Omaha Daily Bee Newspaper, February 15, 1903, Page 24

Side Lights on Life in the Feud Land A CEMETERY IN (Copyright, 1803, by Arthur Morris.) IFTY MEN were killed in Ken- tucky's feud country last year by mountaineers who are brave enough when It comes to facing bulets in the open or in ambush, but who Incontinently turn tail and streak along rocky tralls whenever a man with a camera comes along. Consider the typlcal case of “General” Ben Butler Souders and Thomas Jefferson Henderson, old and bitter rivals in the Bell county feud that has cost thirty lives to date. Putting aside their hatred for the time being, they had met on the banks of “Yaller' creek, within sight of the no- torious Quarter House, and had just con- summated the sale of a brindle cow to their mutual satisfaction, when a camera man strolled along. The ‘‘general’ was the first to spy the black-boxed instru- ment, and the instant he did so that in- stant he stood not on the order of his charging full speed down the mountain side. Thomas Jefferson stood his ground until, a few moments later, he became acquaipted with the cause of his old enemy’'s precipitate flight, and then, he, too, took to his heels in the direction marked out by the “general.” Only the latter's venerable father, 'Squire Bouders, stayed to face the camera. “Yer see,” ingenuously explained the 'squire, “th' general is right superstitious about them picter-drawin’' boxes. The gen- eral hev fit rome day an' time an’ he ain't lookin' fer no trouble no more. They ain’'t a better man nor he be, an’ if he's had killin' ter do, hit were bekaze they warnt no one else in Yaller creek good an’ hefty enough ter do hit on'y him.” Only after an hour's persuasion and de- talled explanation: of the working of the “picter-drawin' box" would the ’squire consent to be photographed, anl it re- quired all of two hours’ diplomatic elo- quence to induce Thomas Jefferson Hen- flerson the next day to posec before the camera. Praise of the picturesqueness of his dllapidated shanty and the beauty of his age-withered mother, sitting In the doorway churning, finally had the desired effect. “Wall, I reckon,” said Thomas, “if you- all is agoin’ ter make a drawin’' o' th' old shack, hit 'pears I oughter be in hit; but, durn it all, I'd ruthes hev a gun pintin' at me.” The only leader in all the feud country who showed no fear or backwardness of the camera was Anse Hatfield. The pos- sible commercial value to him of his like- ness gave him courage to pose. “You-all kin draw my picter,” he sald, “an’ atter hit's drawed, you-all kin write a history in a book about hit, an' then I'll tell you what we-all kin do. We kin taike these hyah dawgs, an’ this hyah gun, an' th' picter ‘at you-all ‘ill draw, FEUD LAND, an' th' book, an’ we kin show eve'ywhere in th' kentry, an’ make a sight o' money, They's money en these hyah feuds, even if they is worry an’ divilmint. Why, I kin sell th' hide o' a b'ar fer $10 more nor hits worth jest bekaze hit were killed by ole Devil Anse, An’' they ain't a tooth in th'e jaws o' th' varmint 'at T kainu sell fer $1 a tooth fer th' same reason.” These same camera-shy dare-devils of the mountains take particular delight in having their families and their cemeteries pictured. They will go to no end of ‘trouble to induce ‘th’ ol’ woman' and ‘“th’ gals” to pose by their spinning wheels, which are still universally used 4in this region, and do anything to help in “‘th’ drawin’ o' th' wimmen folk.” The typieal feud land cemetery looks like nothing so much as a deserted villago of dollhouse proportions. The dead—the majority of whom have fallen in feuds— are placed in little frame shacks, about six feet wide by ten feet long, which boasts a door in one end wide enough to admit a coffin and high enough to make a six-foot mountaineer bend double when ha enters to place a body inside. No fasten- ing other than a bit of revolving .wood, with a nail as a pivot, is on any door, The active participants in the feuds are not the only people in their blood-bespat- tered world who have. rather remarkable ideas of law and its enforcement. Even the authorities have their own peculiar ways of interpreting justice, . b “If a civil citizen kills dnother citizen and it is clearly in self-defense, don't in- dict him,” sald a judge to a grand jury in Letcher, one of the feud counties, re- cently, “If a civil citizen kills an outlaw, don’t indict him, no matter whether he killed in self-defense or not. If one out- law kills another outlaw, indict him with- out questioning the motive for killing. In such a case it would be well to sentence the outlaw for life and so get rid of him as well az his victim. If