I will be at the Thomas Clark History Center in Frankfort on May 15th at noon for a screening of my film, The Feuds of Bloody Breathitt.
I will also be at the Filson Historical Society on May 16th at 1:00 for a screening of my film, The Feuds of Bloody Breathitt
And I will be in Jackson, at the Breahtitt County History museum on May 18th at 6:00 for a screening of my film, The Feuds of Bloody Breathitt.
KET1 SDBA Sat, 01/26/2013 4:00 a.m.KETKY SDBA Wed, 02/13/2013 10:00 p.m.KETKY SDBA Sat, 01/19/2013 9:00 p.m.KETKY SDBA Sat, 01/19/2013 12:00 p.m.KETKY SDBA Fri, 01/18/2013 6:00 p.m.KETKY SDBA Wed, 01/16/2013 8:00 p.m.KETKY SDBA Wed, 01/16/2013 7:00 a.m.KETKY SDBA Sun, 01/13/2013 6:00 p.m.KETKY SDBA Sun, 01/13/2013 12:00 a.m.
I recently had the pleasure of participating in the 2012 Ky Book Fair in Frankfort. This was my second year in a row, and I just love the event. Even got to participate in a panel discussion on the feuds of Kentucky. Thanks so much to Ellen Hellard for inviting me.
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From the Lexington Herald-Leader:
Documentary explores ‘bloody Breathitt’ feuds more deadly than Hatfield-McCoy
Published: September 3, 2012
By Jack Brammer — jbrammer@herald-leader.com
Jerry Deaton became interested in the Breathitt County feuds after reading Breathitt: A Guide to the Feud Country in the Capitol law library in 1986. It contained information about a relative’s death.
The Hatfield-McCoy feud that raged in southeastern Kentucky and West Virginia from 1863 to 1891 is one of the most famous family feuds in American history. With attention to it revived this year by a popular TV miniseries on the History channel, the feud has become a tourism draw for the mountainous region.
But there was a feud in Eastern Kentucky that involved more families, killed more people and attracted more media attention at the time.
“The Breathitt County feuds helped give rise to the image of the stereotypical Eastern Kentucky hillbilly and an area of the country known for frontier lawlessness,” Jerry Deaton said.
Deaton, 48, of Frankfort, has dedicated more than 25 years to studying the feuds of Breathitt County. With the assistance of Pinnacle Productions in Lexington, he is gearing up to release a 50-minute documentary film about the deadly skirmishes that lasted from 1870 to 1912.
The Feuds of Bloody Breathitt: Kentucky’s Untold Story will have its premiere at 6 p.m. Sept. 20 at the Thomas D. Clark Center for Kentucky History in Frankfort. A trailer for the documentary may be viewed at Jerrydeaton.com.
“Probably no one knows more about the Breathitt County feuds than Jerry Deaton,” said state historian James Klotter, who teaches at Georgetown College and was interviewed by Deaton for the film but has not yet seen it.
Deaton, an author who is semi-retired after working for the state Legislative Research Commission and the Kentucky League of Cities, takes the stories about the feuds personally. He is a descendant of one of the people involved in the feuds, which usually started over petty grievances.
Deaton, who grew up in Breathitt County, was working for the LRC in Frankfort in 1986 when he took a break in the Capitol law library.
“I like old stuff. I looked at the old book collection there, and found a book about the feuds of bloody Breathitt,” he said.
Deaton found in the book that one of his relatives had killed another relative in 1895.
“Nobody in my family had ever talked about that, and I started asking questions,” he said.
The late Kentucky historian Thomas Clark, Deaton said, told him that Kentucky was prime for the feuds because it had 120 “little kingdoms,” better known as counties.
“There was no state police force at the time,” Deaton said. “Authority had broken down, people in Eastern Kentucky were isolated in the mountains, and they pretty much had to take care of matters themselves. Armed mobs called regulators became the norm.”
The lawlessness led to newspaper and magazine articles around the world.
The Lexington Herald became so incensed about the feuds that it asked the state legislature to abolish Breathitt County because it was giving the state a bad name, Deaton said.
While the Hatfield-McCoy feud claimed more than a dozen members of two families, the Breathitt feuds involved about six families and led to more deaths, probably more than 100, Deaton said.
