The image shows me reading a book by Professor Benjamin Luntz about the ku klux klan in Pike and Letcher counties in Eastern Kentucky. Most readers will be surprised to learn that there was enough klan activity in Letcher and Pike counties to fill a 750 page book, but there it is.
Professor Luntz writes about the area where the two counties border each other. There is nothing about the Eastern half of Pike County, where the ‘feud’ occurred. Tug Valley is two days’ ride from the Letcher County border.
Knowing that dozens of men–approaching one hundred–from the Tug River side of Pike County deserted the Union Army en mase in August of 1864, when the 109th Colored Regiment was brought to their Louisa headquarters, we can deduce that eastern :Pike County was fertile ground for the klan.
My 2g Uncle, Ransom Hatfield (son of Preacher Anse) told me that his uncle Basil, who was High Sheriff at the time fired Frank Phillips as a deputy because he was ‘ku-kluxing.’ Once again, later research proved a basis for Ransom’s claim.
Here is the Frank Phillips marker that the State of Kentucky erected a couple of years ago. The ‘historian’ who wrote that marker either knew no history, or they intentionally prevaricated.
Frank Phillips was hired as a deputy to Basil Hatfield in June, 1887. (Click to enlarge.)
Six months later, Basil Fired Bad Frank, right in the middle of his raids into Logan County.
Bad Frank was NOT hired by the governor to ARREST Hatfields. The governor had no authority to arrest anyone in West Virginia. Frank was appointed in September of 1887to RECEIVE the Hatfields AFTER they had been arrested in West Virginia. After December of 1887, Frank had no legal authority to do anything vis a vis the Hatfields, and the US Supreme Court so held.
Two months after his last raid into Logan Cont on January 19, 1888, the grand jury in his home county of Pike indicted Frank and all his crew for “Unlawfully banding and confederating together.”
A year later the same men were charged in Pike for KU-KLUXING! 