Early Logan County was a ‘mess’

By Dwight Williamson

The July 23rd 1929 edition of The Logan Banner proclaimed that 10,000 or more people had attended the third annual reunion of the Devil Anse Hatfield clan near the old home place on upper Island Creek. The Banner reported that “Hatfield’s, their kinsmen, neighbors and friends” all gathered in a great celebration. The notable celebrities that were credited for the affair were brothers— Sheriff Joe Hatfield, former Sheriff Tennis Hatfield and Chief Deputy Cap Hatfield, who in February had celebrated his 65th birthday. Also in attendance was former Governor Henry D. Hatfield, then a State Senator, and Coleman Hatfield, Police Judge for the City of Logan. It would be most of these men who would later be accused of plotting to replace State Police personnel and buying off others to protect certain family related illegal activities. By the time this happened, the most famous of the existing feudal clan, William A. “Cap” Hatfield, would be dead following an operation to remove a brain tumor in August of 1930.

One of the last court actions Cap Hatfield would take just three months before his death was the defending of Peter Kinder of Blair, who was accused of the murder of Joe Gore during the Battle of Blair Mountain. Kinder, 60, had been on the run since the historic confrontation, but was found and arrested in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. Hatfield, who was taught to read and write by his wife, Nancy (Smith) Glenn, got married at the age of 19. Cap had later received a law degree by taking a correspondence course and was admitted to the Bar Association in 1906. In the last case involving the Blair Mountain ordeal, he managed to get his client’s murder charge reduced to manslaughter, thus saving him from the gallows of Moundsville Prison.

Cap’s oldest son, Coleman, was already an attorney, while another son, L.W. (Elba) Hatfield was elected Justice of the Peace in 1928 when his uncle Joe became Sheriff. Elba would in 1932 play a crucial role in the infamous murder of Mamie Thurman.

By 1930, central players of the time period—former Sheriffs Don Chafin and Tennis Hatfield—both had served prison times and were then at odds against each other following Hatfield’s testimony that convicted Chafin for selling illegal liquor during the Prohibition period when they were partners. Overall, Logan County was a complete “mess” as murders, stabbings, beatings, prostitution, moonshining, and political corruptness all were coupled together with coal mining injuries and deaths—all in the middle of the Great Depression, and when Logan County government was $900,000 in debt. With no federal government welfare funding, many people of the region were literally starving to death. Evicted coal miners and others were living in tents; many in the vicinity of what are now the local McDonald’s restaurant and the Four Seasons store locations.

The first bank ever in Logan County—the old Guyan Valley Bank that stood between Logan and Main Streets where Logan Bank and Trust now operates—failed and many people lost money following “Black Friday” of 1929 when the stock market crashed. Don Chafin lost over $100,000, but when the bank was later closed, he wound up purchasing the stone building, opened several businesses, and had his office on the second floor. It was at this office that the Hatfield’s would have him arrested for possessing illegal liquor.

Not only was there a political war going on in the Logan County, but due to nearly 60,000 residents then living in the county, and the City of Logan facing a shortage of housing, there was a battle to destroy filth and waste in Logan that had been leading to typhoid fever. It was announced that the hot weather of July had caused babies “to die by the thousands” nationwide from diseases caused by the house fly. The United States Department of Health was quoted as saying that one set of house flies could produce 46,600,000,000 more flies in just three months. It was said that an army of flies back then killed more people in the United States than all wars combined.

With no proper garbage disposal, citizens routinely tossed tin food cans into piles, while other garbage was burned, leaving open dumps throughout the county. Garbage dumps and hog pens, of which there were many in the area, were the chief breeding places for flies and rats. And the city of Logan, facing tough economic times, was trying to come up with funds for an incinerator. Officials said it was left over organic matter in tin cans that was the major cause of flies, rats and disease, and noted that the furnace of an incinerator, which operated between 1800 and 2000 degrees, would bring needed relief. Logan residents voted overwhelmingly to pass the bond issue, which brought the first garbage incinerator to Logan County. However, the large furnace and smokestacks of the local power company had long been rumored to be used by Sheriff Chafin and others when it came to incinerating certain human beings. This would in 1932 be backed up by a Tennis Hatfield political ad that said his brother had put an end to such actions during his previous administration as sheriff.

