Several Were Killed In The Great Clayhole Election Battle

Editor's Note: There are many episodes of bloody events in the annals of Breathitt County's history. To leave these stories untold would be an injustice to our rich history. After all, for nearly 100 years the gun, the feud, moonshine, and the desperados all played major roles in the development of our county. Sometimes the foul deeds were done from ambush. while at other times bold characters acted out their schemes in full view. It must have been a time of little law and order. However, through it all, dear old Breathitt County survived, much too strong to bend to the zinging of bullets and the violent tempers of native clans or outlaw gangs.

One of the last of the great battles among Breathitt Countians where guns flashed and victims fell was the Battle of the Clayhole Voting House which took place on the 1921 November General Election Day (some 66 years ago). At a place now

mostly forgotten near the mouth of Russell's Branch, a small wooden voting house stood alongside the old county road and upon the banks of the Betty Troublesome Creek. Here on that long ago morning voters appeared to cast votes for their choice. However, some wanted to control the votes of others. In this old newspaper account, which appeared in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch on December 4,1950, a reporter visits with one of the surviving members of that famous event. From his inter- view we get a clearer view of what happened at the Clayhole Battle. Of course, we all know that this is only a tiny part of the total story. As issues of The Journal roll by, we will, no doubt, explore this interesting topic again!

The Clayhole Election Battle

By F.A. Behymer - 1950

A staff correspondent of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Frozen Creek, KY.--At November election time the waters of Troublesome Creek flowed untroubled by Clayhole Votin' House where men battled, killing and maiming, on another November day. Peace brooded over the mountains and the valleys. Neglect of graves in lonely buryin' grounds testified to the frailty of remembrance and the healing of hearts that sorrowed 28 years earlier.

The Battle of Clayhole Votin' House was called the strangest and most tragic of all the strange and tragic conflicts among the men of the mountains, for when it ended four men were dead and seventeen wounded, men who had been neighbors and good friends before the trouble started at early light on that long ago election day. The deadly strife of that one fateful day has long since died in the hearts of men who fought to kill, and bear the battle scars.

Tried To Kill Men Who Shot Him

Old Ed Davis was "into" that fight. He "done his best" to kill the men who were trying to kill him. Maybe he did kill a couple of them. He doesn't know. If he did he was justified because they were doing their best to get him. He has the scars to prove that.

Ed Davis, on a late autumn day, sat on the porch of his little home on Frozen Creek, taking his ease and willing to talk to a stranger who came driving up the creek. "Take a cheer and set," he said. When the trouble on Troublesome was mentioned he said yes he was "into" that and about the last of the survivors he reckoned.

This was how it was. He had come to the 'lection ground from his home on Lost Creek, where he was born 80 years prior and brought up. He had come, not to make trouble, but to try to keep it down. Armed? Shore, but that wasn't nothin'. Everybody went armed to the 'lection ground. But he went as a peacemaker. "Boys," he said. "Let's don't have no trouble. We're all friends and neighbors here." Asbury Combs called to him to keep out of it. Then there was a shot and everybody was shootin'.

13 Democrats in 275 Voters

Clayhole Votin' House was a slab-sided shanty that stood on the slope above Troublesome. It was a new precinct that had been spilt off from Buckhorn and Lost Creek. In it were 275 voters, of whom only 13 were classed as Democrats, although there were some disgruntled Republicans who went along with them. There wasn't any feudin' on Troublesome then. The only "feudin"' was over who should be elected to what. There was tension, but everything was peaceable, you might say, until a man tried to keep a granny woman from voting the way she wanted to. That started the shooting.

It was called the Combs "settlement" because the Republican Combses intermarried with the Allens, dominated it, with America "Aunt Min" Combs as its matriarch. It was a tragic day for Aunt Min because three of her sons and two of her nephews were "into" it and she saw two of her sons fall and die.

There was fear that there would be trouble at Clayhole As a precaution, with ironic implications, Coroner Sam Carpenter, Republican, appointed 14 deputies though their intended function was to help keep the peace rather than hold inquests. That their impartiality was doubted was indicated when Democrats riding down Riley Creek, where they spent the night before the battle, fired off their pistols and yelled their disapproval.

All Men Carried Guns

It was according to the custom, with special reference to the occasion, that when at dawn the men conversed on the votin' house, half-a-quarter above the mouth of Russell, every mother's son carried a gun. It was the custom, Ed Davis says, for men to wear guns then like they wear neckties now.

On that point oldtimers tell about the testimony that Harless Campbell, timberman, gave at one of the trials that grew out of the trouble. Floyd Byrd, noted mountain lawyer, was cross-examining him. "Did you have a pistol?" Byrd asked.

"Shore, I had a pistol."

"What did you have the pistol for?"

"Why, I carry it all the time, practically."

"Sleep with it on?"

"Sleep with it under my haid."

"So when you got up that morning you took your pistol from under your head and put it in your pocket and went to the election, did you?"

"Shore."

Fight Began Over Woman's Vote

It was a custom "more common than commendable," as an aged men took occasion to remark to this writer, riding to the scene after the battle:

"I tell you uncle," he said with conviction, "effen you got a pistol, which natchelly you would, the best thing to do with it when ye go to the 'lection ground, is to leave it hum." It was good advice which nobody took when they went to the 'lection ground, for none of them left their gun "hum." That was why there was trouble at the 'lection ground.

