurred in Floyd county, Howard came to Prestonsburg and procured a warrant from Hugh Harkins for Pruitt’s arrest. He carried the warrant back to the head of Wolf and gave it to Harkins’ brother-in-law, Billy McCoy.
McCoy went down Wolf Creek to arrest Pruitt, found him in a belligerent mood. Pruitt was standing in the cabin yard, a gun in each hand and armed with a knife. McCoy came in, eyeing the walking arsenal, but before his could ask the bully to submit, was told: “Now Billy McCoy, I know what you’re her for but you’re on a fool’s errand. You get away from here if you know what’s good for you.”
McCoy expostulated, affirmed that he would have to submit and be tried. To this Pruitt replied, displaying his arms: “I’m not going.” Nor would he, McCoy, calculating the hazard of attempting to arrest [t]his man alone, well-armed and belligerent as he was, with the possibility that the whole family would attack him, retreated and threatened to summon aid and return. The swaggering bully shouted “When you do come back, don’t come with no fools, because I’m a man that will kill.” Billy McCoy left to hunt a posse.
After a hasty supper that night Billy McCoy set out to deputize men. He rode over the dividing ridge between Wolf and Brushy, went across Johns Creek to buffalo and summoned Matthew Clay. In the interim between dark an morning of the next day he enlisted others. Mrs. McCoy thinks there were possible eight men in the posse others affirm there were only six and court records indicate the last number is correct. We now the names of only five as a certainty. These were Deputy Sheriff McCoy, William Ratliff, who married Mrs. McCoy’s sister, Abner James, Matthew Clay, and John Roop, another brother-in-law of McCoy and Abner’s who had married Malinda James. Robert Clay may have been the sixth member of the group. [note: There were nine in the group. The six mentioned about plus John Priest and David James who were all arrested. B. Mullins was also there but was not arrested.]
The next morning they started down Wolf Creek, either by way of the Painter or Meathouse Fork. The few settlers they saw warned them of the bully Pruitt but they continued down the creek-bed road until they came to his house. He was expecting such a visit from the law and was swaggering across the “yard” drunk on the potent backwoods spirits.
Mrs. McCoy said that Pruitt, ugly with drink, had a gun, broken teakettle and butcher knife in his hands. All of the posse were armed with the Kentucky rifle except Abner James. His lack of arms may be attributed to no other reason than McCoy, fearing the awful temper and anticipating an utter lack of discretion on this ticklish errand, had refused to let Abner freeing a rifle.
Pruitt, shouting defiance at the law, marched back and forth across the yard, beating on his chest. After a little parley the threw the tea kettle at the posse, brought up his gun, threatened to kill any man who came in after him. We know enough of Abner James to surmise that by now he was boiling with anger, wanted only to enter the yard and engage Pruitt in hand-to-hand battle, backwoods fashion. The Pruitt gun, though, pointed dangerously at him and the others. Suddenly Abner James, just as McCoy had feared, shed control of his fierce Irish temper, wrung a rifle from William Ratliff and fired. The shot took Pruitt squarely in the chest and he fell, dying. Matthew Clay said, afterwards, “When Abner fired I could feel my trigger finger creep.”
Attorney William P. McCoy, of Inez, grandson of Billy McCoy adds information on the famous case and fills in a gap of the story that his aunt did not remember. Attorney McCoy had the story also from his grandfather and from a (sic) perusual of the court records. He writes:
“McCoy then arrested James and took him to Prestonsburg where he was confined in jail. The friends of Pruitt took the position that he homicide occurred in Lawrence county and not in Floyd. When the case was called an order of court was had and the lines located. It was found that they were in Lawrence when they attempted to make the arrest and when the shooting took place. Then it was that the Lawrence circuit court indicted James.”
We glean, from an old suit of Abner James vs. Henry C. Harris filed in the Floyd Circuit Court, Oct. 20, 1852, some of the trial details and are able to infer from it some of the attendant excitement. There had been a gathering of the James kin to support Abner at the trial. There had been a comparable gathering of the Pruitts and the Burchetts. Bill Pruitt had married a Burchett, and her people were influential in Lawrence. Both sides were ably represented and the stage was set for what Henry C. Harris James’ attorney, said “was the most excited trial he ever witnessed.”
