Appalachian History Series
How a wagon note, a courthouse ambush, and a hidden rifle shot pulled two Kentucky counties into years of bloodletting until state power forced a weary peace.
Setting and background
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the mountain counties of Clay and Harlan balanced self reliance with thin institutions. Family networks competed for county offices, contracts, and prestige, and when personal quarrels overlapped with politics they could spill into public violence. Contemporary newspapers followed the turmoil closely and helped stamp “Bloody Clay” into the national vocabulary.
Sparks that lit the powder
Clay County’s quarrel, remembered locally as the Baker and Howard feud, began with something small in a cash poor economy. In 1898 Tom “Bad Tom” Baker, widely praised for his marksmanship, bought a debt note on a wagon and timber contract owed by a Howard kinsman. To Baker’s friends this was business, to others it read as a public slight, and ambushes followed on both sides as allies lined up with either the Bakers or the Howards and their White family allies.
Across the ridge in Harlan County, the Turner and Howard quarrel started earlier and even more personally. Around 1882, after a bout of drinking, Wickliffe Howard fetched a musket and shot Robert Turner, son of Judge George Turner. A jury later acquitted Wickliffe on a claim of self defense, a verdict that enraged the Turners and hardened both clans for years of retaliation.
Families, partisans, and local power
Tom Baker’s defiance made him the focus of Clay County’s fighting. His elderly father, George W. Baker, was murdered by Jim Howard, a killing that convinced both camps there would be no restraint. The Howards, powerful in both counties, counted allies in the sheriff’s office and in local courts. In Harlan, Henderson Howard’s circle included the feared enforcer Wilson “Wils” Howard, while Judge George B. Turner’s sons became early martyrs in their county’s feud. Each side gathered friends and relatives, and in towns where half the population shared a surname, the line between public and private life was thin.
Flashpoints in Clay County
One of the first widely reported shocks came when Baker and his men ambushed a party of Howards on a mountain road using high powered rifles with smokeless cartridges. Burch Stores was shot from his horse and killed, and Wils Howard was badly wounded. Baker partisans were blamed for firing explosive bullets into the fallen men, and within hours Jim Howard shot George Baker, unarmed and pleading for his life. Those deaths set off a surge of revenge shootings.
Tom Baker’s own death drew headlines across the country. After months of killings and a wave of arrests, the Kentucky State Guard pitched a camp on Manchester’s public square to keep order during Baker’s case. On June 11, 1899, while Baker stood inside the guarded camp talking with his wife and child, a single rifle shot cut him down. Contemporary reports stated that the shot came from a second story window of Sheriff Beverly White’s home, which stood across from the courthouse and the militia tents. Troops rushed the house, a Gatling gun was trained on the porch, and the men inside surrendered, yet no court ever fixed legal blame for the shot.
Harlan County’s running war
After Robert Turner’s killing, the feud in Harlan flared again on a crowded court day in early July 1885. Accounts describe Howard riflemen posted at an upper window near the courthouse yard and Will Turner striding up the walk when the firing started. Turner was hit through the chest, carried off, and soon died of his wound, which removed the Turners’ fiercest fighter and deepened their resolve to strike back.
Wils Howard became the symbol of Harlan’s lawlessness, and Kentucky officers admitted they could not bring him to justice locally. He was eventually tried not in Kentucky but in Missouri for a separate murder there and was hanged at Lebanon in January 1894. Primary reports recorded the time and place of his execution, and with Wils gone the Turner and Howard fighting quickly lost momentum.
Law, politics, and the weight of the state
During the worst months of 1899, Kentucky’s governor repeatedly sent militia to Manchester. Soldiers patrolled streets, searched travelers for weapons, escorted prisoners, and ringed the courthouse with tents. Newspapers told readers that the very presence of troops and a Gatling crew had become routine in Clay County. Even with soldiers on hand, Baker was shot within the guarded perimeter, which underscored how deep local loyalties ran and why outside force was deemed necessary.
Courts struggled as well. Witnesses contradicted each other in examining trials, sheriffs favored one side or feared the other, and juries balked. Meaningful prosecution often required a change of venue or an entirely different jurisdiction, which is why Wils Howard’s case was handed to Missouri. State politics sometimes crossed paths with feud leaders in ways that kept tempers hot and rumors alive, yet over time the combination of outside lawmen, stronger courts, and a public weary of killing helped the open warfare ebb.
How the shooting stopped
Harlan quieted first. With Wils Howard executed and many principals dead or gone, the Turner and Howard feud petered out in the 1890s. Clay County simmered longer. After Tom Baker’s assassination and a sustained military presence, the factions finally took a public step toward peace on the Manchester courthouse steps in November 1903, where Baker and Howard men shook hands before a crowd. There were later flare ups, but by the 1910s the fighting no longer ruled county life, and by the 1920s new industries and outside officers further discouraged family warfare.
Why it still matters
The feud shows how a small insult can ignite when it falls on dry timber laid by poverty, patronage, and partisan courts. It also shows that personal honor, when it outruns impartial law, brings ruin to families and towns. Eastern Kentucky communities rebuilt slowly, and the region carried the burden of sensational headlines that painted the mountains as a place where the gun outran the gavel. Even so, the long arc bent toward public order as soldiers, judges, and ordinary citizens insisted that disputes move from the street to the courtroom.
Sources & Further Reading
Indianapolis News, June 12, 1899, reporting that the fatal shot that killed Tom Baker came from Sheriff White’s home in Manchester. Indiana Newspapers
Champaign County Gazette, June 14, 1899, summarizing that Baker was within a short distance of the assassin who fired from Sheriff White’s porch. idnc.library.illinois.edu
Utica Observer, June 12, 1899, front page item on the shooting of Tom Baker during the militia occupation of Manchester. nyshistoricnewspapers.org
Gratiot County Herald, January 26, 1894, reporting the execution of Wilson “Wils” Howard at Lebanon, Missouri. digmichnews.cmich.edu
Putnam County Courier, January 26, 1894, noting the same execution at Lebanon, Missouri. news.hrvh.org
Los Angeles Herald, July 18, 1899, coverage of renewed outbreaks in the White and Baker war that summer. California Digital Newspaper Collection
“The Baker–Howard–Turner Feud,” research draft with collated clippings, dates, and local memory, used here as a guide to names, sequences, and places.
YesterYear Once More, “Baker Howard Feud,” which reproduces period wire reports about the militia camp and the fatal shot from Sheriff White’s house. YesterYear Once More
Hometown Herald, “Blood Feud, The Clay County War,” a modern overview that integrates period reportage. The Hometown Herald
Kentucky Kindred Genealogy, “Turner and Howard Families of Harlan County,” a family based summary of the Harlan episodes that quotes and paraphrases nineteenth century accounts. Kentucky Kindred Genealogy
Old Stagecoach Stop, “The Outlaw Wils Howard,” two part narrative that synthesizes Missouri records and local newspaper accounts of Howard’s capture and execution. Old Stagecoach StopOld Stagecoach Stop
Author Note [Blank]