a civil citizen takes a bag of provisions on his back and pursues an outlaw all week, and then kills him as he wouyld wild game, don't indict him. If you want to do anything, give him a better gun and more ammunition, 80 that he can get the next outlaw more easily. If you do indict such a man, be sure that I will file the indictment away as soon as I reach it." Quite as remarkable as these instruc- tions is the fact that the records of the feud counties show that out of a total of between 300 and 400 murders occurring during the past twenty years, there has been only one official hanging. This was the execution of Ellison Mounts, in the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud. Mounts was a half-witted boy accused of complicity with the Hatfields in the burning of the McCoy homestead in Pike county. As this exploit was one of the most spectacular A FAMILY OF FEUDISTS, 'SQUIRE SOUDERS, FATHER OF THR GENERAL IN THE BELL COUNTY FEUD 8 ) and revolting in the entire feud, the au- thorities bestirred themselves in the mat- ter. But there are many who hold that Mounts was innocent, and the leader of the McCoy faction is one of them. The average feud man thinks about the courts as does Thomas Jefferson Henderson. “Yer see,”” he sald, ‘.1’ cohts hev four killin's agin me, an’ I reckon ef I keep my mouth shet they'll be lees trouble. So long as th’' cohts ain't talkin’ any, I ain't talkin’ neither.” When the courts do begin to talk, then it is that the feud country sends represent- atives from far and near. Court week and election day are its red-letter events, the only times in the year when there is a gen- eral outpouring of dwellers of mountain- side shacks to a common center. The judge who presides over court gen- erally manages to maintain the requisite amount of judicial dignity while in his shirt sleeves, and often he spends his time reading a newspaper while the tobacco- spitting jury is confused by eounsel, also inveterate users of the weed, and, like the judge, minus coats, Until an old dinner bell dissolves court for recess the mountaineer spectators emu- late the jury in adorning with tobacco juice the floor of the dingy room, with its many broken window panes. Then they slouch out onto the green surrounding the seat of justice, lie around in groups, swap yarns and tobacco plugs, devour watermelons, whittle boards and sticks until the grass is littered with countless pine slivers, and now and then look after their mules and “‘plugs,”” hitched to the court house fence in the rear. Recess over, a court attendant sticks his .head out of a second-story window, rings the bell lusily, and bawls for the witnesses in the murder case on trial-to come into court. But tkere is no immediate response to the official summons. The Kentucky ,moun« taineer is nothing if not deliberate in all his movements and methods. A quarter of &n hour later, one homespun-clad man after another strugglcs upon his feet. There le ‘a laugh and an extra joke cracked as the fat man and principal wit and gossip of the town is hoisted from the grass by two of his satellites and waddles off on his pudgy feet. Then, in leisurely Indian file, the outdoor gathering slouchily adjourns to the ancient court house, leaving a wide trall of tobacco juice in its wake, The courthouse of Harlan county is typ- fcal of similar structures in feud Jland. Twenty years ago it was besieged by one- half ‘the town's male population, while the other half was barricaded within during one of the bitterest of the early feudal wars. fcores of men were’ kl'l)ed in those days, and for three years the military arm of the state was unable to suppress this minia- “ture revolution, which finally «ught itself out in the mountains that cluster about and overhang the picturesque little county seat. At that time the Howard party, as an or- panized feudal body, was broken up and its famous leader, Wilse Howard, fled to Cali- fornia. There, some say, he was hanged; others that he eluded the vigilance of his jailors and the sheriff, who performed a mock execution in his behalf, thus leaving it open to the conjecture that he may still be lurking in mountain fastnesses ready to sweep down upon his old feudal enemies. In Harlan courthouse are still the marks of this dare-devil's prowess and that of his followers when they stormed its brick walis in the endeavor to dislodge and put to flight the town authorities. The courtroom is grimy with age, desolate and bare. Its window panes are broken and the shutters creak dolefully in the wind. And the rest of the building is iu keeping with the room where many a murderer has been tied but never brought to justice. It is