This War on Coal/Friends of Coal crap and the fight against the EPA confuses the heck out of me. I guess because what they are preaching ain't the truth. Just a bunch of companies that have some vested interest in what's left in the ground trying to get to it and take advantage of us again.
I don't understand it. We lived this and this wonderful life in coal is BS. It was feast or famine when it was good!! Maybe for a few they got something out of it, but it was terrible as steady employment. Never was enough employment for everyone. Sharing a link for a brief history lesson!!! Sounds real familiar that nothing has changed. Even though we got some of the severance taxes implemented by some states, it was too little, too late and they kept dickering with it...they didn't pay what they should have. Those severance taxes should have been retroactive. Still cost us more to have that coal dug just in the bad health we suffer from it.
PAST time to diversify the economy. Just diversify. Stop putting all our eggs in a coal bucket and burying us for the coal. Below is part one of a two part series. Here is the link for both Appalachia: Poor People, Rich Land #WaronCoal #AppalachianHistory
Showing posts with label Appalachian History. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Appalachian History. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2016
Sunday, September 13, 2015
The Legend of Rabbit Martin Part 3
For Part 1 CLICK HERE For Part 2 CLICK HERE
This is Part 3 of the Legend of Rabbit Martin series. Starting with the article from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph Thursday December 31, 1970 by Mike Stater. Gives the names of all those involved and a timeline. The newspaper was kept by my family because one of the top stories for 1970 also included the death of my former father-in-law in a train derailment.
Sensational $300,000 Clyborne Theft Is Area Top Story
"The Clyborne case begun with the robbery on Jan. 5 and continued throughout the year with various arrests, the trials of the six persons arrested in connection with the theft and the sensational September escape of "Rabbit" Martin and five others from the Mercer County jail following Martin's conviction.
The robbery took place while Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Clyborne, wealthy coal operators, were dining out. Their Liberty Street home was burglarized of $300,000 cash, all in crisp, new $100 bills, a portable television and a .38 caliber pistol.
Clyborne said he was unaware the money was being kept in the house but his wife admitted to keeping it and said she had saved the cash from "liquefied dividends" of coal properties of which she was a stockholder.
On Feb. 10, the first arrests were made in connection with the heist. Roy Dwight Perdue, a 54 year old former Bluefield jewelry and watch repair store operator, and his 45 year old companion Betty Louise Powell, were arrested at the Powell woman's home on Highland Ave. Perdue was held for grand jury action on charges of receiving stolen funds, specifically $65,000 in the robbery. The Powell women was freed on $1,000 bond.
The third and fourth arrests were made of Feb. 28. Rufus Raymond Hampton, 30, of Bluefield, and Mary Ann Byrd of Bluefield, VA were arrested in Tazewell County, Va. and the pair was transferred to a Washington County, Va., jail where they remained until the trials began.
W. T. (Bill) Christian, 50, owner of the Bluefield Seat Cover Center, was the fifth person arrested in the case. He was charged with receiving stolen goods, $5,000, a TV, some jewelry and a pistol, and was released on $50,000 bond.
William "Rabbit" Martin was the sixth suspect arrested on March 2. The 41 year old Bluefielder surrendered at the state police headquarters in Princeton after he said he learned he was being sought. On March 11, Martin and Christian were held for the April term of the grand jury. Martin was charged with breaking and entering and Hampton and the Byrd woman were charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Martin's bond, originally $100,000, was reduced to $35,000 on March 17.
Martin went on trial May 19. The jury failed to reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared. During his trial, Mercer County Prosecuting Attorney David Knight maintained that there was another person involved in the theft, Ira Mathena, who had died prior to the trial.
Martin, Hampton and Mathena were charged with the actual robbery. Hampton who admitted to the robbery, was the key witness for the prosecution, and Martin's family, who swore he was home on the night of the theft, were the key defense witnesses. Martin's trial was rescheduled for August.
None of the money has been recovered. On May 24, Ira Mathena's body was ordered exhumed because officials believed some of the stolen money might have been in his grave. It wasn't.
Martin was convicted in his second trial in August. Hampton was again the key witness but the prosecution added strength to his testimony with four other witnesses who supported Hampton. Hampton, in the first trial, was accused of having a reputation of not telling the truth.
On Sept. 9 Hampton was sentenced to one to 25 years after he declared his guilt in the case. The Bird woman, who also declared her guilt, was referred to the probation officers.
The next day, Perdue was convicted and on Sept. 18 Martin was sentenced to life imprisonment as a habitual criminal. Perdue was later sentenced one to 10 years.
Martin, along with five others, escaped from the Mercer County jail on September 19. Others with him were Ronald Williams, Eugene Cole, Michael Kade, Otis Vest and Clayton Carraway. All were captured within a week except Martin, who eluded police until October 10 when he was captured in Parkersburg and taken to the state penitentiary at Moundsville.
The jailbreak prompted Mercer County Sheriff Wintfrey Shrewsbury to set up new rules at the jail to tighten jail security. An investigation of the jailbreak was conducted and that probe was culminated on Oct. 8 when nine persons were indicted in connection with the break. Martin and Cole were indicted on felony charges of using force and violence. Others indicted were Jacob Handy, Dewey Baskin, Roy Hall and Anita Howard.
Handy was sentenced to one to 10 years on charges of smuggling Martin a gun in the jail break and the Howard woman, who married Handy the day prior to the sentencing, was sentenced to 1-10 after she pleaded guilty to falsely testifying in Martin's second trial.
A mistrial was also declared in Christian's case on Nov. 21, He'll be tried again Jan. 15. " Christian would die shortly after that so I'm not sure if he was convicted or not.
This was the reporting for the top stories of 1970 when this all began. One of the things to note was how many business owners were involved in this. Many were in the fencing game and actually competed with one another. The money the law confiscated from these people were from other scams and robberies not the Clyborne robbery. In Rabbit Martin's world, at that time so many were connected...it was I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.
I wish I had Rabbit Martin's journals he wrote while in the jail. I remember some notes were his anger over the testimony. When I asked him who were the people that helped in his escape. He said they were people who very good friends and knew the true story. He regretted they had to pay for it.
One of the journals related to how he was treated after his captured. Jailer's were so afraid of him they would scoot his tray to him by pushing it with a broom. He was in solitary a LONG time.
Now I heard the story I'm about to relate from two people...Rabbit Martin and his second wife, Martha Hampton Martin.
As I related before, I met Rabbit Martin through my ex husband. Several years after his release from prison. We spent time with Rabbit and Martha as couples going out together. Martha and I actually went to see the Chippendale dancers together. Rabbit Martin gave each of us $100 in one dollar bills to make sure we had a good time. AND WE DID!!
My ex husband asked Rabbit Martin to be his best man at our wedding. He couldn't because Martha and he were getting married the same day as we were. And we didn't have a dual ceremony.
Rabbit Martin kept alluding to he was set up and the Hampton's did it. It was a betrayal that he didn't like to think nor talk about. The Hamptons and Rabbit Martin were once very close. But it was Martha that told me how this betrayal played out. Her ex husband was Robert "Bob" Hampton. They owned a couple of produce markets in Bluefield. Martha told me that Rufus Raymond Hampton was kin to her ex husband and was hired to finger Rabbit Martin in the robbery. It was a power play but also because she was having an affair with Rabbit Martin at the time of the Clyborne robbery.
Martha told me that Rabbit was gaining larger jobs and fencing jobs eating into other's profits. He was trusted more, was efficient and careful about what he did. A couple of other interested parties went in on this scheme to set Rabbit Martin up. She never said exactly who, but declared she knew them all and all their dirty little secrets.
Rabbit Martin in his interview with Barbara Hawkins, said, "A lot of people didn't tell the truth and some who knew the truth wouldn't speak up...some witnesses changed their testimony from the first trial to the second one...I was fighting one person's testimony. They had no material evidence against me, just the testimony of one man....When it came down to it in court, it was a matter of who was the best liar...who told the best lies to the jury."
Rabbit Martin never talked about nor ratted out the system he worked under. He never said anywhere in his testimony about the other jobs he did. Nor did he ever bring that into play for his defense. When you look at the records he tried to prove his innocence by relying on facts of the events of that night. He worked tirelessly in prison trying to prove his innocence.
The prisoners first had 7 demands when they took over the prison.
1. Investigation of all the circumstances in the death of Guard Quilliams the previous year. Rabbit Martin said they had the wrong person charged.
2. Ten cells in basement be removed. They had been used for solitary confinement. It was damp and months down there the prisoners would die of health problems like pneumonia.
3. Rules and regulations for prisoners, and rules and regulations for guards, be all written, and enforced with "equal justice to all men".
4. Whenever a newsman visits a prison, and wants to talk to a prisoner, and prisoner wants to talk to him, should be allowed.
5. Have inmate representative on prison "police court".
6. Seek to get WV Penitentiary accredited by American Corrections Association.
7. Indicted inmates should be provided an attorney.
Then they came back with 15 more.
1. Amnesty for all of those involved in present disturbance.
2. To resolve issue of guard ignoring convicts claim they are sick: provide a box and forms convicts may put into it, with the doctor only one having a key.
3. Meals brought in for maximum security section, to be served on a table.
4. Remove screen around area designed to protect convicts who think their lives are threatened. (New remodel plan includes a section for "vulnerables" and when that is ready, screen will go up.)
5. Unaccounted for
6. Clean sheets, and clean clothes for the exercised men.
7. Permit inmates to carry any amount of cash. (at present they are limited to $1 in cash plus any amount of prison scrip good at official prison store)
8. Profits from prison store go into inmate's fund. Lately this was used to buy a color TV. Now, they want this fund to be used instead for benefit of individuals with problems. "It's their money, they say where it goes," said Yost.
9. Governor to appoint an independent committee to look into the problems in prison; and any prisoner's mail to such committee not to be censored.
10. Guards carrying firearms not to be permitted to associate with general prison population.
11. Maximum security prisoners to be permitted to attend Sunday church services in the walls.
12. Families of convicts, to be able to inquire at any time about health and welfare of such convict, and get in touch with him. (The governor set up a toll free line to Charleston so that his office could check up on where that prisoner was.)
13. A person requested by a convict to represent or counsel him, shall be permitted to see said convict.
14. Visiting rights not to be cancelled because of the uprising.
There was one more not recorded. All were agreed to by the governor but two..amnesty for those involved and the increase in the money carried.
Another smaller riot broke back out, when they tried to remove the body of the prisoner killed in the riots but was quickly quelled.
After he was released there many times Rabbit Martin was followed wherever he went. Once he asked to borrow our car and my ex without thinking about it just gave him the keys. Then all the sudden my ex sprinted out the door before Rabbit could leave so he could take out a gun that was in the glove compartment. Felons are not to have guns in their possession.
Right after Rabbit Martin left, a black sedan that had been parked down the street followed him. When he returned with the car and picked up his own, there was the same black sedan following him again. He called it, "his shadow". Who ever it was following him, would disappear from time to time and then show back up. He was always careful not to do anything to be put back in prison.
He divorced his first wife and married Martha.
Martha and Rabbit Martin didn't exactly have a good marriage. Not that I'm one to talk or pass judgement but they fought a lot. Martha was always getting into trouble especially when she drank and she drank a lot. She was tough as nails. She could drive a tractor-trailer before they were "cushy-poo" automatics and fight you like a man. He tried to guard her from her self and she was hard to guard. He called her the "wild cat" and once described her as the "only wild cat" he never wanted to take on.
One early morning my ex answered the phone a voice said, "COME GET ME!" He didn't recognize the voice and said, "Well first, who in the hell is this?" The voice said loud enough I could hear it, "It's Rabbit Martin, now Come GET ME!" My ex, said, "Well now I know who it is, where the hell am I suppose to come get you?" He said, "Come to the house, Martha has gotten drunk and lost the damn car."
Martha had been out the night before drinking heavily while he was working and did not know what happened to the car. She said she hitchhiked home and thought it was in a ditch. She had no idea where all she had been. So for 3 hours my ex and Rabbit Martin drove around the county to every bar and watering hole looking for their car. They were driving down 460 and happened to notice a tow truck way up on a hill in a very steep driveway...and there was the car. She had somehow driven up this really long uphill driveway and in trying to turn around ran over into the yard backed the car against a tree. She had spun the tires to shreds off the car and didn't remember it.
Every time we would meet Rabbit Martin there would be stories of another incident and another and another concerning Martha. Time marches on and I went back to school, work, kids. Didn't see much of them. Once he stopped by the house to ask my husband to ride with him on a trip. He was then driving his own semi truck. Said he was working on buying more to start his own company.
I remember that day well. Rabbit Martin had just went by the dentist to pick up a partial they had made to replace his front teeth. He just picked them up but didn't have time to have it adjusted. He put them on there at the house and they stuck out like Bug's Bunny's front teeth, making him look like a real Rabbit. We all busted out laughing. He just took them off and stuck them back in his shirt pocket. He later had them adjusted to look like normal teeth.
My ex when he got back from that ride, said he'd never ride with Rabbit Martin again. " When he drives he doesn't use the brakes...he uses the horn!" I think he finally put a few trucks of his own on the road and start his own small company. He worked hard for many years all the time. In the article with Barbara Hawkins he mentions it and that he lost it all when he and Martha were divorcing. She died before the divorce was final and he was left with bills and alone.
After my ex and I divorced I really lost all contact. My brother worked with him from time to time. I did run into him once and that's how I found out where his personal papers went. I understand in the end he found love again and remarried. I'm glad because he definitely deserved it.
Barbara Hawkins interviewed the former prosecutor and Rabbit Martin's attorney in her article and really it's a good description of Rabbit Martin.
"I think he did it." We just don't know what he did with the money." said the former prosecutor. (David Knight)
There are a lot of theories, but it was never found." Knight said Martin was a "tough character" and his hearings were "wild and woolly" like you read about in the old days. "There was one time when he fought with four troopers in the hallway, knocked out the glass in a door going into the room, and had to be handcuffed to a railing before we could start the hearing," Knight said.
Martin's defense attorney, Robert E. Holroyd, has a vivid memory of that incident also.
"Martin was always fighting with the police. That time, when Martin had pulled away from the troopers, I went over to him to tell him to calm down because he wasn't helping his case by carrying on like that. He turned around toward me and somehow he got hold of my necktie. About the time he grabbed it, the troopers came after him again, and there I was on the TV news with Rabbit Martin hanging his own lawyer by his own necktie..."
Dent said that was the only time he ever saw Martin be violent. "He threw a fit," said the magistrate. Dent said Martin - who prided himself on being a hell raiser - usually got into a fight every time he was brought to court for a hearing."
(There was a journal entry that explained this behavior. Rabbit Martin thought the charges were trumped up and they were railroading him. His thinking was he was not going to make it easy on them to try him for this crime, he didn't do.)
