There simply is no credible reason as to why students in Logan County are not taught local history as much as they should be. Unless, of course, some educators are not familiar with it themselves because they were never taught local history. Maybe, too, it is just not an allowed curriculum subject. I really do not know.
Even with the expanded demands now placed upon our educators, perhaps if youngsters were instilled with the exceptional local history of Logan County, which would include that of Mingo as well, maybe students would later on as adults insist upon making Logan County great again. By that I simply mean our history would not have been placed upon the back burners of local success for all these decades. Here’s an example of what caused me to seek out some Preparation H, if you know what I mean.
Longtime friend and Logan businessman Don Browning, owner of Browning’s Jewelers in Logan, gets a great deal of out-of-town visitors to his business that is located on Stratton Street across from the Logan County Courthouse. Many of the visitors are former Loganites who occasionally like to visit their bygone hometown.
About two weeks ago a Delaware couple who formerly lived at Holden came to Browning’s store and purchased a few nostalgic items that identified them with the place they once knew. The visitors, Mr. and Mrs. Maynard, left Logan in 1961 when the wife graduated from Logan High School. Although I do not have first names, I can tell you that the woman was a Stapleton who was raised behind Island Creek’s Parkway company store at 5&6 Holden that later became Adams’ IGA and is now the site of a printing shop. Mr. Maynard was raised at 7&8 Holden.
According to Don, the aged couple said they traveled a great deal, visiting many small towns. “They said they were simply ‘dumbfounded’ when they returned to Logan,” Don said, adding the former Loganites said they were shocked to see “that the politicians have never taken advantage of all the local history to entice visitors to the town or the county.” They particularly mentioned the Hatfields, Don Chafin, Blair Mountain and even Mamie Thurman. Of course, there is much more history to Logan County than what the Maynards mentioned.
And, to simply blame “politicians” is not exactly accurate, but that term basically is what all elected officials are referred to. One such office holder, County Clerk John Turner, who is a true public servant and does not fall into the political category with such people as myself and others, told me about how a few years ago his uncle, who was visiting from another state, asked him to take him to visit the Hatfield Cemetery.
John said he was happy to take him to the site that has been visited by many thousands of people over the years and continues to be a destination for most visiting Hatfield-McCoy trail riders. Unfortunately, like so many others, John’s uncle could not make it up the steep and rocky terrain of the trail to the cemetery.
Downtrodden, John promised his uncle that upon his next visit to Logan he would obtain an all-terrain vehicle and take him up the hill to see the life-sized statue of Devil Anse and the surrounding family graves. Not too long thereafter, John’s uncle died. (John did not know that all-terrain vehicles are not allowed upon the dirt road to the cemetery.)
There has been a considerable amount of money already spent with an engineering firm supposedly to create plans for a walking trail to the cemetery, a bridge, and even a parking area to accommodate visitors to the popular and secluded site.
I’ve been patiently waiting on an announcement of a grant for over $200,000 to allow this work to be completed. Originally, I was told the announcement would likely come in October of this year. As we now are about to embark upon the month of December, I am getting a bit fidgety because of promises of the past that were never kept. However, I shall remain patient, at least for the time being.
In regard to a related cemetery matter, a small graveyard located on a hill near where Anderson “Cap” Hatfield used to reside has been designated to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places, it being the final resting place of Cap Hatfield, the notorious son of the famed feudal leader, Devil Anse Hatfield.
I will soon be releasing a story concerning that property and the related Hatfield clan. It is a story that has never been told before. It is, in fact, the narrative of a long lasting feud that caused hard feelings between brothers, sisters and other family members. I shall refer to it as the “real” Hatfield family feud that even some existing family members may not be familiar with. Interestingly, it is a legal battle that lasted from the middle of World War II in 1943 and culminated with an order by Logan Circuit Judge C.C. Chambers in 1953.
Although I have been researching the matter for well over a year now, it was not until Circuit Clerk Mark McGrew — another elected official that I place in the same impressive category as John Turner — graciously brought me the hundreds of pages of courtroom documents and even the results of an appeal to the West Virginia Supreme Court that will allow me to relay a bit of Logan County history never revealed before.
And, in case you do not know, it is Mark McGrew who obtained and has for display on the Logan County Circuit Clerk’s website the entire transcripts of the 1932 murder trial of Mamie Thurman. When the site was first made available it was missing several pages from the trial. However, I have since provided them to McGrew and people can now read the court record and determine for themselves who did the dastardly deed.
There are many stories, both good and bad, as to the Hatfield family. The story I have planned is not for any reasons other than the fact that it happened and is a piece of Logan County and the Hatfield family history.
Early next month I have an optometrist appointment with Michael Beres, the great-grandson of a daughter of Cap Hatfield. Prior to engaging with Beres, and prior to her retirement, Arabel Hatfield, whose father was a son of Cap Hatfield, was my “eye doctor.”
It seems odd that Arabel’s grandfather, a lawyer, was legally blind and that her father (also named Coleman), herself, and her nephew, Michael Beres, became optometrists. Ahead of the telling story I have planned about the Cap Hatfield family, the following is an account of a man who was defended in a Logan County court of law by Coleman Hatfield, an attorney who was legally blind.
It was reported in The Logan Banner that Coleman Hatfield said it was impossible for his eyesight to be improved and it would be useless for Charlie Brumfield, a man Hatfield had defended in court, to donate one of his eyeballs to him.
Brewster, who was then confined in Moundsville prison for a life sentence term in the 1940s shotgun slaying of his wife at their Fort Branch home on Christmas Day, offered to donate his eyes for services rendered by Hatfield in court.
Hatfield reportedly answered the imprisoned man’s offer by stating that “the human eye cannot be successfully transplanted as a whole and made to function by a surgical operation.”
“In order to clarify the point in question, I have been advised that the chief trouble with my vision is by pigmentation of the retina, which is a condition inherited from childhood, and said to be from vitamin A deficiency,” Hatfield wrote in his answer to Brumfield.
It is interesting to me, too, that one of the sons of Cap Hatfield was L.W. “Elba” Hatfield. It was he who would serve as the magistrate in the preliminary hearing of Clarence Stephenson and Harry Robertson, accused murders of Mamie Thurman.
In an upcoming story of this branch of the Hatfield family, a major question at issue was whether or not two of Cap’s daughters were dead or alive.
The results of this 10-year feud led to the building of the sandstone-constructed house that now sits on Route 44 near the once-booming community of Stirrat in Logan County.
It stands as a beacon to the Hatfield family legacy on real estate that, according to court testimony, once was the site of a Hatfield beer garden.
Dwight Williamson serves as magistrate in Logan County. He writes a weekly column for HD Media.