an unusual election day that does not give cause for the beginning of at least three feuds. A quarrel at the polls started the famous Bell county feud, in which the massacre at the Quarter house only a year ago was a chapter. “General” Souders and Henderson, mentioned above, are the pres- ent rival chieftains of this feud. A similar cause started the trouble between the Bent- leys and Rameys, the Justices and Bevins, the Hargises and Cockrills last year; while among the older feuds there is scarcely one that does not count an election day dispute among its leading motives, She Married Her Father’s Coachman ICTORIA MOROSINI, who eloped from her father's beautiful home at Riverdale on September 9, 1884, with the family coachman, Ernest Schilling-Huelscamp, is living in retirement at Rutland, Vt., where she s known as Miss Baldwin. Apparently she has absolutely forgotten her former husband. Schilling is coachman for Dr John Jacob Kindred of the Rivercrest sani- tarium at Astoria. He does not know where Victoria is, but he loves her as fondly as ever. He cherishes the hope that she still cares for him and that some day they will be reunited for the rest of their lives Glovanni P. Morosinl was the friend and bodyguard of Jay Gould. He had fought and suffered with Garidbaldi. Som of an fllustrious Venetian family, he brought to this country old-fashioned Latin ideas as to the seclusion of young girls. His daugh- ters were allowed to have few companions of their own age. They rarely saw young men, and then only in the presence of elderly relatives. Eroest Schilling, the family coackman, was a tall, slender, good-natured youth, with faint red cheeks and straw-colored hair. It was his duty to take Victoria driving, to accompany her when she rode. In the summer of 1884 the Morosinis saw that he and Victoria were too fond of each other. They discharged him. Schilling returned to the place on Sep- tember 9, 1884, ostensibly to collect money from a fellow servant. Victoria ran across the lawn and kissed him. Mrs. Morosini saw and stormed. That night Victoria eloped with Ernest. They went to Europe, but returned to New York in a few months. Ernest got & job as conductor on a Second avenue car. Victoria became a superior chorus girl in “Amorita,” which was being played at the Casino. She tinkled on a mandolin, sang with a pleasant little voice and tried hard to dance gracefully. She was too big. Still she was a popular success because of her notoriety. Ernest sat in a front row and grotud bi. teeth. Also in a front seat was & young New York rubber merchant, friend of the Morosino family, After many efforts the merchant brougit Victoria and her father together. On September 1, 1886, she vanished from New York. Ernest has never seen her since nor known her whereabouts. She has not communicated with him nor admitted her identity to any one ‘of the hundreds of per- sons with whom she came in coutact. The World has learncd that she went to a con- vent in Paris, wherc she remained until early in 1863 From ther: she :uddenly went to Vancouver, B. C., ard took train for Rutland, Vt., where she arrived at night and was driven to the convent of the Sisters of St. Joseph, where she was taken as a boarder under the name of Miss Baldwin. She left the protecting walls of the convent seldom, and then she always wore large green glasses. But even these could not conceal bher. umas ‘al beauty of features and richness of colcr- ing. She was the source of much specula- tion among the Vermonters and at last a few of them learned her socret But she would not admit when guesitioned that she wae Victoria Morosini-Schilling. When Mrs. G. P. Morosini died 5n Nesem- ber 3, 1893, her funeral was delayed until the fourth day so that her daughtar, \le- toria, might attend it, The reconciliation with her family was complete, She after- ward returned to Rutland, where she re- mained in the convent until three yecars ago, when she left because of a disagree- ment with the mother superior. Her father agaiu cast her off. Still xnown as Miss Baldwin, she has boarded cver since with a Rutland family, who live in West street, near the bridge. They are in mod- erate circumstances. Two prominent young men of Rutland bave been devoted to “Miss Baldwin,” but ehe has given them little encouragement. Schilling enlisted in the United States Marine .corps ihree weeks after his wife disappeared. When be returned at the end of Ris $ve years' term bhe made his bome at Steinway, Astoria, where he has sinee remained. . He is bhepest, sober and industrious. His pearest friends say that he is certainly shadowed by detectives, who bope to furnish evidemce against him. L