Singing From the Gallows: The Story of "Bad Tom" Smith

Publishing

Dedication

This work is dedicated to my daughter Christin, who has two great-great-grandfathers mentioned in this book. One was as good as the other was bad.

Acknowledgements

This book took years to write, and I want to thank those who have helped me in the process. My wife, Carol, did many hours of exhaustive research, and contributed greatly to the finished product. A special thanks to Robert Ludwig, who did the artwork for the cover and encouraged me to finally finish the book. Also, a thank you to Charles Hays, the publisher of The Kentucky Explorer magazine, for writing the forward to the book. Yolanda Ciolli of AKA-Publishing is responsible for the book getting into print under the Compass Flower Press imprint.

Foreword

I first read an account of Bad Tom Smith and the Fult French Gang published in our local newspaper, The Jackson Times, when I was still a student at Quicksand Grade School in the late 1950s. Years later, I came across more articles concerning Smith and his role in the famed French-Eversole War of Perry County and the fact he was the first and only man ever legally hanged in Breathitt County. These stories of feuds and outlaw days in Eastern Kentucky started me out in a career dealing with local and state history which has continued even to this day.

Back in 1969, I put together a small booklet recounting the life and times of Tom Smith, including an account of his hanging. The little book was well-received, and the 1,000 copies soon sold out. Now, some 44 years later, it is a real treat to learn of Wayne Combs’ new book on Bad Tom called Singing From the Gallows. The wonderful details and a keen insight make his book not only a joy to read, but offers many facts not known by most of us. It is evident much research and hard work have gone into the composition.

To truly appreciate the story of Bad Tom Smith, we must remember the late 1800s as being a time of lawlessness and anarchy not only in Kentucky, but throughout America. Yet, few places suffered through this age of violence as did the highlands of Eastern Kentucky. For several generations the settlers had been cut off from mainstream America, and thus mountain society and customs were a throwback to a much earlier time. While it is true men were elected to uphold the law, in many cases the lawmen were either too weak or too crooked to enforce peace and order. This breakdown allowed for stronger forces to step in and, in some cases, take over whole towns. Clans and factions formed along family lines for financial reasons. Feuds and wars were a constant part of everyday life in the mountains of Kentucky from the 1860s until about 1912.

It was a time when family honor demanded revenge for the slightest insult. Often mountaineers took to the woods seeking out defenseless victims to be shot from ambush. In other cases, without proper schooling or any chance for success, many young mountain men found themselves hired to do the fighting and killing for wealthy and vengeful bosses. Tom Smith was one of these men. He seemingly hired his deadly gun out to the highest bidder in some cases, but in other instances he was just simply bad. According to his own confession made on the day he was hanged, June 28, 1895, he murdered several men and committed other foul deeds.

In the annals of local history, some men are almost bigger than legend. Such is the case of Tom Smith, a man who during his lifetime carried the name of Bad Tom. In an age when murder and ambush were common, few bad men earned the title of Bad, but the bloody deeds of Tom Smith more than justify his title. Even today, nearly 120 years after his hanging, when someone speaks of him, he is called Bad Tom Smith.

However, even the meanest man has a story to be told. He is not mean all the time. As the reader will soon learn, Tom Smith was not all bad. Wayne Combs does a masterful job of bringing out every facet of Bad Tom’s life, both the good and bad. For the reader, there will be some interesting surprises along the way.

Charles Hayes

Owner/Publisher

Kentucky Explorer Magazine

Jackson, Kentucky

Introduction

In the spring, summer, and fall, southeastern Kentucky, the proud home of the Cumberland Mountain Range, is one of the most beautiful places on the earth. However, those Appalachian Mountains look bland and bleak in the winter. The numerous trees that cover the not very tall—but quite steep—mountains show us a breathtaking green from spring to autumn. In the fall, the leaves magically change to various shades of brown, gold, red, and yellow. For a week or so, the hills come alive with breathtaking beauty. Then the landscape looks barren and disrobed throughout the winter, with only a few pine trees and some scrub brush growing out of the snow, making the environment look depressing to many people in the cold winter. But with spring just around the corner, there is always hope for Kentucky’s Cumberland Mountain people.

Hazard is the county seat of Perry County. In the Appalachian chain, Hazard is located in the middle of the Cumberlands. Because Hazard and Perry County number among the few wet places in southeastern Kentucky—meaning that liquor is sold legally there—Perry is one of the most prosperous mountain counties in the state. However, that affluence has come at a great price. Sometimes a great deal of violence takes place in the taverns and bars. First Chance and Last Chance beer joints seem to dot every county line crossing.

Perry County was formed in 1821 from portions of Floyd and Clay Counties thirty years after Kentucky, which had been called Kentucky County, Virginia, was taken away from the Old Dominion and admitted to the Union as the fifteenth state. Before Kentucky County became a state, it consisted of three Virginia counties—Jefferson, Fayette, and Lincoln. In 1824, Elijah Combs and his seven brothers established a post office in the small community on the banks of the North Fork of the Kentucky River. Mail carriers and others traveling from Prestonsburg in Floyd County to Manchester in Clay County found Hazard a good rest stop. Then, a subsequent county courthouse was named Perry Courthouse.

Some people think Hazard got its name from being a violent and hazardous place to live. Actually, the town and county were named for American naval hero Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, who helped defeat the British fleet in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812, then became an Admiral. A group of eastern Kentucky mountaineers traveled north to fight against the British with Perry. Perry died in 1819, before the town and county were named in his honor. In 1821, Perry County became Kentucky’s 68th county. However, it was not until June 20, 1854 that the legislative record regularly referred to the site as Hazard. Prior to that date the county seat was referred to as Perry Courthouse. The county name was sometimes spelled Hazzard.

