A Forgotten Feud of "Bloody" Breathitt County, Kentucky 

God Bless Breathitt County. From Whick to Vancleve and every broken down shack and every relative's grave in between. What a place.

About 1/3 of the way in, I lost track of who killed who.

You tell the best stories, demonstrating that fact is often stranger and more interesting than fiction.

James Marcum was my great grandfather. The story that's been passed down is that there was a failed assassination attempt that occurred before the courthouse incident. James was traveling to town, possibly to file some documents and was expected to be traveling alone but was accompanied with his family. When the buggie they were riding came past some cover on the side of the road, there was a man with a shotgun pointed at them. With only a shotgun the would-be assassin could not be sure to hit only James and not his wife or child. This is what prompted James to start carrying his son with him when he left the house. Thanks for doing this, I'll have to show this to my dad.

I am a 7th generation Kentuckian. The first member of my family to come to Kentucky, came from Virginia to Woodford County Kentucky right after he got out of the Colonial army following the War Of Independence. I knew that Kentucky was totally ravaged by the armies of both the North and South but I didn’t know that it continued to such a degree in Breathitt County. Jackson County Kentucky was known for its moonshine for many many years before it became legal to distill moonshine. Starting in the late sixties, premium grade marijuana, sometimes called “Kentucky Bluegrass”, superseded moonshine as the illicit substance of choice to be produced in the area. Excessive poverty and unemployment caused people to grow marijuana to survive. Everyone knew when the weed crop had come in by the number of new pickup trucks being driven in Jackson.

Wow... that *does* make the Hatfield/McCoy feud seem tame by comparison. I suppose the Hatfields and McCoys get more notice because it was across state lines and a much longer and protracted feud.

Hard to believe its possible. But your content continues to get better with every episode you release. Thank you History Guy. So many of us really appreciate what you do.

Very interesting....... I always knew Breathitt County to be called Bloody Breathitt, just never knew why. Now I do. 😀 Thank you for all of your interesting stories.

I live in Louisville Ky. And have heard about this for years. I have in the past read up on this feud. From what I have read THG Could have gone on for over an hour with Info on this matter. But as always THG Did an outstanding job bring the main parts of the story to light.

Much respect for you my friend!! My home town right here!!!!!!

My entire family (on my dad's side) is from Breathitt County. My great uncle has a farm in Lost Creek, just a couple miles south of Jackson, and we've had personal dealings with the Cockrill family even to this day (I'm literally related to almost every single person you mentioned in this story). I have to admit that it's very odd to have such a close personal connection to one of your stories.

I'm related to the Callahans in this story. Fueding goes back to before the Civil War and became even more intense afterwards when lawlessness was rampant and Capt. Bill Callahan formed a group to try to maintain order but instead made things worse and more polarized. Very interesting times!

That was a lot of careful alliteration, well spoken sir.

My grandmother was a Hargis. We are very old southern family and proud of our history. Good or bad. Great story.

It’s not necessarily that we in Kentucky are more violent than others - it’s just that we are real good shots.

I'm from Oneida, Clay County, KY. Kentucky had many feuds, just as was stated in this video. But the Clay County feud involved 4 families. The feud was know as the Baker/Howard feud and the White/Garrard feud. It lasted for 3 generations and is estimated that 150 people died, unknown how many more were injured.

Very clear rendition. I am related to the Hargis family, and as you mention, by association most of the participants!

My mother was from Lynch, KY in Harlan county. Harlan County was called @Bloody Harlan county” due to skirmishes between the United Mine Workers Union(UMW) and mine operators. Different circumstances, same tragic loss of life, but lacking the same level of loathing (familiarity breeds contempt) as in Breathhitt county. Excellent video!

My dad was from bloody Breathitt. It is still referred as such.

My family is from nearby pike county KY. Feuds are serious business in those areas. Most folks there are friendly and many old wounds have healed, but bad blood still runs sometimes.

I always heard the ol timers speak of Bloody Breathitt. Now I understand why, thanks for the history lesson.

Malcolm Gladwell has made the point that American families who engage in these blood feuds tend to have immigrated, generations ago, from areas in England and Scotland where long-standing blood feuds are also common. This kind of cultural heritage takes many decades to die out, even if there is no direct connection with previous generations of one's family.