So, this was the setting Attorney General Howard B. Lee came into when he was enlisted by Governor William Conley to prosecute Enoch Scaggs for the cold blooded murder of Logan Police Chief Roy C. Knotts, who was shot five times by Scaggs at close range in the Smokehouse restaurant and pool hall on Stratton Street on a December 3rd afternoon in 1930. Logan Circuit Judge Naaman Jackson, who had seen all of the corruption he could handle since winning his position in 1924, had appealed to the governor to help bring an end to the reign of terror that had held Logan County as a “prisoner” unto itself.

It seemed to Lee that nobody could be trusted to testify truthfully or that a local jury could be impaneled that would hear the evidence and rule accordingly. During his stay in Logan in preparation for the trial, Lee became appalled at what he saw happening in Logan. Everyday shootings and many murders made him realize that nearly everyone, including convicted felons, had guns. Guns, combined with the constant availability of moonshine and other illegal alcoholic drinks, such as home brew or wine, created most deadly outcomes. Following the outcome of the murder trial, attorney General Lee addressed the State Legislature about the problem.

Lee told the legislators that Logan County’s “pernicious system of protecting gun-carrying ex-convicts, criminals and thugs was a disgrace to the state.” He referred to Logan as a “gunman’s paradise.”

Perhaps that is why 16 state troopers were brought to Logan to protect a special jury that had been brought from Monroe County to decide the fate of Enoch Scaggs. The jury stayed at the Aracoma Hotel, described as one of the most modern hotels in West Virginia. Lee would stay across the street at the newer Pioneer Hotel.

Political dominance from the Don Chafin regime had carried over to the Hatfield’s, who had previously worked in his administration. Deputies were still being paid by coal companies and most of them consisted of no more than political hacks, who could handle and be willing to use their firearms, and they did. While two deputies associated with former Sheriff Tennis Hatfield were about to be tried for trying to destroy a Boone County newspaper that opposed the Hatfield’s, Deputy A.C. Scaggs was facing murder charges after he shot Brooks Carey at the Logan Fire Department. Ironically, Brooks Carey was the son of Lawrence Carey, accused along with Hibbard Hatfield, of killing of a man named Avis in front of the old State Café on Stratton Street. In both murders, the men were found not guilty. Hibbard Hatfield would five years later be on duty in June of ’32 when Mamie Thurman was so brutally murdered. He would be working that stormy June 20th night alongside Mamie’s husband, Jack, and would testify in the trial of Clarence Stephenson, accused murderer of the so called “Vixen of Stratton Street.”

During the Hatfield reign of 1924 through 1932 there were many actions involving the Hatfield clan. The Blue Goose Inn, owned by Tennis, had in 1927 burned, along with eight other dwellings nearby. The former sheriff, described as a “skirt chaser” by members of his own family, was going through a bitter divorce in which one of his three wives sought revenge—and she seemingly got it. In addition, former Sheriff Don Chafin was in Charleston trying to use his political strength to get rid of all State policemen, while a special commission was looking into some state policemen being bought off by the Hatfield clan. Meanwhile, the assistant prosecuting attorney, Ira P. Hager, a staunch ally of the Hatfield’s, was facing disbarment for his role in rescuing an arrested deputy from a Kentucky jail. A petition had previously been filed in circuit court to remove Hager on the grounds of “gross neglect of duty and drunkenness.” Also, the Memorial Burial Park at McConnell was being completed, and the Logan Woman’s Club was formulating plans to beautify Logan. But it was Sadie (Walters) Hatfield’s words that had Logan County whispering prior to the blatant 1930 murder of Logan Police Chief Roy Knotts by former Logan deputy, Enoch Scaggs.

After Judge Naaman Jackson denied Sadie Hatfield’s request for a change of venue to another jurisdiction, even though the Supreme Court had already reversed an earlier divorce decree and remanded it back to circuit court, the determined wife of Tennis Hatfield spilled the beans. She filed a petition in which she claimed that years prior at the insistence of her husband and his brother, Joe, and “after being threatened with death or great bodily harm by Tennis, she spent considerable time learning to imitate the signature of Don Chafin.” She said that several of the papers concerning the liquor business at The Blue Goose Inn were used to convict Chafin in federal court. She accused Joe Hatfield of offering her $1500 to not disclose anything “that might get Tennis in trouble.”

The petition further stated that the “incumbency of Joe Hatfield as sheriff has been marked by a reign of terror,” originating when Tennis was sheriff but growing worse to the point “that the laws have completely broken down.”

Dwight Williamson is a former writer for the Logan Banner. He is now a Magistrate for Logan County. He writes a weekly column for HD Media.

Published with permission.

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