Newspaper Articles 

The Feud INVOLVING 

MARCUM-SPICER-Hargis-JETT-WHITE

BREATHITT-JACKSON COUNTY

DESOLATED BY A FEUD

Woman Victim of Cowardly Breathitt Assassins

COURTS FAIL TO PROTECT HER

The Washington Post May 29,1904

Son, Shot in the Back by Ambushed  Man-Killer, Dies in Her Arms-Husband Driven from Home-Brother Killed by Curtis Jett-Risked Her Life to Save that of Her Brother

Born in Breathitt County, where feud wars have raged since the Kentucky mountains were first settled by white men, and where strife has been almost unmolested by the law and often fostered by the notions of corrupt county officers who have used their official position and political influence to back their clansmen. Mrs. George Johnson of Jackson whose only son, James Johnson was killed by “Bummer” Spicer a short time ago, is one of the most pathetic figures in the history of Kentucky feuds.

At fifty years old Mrs. Johnson has lived to see and uncle, a brother, and a son shot down by assassins and her husband driven into exile by a band of out-laws who would doubtless have killed him had he not escaped from them in the darkness and fled through the forest and find refuse in an adjoining county.

Mrs. Johnson was Miss Mary Marcum, daughter of Alfred Marcum a pioneer citizen of Breathitt County and the owner of immense tracts of timber lands.

Throughout her life she had been accustomed to see “dead shots” known as professional man killers with revolvers at their belts and rifles in their hands. Immune from punishment by virtue of their feaity to powerful feud leaders, and perhaps in every year of her life she has had cause to believe that some member of her family was likely to be at any time a target for the unerring rifle of the assassin who hides in the woods and shoots his victim in the back.

Guards Her Brother

When in June, 1900. It became commonly reported that assassins seeking the life of James B. Marcum were lying in wait around his home to shoot him if he should appear upon his porch or at a window. Mrs. Johnson went to the beleaguered residence and stayed there day and night for more than two months trying to guard against his murder and fearlessly exposing herself to danger and to insult.

On one occasion a warning that the assassins would be in wait at a rock quarry near the Marcum home and attempt to shoot Mr. Marcum in the early morning was received late in the afternoon. Some of Mr. Marcum’s closest friends gathered at his home to assist in guarding it, and among them no one was more willing to take the hazardous risks than was Mrs. Johnson.

At daybreak the anxious watchers in the house learned that the men were at the quarry, but it was not deemed wise to send one of the men to learn their identity, as it was believed  that, assured of protection, the men  would not hesitate to turn their rifles upon  any one who might be recognized as a friend of the marked man. The quarry was within easy rifle range of the house, and the men ambushed in a grove of stunted oaks at it’s edge were a position to pick off any one about the house without exposing themselves.

Mrs. Johnson volunteered to go toward the rock quarry and learn if possible, the identity of the men in the ambush. It was believed that the men would not shoot at a woman, but this was no means certain, and it required courage for her to advance toward the quarry. When the woman was half way to the ambush the men turned and walked away into the woods. She recognized them, as she afterward testified in court, as Tom White and two other notorious mountaineers.

Marked Man Leaves

When Mr. Marcum finally decided to leave Jackson temporarily Mrs. Johnson, with Mrs. Marcum and Mrs. Hord, another sister of the hunted man, walked with him to the railroad station, keeping themselves between him and all they passed, fearing he would be shot.

It was afterward said that Moses Feltner was asked why he did not shoot Mr. Marcum as he passed down the street and that he replied;

“ I could not do it. The women were around him and he had his little baby in his arms.  I might have killed the baby or one of the women had I fired at him.”

“ To hell with the women and the damned brat,” a fend lender is quoted as having replied. “You should have shot him if you had to kill them too.”

When Mr. Marcum returned to Jackson to try to dispose of his home on Marcum Heights, a suburb of Jackson, so that he could become an exile, as had many other men marked for murder by the clansmen of Breathitt, he rented apartments in Main street, where he hoped that assassins would not dare attack him in the presence of the townspeople. He left his apartments only when it was absolutely necessary, and never walked in the streets except when accompanied by some member of his family.  During this time Mrs. Johnson was his closest attendant, keeping watch over his imperiled home when an attack was feared, and attending him when he went upon the streets.

Takes Fatal Risk

After considering the matter for a long time, Mr. Marcum decided that he could not sacrifice his property, for which there was no ready sale, and his lucrative law practive and begin life anew with a wife and five children to support, and he concluded that it would be best for him to remain in Jackson. He remained under cover, however, and did not venture down town alone until May 5, when he was called to court in answer to a summons which he could not ignore.

It was a beautiful spring morning that Mr. Marcum walked down the street and up to the door of the courthouse, where he was paused a moment to talk to B.J. Ewen, a contractor who had been granted a contract to build a walk around the courthouse. As Mr. Marcum stood in the doorway Tim White, known as a man killer, and freed from the penitentiary by a pardon granted by Gov. Beckham passed out of the door, brushing against the lawyer.

“Ewen”, said Mr. Marcum, laying his hand upon his companion’s shoulder, “that is a bad man. I am afraid he means to harm me.” And as he spoke his eyes followed White, and he turned with his back to the open door.

