Polly Coffeeground
Fall 1862
Polly "Coffeground" Jones Mosley hoarded coffee beans in her apron pocket from 1862 until her dying day. When asked why, Polly took great delight in telling the chilling story of a day when she was all alone on the family farm at the head of the Jones Fork of Troublesome Creek.
Abe Lincoln had called for 75,000 Union volunteers to hold off General Lee's rapid advance into East Kentucky. "The men lit out", Polly said, "most a walkin' down Troublesome, over to the Levisa and Tug Forks of the Big Sandy, wherever the Union told them to be." It appeared that East Kentucky’s job was to cut the rebels off before they made headway into the state from the Virginia and Tennessee borders. Hence Mosley had held out as long as he could, his heart heavy about leaving Polly and baby Frankie, their deepest pride, born in their middle years. The other children were grown and gone, some married off, some off to War, and some, well, just gone.
Hence felt compelled, though, to join the Union forces in Lawrence County. He knew this war must be won to preserve the flag that symbolized the hard fought battles for American independence from “old King George”. Polly was a strong, resourceful woman, but his heart heaved a little as he began the 55 mile walk to join forces gathering of the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River, leaving her and the baby alone far from any real civilization. All the able-bodied men on the creek had left by now to join one side or another and Polly was beginning to feel the strain of being alone on the Beaver Creek to face the winter of 1862--she and Baby Frankie are all alone. There weren't many neighbors nearby, her boys had all left, and the older girls had married and moved out. Just Frances, her change of life baby, was with her and made her life feel worthwhile again.
Her brother Claibe was over in Letcher County, spying for the Union near the Virginia border where there was always a fight. She sighs, but knows she won’t see him until after the war. Polly laughs and reminds herself that Claibe is too mean to die.
Polly senses a frosty overtone in the wind and knows winter is coming on. She had worked like a brute for months to get the food and wood supply gathered. She didn’t even try to dig coal from the mountain sides, wood was easier. She’d left the baby on the porch more than once this autumn while she gathered the remaining crops in the garden. “Lord, what will I do with pumpkins and gourds?” she often asked. She saved them anyway, cooking the fresh pumpkin into something she called ‘punkin butter’ that was good on hot biscuits. It was no one’s favorite food, but was nourishing and the baby could eat it too.
She preserved every vegetable and piece of fruit she could find in her sparse garden and in the surrounding hills. She spread her green beans and fall beans on the roof to dry out in the hot sun. She strung fresh green beans by needle on long threads to hang in the sun until they dried and shriveled into delicious shuck beans to cook in the winter when no green beans were to be found.The beans would keep forever once dried properly.
Her hands were permanently stained black from hulling and shelling the black walnuts that grew all over the mountains. The sweet nutmeats would be worth the work on a cold snowbound night, when she needed nourishment. She knew that for sure.
She picked wild mountain greens like ‘polk sallet’ to mix with dandelion greens around her hillside yard and the turnip and mustard greens and spinach from her garden. Polk weed alone was too much of a laxative, so she used it wisely. She searched the hills for delicious greens called ‘Speckled Dick and Molly’s Cock’. Nobody seemed to know where the names came from, but Polly would always laugh to herself when she picked them. Hence made sure her special short knife was so sharp that a flick of her wrist would capture the toughest greens. Polly knew from her own mother, how to season food and that her ration of salt bacon was vital to the good taste and nutrition of such a bountiful mountain harvest.
Out in the cool, dry smokehouse, Polly had hidden a small supply of sugar and coffee among her stash of shuck beans, potatoes, dried green apples, hand ground meal, a right good slab of salt pork, and two cured hams. Since the war, sugar and coffee were impossible to find; even before the war,they traveled 50-mile roundtrip to the nearest supply store for such luxury items.
It’s quiet this evening, no activity on the farm, the birds beginning to huddle in the trees, transitioning their sounds into an evening tone. Polly rocks Frankie to sleep on the front porch where they could still bask in the late sunshine, then swaddles her safely in the cradle. Polly then makes the trek out to the smokehouse under the cliffs just beyond the backside of the house. She worked by the clock of the heavens and looked towards the mountain top. It was around 6:30, she surmised. The sun would sink below the ridge at 7:00 PM. She prayed Claibe and Hence had good shelter tonight, but most of all, she worried about Claibe.
Claiborne Jones
Claibe killed his first man at the age of 12, and, by his own account before he was 30, killed at least 13 more with “Old Champee” his trusty shotgun and with his array of hunting knives.
“I stand on principle and never killed a man without a good reason”, he would declare when asked about his actions.
Claibe was notorious for his escapades with women, his bravado, and his brushes with the law—even though he later came to serve as the law in several counties of Kentucky. He was good looking and brave, fiercely protected his loved ones, and was celebrated for bringing in more than one bear at a time—single-handed. Women loved him and caused him more than a little trouble.He had learned as a child that if he had to back down from a fight, there were other ways to win, if the cause was right.