"Oddly enough, all three men say they liked Rabbit Martin. Holroyd said, "He could be rough when he wanted to be, but basically it was a defense mechanism to deal with his environment in the underworld. I always thought underneath all that tough guy stuff was a gentle person. He was personable--- everybody liked him."
Holroyd said he learned during the months they spent preparing for the trial that Martin "had a lot of friends, people who wanted to come to his assistance ---there were a lot of little people out there who loved him. He became sort of a cult hero to one class of people because they saw him as the man who had taken on a coal baron and got his money. "
I remember seeing where someone had vandalized billboards with spray paint all around the county, when he was on the lamb, as a message in support of Rabbit Martin. They had written, "Run Rabbit Run!" in bright red paint.
Holroyd also described him as "extremely intelligent"' He's the type of man with the proper upbringing and the chance for an education, could have made a place for himself in the business world. "
William T. "Rabbit the Legend" Martin died October 7, 2013 at the age of 84. His kind of world is over but the Legend does live on for those of us who remember him.
Thus is my tale of the Legend of Rabbit Martin. It's just story of a very remarkable person I along with many others have been blessed to cross paths with and know in this old world.
This is Part 3 of the Legend of Rabbit Martin series. Starting with the article from the Bluefield Daily Telegraph Thursday December 31, 1970 by Mike Stater. Gives the names of all those involved and a timeline. The newspaper was kept by my family because one of the top stories for 1970 also included the death of my former father-in-law in a train derailment.
Sensational $300,000 Clyborne Theft Is Area Top Story
"The Clyborne case begun with the robbery on Jan. 5 and continued throughout the year with various arrests, the trials of the six persons arrested in connection with the theft and the sensational September escape of "Rabbit" Martin and five others from the Mercer County jail following Martin's conviction.
The robbery took place while Mr. and Mrs. C.A. Clyborne, wealthy coal operators, were dining out. Their Liberty Street home was burglarized of $300,000 cash, all in crisp, new $100 bills, a portable television and a .38 caliber pistol.
Clyborne said he was unaware the money was being kept in the house but his wife admitted to keeping it and said she had saved the cash from "liquefied dividends" of coal properties of which she was a stockholder.
On Feb. 10, the first arrests were made in connection with the heist. Roy Dwight Perdue, a 54 year old former Bluefield jewelry and watch repair store operator, and his 45 year old companion Betty Louise Powell, were arrested at the Powell woman's home on Highland Ave. Perdue was held for grand jury action on charges of receiving stolen funds, specifically $65,000 in the robbery. The Powell women was freed on $1,000 bond.
The third and fourth arrests were made of Feb. 28. Rufus Raymond Hampton, 30, of Bluefield, and Mary Ann Byrd of Bluefield, VA were arrested in Tazewell County, Va. and the pair was transferred to a Washington County, Va., jail where they remained until the trials began.
W. T. (Bill) Christian, 50, owner of the Bluefield Seat Cover Center, was the fifth person arrested in the case. He was charged with receiving stolen goods, $5,000, a TV, some jewelry and a pistol, and was released on $50,000 bond.
William "Rabbit" Martin was the sixth suspect arrested on March 2. The 41 year old Bluefielder surrendered at the state police headquarters in Princeton after he said he learned he was being sought. On March 11, Martin and Christian were held for the April term of the grand jury. Martin was charged with breaking and entering and Hampton and the Byrd woman were charged with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Martin's bond, originally $100,000, was reduced to $35,000 on March 17.
Martin went on trial May 19. The jury failed to reach a verdict and a mistrial was declared. During his trial, Mercer County Prosecuting Attorney David Knight maintained that there was another person involved in the theft, Ira Mathena, who had died prior to the trial.
Martin, Hampton and Mathena were charged with the actual robbery. Hampton who admitted to the robbery, was the key witness for the prosecution, and Martin's family, who swore he was home on the night of the theft, were the key defense witnesses. Martin's trial was rescheduled for August.
None of the money has been recovered. On May 24, Ira Mathena's body was ordered exhumed because officials believed some of the stolen money might have been in his grave. It wasn't.
Martin was convicted in his second trial in August. Hampton was again the key witness but the prosecution added strength to his testimony with four other witnesses who supported Hampton. Hampton, in the first trial, was accused of having a reputation of not telling the truth.
On Sept. 9 Hampton was sentenced to one to 25 years after he declared his guilt in the case. The Bird woman, who also declared her guilt, was referred to the probation officers.
The next day, Perdue was convicted and on Sept. 18 Martin was sentenced to life imprisonment as a habitual criminal. Perdue was later sentenced one to 10 years.
Martin, along with five others, escaped from the Mercer County jail on September 19. Others with him were Ronald Williams, Eugene Cole, Michael Kade, Otis Vest and Clayton Carraway. All were captured within a week except Martin, who eluded police until October 10 when he was captured in Parkersburg and taken to the state penitentiary at Moundsville.
The jailbreak prompted Mercer County Sheriff Wintfrey Shrewsbury to set up new rules at the jail to tighten jail security. An investigation of the jailbreak was conducted and that probe was culminated on Oct. 8 when nine persons were indicted in connection with the break. Martin and Cole were indicted on felony charges of using force and violence. Others indicted were Jacob Handy, Dewey Baskin, Roy Hall and Anita Howard.
Handy was sentenced to one to 10 years on charges of smuggling Martin a gun in the jail break and the Howard woman, who married Handy the day prior to the sentencing, was sentenced to 1-10 after she pleaded guilty to falsely testifying in Martin's second trial.
A mistrial was also declared in Christian's case on Nov. 21, He'll be tried again Jan. 15. " Christian would die shortly after that so I'm not sure if he was convicted or not.
This was the reporting for the top stories of 1970 when this all began. One of the things to note was how many business owners were involved in this. Many were in the fencing game and actually competed with one another. The money the law confiscated from these people were from other scams and robberies not the Clyborne robbery. In Rabbit Martin's world, at that time so many were connected...it was I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine.
I wish I had Rabbit Martin's journals he wrote while in the jail. I remember some notes were his anger over the testimony. When I asked him who were the people that helped in his escape. He said they were people who very good friends and knew the true story. He regretted they had to pay for it.
One of the journals related to how he was treated after his captured. Jailer's were so afraid of him they would scoot his tray to him by pushing it with a broom. He was in solitary a LONG time.
Did He or Did He Not Do It?
As I related before, I met Rabbit Martin through my ex husband. Several years after his release from prison. We spent time with Rabbit and Martha as couples going out together. Martha and I actually went to see the Chippendale dancers together. Rabbit Martin gave each of us $100 in one dollar bills to make sure we had a good time. AND WE DID!!
My ex husband asked Rabbit Martin to be his best man at our wedding. He couldn't because Martha and he were getting married the same day as we were. And we didn't have a dual ceremony.
Rabbit Martin kept alluding to he was set up and the Hampton's did it. It was a betrayal that he didn't like to think nor talk about. The Hamptons and Rabbit Martin were once very close. But it was Martha that told me how this betrayal played out. Her ex husband was Robert "Bob" Hampton. They owned a couple of produce markets in Bluefield. Martha told me that Rufus Raymond Hampton was kin to her ex husband and was hired to finger Rabbit Martin in the robbery. It was a power play but also because she was having an affair with Rabbit Martin at the time of the Clyborne robbery.
Martha told me that Rabbit was gaining larger jobs and fencing jobs eating into other's profits. He was trusted more, was efficient and careful about what he did. A couple of other interested parties went in on this scheme to set Rabbit Martin up. She never said exactly who, but declared she knew them all and all their dirty little secrets.
Rabbit Martin in his interview with Barbara Hawkins, said, "A lot of people didn't tell the truth and some who knew the truth wouldn't speak up...some witnesses changed their testimony from the first trial to the second one...I was fighting one person's testimony. They had no material evidence against me, just the testimony of one man....When it came down to it in court, it was a matter of who was the best liar...who told the best lies to the jury."
Rabbit Martin never talked about nor ratted out the system he worked under. He never said anywhere in his testimony about the other jobs he did. Nor did he ever bring that into play for his defense. When you look at the records he tried to prove his innocence by relying on facts of the events of that night. He worked tirelessly in prison trying to prove his innocence.
I remember in those boxes he left at the house were full of letters of people he contacted. They were also full of letters and cases not his own. As he became a jail house lawyer to get himself out of jail, in the process he helped other prisoners to be released too.
One of the ways he tried to prove his innocence was to verify his alibi and taking apart the testimony of witnesses. A friend of Raymond Hampton's had testified that Rabbit Martin had picked up Raymond Hampton the day of the robbery. Rabbit maintained he and Raymond Hampton had been together but it was the day before the robbery not the day of. He tried to prove it.
In his role as taxi driver, Martin said he and Hampton had driven a soldier from Bluefield to Ft. Meade, Md. , on the day before the Clyborne robbery. Rabbit said the soldier paid him by check. When he attempted to contact the serviceman to testify in the trial, he was out of the country. Later, the man was killed. So the next step was to attempt to trace the check, which he said was cashed at the Flat Top National bank. They didn't have any records there. So he contacted the branch bank of where it was from on the military base and they refused to give him any information. He said after the trip to Ft. Meade he returned home, spent the day there and went to a local bar for a short time on the day of the robbery. But no one believed the witnesses that saw him at the bar, nor did they believe his family's testimony.
When he had exhausted all of the avenues he could, he found a way to appeal a former conviction from 1948 that was part of his habitual criminal record that sent him to prison for life. According to him he got the charges back to court on appeal on a technicality. They basically had to reverse the charges and release him in this trial because all the witnesses had already died. Thus reversing his habitual criminal record. His attorney Edwin Wiley got him released on that appeal. Martin's motivation was his prison admittance slip that he carried even when I met him, in his wallet. It said "Discharge date: Via death". He was determined not to die in prison for something he did not do.
During the trials, representatives from the Clyborne's insurance company were there during all his trials. He said from time to time in prison, he would have letters and visits from the insurance company still trying to find the money which was never found. He told me, as he told them, he thought that money never existed in the first place. He said the insurance folks always balked at that and accused him of lying about it.
He wasn't going to tell the insurance company how he knew this or how the scheme worked. To do so would expose him to other criminal charges of other events with other clients that has the same insurance company. That was not going to happen. If the money did really exist, he said he thought it was probably part of the scam like so many he had been part of before. (For how that worked you have to read Part 2)
My ex husband painted Rabbit Martin's car at our house. My ex used to work for a body shop. It was beautiful when he finished it. A midnight blue Oldsmobile.
Rabbit Martin went out and purchased a custom made license tag for this car after it was finished. In West Virginia you only have one license plate on the back of the car. The front plate could have whatever you wanted painted on it. He had it painted with "$300,000 Rabbit". He said he didn't want the insurance company and those following him who thought he still had that money to bother anyone else.
His time in prison was just as exciting as his time outside. He said he had a hard time of it for about the first year and was in many fights with other prisoners. Rabbit said he settled down after a time, did his work and studied law books to pass the time, trying to find a legal way out.
One of the stories I remember vividly was when he said he became a trustee of the prison. He was a truck driver and as a trustee he would go pick up a load of coal to be delivered to the prison. He would also sometimes deliver coal to a guard or two. For those trips he was rewarded ....they took him to a brothel. He described this one brothel that had a chalkboard at the door listing the prices of all the services. I was sitting in a bar with my ex, Rabbit and Martha when he described this. Martha laughed and said, "I don't care about the prices...what was total on all ya got?" He actually turned red a bit embarrassed and I never saw him embarrassed again.
Moundsville Prison conditions were notoriously awful. In March 1973, a prison riot broke out in which Governor Arch Moore and his assistant Norman Yost actually went to the prison to negotiate the release of five guards from the prisoners. The person negotiating on behalf of the prisoners.......Rabbit Martin. Thus that picture in his box I saw of him meeting with the Governor Arch Moore shaking his hand surrounded by prisoners with state police guns trained on them.
The riot lasted 24 hours and resulted in one death of an inmate...killed by the inmates as a snitch Rabbit Martin said. Rabbit Martin said he was not involved at first but it started to get ugly and some of the inmates encouraged him to participate. His name was never mentioned in the news articles but he told me he and several others took care of the guards to ensure they were not going to get hurt and the guards trusted him.
One of the ways he tried to prove his innocence was to verify his alibi and taking apart the testimony of witnesses. A friend of Raymond Hampton's had testified that Rabbit Martin had picked up Raymond Hampton the day of the robbery. Rabbit maintained he and Raymond Hampton had been together but it was the day before the robbery not the day of. He tried to prove it.
In his role as taxi driver, Martin said he and Hampton had driven a soldier from Bluefield to Ft. Meade, Md. , on the day before the Clyborne robbery. Rabbit said the soldier paid him by check. When he attempted to contact the serviceman to testify in the trial, he was out of the country. Later, the man was killed. So the next step was to attempt to trace the check, which he said was cashed at the Flat Top National bank. They didn't have any records there. So he contacted the branch bank of where it was from on the military base and they refused to give him any information. He said after the trip to Ft. Meade he returned home, spent the day there and went to a local bar for a short time on the day of the robbery. But no one believed the witnesses that saw him at the bar, nor did they believe his family's testimony.
When he had exhausted all of the avenues he could, he found a way to appeal a former conviction from 1948 that was part of his habitual criminal record that sent him to prison for life. According to him he got the charges back to court on appeal on a technicality. They basically had to reverse the charges and release him in this trial because all the witnesses had already died. Thus reversing his habitual criminal record. His attorney Edwin Wiley got him released on that appeal. Martin's motivation was his prison admittance slip that he carried even when I met him, in his wallet. It said "Discharge date: Via death". He was determined not to die in prison for something he did not do.
During the trials, representatives from the Clyborne's insurance company were there during all his trials. He said from time to time in prison, he would have letters and visits from the insurance company still trying to find the money which was never found. He told me, as he told them, he thought that money never existed in the first place. He said the insurance folks always balked at that and accused him of lying about it.
He wasn't going to tell the insurance company how he knew this or how the scheme worked. To do so would expose him to other criminal charges of other events with other clients that has the same insurance company. That was not going to happen. If the money did really exist, he said he thought it was probably part of the scam like so many he had been part of before. (For how that worked you have to read Part 2)
My ex husband painted Rabbit Martin's car at our house. My ex used to work for a body shop. It was beautiful when he finished it. A midnight blue Oldsmobile.
Rabbit Martin went out and purchased a custom made license tag for this car after it was finished. In West Virginia you only have one license plate on the back of the car. The front plate could have whatever you wanted painted on it. He had it painted with "$300,000 Rabbit". He said he didn't want the insurance company and those following him who thought he still had that money to bother anyone else.
Moundsville Prison Stories
His time in prison was just as exciting as his time outside. He said he had a hard time of it for about the first year and was in many fights with other prisoners. Rabbit said he settled down after a time, did his work and studied law books to pass the time, trying to find a legal way out.