Thanks for posting this. Curtis Jett is my great-great uncle. I didn't find out about him and what he did until recently when I was doing some genealogical research. Nobody on that side of the family ever talked about him and they disowned him after he got out of prison.

Another fantastic video from The History Guy! This is why we love the channel. Why have we never heard of this? It is indeed, history that deserves to be remembered!

Love your videos! History is my passion and you help fill that void!

Need a genealogical chart to follow this story

As a life long resident of Kentucky, I can say this: Kentucky 5 million people 20 last names.

Your uploads are always on time! Like a Swiss watch 😊

1 branch of my family tree hails from Breathitt County KY, last name of Sewell. They arrived there about 1802 and stay until the outbreak of the Civil War when they moved north into Clark Co. Illinois. A couple brothers stayed in KY and after the war, another brother moved back. I remember reading about one of the fueds where one cousin of theirs was caught in the crossfire and was shot in the leg.

This is such a complicated story it needs a list of characters like a Dickens story and a time line of events.

This channel is a school of its own!!!

Woooo good morning history guy, good morning everyone. Happy days I wish you all well!

I live in Madison County Kentucky and I love your channel . I darn neer lose my mind til you down load an episode on your channel. Thank you for your hard work to bring us all a little bit of history.

Thank you for posting your video. It actually got a conversation going as my family originated there. An ancestral grandfather shot and killed a man on the jackson courthouse steps. He was lynched on those same steps by the town. The words etched on his rifle? "Death to many" he was one of many family sharpshooters

There’s actually a song called JB Marcum that you can find on RU-vid. This is a nice narrative of one of the feuds that occurred later towards the end of The Bloody Breathitt era, there are actually many feuds that occurred in Breathitt, starting in the early 1800’s and ending in the mid-to late 1920’s, early 1930’s.

Looking good history guy! I was going to suggest certain shades of green, so I'm glad to see you and the Mrs. are on it. Thank you so much! Always learning new things, especially about history and I love your presentations. 👍💕

You sir, are such a great history professor! In light of the unfortunate fire of Notre Dame, can you do a segment on the lesser known history of the cathedral?

I live in Danville, KY. Especially enjoyed this episode. Thanks.

Thank you for yet another great video, History Guy! Keep up the good work, and thank you! Enjoy your morning!

I was having a hard time following the names but then you said they were all related. I might have to watch it a couple more times to get it straight. Very interesting Mr history guy!

Man oh Man you are good at you craft!

My mother's family is from Breathitt. My GG grandfather was killed in the Little-Strong Feud (killed trying to stop violence). There's a good ballad about the killing of J.B. Marcum. Google The Ballad of J.B. Marcum and you'll find it.

Thank You History Guy!

“Merci! I am killed!” I’ll make sure to note that in my “things to say before death” file. 🤣

What a feud. Thanks for sharing this.

I have studied this feud in depth. You do a very good job of bringing out all of the people and the relationships. My great-grandfather was a Jett so Curtis Jett has always been an interesting person to study. However, he was not the only Jett in the family to be involved in a deadly feud.

Thanks, I really enjoy your videos,. This one reminds me of Rev. John J. Dickey’s diaries which is a mix of Kentucky history, and memories of those living during those turbulent years.

My last name is Marcum and I stumbled across this entire thing a few years ago while browsing a newspaper archive and searching my name. J.B. is my around my fourth cousin! I knew my family was from the mountains but this story really is crazy.

Alford brothers of Alfordsville IN. Three brothers of one family who died fighting for the North in the Civil War. There’s a book titled “We All Must Dye Sooner or Later”. The book is a compilation of family letters during the war years.

Another educational and entertaining video, HG; thank you...

Thank you History Guy I enjoy your videos and learn a lot from them

My great great grandfather caused a lot of grief in Jackson Co. He was known as One-Armed Andy Barrett.

Outstanding video and presentation

Love me some feud n! You’re a great story teller, enjoyed your video!

My pawpaw use to tell us story about this when we was kids. He said on the day his dad die, he said he had killed over 20 people and he knew he was going to Hell

Every time I watch one of your videos I learn new things. Just awesome content. And wow! You need a spreadsheet to see who's related to who and who killed who in the story!