The excitement was evident when the Lawrence circuit court called the case. Protagonists of both sides were present in Louisa—Jameses, Pruitts, Burchetts, McCoys, Roops, Ratliffs, Clays, McGuires, Leslies and many others who had their insatiable curiosity whipped up by the case and the wild record of Abner James. It was one of those tense hours in mountain court trials when a drunken work, a single vocal outburst or similar cause would have touched off a sudden burst of feud passion.
The trial lasted nearly the entire week. In answer to the suit brought by Abner James against his former attorney in 1852 over the lawyer’s fees, Henry C. Harris stated “that Abner James, John (sic) Rupe, and Matthew Clay were indicted in the Lawrence circuit court for murder—that your respondent was employed by them to defend them and he attended the Lawrence circuit court and defended James, (sic) Rupe and Clay in one of the most excited trials which I ever witnessed. It occupied nearly the whole week. Able counsel was employed to prosecute them. Abner James was the man who shot Pruitt and although they [Roop and Clay] were present it was not pretended they or either of them shot Pruitt. When the trial came on yr. respondent and the assistant counsel agreed to try James and Clay and (sic) Rupe–upon this result the whole case depended as everybody knew. A verdict was rendered acquitting Clay and (sic) Rupe.”
Sometimes it is not merely the evidence of the homicide itself that convicts but things said or done in the aftermath. It was thus with Abner James’ case. The jury was inclined to be lenient, for after all he had been a member of a duly deputized posse of men out to execute a warrant. But it was sworn and went uncontested, that Abner had made certain remarks after he killed Pruitt. The words shocked the jury then as they shock us now and it was said to have been the bit of evidence that leaned the jury to conviction. He was sentenced to be hanged.
While Abner James lingered in the Louisa jail his friends were busy in a desperate effort to save his life. These were numerous. There were his many brother-in-law, which included Hugh Harkins who had issued the warrant for Pruitt, and William Ratliff. Assisting in the final legal effort were David James, Robert Clay, Martin Leslie, William McGuire and others. A petition was circulated to be presented to the Governor for clemency, and young William James, the condemned man’s son, who was in his teens was the most indefatigable worker in securing signatures.
There is an inference, from certain records and the reconciliation of (sic) traditionary accounts, that two trips made to the state capital in an appeal for clemency. Henry C. Harris says in one place that “if he ever did his duty he did it in that celebrated trial—and after Abner James was convicted to be hung he went to Frankfort for him and presented to the Governor in company with L. P. Martin a petition. He performed this trip in the dead of winter and traveled 156 miles.” In another place Harris states a petition was gotten up and he, with J. P. Martin and William McCoy went to Frankfort and were gone “three or four weeks.” In both statements the expenses attendant upon the trip or trips are given in varying sums. A more plausible conclusion is that Harris and Martin had gone to Frankfort and William McCoy followed later with the completed petitions, now signed by a great number of people.
Again we quote W. R. McCoy, the Inez attorney and grandson of Billy McCoy: “At that time the only method of travel was either walking or riding horseback between Big Sandy and Lexington, so William McCoy got on his horse and rode . . . to Lexington. He placed his horse in a livery barn there and took the stagecoach to Frankfort. He was detained there several days.”
We would rather that Mrs. McCoy relate the story, f or, with the exception of Mrs. Smith, she is the only living person who had directly from her father his experience at Frankfort. “He was in Frankfort six days and each day would go to see Governor William Owsley and plead with him to grant a pardon. The Governor kept putting him off and told him that he would give him a pardon in time to save James from the noose. Finally, on the last day, father went to the governor and told him that he did not believe he would have time to ride back to Louisa in time to save his brother-in-law. Governor Owsley said, “Now, McCoy, I’m ready for you. I have gone over all of the evidence and studied the facts and I believe Abner James was justified doing what he did.” The Governor took a silk handkerchief and tied the pardon around my father’s waist.”