One of the stories I remember vividly was when he said he became a trustee of the prison. He was a truck driver and as a trustee he would go pick up a load of coal to be delivered to the prison. He would also sometimes deliver coal to a guard or two. For those trips he was rewarded ....they took him to a brothel. He described this one brothel that had a chalkboard at the door listing the prices of all the services. I was sitting in a bar with my ex, Rabbit and Martha when he described this. Martha laughed and said, "I don't care about the prices...what was total on all ya got?" He actually turned red a bit embarrassed and I never saw him embarrassed again.
Moundsville Prison conditions were notoriously awful. In March 1973, a prison riot broke out in which Governor Arch Moore and his assistant Norman Yost actually went to the prison to negotiate the release of five guards from the prisoners. The person negotiating on behalf of the prisoners.......Rabbit Martin. Thus that picture in his box I saw of him meeting with the Governor Arch Moore shaking his hand surrounded by prisoners with state police guns trained on them.
The riot lasted 24 hours and resulted in one death of an inmate...killed by the inmates as a snitch Rabbit Martin said. Rabbit Martin said he was not involved at first but it started to get ugly and some of the inmates encouraged him to participate. His name was never mentioned in the news articles but he told me he and several others took care of the guards to ensure they were not going to get hurt and the guards trusted him.
The prisoners first had 7 demands when they took over the prison.
1. Investigation of all the circumstances in the death of Guard Quilliams the previous year. Rabbit Martin said they had the wrong person charged.
2. Ten cells in basement be removed. They had been used for solitary confinement. It was damp and months down there the prisoners would die of health problems like pneumonia.
3. Rules and regulations for prisoners, and rules and regulations for guards, be all written, and enforced with "equal justice to all men".
4. Whenever a newsman visits a prison, and wants to talk to a prisoner, and prisoner wants to talk to him, should be allowed.
5. Have inmate representative on prison "police court".
6. Seek to get WV Penitentiary accredited by American Corrections Association.
7. Indicted inmates should be provided an attorney.
Then they came back with 15 more.
1. Amnesty for all of those involved in present disturbance.
2. To resolve issue of guard ignoring convicts claim they are sick: provide a box and forms convicts may put into it, with the doctor only one having a key.
3. Meals brought in for maximum security section, to be served on a table.
4. Remove screen around area designed to protect convicts who think their lives are threatened. (New remodel plan includes a section for "vulnerables" and when that is ready, screen will go up.)
5. Unaccounted for
6. Clean sheets, and clean clothes for the exercised men.
7. Permit inmates to carry any amount of cash. (at present they are limited to $1 in cash plus any amount of prison scrip good at official prison store)
8. Profits from prison store go into inmate's fund. Lately this was used to buy a color TV. Now, they want this fund to be used instead for benefit of individuals with problems. "It's their money, they say where it goes," said Yost.
9. Governor to appoint an independent committee to look into the problems in prison; and any prisoner's mail to such committee not to be censored.
10. Guards carrying firearms not to be permitted to associate with general prison population.
11. Maximum security prisoners to be permitted to attend Sunday church services in the walls.
12. Families of convicts, to be able to inquire at any time about health and welfare of such convict, and get in touch with him. (The governor set up a toll free line to Charleston so that his office could check up on where that prisoner was.)
13. A person requested by a convict to represent or counsel him, shall be permitted to see said convict.
14. Visiting rights not to be cancelled because of the uprising.
There was one more not recorded. All were agreed to by the governor but two..amnesty for those involved and the increase in the money carried.
Another smaller riot broke back out, when they tried to remove the body of the prisoner killed in the riots but was quickly quelled.
After he was released there many times Rabbit Martin was followed wherever he went. Once he asked to borrow our car and my ex without thinking about it just gave him the keys. Then all the sudden my ex sprinted out the door before Rabbit could leave so he could take out a gun that was in the glove compartment. Felons are not to have guns in their possession.
Right after Rabbit Martin left, a black sedan that had been parked down the street followed him. When he returned with the car and picked up his own, there was the same black sedan following him again. He called it, "his shadow". Who ever it was following him, would disappear from time to time and then show back up. He was always careful not to do anything to be put back in prison.
He divorced his first wife and married Martha.
Martha and Rabbit Martin didn't exactly have a good marriage. Not that I'm one to talk or pass judgement but they fought a lot. Martha was always getting into trouble especially when she drank and she drank a lot. She was tough as nails. She could drive a tractor-trailer before they were "cushy-poo" automatics and fight you like a man. He tried to guard her from her self and she was hard to guard. He called her the "wild cat" and once described her as the "only wild cat" he never wanted to take on.One early morning my ex answered the phone a voice said, "COME GET ME!" He didn't recognize the voice and said, "Well first, who in the hell is this?" The voice said loud enough I could hear it, "It's Rabbit Martin, now Come GET ME!" My ex, said, "Well now I know who it is, where the hell am I suppose to come get you?" He said, "Come to the house, Martha has gotten drunk and lost the damn car."
Martha had been out the night before drinking heavily while he was working and did not know what happened to the car. She said she hitchhiked home and thought it was in a ditch. She had no idea where all she had been. So for 3 hours my ex and Rabbit Martin drove around the county to every bar and watering hole looking for their car. They were driving down 460 and happened to notice a tow truck way up on a hill in a very steep driveway...and there was the car. She had somehow driven up this really long uphill driveway and in trying to turn around ran over into the yard backed the car against a tree. She had spun the tires to shreds off the car and didn't remember it.
Every time we would meet Rabbit Martin there would be stories of another incident and another and another concerning Martha. Time marches on and I went back to school, work, kids. Didn't see much of them. Once he stopped by the house to ask my husband to ride with him on a trip. He was then driving his own semi truck. Said he was working on buying more to start his own company.
I remember that day well. Rabbit Martin had just went by the dentist to pick up a partial they had made to replace his front teeth. He just picked them up but didn't have time to have it adjusted. He put them on there at the house and they stuck out like Bug's Bunny's front teeth, making him look like a real Rabbit. We all busted out laughing. He just took them off and stuck them back in his shirt pocket. He later had them adjusted to look like normal teeth.
My ex when he got back from that ride, said he'd never ride with Rabbit Martin again. " When he drives he doesn't use the brakes...he uses the horn!" I think he finally put a few trucks of his own on the road and start his own small company. He worked hard for many years all the time. In the article with Barbara Hawkins he mentions it and that he lost it all when he and Martha were divorcing. She died before the divorce was final and he was left with bills and alone.
After my ex and I divorced I really lost all contact. My brother worked with him from time to time. I did run into him once and that's how I found out where his personal papers went. I understand in the end he found love again and remarried. I'm glad because he definitely deserved it.
Barbara Hawkins interviewed the former prosecutor and Rabbit Martin's attorney in her article and really it's a good description of Rabbit Martin.
"I think he did it." We just don't know what he did with the money." said the former prosecutor. (David Knight)
There are a lot of theories, but it was never found." Knight said Martin was a "tough character" and his hearings were "wild and woolly" like you read about in the old days. "There was one time when he fought with four troopers in the hallway, knocked out the glass in a door going into the room, and had to be handcuffed to a railing before we could start the hearing," Knight said.
Martin's defense attorney, Robert E. Holroyd, has a vivid memory of that incident also.
"Martin was always fighting with the police. That time, when Martin had pulled away from the troopers, I went over to him to tell him to calm down because he wasn't helping his case by carrying on like that. He turned around toward me and somehow he got hold of my necktie. About the time he grabbed it, the troopers came after him again, and there I was on the TV news with Rabbit Martin hanging his own lawyer by his own necktie..."
Dent said that was the only time he ever saw Martin be violent. "He threw a fit," said the magistrate. Dent said Martin - who prided himself on being a hell raiser - usually got into a fight every time he was brought to court for a hearing."
(There was a journal entry that explained this behavior. Rabbit Martin thought the charges were trumped up and they were railroading him. His thinking was he was not going to make it easy on them to try him for this crime, he didn't do.)
"Oddly enough, all three men say they liked Rabbit Martin. Holroyd said, "He could be rough when he wanted to be, but basically it was a defense mechanism to deal with his environment in the underworld. I always thought underneath all that tough guy stuff was a gentle person. He was personable--- everybody liked him."
Holroyd said he learned during the months they spent preparing for the trial that Martin "had a lot of friends, people who wanted to come to his assistance ---there were a lot of little people out there who loved him. He became sort of a cult hero to one class of people because they saw him as the man who had taken on a coal baron and got his money. "
I remember seeing where someone had vandalized billboards with spray paint all around the county, when he was on the lamb, as a message in support of Rabbit Martin. They had written, "Run Rabbit Run!" in bright red paint.
Holroyd also described him as "extremely intelligent"' He's the type of man with the proper upbringing and the chance for an education, could have made a place for himself in the business world. "
William T. "Rabbit the Legend" Martin died October 7, 2013 at the age of 84. His kind of world is over but the Legend does live on for those of us who remember him.
Thus is my tale of the Legend of Rabbit Martin. It's just story of a very remarkable person I along with many others have been blessed to cross paths with and know in this old world.
A Chronology of events in the Bluefield Daily Telegraph article
Jan. 5, 1970 - The home of millionaire coal baron C.A. Clyborne, located on Liberty Street in South Bluefield, is robbed of $300,000 in $100 bills between 5:30 and 7:15 PM while Mr. and Mrs. Clyborne were out of the house. Two sets of tracks were found in the snow outside the house. Entry was made by jimmying the back door of the one story house with a crowbar or similar tool. Bluefield Police Chief A. L. Dodson said it was the largest theft ever recorded in the two Bluefields.
The money was taken from a bedroom closet that had two locks (which were broken). The money was in a grey steel strong box. Clyborne told police the money was accumulated by his wife, Queenie, from "liquidated dividends" and he was unaware it was kept in the house. He said he could "not have slept at night" if he had known it was there.
Also take were a small portable television, a .38 caliber revolver, a strong box containing the money, a pillowcase apparently used to carry the strong box and some jewelry, according to the report filed by Officer K. Pruett.
Det. Jim Dent and Sgt. H. R. Tabor dusted for fingerprints. Some fabric marking indicated gloves were worn.
Jan. 6, 1970 - Prosecuting Attorney David Knight, responding to a call for assistance by the Bluefield Police Department, sent Trooper Perry and Elwood (Shorty) Simons of the Mercer County Sheriff's Department.
The BPD report said officers obtained information that indicated 11 checks in various amounts from $812 to $20,000 had been issued to Queenie Clyborne between Jan.17, 1967, and Sept. 29, 1969. The report said, "A check with the First National Bank showed that all of these checks had been cashed and paid in new $100 bills."
The police report said a confidential informant said she saw a car parked in the vicinity occupied by a man she observed smoking a cigarette. She said after a while she saw a "tall heavy man" come out of Whitethorn Street carrying what she believed was a pillowcase with laundry in it. He went to the car and put the pillow case in the back seat and got in the front seat. She said she thought the car was a 1964 Red Pontiac similar to one a girlfriend owned.
Several leads were being checked including a report that a man and his girlfriend had used $100 bills in purchases in Bluefield and left town in a car they had bought that morning for five $100 bills and some smaller bills. The police report was signed J. Dent
Jan. 7, 1970 - C.A. Clyborne posted a $10,000 reward.
Feb. 1, 1970- A Bluefield police report indicated that on about Jan.15 a man living in Tampa, Fla. , who had frequented the Bluefield area, received a letter from Bluefield. The names were not included in the report, which said there was a clipping with the letter about the $300,000 robbery. The report said a suggestion was made in the letter that a contact would be made about the stolen money. The informant expressed interest in a reward.
The report said Warden and Perry contacted the informant and he and his wife were flown to Bluefield. Officers checked the number listed in the letter and learned it was a telephone booth in Brushfork. It was staked out. At 3 minutes until 9 p.m. a black and white Cadillac pulled up and parked right by the door to the phone booth. At 9 p.m. the phone rang and the driver, who was alone, answered the phone. Agent Warden and Sgt. Tabor listened over the phone while the informant talked with the person on the other end."
According to the police report filed by Dent, the informant identified the caller, who was quoted as saying he had $65,000 of the stolen money and wanted the informant to fence it for him at the race tracks in Tampa. The report quoted the man as saying he did not pull the job but that he knew who did. He mentioned that the money had been split three ways. (NOTE: that's only $195,000 if divided equally) He offered the informant $15,000 to fence the money for him.." the two parties agreed to recontact each other after the man in the Cadillac said he had a girlfriend write the letter for him. He gave a telephone number of a Bluefield woman's house.
The same report noted at about 12:20 PM on the afternoon of Jan. 17, William T. "Rabbit" Martin was observed by Sgt. Tabor and Officer Dent in the alley of 708 Highland Ave. Martin and the subject involved in the report were in Martin's car.
Feb. 11, 1970- Newspaper reports indicated that Ray Dwight Perdue, 54, was arrested and charged with receiving stolen goods. Bond was set at $50,000 for Perdue. None of the cash was recovered.
The police report said a confidential informant said she saw a car parked in the vicinity occupied by a man she observed smoking a cigarette. She said after a while she saw a "tall heavy man" come out of Whitethorn Street carrying what she believed was a pillowcase with laundry in it. He went to the car and put the pillow case in the back seat and got in the front seat. She said she thought the car was a 1964 Red Pontiac similar to one a girlfriend owned.
Several leads were being checked including a report that a man and his girlfriend had used $100 bills in purchases in Bluefield and left town in a car they had bought that morning for five $100 bills and some smaller bills. The police report was signed J. Dent
Jan. 7, 1970 - C.A. Clyborne posted a $10,000 reward.
Feb. 1, 1970- A Bluefield police report indicated that on about Jan.15 a man living in Tampa, Fla. , who had frequented the Bluefield area, received a letter from Bluefield. The names were not included in the report, which said there was a clipping with the letter about the $300,000 robbery. The report said a suggestion was made in the letter that a contact would be made about the stolen money. The informant expressed interest in a reward.
The report said Warden and Perry contacted the informant and he and his wife were flown to Bluefield. Officers checked the number listed in the letter and learned it was a telephone booth in Brushfork. It was staked out. At 3 minutes until 9 p.m. a black and white Cadillac pulled up and parked right by the door to the phone booth. At 9 p.m. the phone rang and the driver, who was alone, answered the phone. Agent Warden and Sgt. Tabor listened over the phone while the informant talked with the person on the other end."
According to the police report filed by Dent, the informant identified the caller, who was quoted as saying he had $65,000 of the stolen money and wanted the informant to fence it for him at the race tracks in Tampa. The report quoted the man as saying he did not pull the job but that he knew who did. He mentioned that the money had been split three ways. (NOTE: that's only $195,000 if divided equally) He offered the informant $15,000 to fence the money for him.." the two parties agreed to recontact each other after the man in the Cadillac said he had a girlfriend write the letter for him. He gave a telephone number of a Bluefield woman's house.