The Hatfield-McCoy feud became more famous than those in Breathitt and several other counties, said historian Klotter, because it involved a U.S. Supreme Court decision, occurred in two states, was popularized by dime novels, and several of the participants were tried in Louisville with its news media.
When starting to make his film about the Breathitt County feuds four years ago, Deaton said he encountered some county residents who still were reluctant to talk about the violence of more than 100 years ago.
But most people became enthusiastic about it when they realized “I wanted to do it right, but some still never talked about it,” he said.
Deaton said his film, “does not point any fingers, does not call anyone a villain.”
Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Mary C. Noble of Lexington is the film’s narrator.
“It’s a great idea for Jerry Deaton to tell this story,” Noble said. “Breathitt is my home county, too, and my grandmother’s brother was one of the victims in the feuds.”
Jack Brammer: (502) 227-1198. Twitter: @BGPolitics. Blog: Bluegrasspolitics.bloginky.com.
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Here is the trailer for the film I plan to release in September. Hoping to have a screening, possibly in Lexington later that month. Hope you like it.
-Jerry
The Feuds of Bloody Breathitt: Kentucky’s Untold Story Trailer from Jerry Deaton on Vimeo.
Jerry is currently working on a documentary called the Feuds of Bloody Breathitt, scheduled to be released in September, 2012. The following is an article describing that event.
On May 4, 1912, shots rang out from a hillside in Eastern Kentucky, mortally wounding the owner of a rural mercantile store, as he tended to a customer. One week later the man would die, putting an end to what most historians call the bloodiest and most violent feud Kentucky, or for that matter the United States had ever seen.
No, the victim was not a Hatfield, nor even a McCoy, and this event did not take place in Pike County. The murdered man was Ned Callahan, a former sheriff, and leader of the Callahan/Hargis faction of Breathitt County, Kentucky. His death would end more than 40 years of feuding in the county known as Bloody Breathitt, a place so violent that a Lexington newspaper had once called upon the state legislature for its abolishment.
Ned Callahan, and County Judge James Hargis would face murder charges five times during their prosperous but short lives but would never be convicted. Their troubles were with the Marcums and Cockrills and grew out of charges of a fixed school board election in 1898. Over the next seven years in what James C. Klotter, the State Historian of Kentucky, has termed a “reign of terror,” the Marcum/Hargis feud would claim the lives of most of the prominent members of each family, including doctors, lawyers, judges and police chiefs.
J.B. Marcum, a prominent attorney and perhaps the most high profile victim of the feuds, was gunned down in the doorway of the Breathitt County courthouse by Curtis Jett, a nephew of Judge Hargis. Marcum had predicted his own death and had written of its certainty in an article in the Lexington Morning Herald several months earlier. Hargis and Callahan, County Judge and Sheriff respectively at the time, were both seated in plain view of the murder and did nothing for nearly an hour after the event occurred. Both men were implicated at the trial of Curtis Jett but neither was ever convicted. Marcum’s wife would eventually gain a civil trial victory and Hargis would pay her $8,000 for her husband’s wrongful death. Just five years later, however, Judge Hargis would die at the age of 48, when his son Beach [Beachamp], shot him numerous times in a drunken brawl in the very store where he had made his fortune.
The Marcum/Hargis feud was not Breathitt County’s first. The Strong/Amis feud in the early 1870 grew out of post Civil War violence in Breathitt County. Captain William “Bad Bill” Strong led a large party of “regulators” who raided the homes and killed a number of men he had earlier court martialled in Breathitt County.
John Amis, once a Strong ally, had a falling out with Bad Bill over division of loot, and soon after an armed band led an attack on Strong’s home. Several on each side were killed, and, amazingly, Strong escaped. When later asked by a newspaper reporter if he killed anyone that day, he was quoted as saying, “Of the men who attacked me, several did not escape.” Strong and his band would later ambush and kill John Amis on the front porch of a cabin on Long’s Creek when Amis rushed from the protection of his home to rescue his infant child who had gotten out the door.