I'm from kentucky myself, louisville in particular and I know quite a lot about the state's history and have never heard of this

i really enjoy your efforts. i look forward to ones i've yet to see. having spent time in kentucky myself, this episode particularly resonates. i think, if you are looking for unremembered things that deserve remembering, you might enjoy examining the actual history of "fair Verona," and the families which WS translated into Capulets and Montegues. that story of the Avignon Heresy truly does deserve your attention. in fact, the historicities of any Shakespeare play! i think you might be pleasantly surprised at how many are based in history.

Kain-tuc-kee ;{Dark and Bloody ground. is the Cherokee name for Kentucky.

I live in Breathitt county!!💕

Story's like this are perfect examples proving disputes turn violent with the sheriff's and courts in the south over many subjects . Civil rights was no speciality just another strongly disputed subject .

Cool vid. love history... love your content....you will never run out of content .. idea . Skidmore MO.

I really love what you do for our society. Might I suggest a bio about yourself and your journey to hear and now, as a person and a channel. Keep fighting the good fight!!

Your Videos are awesome I enjoy your Videos very much

Dang. Those guys didn't mess around back then.

What an entertaining video! Always enjoy hearing about history from my beloved state. I also share the last name of one of the people involved in this account. Fascinating. Thank you!

"Them's fightin' words!" :-) Nice one. Thanks!

Another great video

Your efforts are an inspiration to me.

My mother was from Lee County, which is not far from Breathitt County. She left Kentucky for Arizona in 1926, when she was 18, and stayed in the West most of the rest of her life. This episode might explain why she got the hell out.

Always love what you do. Thank You.. maybe someday you could do one on the Battle of Matewan .. I’m from Welch, WV so I would enjoy that video. Thanks again for what y’all do... and love the cats on Facebook

Loved this episode. I am very familiar with Jackson

Great job!

As a Kentuckian,,thank you for the lesson,,,right down the road from me.

Hillbilly Elegy is a great book and very illuminating for those of us who's parents and grandparents migrated away from the hills for better opportunity but brought not only a lot of good but also some tragic lifestyles with them.

INCREDIBLE!!

Still living here, right where some of that took place. My gr gr gr grandfather was Captain Bill Strong. There is a ton of his direct descendants who still live here.

A good many of my Dad's family are from Breathitt Co. I have a photo of Tom Cockrill and I always wondered who he was and how I'm related to him.

Best voice and presentation ever i love you history guy

I live in Breathitt County and this is a very nice piece of history.