The same report noted at about 12:20 PM on the afternoon of Jan. 17, William T. "Rabbit" Martin was observed by Sgt. Tabor and Officer Dent in the alley of 708 Highland Ave. Martin and the subject involved in the report were in Martin's car.
Feb. 11, 1970- Newspaper reports indicated that Ray Dwight Perdue, 54, was arrested and charged with receiving stolen goods. Bond was set at $50,000 for Perdue. None of the cash was recovered.
Feb. 12, 1970- The Daily Telegraph later reported Perdue said he "knows nothing about the theft."
Feb.14, 1970 - Warrants were issued for Raymond R. Hampton and Mary Bird Hampton. Police reports indicated that Perdue had implicated Hampton.
Feb. 18, 1970 - Perdue represented by Princeton lawyer James Satterfield, was held for the April Grand Jury in a preliminary hearing on charges of receiving stolen goods amounting to $65,000. Testimony revealed that Perdue was arrested after a Tampa resident said he received a letter about $65,000 to be laundered at the Tampa race track.
Feb. 26, 1970 - Raymond Rufus Hampton, 37, of Bluefield Va. and Mary Byrd, 30, were arrested in Virginia, charged with interstate Transportation of Stolen Property. No money was recovered.
Feb. 27, 1970 - Police reports indicated Hampton said he wanted to make a statement. He was quoted in the police report as telling officers that he and Rabbit Martin and Ira Mathena had "executed the burglary of the Clyborne home...he and Martin had forced their way into the house through the rear door leading to the patio...he told about taking the gun, jewelry and money box but said they didn't know at the time exactly what was in the box. He said on the way out he picked up the portable TV. He said he waited near the house with the TV while Martin took the pillow case containing the other articles to the car. He said Martin and Mathena picked him up.
The police report said Hampton named another Bluefield man as a go-between to launder the money and said he received $3,000 from Martin and that man after he turned his cut, $65,000 back over to Martin so it could be exchanged for "safe" money. He said he went to Alexandria and Martin met him there and gave him $2,000 more.
Hampton also was quoted in the report as claiming Martin had contracted someone to kill him.
Feb. 26, 1970 - W. T. (Bill) Christian, 50, became the fifth person arrested. He was charged with receiving stolen goods and was freed on a $50,000 bond. He was represented by Joe Sanders, Jr. and denied the charge. No money was ever recovered.
March 1, 1970 - William Thurman "Rabbit" Martin Jr., 41, of Harry Street, Bluefield, was arrested on breaking and entering charges. Accompanied by the lawyer he had employed, Robert E. Holroyd of Princeton, Martin surrendered to authorities at the State Police Barracks in Princeton after learning when he returned from a trip out of town that police had a warrant for his arrest.
The Daily telegraph reported a "brief struggle" occurred when the newspaper's photographer attempted to photograph Martin as he was taken from the State Police offices. Bond was set at $100,000. No money was recovered.
March 3, 1970 - Judge Howard Jarrett reduced bond to $50,000 for Martin after Holroyd made the request, saying most murder bonds were only $5,000 to $10,000. After bond was reduced, Holroyd complained it was still too high for his client to raise the money. However, Martin was released on bond a few days later. (Courtesy of the Little people)
March 10, 1970- Martin and Christian were bound over to the Grand Jury in a preliminary hearing. The main witness for the state was Hampton, who turned state's witness.
Prior to the hearing, Martin had a skirmish with officials when a photographer attempted to take his picture. He tried to smash the camera, hit the state trooper and broke out a window in the door to the hearing room. He was handcuffed to a wooden rail throughout the hearing as a result of the fight. During the hearing Hampton said, Martin, "put a price on my head", so he agreed to testify. He said he and Martin took jewelry, a gun , a television set and the money in a locked closet. He said they were "real surprised" to find the money and it wasn't counted until they got to the car. He said they went to Christian's home and gave him the merchandise and $5,000. Hampton said the money was divided and he got $65,000 but he gave it back to Martin several days later. He said Martin was going to get it "changed" into "old" money. He said Christian was going to get it changed in Ohio. He said he actually received $3,000 which he spent. He said he later received $2,000 from Martin in Alexandria, VA. which he also spent.
March 11, 1970 - A newspaper report connected Ira Mathena to the case, reporting a witness said Martin and Mathena had "cased" the Clyborne home prior to the robbery. Mathena died of a heart attack before any criminal action was taken against him. (In a recent interview, Knight and Holroyd confirmed that Mathena's body was exhumed during the summer of 1970 as a result of reports that he was murdered, but there were no indications of foul play.)
April 9, 1970- The grand jury indicted Martin and Hampton for burglary, Perdue and Christian for receiving stolen property and Byrd for accessory after the fact.
May 18, 1970 - Martin's trial begins with Hampton as a key witness for the state. Queenie Clyborne told the jury "every penny was mine" and said she had been collecting the money for 27 years to be used for retirement.
In opening statements, Prosecuting Attorney David W. Knight told the jury Mathena drove the get-away car and the burglary was committed by Martin and Hampton. Holroyd said Martin was "innocent" and he had an alibi - he was at home with his family and worked on a car with his father -in - law during the time of the robbery.
May 21, 1970- Martin's wife, Maze, and two teenage step daughters, testified he was at home eating supper at 6:30 p.m.
May 23, 1970 - The trial ended in a hung jury after the jury deadlocked at the end of six hours of deliberation.
Summer of 1970 - Hampton entered a guilty plea to burglary and was sentenced to 1-15 years and Mary Bird Hampton was placed on probation.
August 8, 1970 - Martin's second trial started.
Aug. 14, 1970 - The jury returned with a guilty verdict five hours after starting deliberations, Knight informed Judge Jarrett he would file "information" that Martin had four prior convictions which would qualify him for a life sentence under the Habitual Offender's act.
Aug. 17, 1970- Bluefield Police Department declared the case against William T. Martin, Jr. closed.
Aug. 25, 1970 - Holroyd appealed Martin's conviction but Judge Jarrett rejected the motion.
Sept. 9, 1970 - Perdue was convicted by a jury for receiving stolen property.
Sept. 17, 1970 - Martin was sentenced to life in prison.
Sept. 18, 1970 - Just 13 hours after he had been sentenced, Martin jumped a jailer in Mercer County Jail and escaped. He had a pistol. Five other prisoners went with him, leaving Princeton in a jailer's automobile. No one was injured.
Sept. 19, 1970 - The get away car was found in Bluefield, Va.
Sept. 20, 1970 - One of the escapees, Michael Kade, surrendered to authorities near Montcalm.
Sept. 21, 1970 - Police suspect that Martin is in Bluefield. Another escapee, Eugene Cole, is captured in New Castle County, Del.
Sept. 22, 1970 - The escapee who helped Martin over come the jailer, Ronald Williams, was captured going the wrong way on a one-way street in Hagerstown, Md. (An update on Williams indicates he was serving a life sentence in Moundsville in the 1980s for the murder of a Beckley police officer when he escaped. He was accused of killing a West Virginia State trooper and an Arizona resident while on the run and is still incarcerated in Moundsville.) The fourth escapee, Clayton Caraway was also captured.
Sept. 22, 1970 - Jacob Handy of Bluefield was arrested on charges that he provided the gun that Martin used in the escape.
Sept. 22, 1970 - Perdue was convicted by a jury for Receiving Stolen Property in connection with the Clyborne robbery and sentenced to 1-10 years in prison.
Sept. 23, 1970 - Prosecutor Knight said police are "hot on the trail" of Martin.
Sept. 25, 1970 - The Daily Telegraph reported the newspaper had received information on Martin, Williams and Cole spent their first night of freedom in Pocahontas, Va. area. The following day the newspaper reported they had also been in Bluefield.
Sept. 28, 1970 - Sheriff Wintfrey (Wimpy) Shrewsbury instituted new rules at the jail to tighten security.
Sept. 30, 1970 - The Daily Telegraph reported that Martin was in Washington, D.C. two days after the escape.
Oct. 7, 1970 - Martin was captured in Parkersburg, 3 weeks, 5 hours after he escaped. Commitment papers were prepared for his admittance into the prison in Moundsville and he was taken there instead of being returned to Princeton. Parkersburg police said Martin broke into a school in their area and they were watching him. They apprehended him as he started to leave the city. They did not know who they had when they captured him after a foot chase when he wrecked his car.
Aug. 8, 1971 - Judge F. Morton Wagner decreed that Bill Christian could not be tried again on a charge of receiving stolen property due to a mistrial declared in January of that year and hung jury in November 1970.
An undated card attached to the Bluefield Police Department record book. Raymond R. Hampton is back in the medium security prison at Huttonsville after being shot while being an escapee from that institution. About $10,000 of the $300,000 has been accounted for, but the remainder has never been recovered. Rabbit Martin is now serving a life sentence at the state penitentiary in Moundsville.
December 1972 - Princeton attorney William J. Akers served as special judge and re sentenced Martin on a Supreme Court order, it was later learned that age 28, Akers was too young - by two years - to serve in the capacity as judge.
1976 - a 27 year old guilty plea entered by Rabbit Martin who is serving a life sentence in Moundsville, was reversed in U.S. District Court and the life sentence may be reversed. Judge Dennis Knapp revered the 1948 plea to interstate transportation of a stolen car because "it was made without his full understanding of the consequences". The State Supreme Court later nullified the life sentence. Martin's lawyer was Edwin Wiley of Princeton.
Oct. 8, 1976 - Martin was re sentenced after his life sentence was reversed and Judge Howard Jarrett sentenced him to 20 years in the penitentiary - 15 years for the Clyborne burglary and 5 years on "information" of a prior felony, an armed robbery in Raleigh County.
Nov. 23, 1977 - Martin filed a new appeal. He said he was not furnished a full trial transcript within the statutory time limit for an appeal. (Through the years, Martin had numerous local lawyers represent him in appeal cases ---Jerry Cameron, Billy Burkett, Phil Lilly, Mike Gibson and Edwin Wiley, who at the time of the article, Mercer County Law Master. "They were all fine fellows...I still remember them all, Martin said later.)
May 10, 1978 - The State Supreme Court reversed the Oct. 8, 1976, sentencing and ordered re sentencing of Martin. the Court said Martin should have been given credit for time previously served as well as pre-trial and post-trial time.
Aug. 31, 1978 - Wiley won freedom for Martin on the appeal. Wiley said the basis of the appeal was that the plea Martin gave nearly 20 years earlier did not meet the standards of Federal Court and did not even comply with Common Law. Martin was released from prison.
Jan. 5, 1995 - Rabbit Martin, now a retired Bluefield resident, contacted the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "It's been 25 years. I thought you would have a story". he said to the reporter. Martin apparently was the only person who remembered the anniversary of the incident that went down in Bluefield's history. "
HOW COULD HE FORGET IT?
I finally wrote about your story old friend. RIP
Sources: Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 31, 1970 author Mike Stater
Bluefield Daily Telegraph, July 22, 1995 author Barbara Hawkins
Feb.14, 1970 - Warrants were issued for Raymond R. Hampton and Mary Bird Hampton. Police reports indicated that Perdue had implicated Hampton.
Feb. 18, 1970 - Perdue represented by Princeton lawyer James Satterfield, was held for the April Grand Jury in a preliminary hearing on charges of receiving stolen goods amounting to $65,000. Testimony revealed that Perdue was arrested after a Tampa resident said he received a letter about $65,000 to be laundered at the Tampa race track.
Feb. 26, 1970 - Raymond Rufus Hampton, 37, of Bluefield Va. and Mary Byrd, 30, were arrested in Virginia, charged with interstate Transportation of Stolen Property. No money was recovered.
Feb. 27, 1970 - Police reports indicated Hampton said he wanted to make a statement. He was quoted in the police report as telling officers that he and Rabbit Martin and Ira Mathena had "executed the burglary of the Clyborne home...he and Martin had forced their way into the house through the rear door leading to the patio...he told about taking the gun, jewelry and money box but said they didn't know at the time exactly what was in the box. He said on the way out he picked up the portable TV. He said he waited near the house with the TV while Martin took the pillow case containing the other articles to the car. He said Martin and Mathena picked him up.
The police report said Hampton named another Bluefield man as a go-between to launder the money and said he received $3,000 from Martin and that man after he turned his cut, $65,000 back over to Martin so it could be exchanged for "safe" money. He said he went to Alexandria and Martin met him there and gave him $2,000 more.
Hampton also was quoted in the report as claiming Martin had contracted someone to kill him.
Feb. 26, 1970 - W. T. (Bill) Christian, 50, became the fifth person arrested. He was charged with receiving stolen goods and was freed on a $50,000 bond. He was represented by Joe Sanders, Jr. and denied the charge. No money was ever recovered.
March 1, 1970 - William Thurman "Rabbit" Martin Jr., 41, of Harry Street, Bluefield, was arrested on breaking and entering charges. Accompanied by the lawyer he had employed, Robert E. Holroyd of Princeton, Martin surrendered to authorities at the State Police Barracks in Princeton after learning when he returned from a trip out of town that police had a warrant for his arrest.
The Daily telegraph reported a "brief struggle" occurred when the newspaper's photographer attempted to photograph Martin as he was taken from the State Police offices. Bond was set at $100,000. No money was recovered.
March 3, 1970 - Judge Howard Jarrett reduced bond to $50,000 for Martin after Holroyd made the request, saying most murder bonds were only $5,000 to $10,000. After bond was reduced, Holroyd complained it was still too high for his client to raise the money. However, Martin was released on bond a few days later. (Courtesy of the Little people)
March 10, 1970- Martin and Christian were bound over to the Grand Jury in a preliminary hearing. The main witness for the state was Hampton, who turned state's witness.
Prior to the hearing, Martin had a skirmish with officials when a photographer attempted to take his picture. He tried to smash the camera, hit the state trooper and broke out a window in the door to the hearing room. He was handcuffed to a wooden rail throughout the hearing as a result of the fight. During the hearing Hampton said, Martin, "put a price on my head", so he agreed to testify. He said he and Martin took jewelry, a gun , a television set and the money in a locked closet. He said they were "real surprised" to find the money and it wasn't counted until they got to the car. He said they went to Christian's home and gave him the merchandise and $5,000. Hampton said the money was divided and he got $65,000 but he gave it back to Martin several days later. He said Martin was going to get it "changed" into "old" money. He said Christian was going to get it changed in Ohio. He said he actually received $3,000 which he spent. He said he later received $2,000 from Martin in Alexandria, VA. which he also spent.
March 11, 1970 - A newspaper report connected Ira Mathena to the case, reporting a witness said Martin and Mathena had "cased" the Clyborne home prior to the robbery. Mathena died of a heart attack before any criminal action was taken against him. (In a recent interview, Knight and Holroyd confirmed that Mathena's body was exhumed during the summer of 1970 as a result of reports that he was murdered, but there were no indications of foul play.)