Assassin Does His Work 

The muffled report of a pistol was heard, and Mr. Marcum, shot in the back by an assassin in the hall, tried vainly to remain standing, and he sank backwards to the floor cried in his agony, “Oh Lord, they have killed me at last.”

(word missing) turning instinctively to look down the hall, saw Curtis Jett advancing with a pistol in his hands, and as he sprang out of the line of fire he heard a second shot as the assassin leaned over Mr. Marcum’s prostrate form and sent another bullet through his brain.

Across the street in his store sat Judge James Hargis, leaning upon the counter. Near him sat his henchman, Sheriff Edward Callahan. Between these officers of the law and the murdered man in the doorway there was a narrow street flooded by sunlight. They did not see the assassin, so they afterward testified, but Callahan started, with drawn pistol, to the front of the store. He was detained by Judge Hargis. Just why he was detained has not been fully explained. The officers of the law made no immediate attempt to find the assassin. It is not believed that they desired that he should be apprehended.

To every home in Jackson the news that the long expected murder had been done.  The report was received with silence, for the assassin with his smoking weapon was at large and none dared antagonize the fraction with whom it was believed that he was associated.

Seeks Out The Murderer

To Mrs. Johnson and the other sisters of the victim the news came as quickly as it did to his wife-the mother of five children and soon to become mother of the sixth. While the other women were crushed with the weight of their sorrow. Mrs. Johnson ran at once to the scene of the murder and fearlessly entered the court house, hoping to get a glimpse of the murderer, and careless of the danger of facing a man who, who as he had been coward enough to shoot a defenseless man in the back, would not have scrupled at killing a woman.

As she ran distracted through the streets, Mrs. Johnson noticed Curtis Jett and Tom White.

“Was it you that killed my brother?” cried the woman.

“I killed him, but Hargis’ money did it.” replied Jett, according to the sworn statement of Mrs. Johnson when she testified at the Jett-White trials.

The shrewd and pitiless cross-questioning of B.Fulton , the one-time lender of the French faction in the famous French-Eversole feud, and interrogations by Ben Golden, brother of Wharton Golden, who figured as a star witness for the prosecution in the Goebel murder trials, failed to shake Mrs. Johnson’s testimony, and the lawyers had to content themselves with stating flatly to the jury that the woman had lied, while the defendants said they had had the conversation with Mrs. Johnson and had joked with her about the murder while the dead man still lay in the courthouse door, but they said that Jett did not mention Hargis’ money and that he was merely joking when he said, “Oh yes, I suppose I killed him.”

Leaves Scene of Murder

After the trial of Jett and White Mr. and Mrs. Johnson decided to leave Jackson, hoping to find peace on their own farm ten miles from the feud city, but near the farm lived many members of the Spicer family, relatives of Edward Callahan, and friends of County Judge Hargis, and soon a controversy over timer land  arose. After that the men in Mrs. Johnson’s family discontinued working in the woods, fearing they might be murdered by the Spicers.

One dark night men rode up to the Johnson residence and said that they had a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Johnson.

In vain Mrs. Johnson appealed to the armed men not to take her husband from his home. Without allowing him to get his overcoat they put him on a horse and marched away with him in the direction of Middle Fork, the stronghold of the Callahans and Spicers.

Believing that he would be killed by the clan, Mr. Johnson determined to make a desperate escape, and as the cavalcade rode down a narrow trail, which wound through a dense forest and along the side of a steep cliff, he slipped silently from his horse and lay by the roadside till the last horseman had ridden past. It was so dark that the men riding in front and behind him failed to notice that he had gotten off his horse, and he was deep into the forest before his escape was known.

Not daring to return to his home, Johnson made his way through the forest to Hazard, the county seat of Perry County, where one of his daughters resided, and he has never since been in Breathitt County since that night.

Courts of No Avail

Reduced to want and fearing to allow her son to cut her own timber, Mrs. Johnson appealed to the courts for protection, seeking an injunction to prevent the Spicers from cutting her timber and asking that peace warrants  be served on several of the clan. But the county officers did not serve the warrants, and although an injunction was granted, the Spicers, so the woman said,  continued to cut timber on her property. At another time she appeared before the grand jury and tried to have the Spicers indicted for confederating, but nothing was done.

Finally the expected happened. Young James Johnson, Mrs. Johnson’s only son went to protest to Roger Spicer that his sons were cutting down his timber. Spicer told the boy that he had better get away from that neighborhood or the “boys would put out his light.”

The boy said that he was not seeking a difficulty and turned to go.

The whip-like report of a rifle rang out, and he fell, shot in the back. Above the window of a little houseboat moored in the Kentucky River a faint puff of blue smoke hung for an instant upon the clear mountain air, and the face of “Bummer” Spicer appeared at a small window.

“I am done for,” said the boy to Lige Roberts, who ran to his assistance. “For God’s sake don’t let them come back and shoot me any more.”

No other shots were fired. The marksman knew that his aim had been true. The boy died in his mother’s arms that night.

Deprived of the support of her husband and separated from him at the time when his presence might in some degree soften her sorrow at the loss of her son, this lonely woman- and she is not an ignorant and uncouth “mountaineer” of the type portrayed in fiction, but a well-educated woman, who would make a good appearance in one of the Bluegrass towns-looks hopelessly into the future and bitterly back upon the past..

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