Where Harris and Martin were while McCoy was pleading with governor Owsley we do not know but it is fairly certain they were not in Frankfort, for no where does Harris claim to have secured the pardon although he did present the petition. We infer that Harris and Martin submitted the application for a pardon and with it the petition, returned to Prestonsburg, left McCoy at Frankfort while Governor Owsley reviewed the evidence and made up his mind.
Mrs. McCoy tells about a conversation her father and the governor had, and we learn that Owsley was interested in the return journey of this mountaineer to his native section. McCoy said that he might get back alive to Louisa and then again he might not. He told Owsley the Pruitts were certain to waylay him along the road, for everyone up Big Sandy knew he was at Frankfort seeking a pardon. “Isn’t there any way except the road you came?” Governor Owsley asked. “There is” McCoy said, “but it is a pure wilderness.”
“Do you know the way?” Mrs. McCoy said the governor inquired. “Father answered that he did and was advised to go that way and not take the same route he had come.”
Billy McCoy caught a late afternoon stagecoach to Lexington, took his horse from the tavern hostler, mounted and rode like a madman toward the hills. Late in the night he stopped to feed his horse and while the animal ate he held the bridle with one hand and ate food he had brought with the other. This done, he mounted again, rode through the night until day broke over the hills. He was in the mountains now, feeling his way up the Licking valley, along mere trails. Under him his horse staggered and died but he bought another. He stopped at a farm house for breakfast. Two more horses died in the break-neck ride to Louisa that day and he was riding the fourth when he approached Louisa late at night. He had ridden up Licking river and crossed the dividing watershed of that stream and the Big Sandy above the Lawrence county seat. No Pruitts had been hidden the “the pure wilderness.” They, out-foxed by McCoy, were hiding in the brush below Louisa and along the main road toward Lexington.
We would like to believe the (sic) traditionary account of the last-minute dash by McCoy through a mountain crowd early in the morning while Abner James rode upon his coffin in a wagon pulled by oxen toward the scaffold outside Louisa.
We would like for the story to end with the embellishment of how Abner James stood upon his coffin and moved his arms up and down like the wings of a cock and crowed, as was the frontier custom of victors in a fight. We are assured, by some that James exhibited his elation by this surviving relic of ancient mores and said, belligerently “the jury said I’d hang, the Governor says I won’t.
Mrs. McCoy punctures this romantic and picturesque legendary account. She says her father arrived back in Louisa late at night, found the town bursting with sightseers. A boat load had arrived from Prestonsburg and one of the curious passengers was Joseph Harris, father of Hiram Harris, the Prestonsburg banker and businessman. Joseph related often the story to his son Hiram and vouched for the arm-flapping and cock-crowing exhibition.
Two women standing in the street near the Louisa Jail when Billy McCoy rode in were Sarah James McCoy, wife of Billy and sister to Abner, and Margaret James, Abner’s wife. Sarah McCoy recognized her husband in the darkness and asked, “What news?” Good”, said Billy McCoy. IT may be that Abner James did revert to the ancient custom of old Augusta when he was released by flapping his arms in victory and crowing like a cock.
He was a wealthy man when he killed Bill Pruitt, but the trial and the effort expended to save his life depleted his land holdings. He moved restlessly from place to place, married again after Margaret died. His second wife, Elizabeth McVeigh, may have been Scotch. Too, but she wasn’t like her predecessor, for Abner divorced her for infidelity before they had any children. She died and he married again to Milley Young, Jan. 24, 1856. They were living together when the Civil War came on and he joined the confederate army, but his son William entered the Union forces. Abner was too old for active duty, trailed with the Rebel forces down South as they re treated under the inexorable Yankee pressure. His martial duties chiefly clerical, for he was a good penman, ended somewhere in Georgia when the war closed. His son William was stationed in the Big Sandy, chiefly at Louisa, guarding a section against Rebels like his father. [Note: Abner and William were both in Company C of the Thirty Ninth Ky Regiment of United States Volunteers (Union Army). He received a medical discharge December 20, 1864 for chronic Rheumatism and Hydrodele.] William had married Dicey Ann Fraley, whom he had met while securing signatures on the petition to governor Owsley. They had several children when he entered the union army. He came home to Johns Creek, Confederates ambushed him, shot a bone out of his leg. He escaped back to Louisa but the camp was prostrated with smallpox and typhoid. The debilitating effects of the wound and typhoid killed him. He was buried at Louisa but was later moved to a national cemetery, down-state.