April 9, 1970- The grand jury indicted Martin and Hampton for burglary, Perdue and Christian for receiving stolen property and Byrd for accessory after the fact.
May 18, 1970 - Martin's trial begins with Hampton as a key witness for the state. Queenie Clyborne told the jury "every penny was mine" and said she had been collecting the money for 27 years to be used for retirement.
In opening statements, Prosecuting Attorney David W. Knight told the jury Mathena drove the get-away car and the burglary was committed by Martin and Hampton. Holroyd said Martin was "innocent" and he had an alibi - he was at home with his family and worked on a car with his father -in - law during the time of the robbery.
May 21, 1970- Martin's wife, Maze, and two teenage step daughters, testified he was at home eating supper at 6:30 p.m.
May 23, 1970 - The trial ended in a hung jury after the jury deadlocked at the end of six hours of deliberation.
Summer of 1970 - Hampton entered a guilty plea to burglary and was sentenced to 1-15 years and Mary Bird Hampton was placed on probation.
August 8, 1970 - Martin's second trial started.
Aug. 14, 1970 - The jury returned with a guilty verdict five hours after starting deliberations, Knight informed Judge Jarrett he would file "information" that Martin had four prior convictions which would qualify him for a life sentence under the Habitual Offender's act.
Aug. 17, 1970- Bluefield Police Department declared the case against William T. Martin, Jr. closed.
Aug. 25, 1970 - Holroyd appealed Martin's conviction but Judge Jarrett rejected the motion.
Sept. 9, 1970 - Perdue was convicted by a jury for receiving stolen property.
Sept. 17, 1970 - Martin was sentenced to life in prison.
Sept. 18, 1970 - Just 13 hours after he had been sentenced, Martin jumped a jailer in Mercer County Jail and escaped. He had a pistol. Five other prisoners went with him, leaving Princeton in a jailer's automobile. No one was injured.
Sept. 19, 1970 - The get away car was found in Bluefield, Va.
Sept. 20, 1970 - One of the escapees, Michael Kade, surrendered to authorities near Montcalm.
Sept. 21, 1970 - Police suspect that Martin is in Bluefield. Another escapee, Eugene Cole, is captured in New Castle County, Del.
Sept. 22, 1970 - The escapee who helped Martin over come the jailer, Ronald Williams, was captured going the wrong way on a one-way street in Hagerstown, Md. (An update on Williams indicates he was serving a life sentence in Moundsville in the 1980s for the murder of a Beckley police officer when he escaped. He was accused of killing a West Virginia State trooper and an Arizona resident while on the run and is still incarcerated in Moundsville.) The fourth escapee, Clayton Caraway was also captured.
Sept. 22, 1970 - Jacob Handy of Bluefield was arrested on charges that he provided the gun that Martin used in the escape.
Sept. 22, 1970 - Perdue was convicted by a jury for Receiving Stolen Property in connection with the Clyborne robbery and sentenced to 1-10 years in prison.
Sept. 23, 1970 - Prosecutor Knight said police are "hot on the trail" of Martin.
Sept. 25, 1970 - The Daily Telegraph reported the newspaper had received information on Martin, Williams and Cole spent their first night of freedom in Pocahontas, Va. area. The following day the newspaper reported they had also been in Bluefield.
Sept. 28, 1970 - Sheriff Wintfrey (Wimpy) Shrewsbury instituted new rules at the jail to tighten security.
Sept. 30, 1970 - The Daily Telegraph reported that Martin was in Washington, D.C. two days after the escape.
Oct. 7, 1970 - Martin was captured in Parkersburg, 3 weeks, 5 hours after he escaped. Commitment papers were prepared for his admittance into the prison in Moundsville and he was taken there instead of being returned to Princeton. Parkersburg police said Martin broke into a school in their area and they were watching him. They apprehended him as he started to leave the city. They did not know who they had when they captured him after a foot chase when he wrecked his car.
Aug. 8, 1971 - Judge F. Morton Wagner decreed that Bill Christian could not be tried again on a charge of receiving stolen property due to a mistrial declared in January of that year and hung jury in November 1970.
An undated card attached to the Bluefield Police Department record book. Raymond R. Hampton is back in the medium security prison at Huttonsville after being shot while being an escapee from that institution. About $10,000 of the $300,000 has been accounted for, but the remainder has never been recovered. Rabbit Martin is now serving a life sentence at the state penitentiary in Moundsville.
December 1972 - Princeton attorney William J. Akers served as special judge and re sentenced Martin on a Supreme Court order, it was later learned that age 28, Akers was too young - by two years - to serve in the capacity as judge.
1976 - a 27 year old guilty plea entered by Rabbit Martin who is serving a life sentence in Moundsville, was reversed in U.S. District Court and the life sentence may be reversed. Judge Dennis Knapp revered the 1948 plea to interstate transportation of a stolen car because "it was made without his full understanding of the consequences". The State Supreme Court later nullified the life sentence. Martin's lawyer was Edwin Wiley of Princeton.
Oct. 8, 1976 - Martin was re sentenced after his life sentence was reversed and Judge Howard Jarrett sentenced him to 20 years in the penitentiary - 15 years for the Clyborne burglary and 5 years on "information" of a prior felony, an armed robbery in Raleigh County.
Nov. 23, 1977 - Martin filed a new appeal. He said he was not furnished a full trial transcript within the statutory time limit for an appeal. (Through the years, Martin had numerous local lawyers represent him in appeal cases ---Jerry Cameron, Billy Burkett, Phil Lilly, Mike Gibson and Edwin Wiley, who at the time of the article, Mercer County Law Master. "They were all fine fellows...I still remember them all, Martin said later.)
May 10, 1978 - The State Supreme Court reversed the Oct. 8, 1976, sentencing and ordered re sentencing of Martin. the Court said Martin should have been given credit for time previously served as well as pre-trial and post-trial time.
Aug. 31, 1978 - Wiley won freedom for Martin on the appeal. Wiley said the basis of the appeal was that the plea Martin gave nearly 20 years earlier did not meet the standards of Federal Court and did not even comply with Common Law. Martin was released from prison.
Jan. 5, 1995 - Rabbit Martin, now a retired Bluefield resident, contacted the Bluefield Daily Telegraph. "It's been 25 years. I thought you would have a story". he said to the reporter. Martin apparently was the only person who remembered the anniversary of the incident that went down in Bluefield's history. "
HOW COULD HE FORGET IT?
I finally wrote about your story old friend. RIP
Sources: Bluefield Daily Telegraph, December 31, 1970 author Mike Stater
Bluefield Daily Telegraph, July 22, 1995 author Barbara Hawkins
The Legend of Rabbit Martin Part 2
I thought this post would be easy but it isn't. Should have waited until winter when there is not so much to do. To be able to tell the story of Rabbit Martin and his being accused of stealing $300,000 from a coal baron's house, then I sort of have to say something about the town it occurred in, Bluefield, West Virginia.
How can one describe this town? It was a town built by the coal industry and the black gold coming through it on the railroad out of the Appalachian mountain coal fields. There was money here. A lot of money.
Today, with the decline of employment in the coal industry of the last 50 years, the town is a shadow of it's former self. It is hard to see it as it once was. It's still touted as Nature's Air Conditioned City where if the temperature rises over 90 degrees the Chamber of Commerce sends out the "Lemonade Lassies" to serve lemonade but it is a far cry from it's glory days today. Bluefield,West Virginia, in it's hay day was a booming bustling little town that reminded me when we would visit "up home" from where ever my dad's military station was, of a little New York.The coal fields brought so many people from all over the world into this area for work. Prohibition itself also brought more outsiders and bootleggers in as the illegal moonshine stills around Bluefield provided illegal booze to be taken to the east coast and mid west markets. I have a friend whose last name is Luciano. Luciano's people migrated to the mountains during this time and yes his family are kin to Lucky Luciano.
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| Dough Boy Lunch to Right |
In 1924, Bluefield grew across state lines when Bluefield,West Virginia was "Married" to Graham, Virginia which was the town adjoining just on the state line border. So today both towns have the name Bluefield with one being in the state of Virginia and one in West Virginia.
There was the high society money side of the town. With the country clubs. theaters, the upper echelon of lawyers, coal barons, railroad and coal executives, Doctors and all the myriad middle class below them, with laborers below that. There was a large black community that had businesses and organizations that mirrored much of the white community. There were two set of colleges, two high schools, one being white and one black before integration in the 1960s.
During WWII, coal was needed for the war effort and a whole host of stars came to visit. Greer Garson once came to Bluefield to sell war bonds.
And one of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. wives was from Bluefield.
I think of Bluefield's hay day as being the years of 1930's to 1970's. As with all towns and cities there is an underworld that works beneath all the legitimate business. When I was a child and Dad first moved us back here in 1970, after being in the military, my parents pointed out a building that had been a brothel just down from the main Norfolk and Western Railway office on Princeton Ave.
It was a brownstone building that outside on warm days on it's small porch driving by you would see a woman that usually looked like she was dressed in lingerie. She wore a lot of make up and had red hair in a very high large hair style. One could not miss her sitting on a porch. She was known by the name Big Red. My mother said she had been a madame and she ran a brothel or enhanced "escort service". My mother always had the greatest respect for her. She said, "That's OK. She's laughing all the way to the bank and her family is cared for."
There was also Veto's Alley which was notorious that if you knew the right people you could make a connection to get just about anything or service there. But if you didn't know anyone there and you caused trouble you wished you never visited.
Rabbit Martin knew that underworld well but the conundrum was he knew people in both worlds side by side and people knew him.
The World of Rabbit Martin
I know of only a bit of his early years. I know he was the same age as my mother. He was born in Roanoke July 26, 1929, the son of William T. and Verta (Johnson) Martin. He spoke of his first crime was stealing a car when he was a teenager. He didn't speak of his early years much to me other than he spoke of being in foster care or an orphanage and reform school he didn't care for. I don't know how far he went in school but I know he read a lot.
He told me that he always held a regular job somewhere by day or night and then for extra money would do his what he called "side" jobs. As he told Barbara Hawkins he freely talked about unlawful activities from his younger years. He said, " I was into everything. I had been in and out of prison numerous times. I did a lot things to make a dollar, - robberies, scams, burglaries...And, I tried to keep on top of it. I had several friends who worked with me."
Barbara Hawkins didn't elaborate on the scams, or maybe didn't get him to talk about them, because he also said there were people alive that knew the truth when he gave the interview....And that is where the story is. He gave a clue when he said, "We tried to keep up with the new alarm systems that came out and things like that."
What ever he was in his younger years, by the time of the Clyborne robbery, he and his friends had developed a sort after hours business of scams and burglaries. But much of it were business deals with legitimate businesses.
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| Beckley Post Herald 12 December 1962 |
The way some of the scams worked he told me was if a business was in trouble financially, they would hire him or several of his buddies to rob them...for the insurance money. He would usually get whatever they robbed, most of the time, and a percentage of the funds of the insurance pay out. They would fence the goods all throughout the east coast. These are what he called his "big jobs".
What amazed me is how many people knew this! The goods sometimes would be divided out locally but mostly fenced out of the area. There was a story my mother told that a neighbor of hers that was a coal miner. To get to the mines during the week he car pooled with several other miners. Their car broke down and they needed a transmission and it to be fixed by Sunday night or they were in danger of losing their jobs. None of them had enough money to scrape the money together to even get a bus ticket to get back to the coal fields much less to buy the expensive transmission needed for the car.
Just so happens an auto business was slated to be hit that weekend by this group Rabbit Martin associated with and the feller found all the parts he needed left on his porch Saturday night. My mother said everyone knew where it came from and no one said a word. My mother said farmer's would find sacks of seed they needed or a part for a tractor, car tires all kinds of little stuff would appear on people's porches. It was like Robin Hood had visited.
My Grand daddy Boyles lived in Bluefield most of the time and my Uncle Tom worked for the cab company. They knew most of these men that did this. As a result my dad would never knowingly ever let my mother buy anything off my grand father. Grand dad was always swapping and trading. My mother bought a lawnmower for my dad once from my grand father and brought it home. My dad never trusted that lawnmower was legit. My grand father lived in an apartment...what was he doing with a new lawnmower? He used it for years but every time he'd still wonder about that lawnmower. Worried him to death.
Rabbit Martin told me tell tales of some of his escapades. Once he was hired to hit a coal company office payroll. He was told when the money would be there and it would be "his payment". The owner would declare to the insurance company there was more in the safe than what was stolen. Same as for goods taken from these jobs for legitimate businesses. It was an insurance scam.
The coal company had made sure the guard would be off somewhere else. He had a limited time to get into the safe. He could not get the combination to work, it was taking too long. Plus the safe was in front of this picture window that faced the highway so he had to sit on the floor and pull the safe out of the way of the window.
He said he had on a brand new pair of bell bottom jeans and he accidentally rolled that safe on his jean leg to the point he had to take a knife to cut himself loose and ruin his new jeans. Made him so mad he just blew the safe open instead of opening it by combination. He told the owner he blew the safe to make it look legit but really he was just pissed off because he ruined a good pair of jeans.
He told Barbara Hawkins, "It was a way of life for me, I used to believe in it." "Back then I worked as hard to steal some body's money as the police worked to try to catch me."
He told me some of the jobs were hired out and some were not. In between the big jobs they would do little jobs. But what they would hit would be country stores, Southern states, post offices and schools, (their agriculture departments had tools that could be fenced easily). Places that had cash and merchandise that would move quickly. By the time of the Clyborne robbery, he was doing very little of those but fencing goods for others that did. He would only do the larger hired jobs.
His motto by that time, after serving two stints in prison, was if you are going to risk the time make sure the crime is worth it. He told me he was selective in what he would fence too. If was from a business, say it was jewelry from a jewelry store, that he do. If it was from a home burglary he'd run them off and scold them. He had a thing about people who robbed other people's homes and it is why the Clyborne burglary just didn't fit him at all, no matter the amount of money.
He did not do house burglaries. He told me he never did a house burglary in his life. First of all that was too personal, it was just part of his code. He told me that a person ought to be safe in their own home, but what he told Barbara Hawkins was, "In my way of thinking, a house burglary is a potential killer. What if somebody was in there or sleeping and woke up? What if he jumped out on me and I had a gun and shot him?" He very rarely used a gun. He said, " I remember a buddy telling me a long time ago when we were getting ready to rob a school and I had a gun. He said, "Put that gun back in the glove compartment. If you shoot them, it's a murder case and that means life or even the death penalty. But, if you get caught for robbery, it's just prison."
At the time of the Clyborne robbery he was driving a cab on bad weather days and working with Wand H Construction Company on the good weather days with nights devoted to the criminal side of his money making schemes.