Newspapers across the United States would carry full length articles and pictures of these feudists from Breathitt, and would go into great detail on occasions– such aswhen Big John Akemon and Asbury Spicer ambushed and killed Bad Bill as he and his grandson rode a mule to a store in their small community of Whick. The grandchild was spared, but Strong’s body was shot numerous times as he lay pinned in the creek under the weight of his dead mule.
The Strong Amis feud would play out by the mid 1870s, but was soon replaced by the Little/Burnett feud of 1878, an event that would draw the state militia to Breathitt in the first of three visits.Jason Little, a man reputed to have murdered his wife and buried her under his front porch, because “that was her wish,” was arrested by Judge Burnett. The Littles were a large, prominent family in Breathitt, with the backing of Big John Akemon (a great, great, great uncle of the author) and the Burnetts were backed by Bad Bill Strong. Jason Little was jailed in Jackson and his kin sought to gain his release through a raid. An all-out gunfight took place (one of the few that occurred in the feuds), leaving several dead, including County Judge Burnett. Little was retained in the jail and after a day and a half of fighting, both sides retreated to the hills when the state militia was sent in to secure the peace.
To put the Breathitt feudal violence in perspective, during an eleven-month period in 1902 alone, more than thirty men were killed on the streets of Jackson. In comparison, twelve lives were lost in the Hatfield/McCoy feud, which lasted nearly a dozen years. Newspapers with huge circulations such as the Washington Times and the Chicago Tribune dubbed Jackson, “the city of sudden death.”
Breathitt County feuds would claim perhaps as many as a hundred lives, most in ambush style attacks from hillsides or open windows. Strangely enough they started and ended in the small community of Crockettsville, twenty-five miles from Jackson in southern Breathitt County.
When Ned Callahan died on May 12, 1912, he too was in his late forties. From his deathbed he issued a statement asking his clan not to seek revenge on those who had killed him– and they did not. Callahan’s death ended the Smith/Deaton/Callahan feud and put to rest nearly half a century of feudal warfare. Those feuds played a large part in saddling Kentucky with the “violent hillbilly” image that it in many ways has had to endure until this very day.
Thursday, August 23rd – Jerry will be the keynote speaker at the Kentucky Municipal Clerk’s Summer Conference on August 23rd in Lexington, Ky.
Wednesday, May 23 5:10 p.m. Jerry will be a guest on the Terry Meiners show on 840 WHAS radio in Louisville to talk about his book and his upcoming film on the feuds of Breathitt County Kentucky.
Monday, June 18, Jerry will be doing a writing workshop for the Owsley County summer school program at Owsley County High School from 9:00 to 12:00.
Jerry recently started working on a documentary film that will cover the 40 plus years of feuds that took place in his native Breathitt County Kentucky. This particular scene was shot on May 4th, the 100th year anniversary of the killing of Ed Callihan from the hills outside his rural Breathitt County store on Long’s Creek.
Jerry recently served as the keynote speaker for the 25th Academic Achievement Awards Ceremony in his hometown of Jackson. More than 600 people were on hand to help celebrate the children of Breathitt county that have maintained a 3.5 GPA. Jerry spoke about how determination has helped him to succeed in life.
Direct link to the video is here: http://www.clipsyndicate.com/video/play/3326952
Jerry at the Kentucky Book Fair with friend and author Don “The Writer” Smith.
Jerry Deaton recently participated in the 2011 Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort, The Frankfort State Journal reported on Sunday, November 13th that he had been the 13th highest selling author at the event, out of 180 authors. Jerry sold more than 60 books that day.
The Kentucky Department of Parks recently purchased Jerry’s book and it will be available in selected Kentucky State Park gift shops across the state. The book is also available at the Kentucky History Museum in Frankfort, Poor Richards Book Store in Frankfort, The Morris Book Shop in Lexington, The Booneville Shopwise (His favorite grocery store anywhere); outlets to be announced in Jackson, and on Amazon.com.
Jerry recently signed copies of his book Appalachian Ghost Stories: Tales From Bloody Breathitt, at the 2011 Kentucky Book Fair in Frankfort, Ky.
Over Halloween weekend, Jerry did a reading in his hometown of Jackson. While telling the crowd about one of his stories, he was photographed in this mysterious picture by museum director Janie Griffith. You be the judge.