Abner came back to Kentucky with the foot-sore, ragged confederate veterans. When he was 90 he found himself again without a wife and in casting about he found Martha Rifle who was perhaps more than two score years younger. By now, he must have become as Mrs. Honaker says, “as bald-headed as he could be.” He and Martha had a son whom he named Daniel after a brother who had gone west. Old now and enfeebled, the Irish fires dying out, he allowed his land to vanish with alienation and neglect. He ended life, at about the age of 91, owning little more than the six feet of earth needed to buy him on the Shopes Creek in Boyd county. Daniel was one-year-old when his father died, grew to manhood with his mother’s maiden name. Everybody called him Little Dan Rifle.
Tradition is strong that Jesse James and the Big Sandy Jameses were relatives. The story is so widely believed that two of Abner’s great-grandsons were name Frank and Jesse James and bear the outlaws’ names today. Mrs. McCoy who knew Frank James, says that the grandfather of Jesse and Frank was a minister and that he was a brother to Samuel, the Johns Creek settler. This would have made Abner James and the father of Jesse and Frank first cousins, which after all is a dubious honor in consanguinity.
Whether or not Abner James and the two outlaws were cousins is unsure, the family genealogists say. But one piece of evidence, pointed to by Mrs. McCoy and Mrs. Honaker is that Frank James stayed with Billy McCoy at the mouth of Brushy Creek and nursed a hip wounded by a lawman’s gun. He had the alias, John Pierce James, and walked, limping, with a cane. No one in the household could place a John Pierce James in the family tree and the explanations of Billy McCoy to his children must have been a little vague. Suddenly one day Miranda’s brother Andy blurted out that John Pierce James was none other than Frank James, who had helped rob the Huntington (W. Va.) bank. Billy McCoy answered his son with a burst of anger, told Andy to “hold his tongue.” He said there was a big reward out for Frank and he didn’t want to see it collected by anything said in his family.
Frank, or John Pierce James, having been around for a week or longer, decided one Sunday he wanted a drink of mountain whiskey. He asked Miranda where he might find some of the illegal corn he knew was distilled in the countryside. She directed him to the house of “Aunt” Susan Preece (question: Susan Priest – John and Mahala James Priest’s oldest daughter?) who lived at the foot of the Dug Point, told him to tell Aunt Susan that she had sent him. Frank went down to Mrs. Preece’s home and was again directed to a brother who had some whiskey in a cornfield. Frank James went out in the field, stayed too long and imbibed too freely. Coming back to the road, he found a group of boys sitting on a big rock. He climbed drunkenly upon the stone, and began to make a speech. He said he was Frank James, told them he was hiding from the law. The boys laughed. They’d heard drunk men brag before.
Suddenly realizing the hazardous import of his speech, James became silent, descended the rock, vanished in the cornfield. He was not seen at the McCoy home a gain. Years later, Billy McCoy told his people that John Pierce James was really Frank James, the outlaw.
Suddenly Mrs. McCoy, who is interviewed last, becomes silent, looks out the window. You know that in her mind’s eyes she is drifting back over the 169 years of the family history with which she is familiar because a fortunate projection of her and her aged relatives’ recollections preserved them to the present day. The recollections of her people began with Samuel James who was born a year before the Revolution opened, the great western migration, the colonization of the Appalachians, the Civil War, a wild crude raw frontier society in which men lived, fought and killed, the slow ascent to the present-day security and order, are chapters and incidents of those reflections. The are the group remembrances of her (sic) sept and clan, of course, but to her they are personal and real and you know that when she looks out the window the whole phantasmagoria passes in review.