The cab company was a hoot. It was a legitimate business but drivers had other ways of making extra money. One was selling liquor on Sundays out of the cab. In Bluefield you could not buy liquor on Sundays so some drivers had a side business. Mostly regular customers that would order their Sunday fill earlier in the week. The cab drivers would pick up on Saturday from the liquor store and bring it to their house on Sunday for the cost of the liquor and their fee. I remember the first time I was aware of this practice. I was at cousin's house who had some delivered to his house on Sunday. I asked him isn't that illegal? He answered, "Well maybe but his next stop is the judges house two streets over. Ain't nobody going to say anything."
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| Beckley Post Herald 16 Jan. 1963 Rabbit Martin hit the Elks Club. It was in an old house only house he ever hit. His pal Brooks went missing as he was Set to testify against Bluefield Police Officers |
Rabbit Martin was supporting a wife and five children and he did it anyway he could. By the time of the Clyborne robbery, Rabbit Martin had been in his illegal side business for over 20 years. He was more than well known in these circles before the Clyborne robbery....and he made his share of enemies too. The one that brought him down was over a woman. That's the next blog post of how that occurred.
For Part 3 CLICK HERE
Sources; Bluefield Daily Telegraph Sunday, January 22, 1995 Barbara Hawkins interview with Rabbit Martin
Photos: My own collection and from the Bluefield WV Facebook page by Randy Gilpin.
Beckley Post-Herald, Beckley, WV
December 12, 1962 and January 16, 1963
Tuesday, August 11, 2015
August 2015 Appalachian Heartwood Summer UPDATE
I apologize to the readers of this blog for not publishing often. I'm almost finished with the rest of the Rabbit Martin saga and hope to have it finished very soon. It's summer and so much going on in this world of mine. From family reunions to extra doctors appointments for my son and myself, to repairs to the old house. Add the limited energy of a disabled person and there ya go! I use up my energy on all these other time consuming events going on at once. Time slips away from me while dealing with chronic aches and pains. I've over work myself and pay for it. When I over work my body, the old brain won't work to write, or read, so I don't try to.
I do what I can do and let the REST GO! But I wanted to let you know we are still here. I will publish the rest of the Rabbit Martin story very soon.
In the meantime, I'm overjoyed that Ancestry.com has the birth and death records from Virginia on line. I've already replaced copies of records that were taken at a family reunion over 20 years ago. Here's a tip, if you bring your research to the family reunion, bring copies of your originals and leave the originals at HOME. It is too tempting to family members or they forget whose is what and make a mistake by taking them home. It's better to share than lament missing records. Hard lesson but I learned. With the records now on line I've already found SO MUCH about my family I didn't know. Such as my great, great grandfather Pierce Waddell died of an accidental shotgun wound. I don't remember anyone talking about that AT ALL!! EVER. No family members I've queried alive today knows or has heard the story either. I'm hoping to find maybe a news article on it later.
So kudos to Ancestry for this one. So much of our family story is opened for new research and these records definitely add to our history. Until next time. Blessings.
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| Meeting the newest family member at a reunion. |
I do what I can do and let the REST GO! But I wanted to let you know we are still here. I will publish the rest of the Rabbit Martin story very soon.
In the meantime, I'm overjoyed that Ancestry.com has the birth and death records from Virginia on line. I've already replaced copies of records that were taken at a family reunion over 20 years ago. Here's a tip, if you bring your research to the family reunion, bring copies of your originals and leave the originals at HOME. It is too tempting to family members or they forget whose is what and make a mistake by taking them home. It's better to share than lament missing records. Hard lesson but I learned. With the records now on line I've already found SO MUCH about my family I didn't know. Such as my great, great grandfather Pierce Waddell died of an accidental shotgun wound. I don't remember anyone talking about that AT ALL!! EVER. No family members I've queried alive today knows or has heard the story either. I'm hoping to find maybe a news article on it later.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Gone Fishing! Can't Wait to See This!
So much has happened in my little world. Going to take a couple of blog posts just to catch up on the most recent news, much less catch up to the drafts on hold.
Was contacted through my blog about my picture of the West Virginia Coon Hunters in my POST about my grandfather.
Bass Pro Shops is building a new store in Bristol, TN. For a link to a recent news story CLICK HERE. It is going to be QUITE a store!! They want to put up a tribute to the Bristol Sessions and asked me if they could use a scan of my photo. I said, YES.
If my grandfather and his brothers were still alive, they would have been in seventh heaven in a Bass Pro Shop. They all hunted, which included coon hunting, but they LOVED fishing.
Granddaddy Wesley Bane Boyles died in a lawn chair on Wolf Creek fishing!
His brother David Brown Boyles' epitaph on his grave stone in Eden, NC says, "Gone Fishing". Plus any event to share and honor the stories of others who were at the Bristol sessions and helped give birth to country music, I am glad to oblige.
I don't know if I will make it down to Bristol to see the display, but I have a few friends down that way I hope will take a few photos for me. If any of my readers get to visit and see it send me a picture please. Hope all is well in Appalachia and the world today for you.
Was contacted through my blog about my picture of the West Virginia Coon Hunters in my POST about my grandfather.
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| West Virginia Coon Hunters 1927, Standing Left to Right Fred Belcher, Clyde Meadows, Jim Brown, Vernal Vest Seated Left to Right: Dutch Stewart, Wesley "Bane" Boyles, Regal Mooney, Fred Pendleton, Joe Stephens. |
Bass Pro Shops is building a new store in Bristol, TN. For a link to a recent news story CLICK HERE. It is going to be QUITE a store!! They want to put up a tribute to the Bristol Sessions and asked me if they could use a scan of my photo. I said, YES.
If my grandfather and his brothers were still alive, they would have been in seventh heaven in a Bass Pro Shop. They all hunted, which included coon hunting, but they LOVED fishing.
Granddaddy Wesley Bane Boyles died in a lawn chair on Wolf Creek fishing!
His brother David Brown Boyles' epitaph on his grave stone in Eden, NC says, "Gone Fishing". Plus any event to share and honor the stories of others who were at the Bristol sessions and helped give birth to country music, I am glad to oblige.I don't know if I will make it down to Bristol to see the display, but I have a few friends down that way I hope will take a few photos for me. If any of my readers get to visit and see it send me a picture please. Hope all is well in Appalachia and the world today for you.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Jenny Wiley - The DNA Way
So much going on in my world. Old Blog is suffering. My son is very ill. His illness is as weird as mine and wondering if it might be environmental. Asking for prayers as he is much too young for this to be hindering him in life. It's taking many doctor's visits to sort out. He hasn't beat my record of eight doctors yet but getting there. My man Ed has also had his brush with hospitals and doctors. That's kept us busy.
Then my FAVORITE website, Native Heritage Project, that includes Eastern Native American history research, posted a link to my blog about my Jenny Wiley posts. Link to the article click here. That made my week!! I've spent hours reading the posts on that website. For anyone interested in the uncovering of records, stories, DNA on so many different tribes that existed in the East it is the most valuable website for the information being compiled on one site.
The Native Heritage Project post is an awesome post!! Roberta goes into detail about DNA requirements in the Jenny Wiley research in proving the connections between the families claiming Native heritage!!! I'm sending that link on to anyone in the groups that are working on researching the Jenny Wiley saga. I expect in the next few years the true story of Jenny Wiley will come to light. I am excited about that!
I also ventured out. I volunteered some time to show corn husk doll making for Ceres Day in Ceres, Virginia. Many of my ancestors were from around Ceres. I haven't demonstrated in over 3 years since this illness hit me full force. I learned a bit about this illness and myself. Was a bit scary. My hands gave out and just quit working on me. When you are use to just doing what needs to be done and your body quits...just quits working...it's unnerving!! I had to stop when I didn't want to and was very frustrated with the unreliability of my body.
As a matter of fact that is the most depressing, aggravating thing that pisses me off about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ ME. Does not matter what you think in your mind you can do, it does not work that way over your body with this illness. That is why it is alarming and scary. I've always believed in mind over matter. My mind says, "We will do this today". My body says, "You wish!" Things you want to do, family outings, projects all suffer because of this illness. I am unreliable to myself, much less to others and don't want to be.
But still it was a good day. I learned I will have to rest more, compensate more and just do what I can do. When the old body quits, so do I. Thankful I was volunteering and not being paid for the service as they would not have got their money's worth!! I came home and crashed for 5 hours. The fatigue of Chronic Fatigue.
I took pictures at the last of the event. Sorry I don't have pictures of any of my demonstration. I am looking into making a video with various corn husk projects. I was introduced to this craft when I was very young. My great grandmother and my mother giving us something to do by playing with corn husks after shucking corn. Over the years I've developed to make hats, mats, baskets, dolls and bags out of the material. By making a video I can share what I've learned and only have to demonstrate it once. If the old hands quit you can turn off the video and start it back up after a long rest.
That's a plan for the future.....something to look forward to. Hope all is well in everyone's world.
Then my FAVORITE website, Native Heritage Project, that includes Eastern Native American history research, posted a link to my blog about my Jenny Wiley posts. Link to the article click here. That made my week!! I've spent hours reading the posts on that website. For anyone interested in the uncovering of records, stories, DNA on so many different tribes that existed in the East it is the most valuable website for the information being compiled on one site.
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| My Ed hears so much about Jenny Wiley from this obsessed woman. While in Ceres I took a picture and he had this sign he made, "Ginny Wiley slept here!" Such a kidder!! |
The Native Heritage Project post is an awesome post!! Roberta goes into detail about DNA requirements in the Jenny Wiley research in proving the connections between the families claiming Native heritage!!! I'm sending that link on to anyone in the groups that are working on researching the Jenny Wiley saga. I expect in the next few years the true story of Jenny Wiley will come to light. I am excited about that!
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| One I have in the bottom of my box Not the best example but I keep giving away all the good ones. |
As a matter of fact that is the most depressing, aggravating thing that pisses me off about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/ ME. Does not matter what you think in your mind you can do, it does not work that way over your body with this illness. That is why it is alarming and scary. I've always believed in mind over matter. My mind says, "We will do this today". My body says, "You wish!" Things you want to do, family outings, projects all suffer because of this illness. I am unreliable to myself, much less to others and don't want to be.
But still it was a good day. I learned I will have to rest more, compensate more and just do what I can do. When the old body quits, so do I. Thankful I was volunteering and not being paid for the service as they would not have got their money's worth!! I came home and crashed for 5 hours. The fatigue of Chronic Fatigue.
I took pictures at the last of the event. Sorry I don't have pictures of any of my demonstration. I am looking into making a video with various corn husk projects. I was introduced to this craft when I was very young. My great grandmother and my mother giving us something to do by playing with corn husks after shucking corn. Over the years I've developed to make hats, mats, baskets, dolls and bags out of the material. By making a video I can share what I've learned and only have to demonstrate it once. If the old hands quit you can turn off the video and start it back up after a long rest.
That's a plan for the future.....something to look forward to. Hope all is well in everyone's world.
Friday, February 21, 2014
Where was the Cabin of Thomas and Jenny Wiley in Bland County? Mystery Monday Post for Sure!
This post is going to be a long one just with the documents! I was going to set the stage with a lot of historical background. But I instead will just mention as I go along a few items that affected land grants.
Folks, please forgive any errors. This little foray into Jenny Wiley has sapped all my energy, taken all my spoons and will take me a great while to recover from. Seriously I'm not going into great detail of the actual background history but will post a short bibliography for those that should pursue more information to understand how your ancestor could be on the frontier in central Appalachia in the 1750's and yet not get a land grant until the 1780's and beyond. If I get my strength back and my mind will work, I will try to do a couple of more in-depth posts about the Loyal Company grants, the impact of war and treaties on the settlers here in our part of Appalachia. But I want to get to what I promised, because I want others to take it and continue on with the research that I can no longer do.
If I don’t do anything else before I leave this old world, I want to inspire others to get the history right about Native Americans in Appalachia, the settlers in Appalachia and the relationships between the two. That to me would be a lasting worthwhile accomplishment. I hope these posts will inspire others to get out there and accomplish the research of the real Jenny Wiley history.
The capture of Jenny Wiley and many other attacks on the settlers in our area occurred long AFTER the Revolutionary War. England has lost, and the westward expansion goes into high gear.
The lands where Jenny Wiley and my ancestors settled were thought to be under treaty to be ceded by the Indians early on. The Indians obviously disagreed. In simplest terms, in many cases, someone forgot to inquire of the true Indians that held claim to these lands to give them up or they did and they said, "NO".
In the middle of that fight you have settlers Thomas and Jenny Wiley and the Indians who attacked them. Both protecting what they considered was their right to protect.
Before the Indian Wars in the 1750's, men such as Thomas Walker, who is the namesake of Walkers Mountain, (Big and Little) Walker's Creek and the Walker's Creek Settlement, had petitioned the colonial government for land. Thomas Walker's Loyal Company was issued a grant for 800,000 acres that spread from West Virginia to North Carolina.
It's real fuzzy the boundaries of these land company claims because no one had actually surveyed the entire lot. There was a certain process you had to go through to get the land grants. A survey had to be taken, (which means you had to hire a surveyor license by the courts), it had to be recorded, you had to pay money, live on the lands and develop them and ...then you could get a grant issued at the county or state level. The whole process for the Loyal Company was interrupted by the Indian Wars, the Proclamation of 1763 (which threatened to make the Loyal Company Grants null and void), and the Revolutionary War. Another problem occurred because there were other competing land company speculators that claimed the same acreage. Add treasury warrants for military service and it's a wonder we didn't have a second war on the frontier after the Revolutionary War. Later these claims after the Revolutionary War would be held up in court of appeals and land commission cases FOR YEARS to settle ownership.
That is why many of our earliest land grant deeds will mention these cases. It shows how it is hard to determine just how long a European settler would have been here on the frontier using just land records. Some folks such as Henry Harman had his surveys recorded in 1754, but waited 45 years to get his grants in 1789.
Others settlers living on the lands before the Revolutionary War, didn't get even a survey accomplished until the 1780's. Many had actually moved on and had sold or assigned their rights to someone else before getting their own original claim recognized which left the assignees having to prove they had purchased the original claim in courts.
In this time period in Appalachia, you can't go just by the deeds or grants to determine when someone arrived in a specific area on the frontier or where they lived at while waiting for courts to determine land ownership. You have to dig for other primary documents to tell their story.
That is the case in looking for where the cabin of Thomas and Jenny Wiley was located.
As I posted in an earlier post, I was trying to create a map for a museum display to mark the route Jenny Wiley took from Bland County, Virginia to where she was held captive in Kentucky. All I found were conflicting accounts in the written sources everyone referred to that claimed to be the actual, factual accounts of Jenny Wiley.
David E. Johnston's wrote in his History of the Middle New River Settlements that he interviewed William Stowers who claimed that the Thomas Wiley cabin was on the old Dill's Place on Clear Fork Creek. You can find his very embellished text version here on pages 98, 105, 107 and 148. Text Version History of Middle New River Settlements by David E. Johnston 1906
It's an amusing account but just like Connelly's version not researched much in primary documents. (and really? Indians adapted the leather hunting shirts from the Europeans? He has that backwards!)