Some of that good old southern hospitality

I've never understood why the Hatfields and McCoys got so much press. Comparatively speaking, it was pretty small potatoes compared to the feuds in Bloody Breathitt or the French-Eversole War in Perry County in the late 1880s-early 1890s. The government ended up sending in state troops twice to break up the latter feud, without much success. Personally, I find the latter interesting in terms of the culture of the region because the conflict was over coal (or rather, mineral) rights. That doesn't sound like much, but it had an enormous impact upon the region. Most of the settlers had held the land there for over a century, and they'd never part with the property. What the coal companies did was go for mineral rights, telling people that they could get money (which they desperately needed, since the economy had tanked) yet keep their land. Kentucky was a border state and that area was largely pro-Union and anti-slavery, but that area borders on both Tennessee and Virginia, and there was a lot of vicious in-fighting. The aftermath crippled the area for years, so people were desperate. Of course, what the companies *didn't* tell people was that owning the mineral rights mean the companies could come in and pretty much do anything they wanted. Afterward, the land was so destroyed, it was worthless. It also meant that they purchased billions of dollars in coal for pennies. It didn't take long for people to figure out what was happening and to start refusing these companies. That's when the coal operators hired men like Fulton French, a former Confederate, to put on some pressure. If French (a lawyer) couldn't coax them into selling, he brought his thugs (paid for by the coal companies) and tried to coerce the owners through physical violence or property destruction. His primary targets for that were the widows of Union soldiers since they were women and more vulnerable to that type of pressure, and generally they were more in need of money. That's actually how the Eversoles came into it; the family sent over 3 dozen men to the war to fight for the Union, many of whom had died, and their widows turned to Joseph Eversole, the acknowledged family head and a fairly well-to-do businessman whose father-in-law was one of the county judges, for legal advice and protection. French wouldn't stop and Eversole wouldn't back down, and thus, the feud was born. Sociologically speaking, though, it was people like French (and in SE Kentucky, it largely *was* French), funded by Big Coal, who ended up causing the economic crisis and environmental problems that plague SE Kentucky today. The area still had a frontier quality to it before the Civil War, but it had been slowly developing as transportation improved. Although Kentucky was a border state and the SE area, in particular, was pro-Union, the area had been hit hard by the Civil War, both economically and in terms of sheer number of men lost. French's actions to procure mineral rights on the cheap allowed coal companies to essentially set up modern day fiefdoms, controlling the economy and infrastructure in the region to a mind-boggling degree. Eventually, the choices for young people came down to leaving the area to find education and other work (which many did) or working for the coal companies. Also re: 8:54 -- it's amazing how blind people could become during such feuds. Fulton French survived the French-Eversole war (unlike Joseph Eversole and Eversole's father-in-law, Judge Combs, both of whom French paid to have assassinated), though he wore a bulletproof vest for years. A couple of decades later, French approached Eversole's widow, Susan on the street in town. The official story is that he greeted her; the unofficial story is that he said something much less polite. Eversole's son Harry, who was escorting his mother, shot French in the spleen, just below the edge of his vest. The incident took place in the middle of town, during the busiest part of the day, and in fact, Harry was fined for 'disturbing the peace'. Though well over thirty people could attest to the fact that Harry *had* discharged a firearm, somehow, none of them managed to see him actually shooting French. French took over a year to die of his wounds. The general consensus seemed to be that it was long-delayed justice, right down to the months of agony in dying. Also: Night Comes to the Cumberlands by Harry Caudill is a great overview of these two feuds and several others in the region, with the added bonus of being written by a native of the area. It's old (early 60s, I believe) but well worth the read.

I enjoyed this ty very interesting

Loved it!

"Try a Little Tenderness" - Blood, Sweat, and Tears

Thank you for that. There is a book, TRAGEDY AT DEVIL'S HOLLOW AND OTHER HAUNTING TALES FROM KENTUCKY by Michael Paul Henson, Which tells a legend of the Callahan Deaton feud. He claimed to know the two involved, but that's about all I can find, other than anecdotal reprints of his story

It’s very common for people who live in isolated communities to have a lot of intermarriages -On the bayous of South Louisiana travel was mostly by boat and buggy-the Matriarchs of the families kept tract of who was who and made sure that cousins didn’t marry -once i told my mother of a girl i met at a dance on. Bayou Terrebonne -that got quashed immediately because she was a second cousin who I didn’t know-also it was seldom that people from one bayou would marry people from another bayou-of course except my Uncle Carol who ended up living there-it felt like i was going to a foreign country when i was called upon to help him build his boat and I didn’t dare stop at any bar there because there would have been big trouble

Great video! The author of Blood Feud: The Hatfields And The Mccoys: The Epic Story Of Murder And Vengeance had a chapter on feuds, most of them in Kentucky, which were either bloodier or longer than the Hatfields and McCoys but less known. In one of the feuds a mother supposedly told her dying son to stop groaning as he lay on the family's front porch during a gunfight. Blood Breathitt should be a TV show. Cue I Know These Hills by Kevin Costner & Modern West.

I was born and raised in Breathitt County. Thanks for the video.

Wow📜📜very interesting informations. The situation in that time was very chaotic

that is so wild. crazy crazy stuff took place back in the day

My birth place is gauge (Breathitt county). I love the mountains.

And there hasn't been a movie made about this?... Good Lord...

Hollywood screen writers are watching this channel, feverishly typing away on their MacBook Airs.

Born and raised in Kentucky, that’s the first time I ever 👂 that story...

I swear it seems like my state is only known for two things: violence and chicken.

Very interesting, my family hails from Salyersville in the neighboring Magoffin County.

That's how it be the person that kills you often times is a family member ,a friend or an acquaintance.

I grew up in Breathitt County....oh the stories told round the tables while knockin back some bourbon.....good days.

Excellent topic and we'll presented (as usual). "But, the next time you do something like this (with a list of who's who) could you please use a family tree type of diagram, and a pointer?" he asked with a grin.