Jerry was featured on a Cable 10 program in Frankfort on October 25th where he spoke about his ghost story book and his invitation to attend the Book Fair in Frankfort.
WJSN in Jackson, Ky featured Jerry on a 30 minute radio program on October 13th, where he discussed Appalachian Ghost Stories: Tales From Bloody Breathitt and read a piece from one of his stories.
On October 25, Jerry did a reading/signing in Radford, Va., the hometown of the books illustrator, Kat B. Smith.
Jerry is branching out into other creative fields and will appear in his first acting role, where he will portray the Sheriff in the Shelby County Community Theatre’s production of The Homecoming. The play will take place December 2,3,4,9,10, and 11.
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Jerry Deaton is the author of Appalachian Ghost Stories: Tales From Bloody Breathitt. (2011). This is Jerry’s first book, and it is a collection of ghost stories set in his home county of Breathitt County, Kentucky. These stories were inspired by the people he grew up around, along with the traditions, folklore and unique and rugged history of this rural county in South Eastern Kentucky.
Deaton is a retired lobbyist for cities in the state of Kentucky and also served as a committee staffer for the Kentucky General Assembly for eight years. He currently lives in Frankfort, Kentucky where he writes and runs a small Inn on Main Street in Lexington, Ky. He is married to Leslie Deaton and has two daughters, Sophie age 15, and Emmie D. age 12.
Join Jerry Deaton on Facebook. Jerry Buck Deaton
Jerry always welcomes letters from readers. You may contact him by mailing him at:
2312 Pea Ridge Rd.
Frankfort, Ky 40601
or you can contact him at jdeaton@me.com.
Jerry Deaton is available for readings, workshops, and lectures etc. Jerry enjoys speaking about the writing process, his background, the history of Breathitt County, and the folk lore, traditions and people behind his stories.
To expedite your request, please include the following information in your email or letter:
Queries should be addressed to:
Jerry Deaton
2312 Pea Ridge Rd.
Frankfort, Ky 40601
or to jdeaton@me.com
Introduction of book:I don’t know a single person who doesn’t like a good ghost story. It seems that all of us–young and old–love to read or hear a good scary tale. It doesn’t have to be gory and blood soaked, or one that keeps us up at night with graphic descriptions of monsters and evil spirits. It just needs to be a good story with characters we like or despise, a setting we can relate to, and an event we can’t quite explain or understand.
My years in Breathitt County, Kentucky left a deep impression that is still present in my life. I always loved hearing stories, any stories, but mostly scary ones that “really happened.” My family told tales like “The Big Toe,” “Raw Head and Bloody Bones,” and “The Thing at the Sweet Gum Ford.” They all involved country folks just like us, but they included something scary. These stories thrilled me and I begged my parents or my grandmother to tell them every night before bedtime.
My stories are about mountain people and their everyday lives. The settings are lonely deserted hollers, overgrown hillside cemeteries, and even the courthouse steps of downtown Jackson. I draw heavily upon fading customs like graveyard meetings, “sitting up with the dead,” and “listenin’ in” on party line telephones to set the stage. Every character comes from somebody I knew, and each situation from something I saw or heard growing up on Long’s Creek or in Jackson. I’ve always watched people carefully, and I notice the small things that really make them who, and what they are. I use those “small things” to bring my characters to life; then I step back and let them tell the story.
These are simply ghost stories, just like my people would have told years ago. I borrow their voice and mannerisms, and I tell these stories like they would have.
Vintage Truck Magazine, September/October 2010.
The Fabulous 1950 Four
Breathitt County Memories, Vol I. (2007)
A Trip to the Old Homeplace.
The Sound of Little Footsteps on the Stairs: NPR December 4, 2006.
Jerry Deaton is the owner/operator of the Carriage House Inn on Main Street in Lexington. The Carriage House is a 200 year old, fully furnished home that is available for rent year round. This two bedroom, bath and a half home is a nice mix of antebellum charm and modern comfort and convenience. Located just a block and a half from Rupp Arena, it is within walking distance of most of downtown Lexington’s restaurants and attractions. It is also within ten minutes of the Kentucky Horse Park and Keeneland Race Course.
To express interest in renting this home, please contact Jerry at jdeaton@me.com or by calling him directly at (502) 229-1249.