William Easley Connelly's version in the, "History of Kentucky, The Founding of Harman's Station", has been over the years considered the gold standard for telling the story of Jenny Wiley. Because he states he relied on interviews with Jenny Wiley's son, Adam Wiley. His goes into great elaborate detail of a trip from a cabin supposedly near Mathias and Henry Harman on Walker's Creek.
(Is it just me or were Connelly's footnotes in this story an entire book to itself?)
His version though is very embellished. I also have a problem that he prints his version long after Adam Wiley is dead. Adam Wiley would not be able to refute anything he wrote. He gets confused the Mathias Harmans. There were 3. Mathias Harman, Henry Harman's brother, Mathias Harman, Henry Harman's son, and Mathias Harman, Daniel Harman's son. That family repeated names a bunch!
When I began 2 or 3 years ago I started trying to verify his claims by looking first for the land sale Connelly mentioned of Mathias or Henry Harman's to Thomas Wiley. I collected copies of every Harman grant and found NOTHING. No boundaries that mention Thomas Wiley as even being a neighbor... NOTHING.
I found the Mathias that built the block house at Harman's Station was Mathias Harman, Henry Harman's brother, and his land grants were with his other brother Daniel Harman on the Clinch River...no where near Walker's Creek. Henry Harman does assign his son Mathias, a land grant on Walker's Creek and it's recorded after 1790 in Wythe County but this Mathias doesn't sell Thomas Wiley land.
Even the Harman story of the hunting camp incident in Connelley's version, the reason the Indians are attacking the Wiley cabin by mistake. is hard to place in the Jenny Wiley saga. Henry Harman and his son's are attacked at a hunting camp in which Henry is wounded. They also killed a chief's son. The story is they are going to race back to the Walker's Creek Settlement because they know these Indians are going to want retribution.
The problem is not that the incident didn't occur it's tying it to the Jenny Wiley story. One version has it occurred in November 1784. If that is the case it is five years before the event. Another that it occurred in November 1788, then it took them a year to get back. If it occurred in November 1789, then they were a month too late but all versions agree it happened in November. Makes me question if whether this part of the story, though it may be a true event, was just added to embellish the story to make it a more exciting captivity narrative.
But even the story of Henry Harman deserves much further research. It is said the chief, whom Henry had killed his son, were once serving together against a common foe. The story even says they were once friends. The Native Americans knew Henry Harman, they called him Skuguska. A whole area of research could be opened up just on this man and his times to see, if the story is true, how allies became enemies.
What I did find was a deed to Thomas Wiley for 110 acres of land on Clear Fork Creek issued in 1795. Thomas was an assignee of Robert Smith and in the grant it mentions that it was an "adjustment to lands in Washington and Montgomery counties", telling me this was settled in a court case. The grant doesn't prove exactly WHEN Thomas and Jenny moved to Clear Fork Creek.....yet. A search, which I did not get to accomplished, for land commissioners records (if they still exist) for this case might produce the actual date. But other records show they were on Clear Fork prior to 1795 and I believe prior to the attack on their cabin.
Robert Smith's original survey was for 300 acres and dated March 5, 1784 and at the bottom of that page it gives the assignment for Thomas Wiley for 110 acres and the survey for 110 acres.
It is funny how you jump around in research. After finding all this suspect history in the written accounts, beginning with J. D. Smith's letter to Governor Randolph giving the timeline for Jenny Wiley's captivity as being much less than Connelly or any of the other writers claimed, I started looking for Jenny Wiley's actual deposition. Connelly mentions it and says he relies heavily on it. Jasper Newton Harman mentions it in his Harman Genealogy, even J.D. Smith mentions her deposition in the letter to the Governor which to me makes it official there was a depostion.
I haven't found the deposition but a search is ongoing for it. Wouldn't it be great to have Jenny Wiley be able to tell us in her own words through the actual deposition? Which begs the question, why has no one found this deposition or affidavit? If we find Jenny's affidavit it might clear up the whole question of where the cabin was or where she was when captured! She may have been on Walker's Creek when she was captured for some weird reason, despite the primary documents saying her cabin was on Clear Fork Creek. LET'S PROVE IT!
In that search, I ordered rolls and rolls of microfilm from the Library of Virginia. I was going through Court Order books, specifically Montgomery County Court order books for the 1790s, since that is where J. D. Smith says the deposition was taken. I didn't find any reference to Jenny Wiley. What has been found were very curious court order entries. Two pages of note, with the first page dated August 4th, 1789, 3 months before the attack on the Wiley cabin. The second page is for the repair and maintenance for a road to the Cove Road up Wolf Creek to Clear Fork Creek.
The way roads were built and maintained at that time period, were by those who were living near or on the road. Settlers would be ordered by the county court to do their part in working on the roads. A surveyor, usually a landowner on the road, would be appointed to make sure to get all the neighbors ordered by the court together, to repair, maintain or build the road. They would also report to the court if someone wasn't pulling their weight or causing problems like putting up an illegal toll. For more information on the early roads and excellent resource the early lands and roads are the series books, "The Early Adventurers on the Western Waters" Volumes by Mary and F.B. Kegley Information specifically for roads is in Vol. 1 pages 178-180.
These orders appear to be for a road from Captain Pearis's on New River up Wolf Creek, to the Cove Road on Clear Fork creek. They include Thomas Wiley as working on the road at Clear Fork Creek. Page 71 orders Matthew French as Surveyor and he is to be over the road from Captain Pearis's, (family the town of Pearisburg is named for), to ten miles up Wolf Creek. Then Charles Hayes Sr. is to be surveyor from Matthew French's up Clear Fork Creek. Here are the actual scans of the orders.
Bottom of Page 71 listing Thomas Wiley and Samuel Sellards with Absalom Stafford.
Matthew French's appointed surveyor for the first group, his lands were on Wolf Creek. Charles Hayes, Sr who was appointed surveyor for the second group, his lands were at the confluence of Clear Fork, Laurel Creek and Wolf Creek at what is called today Rocky Gap. This county road order in August, 1789 is following what is today Route 61 along Wolf Creek through Giles and Bland County, Virginia to Clear Fork Creek not Walker's Creek.
In a search for the names in the bottom half of page 71 all of these men had either lands or were related to those who owned lands on Wolf Creek going into Rocky Gap and up Clear Fork Creek to the Cove Road. For example Joseph Baker married Sukie Hayes the daughter of Charles Hayes Sr. etc. I could list them all but I'm not, I'm tired. The most important one to me is Absalom Stafford.
I found these references in the "Early Adventurers on the Western Waters" Volume II by Mary B. Kegley
Page 49- Commissioners Certificates Book at Montgomery County courthouse on page 86 of that book under the date September 7, 1781 - " Absalom Stafford - Commissioners Certificate 150 Acres on Clear Fork of Wolf Creek bounded by a conditional line made by Thomas Wiley and Thos. Smith."
Page 108 - In a book at the Virginia State Library Archives entitled " Record of Certificates of Commissioners of Washington and Montgomery Counties 1767 - 1788. Pg 82 of that book "Absalom Stafford - 150 acres on Clear Fork Creek, bounded by conditional lines made by Thomas Wily & Thomas Smith, settled 1777."
For a really good explanation of these land commissions that were set up to settled land disputes this Vol II EAWW on pages 98-101 is the best! But it still took Thomas until 1795 to get this land grant. There were further cases after Absalom Stafford and those would have to be tracked down to understand why his was granted in 1795.
What this does show, is that Thomas Wiley's land boundaries were known to land commissioners in 1781 and he is working with Absalom Stafford and Samuel Sellards, his brother in law on the repair of the road to Clear Fork in August 1779. Part of the condition of these land grants was you had to be living on the lands you claimed.
There are a few folks that will be upset with these revelations. Someone will have to prove to me why Jenny and Thomas Wiley would be on Walker's Creek when they had their own lands on Clear Fork Creek. I have found no instance of Thomas Wiley working on the Walker's Creek road in those years or any other proof he and Jenny were living on Walker's Creek.
So how was it that Walker's Creek became the site of the cabin? Myself and my man were talking about this and we have a theory. In the Montgomery County Court Order books, the Walker's Creek Settlement is mentioned many times. Henry Harman's place at Walker's Creek is listed quite a few times. Walker's Creek Settlement was the place for trade, roads to the Clinch River were ordered from Henry Harman's place and Henry's house was even where you went to vote. Sort of like the folks who live on Wolf Creek at Grapefield today. There address is Bastian but they don't live in Bastian. Walker's Creek I believe was a district address but not where Thomas and Jenny Wiley were living. The stories of them living on Walker's Creek, I don't know their basis in fact. I welcome any evidence to the contrary that they were living on Clear Fork Creek.
Thomas Wiley's lands would have been near the Cove Road. The Cove Road off of Route 61 still exists in the beginnings are just over the county line in Tazewell County and it crosses back over into Bland County at the top of East River Mountain before crossing over.. It is a gravel road that goes through a gap across two mountains and ends up in Bluefield, Virginia very close to the head waters of the Bluestone River. All the accounts say that Native Americans went after outlying cabins for captives. Walker's Creek Settlement would have been more populated and definitely a better armed settlement. Cove Road would have been easy access in and out quickly, it just makes more sense the Wiley cabin would have been a better target there.
This was the first time I had heard the name Samuel Sellards. There is a chancery Case in Tazewell County of Robert Garrett vs Samuel Sellards concerning a way ward horse.Try this Chancery Case Link. In that case it states that Samuel Sellards is living at his brother in laws John Borders meaning he is a brother to Jenny Sellards Wiley. Which brother was killed in the attack? And WHERE are they BURIED?
John Borders married Jenny Sellards Wiley's sister Catherine. Their lands were on the head waters of Kimberling Creek. There are three forks of Kimberling Creek and the North Fork was placed in Tazewell County, in the division of counties and then became Bland County lands in 1861. In the story he warned Jenny of seeing Indian sign and to come to his cabin. Even the Border's lands were closer to Clear Fork than Walker's Creek.
It included a land survey and on the Kentucky Land database a certificate that states it was once a grant to George Rogers Clark.
John Evan in Kentucky dug up some documents that showed Jenny Sellards Wiley and her sister Catherine Sellards Borders could read and write. They signed their names on several documents. Jenny signed her name "Jane Wiley". So is this a land grant to our Jenny Wiley before she was attacked? If it were, why would she be getting this land grant? What happened to these lands?
So you see Ladies and Gents....the true story of Jenny Wiley has just begun. I am passing this knowledge on to inspire you to continue where I can not. Jenny Wiley deserves to have her true story told.
Find the real deposition of Jenny Wiley if it exists.
William Connelly Easley's records are scattered across the midwest. I have notes on where. They should be combed for his notes to see if anything exists of his interviews of Adam Wiley.
Discover the Wiley and Sellards family tree in Chancery, court cases, marriage and land records. Where did Jenny and Catherine learn to read and write?
More research on who was the Jane Wiley of the 560 acres Kentucky land grant.
Try to identify the Indians that did this attack and understand the Native American's reason for it.
Take each part of the Jenny Wiley stories and prove or disprove whether it is true or not.
Let me know what you FIND!
One more item. I believe Thomas Stuart Walker's lands that mentions Thomas Wiley's land border, were very close to an old church that the building still exists on 61 called Nebo. That is on the Bland County side about a 1/2 mile from the Cove Road. Many years ago I researched the Thomas Walker family of Clear Fork (Distant kin to the Thomas Walker of Walker's mountain fame) and located the lands for the family. This Walker family donated lands for the church and here is a deed where his corner is at Thomas Wiley's.
I usually go over this couple of times again.... but folks....I am exhausted. The old ticker is flip flopping and I ache like a toothache. Jenny Wiley needs to be left with those who are in better health. There may be errors just contact me and point them out. I probably won't post again for at least another month or more. It will take me that much time to rest and to recover. Going to take me that much time to clean off the bed and put the books up!!
Books I recommend
"Early Adventurers on the Western Waters" Volumes by Mary B. Kegley and F.B. Kegley, Green Publishers, Inc. Orange, VA
The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American communities, by Colin G. Calloway, Cambridge University Press
The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from its beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 By Francis Jennings, W.W. Norton and Company
Stories of Jenny Wiley: Exploring the History and the Legends, by Todd Pack, 2013, Published by Story ATOM Media
Folks, please forgive any errors. This little foray into Jenny Wiley has sapped all my energy, taken all my spoons and will take me a great while to recover from. Seriously I'm not going into great detail of the actual background history but will post a short bibliography for those that should pursue more information to understand how your ancestor could be on the frontier in central Appalachia in the 1750's and yet not get a land grant until the 1780's and beyond. If I get my strength back and my mind will work, I will try to do a couple of more in-depth posts about the Loyal Company grants, the impact of war and treaties on the settlers here in our part of Appalachia. But I want to get to what I promised, because I want others to take it and continue on with the research that I can no longer do.
If I don’t do anything else before I leave this old world, I want to inspire others to get the history right about Native Americans in Appalachia, the settlers in Appalachia and the relationships between the two. That to me would be a lasting worthwhile accomplishment. I hope these posts will inspire others to get out there and accomplish the research of the real Jenny Wiley history.
The capture of Jenny Wiley and many other attacks on the settlers in our area occurred long AFTER the Revolutionary War. England has lost, and the westward expansion goes into high gear.
The lands where Jenny Wiley and my ancestors settled were thought to be under treaty to be ceded by the Indians early on. The Indians obviously disagreed. In simplest terms, in many cases, someone forgot to inquire of the true Indians that held claim to these lands to give them up or they did and they said, "NO".
In the middle of that fight you have settlers Thomas and Jenny Wiley and the Indians who attacked them. Both protecting what they considered was their right to protect.
Before the Indian Wars in the 1750's, men such as Thomas Walker, who is the namesake of Walkers Mountain, (Big and Little) Walker's Creek and the Walker's Creek Settlement, had petitioned the colonial government for land. Thomas Walker's Loyal Company was issued a grant for 800,000 acres that spread from West Virginia to North Carolina.
It's real fuzzy the boundaries of these land company claims because no one had actually surveyed the entire lot. There was a certain process you had to go through to get the land grants. A survey had to be taken, (which means you had to hire a surveyor license by the courts), it had to be recorded, you had to pay money, live on the lands and develop them and ...then you could get a grant issued at the county or state level. The whole process for the Loyal Company was interrupted by the Indian Wars, the Proclamation of 1763 (which threatened to make the Loyal Company Grants null and void), and the Revolutionary War. Another problem occurred because there were other competing land company speculators that claimed the same acreage. Add treasury warrants for military service and it's a wonder we didn't have a second war on the frontier after the Revolutionary War. Later these claims after the Revolutionary War would be held up in court of appeals and land commission cases FOR YEARS to settle ownership.