After the War, Claibe would become a notorious feudist, commissioned by the Governor to help settle feuds before real law was established in Appalachian East Kentucky. After his death in 1915, our relatives brag, he was buried in a prestigious cemetery in Perry County.
But, today in fall 1862, he’s serving as a Union spy in Letcher County Kentucky, on the Virginia border. Being a man of principle, he would later claim, he released many rebel prisoners “if they promised to “go home and kill no more”.
The Smokehouse
Polly is enjoying rummaging around her stock of vittles and selecting a few precious coffee beans for her Sunday morning treat. Coffee was too precious to drink on weekdays--they brewed chicory root and coffee-tree beans then. Polly looks forward to grinding real coffee beans in her little hand mill and boiling the grounds in water on the fireplace. Sunday was a day of rest and she planned to enjoy it as best she could.
“Lord, these beans smell good”, Polly said out loud, startling herself.
No sooner had the quiet returned than it is sharply shattered by the slamming of the smokehouse door. Polly turns in the same instant to see those worthless Hayes brothers step inside. She realizes that she’s cornered between the work table and the wall and has no place to turn. The Hayeses took one step forward and paused.
“Well, look who’s h’yar”! Jim Hayes grinned to show his blackened teeth and tobacco amber dripped down his jaw.
“We’re huntin’ supplies for the soldiers,” He is feeling full of self-importance.
Polly knows they’re not ransacking the farms for supplies for the rebels, as they’d want their neighbors to believe. She looked them right in the eyes.
“Get out of here you worthless low lives! I know you’re stealing for yourselves and nary a bite’s going to the soldiers or the hungry children up Beaver. You’re not even fit for the rebels. Get on out of here, now. Get on out!”
They took another step towards Polly. Jim grinned again, making Polly feel nauseous.
“I love that red hair and how you look when you get all worked up, purty Polly”.
“Low lifes”! Polly’s insults were lost in the tangible silence on the mountain.
She thinks, “The stock’s done run out on these two and here I am alone with them".
Polly knows there are trifling men on both sides of the battle. She and her family just wanted to stay put, but it looked like General Lee had brought the War to them, and also brought out the worst in some of her neighbors. She fought as best she could...which was pretty good, but they forced her down.
“Let’s just have a little fun before we go. You better be good, now, Polly”
Polly demanded, “Let me go you god-damned rebel sons a bitches”, mentally justifying her cursing.
Her attitude was un-yielding even as her body was forced by the strength of the two men, to collapse.As she fell to her knees, they were scraped on the rough splintered lumber Hence had hurriedly laid on top of the muddy earthen floor of the smokehouse floor after a torrential rain just before he left. Her knees were the least of her concerns.
John Hays pulls her head towards the open fly of his britches and Polly is overwhelmed by the rancid smell and knew she’d just as soon die. They jerked her head forward and she felt her hair being pulled out by the roots. Her heart was sinking fast as they roared with laughter.
In the midst of the fray, the smokehouse door flew open. Polly couldn’t see, but even in her misery, knew the men were looking at something fearful. She felt the loosening of their grip from her hair and turned her head. There, framed by the smokehouse door and silhouetted by the last fiery remnants of the Beaver Creek sun set, stood her brother, Claiborne Jones.
Claibe’s stance was firm and calm as he loomed there in the doorway as large as his murderous reputation. He struck a unique type of fear in the Hayes Boys as he stood silently with his famous shotgun, “Old Champee” in one hand and his skinning knife in the other.
At the site of him, Polly jumped up “as quick as a cat could lick its ass”, Claibe would later tell her. Her attackers were frozen speechless as Polly spit on them.
“Well, look who’s here now!” Her pride was physically visible as she regained her composure and hurried to stand alongside her notorious brother.
Claibe knew first-hand the peril women could face when left at the mercy of men with no real virtue. He had routed his spying foray back through Knott County, to honor the oath he made to always look after Polly. He never forgot that oath made when their young lives were so tormented and unpredictable.
Claibe took four solid steps forward, and without batting an eye, made a swift kick upward between John Hayes legs sending John to the floor where he rolled around and cried like a baby.
Jim was about to cry too.
"Now Claibe, we wasn’t going to hurt Polly. You know how it is; we just need some supplies for those poor soldiers down on Levisa Fork.”
“Aint’ nobody mad Claibe, we’ll just be a goin’.”
The smokehouse door slammed shut again.
The Story Goes
The Hayes boys were never seen again
When asked, over the years, Claibe said he heard the Hayes brothers were killed in the battle of Middle Creek near the Levisa Fork of the Big Sandy River in January '63.
However, the descendants of John and Jim Hayes could never find their names registered on any list of the dead or wounded in that pivotal battle.
"Maybe they died in a Prisoner of War camp in the North", they would speculate.
“A terrible way for such fine soldiers to die”, they would mourn.
Copyrighted Property of Judith Sharon Bussey © February 15, 2008
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