The daily Gate City. [volume] (Keokuk, Iowa) 1855-1916, 1915-08-11
WAS FEUD1sT HIMSELF
Decided However That There Was
Very Little in it, and With Iron
Nerve, Started Movement
for Education.
TODAY AND TOMORROW.
Evening-The Herons and DR..
Writ.
Afternoon-The Herons Sisters.

THURSDAY, AUGUST IL.
Acknowledging Festival Quin-
tettc and Robert S. Seeds.
! Eyening-Chicaso Festival Gu'n-
tette and Louis Williams.
Especial to The Gate City.l
| HAMILTON, ILL.,, Aug. 1.-THE
really big feature in the Hamilton
chautauqua to date. and an event in
the experience of all who heard him.
was the lecture yesterday afternoon
by Burns of the mountains. James A.
Burns, minister, lecturer, president
of great school, told in the simplest
| language the story of how he came
| to lay down his "shootin' iron,' and
give up his place in the feud to
which he had been born, and devote
his life to bringing back to his people
| the education and religion which is
theirs by right of descent from col
onial and revolutionary ancestry
At the close of the revolutionary war
there were three Baptist ministers who
were indicted and brought into court
for preaching the sort of religion
they did. The Judge dismissed them
and they, with few followers,
/ fluGlTi faces u LIE uOlIIWSSI
from Virginia and crossing over to
/! the celebrated mountains of Ken
lucky, settled there. They were schol-
ars and gentlemen, but living in the
mountains away from civilization,
they had no educational privileges
and they lost their religion. Educa-
ton and religion are SO closely linked
| together that you interfere with one
| If you destroy the other. (, These
people lived to themselves and conse-
quently, in the mountains OF Ken
lucky you find today $4,000 of purest
Anglo Saxon blood (less than one
tenth Of one per cent have drop OF
foreign blood in them) people who
are direct descendants of the colon
| ial settlers, of the gentlemen and
scholars of Virginia and of the Caro-
linas.
In the homes of many of these
families in which no member can
either read or write, are found copies
OF the classics on whose pages. yell
| low with age are written with quill
pen. the family names of some of the
prominent colonial families. For
over one hundred years these colon
ial descendants have lived alone in
these mountains and the rest Of the
world has gone on. Now through
such men as James A. Burns, they
are going to catch up by leaps and
bounds for they have lin them the
Scotch-Irish blood, and the vigorous
mind and the principles which be-
long to people of that blood
Burns Born to Feud.
Burns was born in Kentucky, the
son of Baptist preacher, who be-
lieved that "a fiddle tune" and the
devil were almost synonymous. His
father had been born into the Baker
Howard feud, being on the Baker
side. This cid Baptist minister didn't
want his boys killed off in feud, so
in 1855 he moved to the Alleghenies
in West Virginia. But at heart he
was always Kentuckian and as the
family sat in the evening about the
omen fire. the father would tell the
children the stories of the land he
loved and unconsciously the children
came to love the hills of Kentucky.
After his father died, James A. Burns
took his mother back to the old
home in Kentucky When they
reached Clay county. they found that
there was war on between the How
ards and the Bakers. He said. ITO
me it was the call of the wild for
was a sure enough Kentuckian and |
could use Winchester with the best
of them and for three years and a
half led or followed my cousins. 1t
was the time of the great war, (the
"feud" is the hard feeling and the
war" is the actual fighting). One
day we went to Uncle Bill Bishops
at the mouth of New Found creek
and there was bad blood up, and for
ty-five of us tried to take a fortified
cabin. / tell you men, III as leave
try to take a German trench as 4
fortified mountain cabin. Well, we
went right up to that cabin and ev
cry man Of those Towards came out
to meet us and when the battle was
over, i was left for dead. One of the
Towards picked me UP and threw me
over the palm fence. so l. maybe,
Along toward morning, came to, |
and l crossed New Found mountain
to Bull Skin where my cousin lived |
went to the top of the mountain and !
stayed there three days and three |
nights. Up there / met new spirit /
and new impulse came into my life. |
| came to hate the carnage and to !
hate the three years and half had I
spent in the feud / thought of the !
white scars which my cousins bors /
on their bodies, mute testimony to I
the spirit of hate and / thought of |
the graves on the hillside and of the |
sorrow in every house in the valley. |
And / remembered how my father
had left Kentucky to save us boys |
from just what I'd been doing.
There / had vision of the posi- I
bility of putting down this feud sp'r- |
It went down to my cousins !