That is why many of our earliest land grant deeds will mention these cases. It shows how it is hard to determine just how long a European settler would have been here on the frontier using just land records. Some folks such as Henry Harman had his surveys recorded in 1754, but waited 45 years to get his grants in 1789.
Others settlers living on the lands before the Revolutionary War, didn't get even a survey accomplished until the 1780's. Many had actually moved on and had sold or assigned their rights to someone else before getting their own original claim recognized which left the assignees having to prove they had purchased the original claim in courts.
In this time period in Appalachia, you can't go just by the deeds or grants to determine when someone arrived in a specific area on the frontier or where they lived at while waiting for courts to determine land ownership. You have to dig for other primary documents to tell their story.
That is the case in looking for where the cabin of Thomas and Jenny Wiley was located.
As I posted in an earlier post, I was trying to create a map for a museum display to mark the route Jenny Wiley took from Bland County, Virginia to where she was held captive in Kentucky. All I found were conflicting accounts in the written sources everyone referred to that claimed to be the actual, factual accounts of Jenny Wiley.
David E. Johnston's wrote in his History of the Middle New River Settlements that he interviewed William Stowers who claimed that the Thomas Wiley cabin was on the old Dill's Place on Clear Fork Creek. You can find his very embellished text version here on pages 98, 105, 107 and 148. Text Version History of Middle New River Settlements by David E. Johnston 1906
It's an amusing account but just like Connelly's version not researched much in primary documents. (and really? Indians adapted the leather hunting shirts from the Europeans? He has that backwards!)
William Easley Connelly's version in the, "History of Kentucky, The Founding of Harman's Station", has been over the years considered the gold standard for telling the story of Jenny Wiley. Because he states he relied on interviews with Jenny Wiley's son, Adam Wiley. His goes into great elaborate detail of a trip from a cabin supposedly near Mathias and Henry Harman on Walker's Creek.
(Is it just me or were Connelly's footnotes in this story an entire book to itself?)
His version though is very embellished. I also have a problem that he prints his version long after Adam Wiley is dead. Adam Wiley would not be able to refute anything he wrote. He gets confused the Mathias Harmans. There were 3. Mathias Harman, Henry Harman's brother, Mathias Harman, Henry Harman's son, and Mathias Harman, Daniel Harman's son. That family repeated names a bunch!
When I began 2 or 3 years ago I started trying to verify his claims by looking first for the land sale Connelly mentioned of Mathias or Henry Harman's to Thomas Wiley. I collected copies of every Harman grant and found NOTHING. No boundaries that mention Thomas Wiley as even being a neighbor... NOTHING.
I found the Mathias that built the block house at Harman's Station was Mathias Harman, Henry Harman's brother, and his land grants were with his other brother Daniel Harman on the Clinch River...no where near Walker's Creek. Henry Harman does assign his son Mathias, a land grant on Walker's Creek and it's recorded after 1790 in Wythe County but this Mathias doesn't sell Thomas Wiley land.
Even the Harman story of the hunting camp incident in Connelley's version, the reason the Indians are attacking the Wiley cabin by mistake. is hard to place in the Jenny Wiley saga. Henry Harman and his son's are attacked at a hunting camp in which Henry is wounded. They also killed a chief's son. The story is they are going to race back to the Walker's Creek Settlement because they know these Indians are going to want retribution.
The problem is not that the incident didn't occur it's tying it to the Jenny Wiley story. One version has it occurred in November 1784. If that is the case it is five years before the event. Another that it occurred in November 1788, then it took them a year to get back. If it occurred in November 1789, then they were a month too late but all versions agree it happened in November. Makes me question if whether this part of the story, though it may be a true event, was just added to embellish the story to make it a more exciting captivity narrative.
But even the story of Henry Harman deserves much further research. It is said the chief, whom Henry had killed his son, were once serving together against a common foe. The story even says they were once friends. The Native Americans knew Henry Harman, they called him Skuguska. A whole area of research could be opened up just on this man and his times to see, if the story is true, how allies became enemies.
What I did find was a deed to Thomas Wiley for 110 acres of land on Clear Fork Creek issued in 1795. Thomas was an assignee of Robert Smith and in the grant it mentions that it was an "adjustment to lands in Washington and Montgomery counties", telling me this was settled in a court case. The grant doesn't prove exactly WHEN Thomas and Jenny moved to Clear Fork Creek.....yet. A search, which I did not get to accomplished, for land commissioners records (if they still exist) for this case might produce the actual date. But other records show they were on Clear Fork prior to 1795 and I believe prior to the attack on their cabin.
Robert Smith's original survey was for 300 acres and dated March 5, 1784 and at the bottom of that page it gives the assignment for Thomas Wiley for 110 acres and the survey for 110 acres.
 |
| Montgomery Co. Va Record of Plots Book D Part 1 1-286 |
It is funny how you jump around in research. After finding all this suspect history in the written accounts, beginning with J. D. Smith's letter to Governor Randolph giving the timeline for Jenny Wiley's captivity as being much less than Connelly or any of the other writers claimed, I started looking for Jenny Wiley's actual deposition. Connelly mentions it and says he relies heavily on it. Jasper Newton Harman mentions it in his Harman Genealogy, even J.D. Smith mentions her deposition in the letter to the Governor which to me makes it official there was a depostion.
I haven't found the deposition but a search is ongoing for it. Wouldn't it be great to have Jenny Wiley be able to tell us in her own words through the actual deposition? Which begs the question, why has no one found this deposition or affidavit? If we find Jenny's affidavit it might clear up the whole question of where the cabin was or where she was when captured! She may have been on Walker's Creek when she was captured for some weird reason, despite the primary documents saying her cabin was on Clear Fork Creek. LET'S PROVE IT!
In that search, I ordered rolls and rolls of microfilm from the Library of Virginia. I was going through Court Order books, specifically Montgomery County Court order books for the 1790s, since that is where J. D. Smith says the deposition was taken. I didn't find any reference to Jenny Wiley. What has been found were very curious court order entries. Two pages of note, with the first page dated August 4th, 1789, 3 months before the attack on the Wiley cabin. The second page is for the repair and maintenance for a road to the Cove Road up Wolf Creek to Clear Fork Creek.
The way roads were built and maintained at that time period, were by those who were living near or on the road. Settlers would be ordered by the county court to do their part in working on the roads. A surveyor, usually a landowner on the road, would be appointed to make sure to get all the neighbors ordered by the court together, to repair, maintain or build the road. They would also report to the court if someone wasn't pulling their weight or causing problems like putting up an illegal toll. For more information on the early roads and excellent resource the early lands and roads are the series books, "The Early Adventurers on the Western Waters" Volumes by Mary and F.B. Kegley Information specifically for roads is in Vol. 1 pages 178-180.
These orders appear to be for a road from Captain Pearis's on New River up Wolf Creek, to the Cove Road on Clear Fork creek. They include Thomas Wiley as working on the road at Clear Fork Creek. Page 71 orders Matthew French as Surveyor and he is to be over the road from Captain Pearis's, (family the town of Pearisburg is named for), to ten miles up Wolf Creek. Then Charles Hayes Sr. is to be surveyor from Matthew French's up Clear Fork Creek. Here are the actual scans of the orders.
 |
| Montgomery County Virginia Order Book No. 4 1788-1790 Page 70 with the date for page 71 |
 |
| Montgomery County Virginia Order Book No. 4 1788-1790 Page 71 |
Bottom of Page 71 listing Thomas Wiley and Samuel Sellards with Absalom Stafford.
 |
| Montgomery County Virginia Order Book No. 4 1788-1790 Page 71 |
Matthew French's appointed surveyor for the first group, his lands were on Wolf Creek. Charles Hayes, Sr who was appointed surveyor for the second group, his lands were at the confluence of Clear Fork, Laurel Creek and Wolf Creek at what is called today Rocky Gap. This county road order in August, 1789 is following what is today Route 61 along Wolf Creek through Giles and Bland County, Virginia to Clear Fork Creek not Walker's Creek.
In a search for the names in the bottom half of page 71 all of these men had either lands or were related to those who owned lands on Wolf Creek going into Rocky Gap and up Clear Fork Creek to the Cove Road. For example Joseph Baker married Sukie Hayes the daughter of Charles Hayes Sr. etc. I could list them all but I'm not, I'm tired. The most important one to me is Absalom Stafford.
I found these references in the "Early Adventurers on the Western Waters" Volume II by Mary B. Kegley
Page 49- Commissioners Certificates Book at Montgomery County courthouse on page 86 of that book under the date September 7, 1781 - " Absalom Stafford - Commissioners Certificate 150 Acres on Clear Fork of Wolf Creek bounded by a conditional line made by Thomas Wiley and Thos. Smith."
Page 108 - In a book at the Virginia State Library Archives entitled " Record of Certificates of Commissioners of Washington and Montgomery Counties 1767 - 1788. Pg 82 of that book "Absalom Stafford - 150 acres on Clear Fork Creek, bounded by conditional lines made by Thomas Wily & Thomas Smith, settled 1777."
For a really good explanation of these land commissions that were set up to settled land disputes this Vol II EAWW on pages 98-101 is the best! But it still took Thomas until 1795 to get this land grant. There were further cases after Absalom Stafford and those would have to be tracked down to understand why his was granted in 1795.
What this does show, is that Thomas Wiley's land boundaries were known to land commissioners in 1781 and he is working with Absalom Stafford and Samuel Sellards, his brother in law on the repair of the road to Clear Fork in August 1779. Part of the condition of these land grants was you had to be living on the lands you claimed.
There are a few folks that will be upset with these revelations. Someone will have to prove to me why Jenny and Thomas Wiley would be on Walker's Creek when they had their own lands on Clear Fork Creek. I have found no instance of Thomas Wiley working on the Walker's Creek road in those years or any other proof he and Jenny were living on Walker's Creek.
So how was it that Walker's Creek became the site of the cabin? Myself and my man were talking about this and we have a theory. In the Montgomery County Court Order books, the Walker's Creek Settlement is mentioned many times. Henry Harman's place at Walker's Creek is listed quite a few times. Walker's Creek Settlement was the place for trade, roads to the Clinch River were ordered from Henry Harman's place and Henry's house was even where you went to vote. Sort of like the folks who live on Wolf Creek at Grapefield today. There address is Bastian but they don't live in Bastian. Walker's Creek I believe was a district address but not where Thomas and Jenny Wiley were living. The stories of them living on Walker's Creek, I don't know their basis in fact. I welcome any evidence to the contrary that they were living on Clear Fork Creek.
Thomas Wiley's lands would have been near the Cove Road. The Cove Road off of Route 61 still exists in the beginnings are just over the county line in Tazewell County and it crosses back over into Bland County at the top of East River Mountain before crossing over.. It is a gravel road that goes through a gap across two mountains and ends up in Bluefield, Virginia very close to the head waters of the Bluestone River. All the accounts say that Native Americans went after outlying cabins for captives. Walker's Creek Settlement would have been more populated and definitely a better armed settlement. Cove Road would have been easy access in and out quickly, it just makes more sense the Wiley cabin would have been a better target there.
This was the first time I had heard the name Samuel Sellards. There is a chancery Case in Tazewell County of Robert Garrett vs Samuel Sellards concerning a way ward horse.Try this Chancery Case Link. In that case it states that Samuel Sellards is living at his brother in laws John Borders meaning he is a brother to Jenny Sellards Wiley. Which brother was killed in the attack? And WHERE are they BURIED?
John Borders married Jenny Sellards Wiley's sister Catherine. Their lands were on the head waters of Kimberling Creek. There are three forks of Kimberling Creek and the North Fork was placed in Tazewell County, in the division of counties and then became Bland County lands in 1861. In the story he warned Jenny of seeing Indian sign and to come to his cabin. Even the Border's lands were closer to Clear Fork than Walker's Creek.
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| Sell of John Borders Kimberling Creek Lands to Nehemiah Bonham in Tazewell county, Va Thanks to John Evans of Kentucky for a copy of this deed. |
Now For Some Mind Blowing Stuff
The location of the cabin is only one reason to open the research up for Jenny Wiley full scale. While searching for deeds I found this land grant in the records.
It is for 560 acres of Land in Kentucky by survey in 1782, for a Jane Wiley, signed by old Patrick Henry himself.It included a land survey and on the Kentucky Land database a certificate that states it was once a grant to George Rogers Clark.
John Evan in Kentucky dug up some documents that showed Jenny Sellards Wiley and her sister Catherine Sellards Borders could read and write. They signed their names on several documents. Jenny signed her name "Jane Wiley". So is this a land grant to our Jenny Wiley before she was attacked? If it were, why would she be getting this land grant? What happened to these lands?
So you see Ladies and Gents....the true story of Jenny Wiley has just begun. I am passing this knowledge on to inspire you to continue where I can not. Jenny Wiley deserves to have her true story told.
Find the real deposition of Jenny Wiley if it exists.
William Connelly Easley's records are scattered across the midwest. I have notes on where. They should be combed for his notes to see if anything exists of his interviews of Adam Wiley.
Discover the Wiley and Sellards family tree in Chancery, court cases, marriage and land records. Where did Jenny and Catherine learn to read and write?
More research on who was the Jane Wiley of the 560 acres Kentucky land grant.
Try to identify the Indians that did this attack and understand the Native American's reason for it.
Take each part of the Jenny Wiley stories and prove or disprove whether it is true or not.
Let me know what you FIND!
One more item. I believe Thomas Stuart Walker's lands that mentions Thomas Wiley's land border, were very close to an old church that the building still exists on 61 called Nebo. That is on the Bland County side about a 1/2 mile from the Cove Road. Many years ago I researched the Thomas Walker family of Clear Fork (Distant kin to the Thomas Walker of Walker's mountain fame) and located the lands for the family. This Walker family donated lands for the church and here is a deed where his corner is at Thomas Wiley's.
I usually go over this couple of times again.... but folks....I am exhausted. The old ticker is flip flopping and I ache like a toothache. Jenny Wiley needs to be left with those who are in better health. There may be errors just contact me and point them out. I probably won't post again for at least another month or more. It will take me that much time to rest and to recover. Going to take me that much time to clean off the bed and put the books up!!
Books I recommend
"Early Adventurers on the Western Waters" Volumes by Mary B. Kegley and F.B. Kegley, Green Publishers, Inc. Orange, VA
The American Revolution in Indian Country: Crisis and Diversity in Native American communities, by Colin G. Calloway, Cambridge University Press
The Ambiguous Iroquois Empire: The Covenant Chain Confederation of Indian Tribes with English Colonies from its beginnings to the Lancaster Treaty of 1744 By Francis Jennings, W.W. Norton and Company
Stories of Jenny Wiley: Exploring the History and the Legends, by Todd Pack, 2013, Published by Story ATOM Media
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