I was born in Hazard, just twenty-three days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. When five or six years old, I realized there was a relative that my parents were interested in knowing more about. They did not wish to discuss the matter in front of me, however, one day my father bought a local newspaper with a historical article entitled The Hanging of Bad Tom Smith. Only then did I learn that this man, who had confessed to numerous homicides and hanged for murder, was my great-grandfather. Thomas Smith was the father of my father’s mother, Matilda Smith Combs. All of the adults called her Tildy. I simply called her Grandma. She married Robert Blue Bob Combs, and they had twelve children. There were so many Combs men named Bob that colors were added to their names to identify them. I lived with my grandparents, Matilda and Blue Bob Combs, for about six months when I was a teenager in the late 1950s, shortly after my mother died of cancer.

A few years earlier, I remember playing cowboys and Indians with my cousin, Paul Jones of Lotts Creek, at my grandmother’s house. Several of the Combs families had come for Sunday dinner. Paul walked into the kitchen and asked, Grandma, was your daddy, Bad Tom Smith, a good shot?

Grandma looked startled. She walked from the coal cook stove to the table with a huge cast iron skillet without saying a word. That question had conjured up a bad memory. Being a very quiet woman, Grandma didn’t want to talk about her father. She quickly gained composure. Paul, get out of my way, I wouldn’t want to spill this good gravy on you and the floor.

One of the few times my grandmother broke her silence about her father was with her daughter—and my aunt—Nancy. Aunt Nancy liked to sing. She was singing some old-time songs around the house one day when my grandmother admonished her to quit singing because it would only lead to trouble. Nancy could end up like her grandfather, who also had liked singing. Tom Smith, I learned, did not only like to sing, but is said to have written several songs. Tom sang the last song he wrote for a group of reporters on the day before his execution.

Bad Tom had six children. My grandmother was thirteen years old, and the baby, Edgar, a little less than a year and a half in 1895, when their father was executed. The other children were Bud, Maggie, John, and Cody.

Sometimes family members of people who have been executed feel ashamed. There’s a story about a woman who was very prominent in her town’s society. One day she decided to trace family roots. The woman hired a genealogy expert to put together the family tree. After much research, the expert told her he had disturbing news. The woman’s great-uncle had been hanged for murder. The lady talked to the genealogy expert privately. The expert issued a written report that stated a great-uncle had died when a platform he was standing on suddenly collapsed.

I don’t believe that shame accounted for Bad Tom Smith’s children’s reluctance to discuss him. Certainly they were not proud of the fact. But more important, I believe, is that the emotional trauma they suffered from this event, as children, never left them.

So, who was this man named Bad Tom Smith, who rode on horseback and led an outlaw gang through the hills and hollows of southeastern Kentucky, and ended up at the end of a noose? My purpose in writing this book is to answer that question by examining not just his death, but the events that shaped his life up to that fateful day.

Smith-Combs Genealogy

A Brief Historical Background of Some Mountain Characters and Characteristics

Tom Smith was born on October 13, 1859, in the tiny Perry County community of Carr’s Fork, which would later become a part of Knott County after that county was formed from part of Perry County in 1885. Although Tom became an outlaw, he came from a respected family. William Smith was born in England and came to Virginia when it was still a colony in the eighteenth century. He married Betty Eunice Ritchie, also from England, shortly after arrival. Their son, Richard, was born March 6, 1771 in Virginia. After their father’s death, Richard and his brother John moved to an unsettled part of Kentucky. Their mother stayed in Virginia to handle the plantations left by their father. Richard probably came to Owsley County, Kentucky by way of Pound Gap, Virginia in about 1792, along the route known as the Daniel Boone Trail. Richard then settled in the Lotts Creek area of Perry County before moving to Pigeon Roost, on Troublesome Creek, at Ary. According to Henry P. Scalf, in his book Kentucky’s Last Frontier, Richard Smith owned 38,577 acres of land in 1796 through Eastern Land Titles. Richard was a Primitive Baptist Minister for forty-five years. He was said to preach hellfire and brimstone sermons, then sneak out back of the meeting place to take a swig of whiskey. According to Owsley County, Kentucky court records, Richard Smith’s brother, John, was later appointed his guardian.

Richard Smith married Elita Alicia Combs in 1792, when she was twenty. Richard Smith, Jr. was the first of their fourteen children. He married Mary Polly Kelly and moved to the Carr’s Fork area of what was then Perry County. The couple had eight children. Tom was the next to the last. His brother, Jeremiah, had died at only a year and a half. The patriarch of the family, Richard Smith, Jr., known as Dick to his family and friends, was killed at the Battle of Shiloh in 1862, less than three years after Tom’s birth. Tom’s mother, Mary Polly, had not been the same since receiving the news that her husband, a Union soldier, had been killed accidentally by his comrades in a friendly fire accident. Life had been hard as Mary Polly had no choice but to raise seven children by herself.

Hazard stretched up and down the North Fork of the Kentucky River. It was an isolated community. The natural barriers of the rugged Cumberland Mountains made traveling by wagon, mule, or horseback difficult. The railroad had not yet come to the craggy hill country. A decision had been made to extend the railroad to Jackson in Breathitt County, some thirty miles away, but that would be the end of the line.

Not many people traveled long distances in the Cumberland Mountains in the later part of the nineteenth century. However, those who did had no trouble finding accommodations. Hospitality was one of the virtues that mountain people both practiced and relied on. No matter how rich or poor a family was, it was a point of honor to offer shelter, food, and drink to any stranger that appeared at their door. This was a habit carried out by nearly all mountaineers. The