As Davis tells it, Aunt Katie Sizemore, "granny woman," white headed and old-like, lit the fuse, although that was the last thing she was aimin' to do. All that she wanted to do was vote for Tim Little, John Caudle, and Black Noble, Republicans, who were said to have given her $7 to vote that way, though she denied it and said George Allen had offered her $10 to vote the other way. However that may be, George Allen grabbed her by the arm and asked her how she was going to vote. "For Little and Caudle and Noble," she said.

"I'd die and go to hell before you'd vote that way, said Allen, and pushed her away.

Davis Interferes

Ed Davis spoke up: "George, why don't you nice people go in and vote the way they want to? What right have you got to tell people they can't?"

"I got all the right I need right here," said Allen, pat ting the butt of his pistol.

That was when Ed Davis got into it. First thing he knew Cleve and Asbury Combs were dead. Whether he killed them he can't for the life of him tell. They asked him that on the witness stand at the trial, "Did you kill those men?" the Commonwealth lawyer asked him point blank.

"Well sir," said truthful Ed, not wanting to claim anything that wasn't his due. "I can't tell you. I don't know. All I can say, I was doin' my best."

Fog, Smoke Hampered Aiming

His best, as he tells it now, is that when Cleve and Asbury shot him he pulled his pistol from his right pocket and shot a round. When his pistol was empty there was so much fog and smoke that he couldn't see whether he had hit the men who shot him. "Had a perfect right," he says, "self defense." He has his scars to back that up and there were 36 bullet holes in his clothes. The Democrats who were shootin' at him should have done better than that, but the fog and smoke were to blame. As for him he was strong in his nerve when he was shootin'. When his .38 went empty he dropped to the ground. To this day he can't say whether he got the men who shot him, but it was awful close shootin' and some of his shots must have hit them, but he had help. One was hit seven times and one 11 times. He couldn't have done all that.

The Republicans gave a good account of themselves, Three of the men killed were Democrats. Davis and nine others were indicted. They were all supposed to be Republicans, though several of them on the witness stand, perhaps in extenuation, claimed they were Democrats. Four Democrats were indicted for killing the fourth victim, who was a Republican. Emphasis at the trials on political persuasions indicated that there was a feeling on both sides that Democrats had a right to kill Republicans and vice versa.

Petitions Court To Drop Case

There were convictions on both sides, though with all the appeals and reverses and other rigmarole they never amounted to much. There was a feeling on both sides that the courts were wasting their time with a little political argument among friends and neighbors. That feeling finally took shape when a petition was presented to the court which was probably the most remarkable in court annals:

"To the Hon. Sam Hurst, judge of the Breathitt Circuit Court, and to the Hon. J.M. McDaniel, Commonwealth's attorney: "We, the undersigned, who are indicted in this court in what is known as the Clayhole Cases, have all agreed with the other parties who are indicted in said cases, that we are willing to have each and all of said cases dismissed, and each and all hereby promise and agree if this is done to 'let bygones be bygones' and there will be no further disturbances or difficulty over said matter, and we each state that it was an election fight and came up on the spur of the moment and for all

this reason we cannot see where any good can result either to the community or to the Commonwealth of Kentucky in litigation over the matter, and we, there fore, request that all cases growing out of said difficulty be dismissed." Ed Davis was one of the signers.

Cases Finally Dismissed

Judge Hurst couldn't find anything in the books to justify him in doing a thing like that and the cases dragged along until at last they were all "throwed out," which Ed Davis thinks is the thing that should have been done, for weren't they all friends and neighbors.

Davis stayed on Lost Creek until he had lived there 55 years in the house that he had built, but when his six children, survivors of the nine born there, had scattered out, he moved over to Frozen where there were a few level acres that he could tend. In the late autumn, with his corn in the shock, he sits on his porch and watches the world go by on the road and is happy to chat with a stranger who comes along and takes a "cheer and sets."

Most of them who were in the Clayhole trouble are gone. Quite a few of them were killed at one time or another. Others died natural deaths. As for him, he doesn't hold any hard feelin's. After all, nobody was mad at anybody. It just happened. Whiskey had more to do with it than anything else. It's peaceable now. Twenty-eight years makes a whole lot of difference. But anyhow there will always be a hardness. It will keep as long as time lasts. It's pretty hard for kinfolks to forget.

Son Killed

"My boy, Arnie, was killed at Spring Fork of Quicksand on account of it. He was workin' on a loggin' job. Sheriff Vanderpool and Constable Bill Lovins came by and asked him to go along to arrest a man for a killin'. They got him and was bringin' him down the creek, when they met Fred Day. Bill Lovins knew my boy and Day had had some trouble, and he said to my boy: 'Arnie, you'd better step off. You might have trouble with Fred.'

"My boy said, 'You don't mean me to run, do you?'

"So when the constable saw that Arnie wouldn't step off he went in front and told Fred to behave himself. Fred pulled his gun and shot Arnie twice. Arnie fired five shots. Both were killed. As my boy was dying he said: 'He's kilt me and kilt me for nothin'. That come down through kinfolks from the trouble at Clayhole Votin' house."

It was time to go. Ed Davis walked with his visitor to the gate. "I hope you good luck on the way," he said.

P.S. - After the election results of November 1921, were counted, it was found that Breathitt County had elected its first Republican Judge (James L. Little), Republican Sheriff (John L. Caudill), and Republican Jailer (Joe Lovely) in over fifty years. For this to have happened in such a highly Democratic county as Breathitt, there must have been some strong and demanding campaigning on that election day of long ago. Maybe this gives an added insight on just why the troubles at Clayhole developed. -- Editor.