Appalachian History Series – Bloody Breathitt and the Courthouse Murder of J. B. Marcum
High on the North Fork of the Kentucky River, in a brick courthouse fronting Jackson’s small public square, a lawyer stepped under an archway and into American folklore. On May 4, 1903, James Buchanan Marcum walked toward the Breathitt County courtroom where he had once practiced and now feared for his life. Shots cracked from the hallway. Marcum fell in the doorway while talking with a friend, mortally wounded in front of dozens of witnesses. Within days editors from Kentucky to New Zealand were calling Jackson a place apart, a county where law had given way to vendetta and where one more man had died in what they branded “Bloody Breathitt.”
For more than a century the story of Marcum’s murder has been told in three different languages of memory. Court papers and affidavits show how he tried to fight the killings with law before dying in the very building where he filed his charges. Newspapers and official reports track the assassination, the militia occupation of Jackson, and the long trials of Curt Jett and Tom White. Ballad singers and record makers carried the story even farther, turning the Breathitt County courthouse doorway into a stage where Judge Hargis, Sheriff Callahan, and the “wild dog of the mountains” stood before a jury of their neighbors’ ears.
This article leans on those three layers of memory, starting with Marcum’s own words and then following the shots that turned a local feud into an international spectacle.
“Startling charges in Breathitt Circuit Court”
To outsiders in 1903, Marcum’s death felt like one more act in a long, confusing feud between the Hargis and Cockrell factions. To Marcum, it was part of a pattern he had already written down in ink. In November 1902 the Morning Herald of Lexington printed a front page feature titled “Startling Charges in Affidavits Filed in Breathitt Circuit Court.” The article reproduced Marcum’s letter and affidavit, a long bill of particulars that listed killings, ambushes, election fraud, and threats he said were tied to Judge James Hargis and his allies in Jackson. He described a county where juries were tampered with, where witnesses were afraid to testify, and where he himself expected to be killed.
Alongside Marcum’s affidavit the paper printed a sworn statement by a Breathitt man named Moses Feltner. Feltner said he had been warned that the faction aligned with Hargis intended to kill Marcum and that he had passed the warning along. His affidavit, like Marcum’s, was meant to go into the official court record. Instead it became part of a public exhibit, proof for readers that even men inside the feud believed that a political machine had turned to murder.
Those filings did not break the machine. But they crystallized Marcum’s role. He was no neutral lawyer caught in a crossfire, and not simply a feud partisan. He was an attorney and former federal commissioner who had chosen to challenge the entrenched leadership of Breathitt County in court. In later summaries of the Hargis Cockrell Marcum Callahan vendetta, Marcum appears as the reformer who tried to use law against a local dynasty and paid for it with his life.
A courthouse doorway and a county’s reputation
On the morning of May 4, 1903, Marcum walked toward the courthouse under the clock tower that stood over Jackson’s square. That red brick building, completed in the late nineteenth century, had already witnessed more than its share of inquests and political quarrels.
Wire reporters told the rest. Newspapers from Michigan to California carried the same grim summary. “Marcum, an attorney, was shot and instantly killed as he was entering the courthouse,” one Associated Press dispatch read, adding that the assassin had not been immediately identified. Papers repeated the detail that he fell in his tracks in the front entrance, hit by rifle fire at close range.
Within a week out of state headlines had turned the killing into shorthand for Kentucky lawlessness. The Virginian-Pilot told readers that “Marcum Killed by an Unknown Assassin in Entrance of Jackson Ky Courthouse While Talking to a Friend.” Small-town papers in Colorado and the upper Midwest reprinted the story under variants of “Killed in Feud” and “Fell Victim to a Feud.” In their versions Breathitt County was no longer just another place in the mountains. It was a dramatic backdrop, a stage for “Kentucky vendettas” and “reigns of terror” where the courthouse itself had become a killing ground.
International coverage carried that image even farther. The Advertiser of Adelaide, South Australia and the Otago Witness in New Zealand both ran long features under the title “Kentucky Vendetta.” They told readers that J. B. Marcum, a United States commissioner, had been gunned down at the courthouse door and that local jurors were too cowed to convict his suspected killers. One article claimed that more than forty men had been murdered in the county’s recent feuds and that Breathitt’s grand jury could not act without military protection.
By the summer of 1903 the phrase “Bloody Breathitt” had hardened into a label. It appeared in national editorials and later in Hargis family defenses, where the judge and his allies tried to recast their critics as outsiders who did not understand the county’s politics. Twentieth century historians would borrow the phrase as a book title, most notably in T. R. C. Hutton’s archival study of Breathitt County violence, which placed Marcum’s murder near the center of a fifty year story about power, patronage, and force.
Militia on the square
Public outrage did something that Marcum’s affidavit had not. It pried open Jackson, at least for a time. The same newspapers that announced the assassination soon carried another wire story. The governor had ordered state troops into Breathitt County.
The deployment was serious enough to earn its own entry in National Guard histories. Guard officers recorded that Kentucky infantry units entrained for Jackson, took up positions around the courthouse, and camped nearby while a grand jury convened under military protection. The state’s military history places the expedition in May 1903 and links it directly to the need to secure witnesses and jurors in the Marcum case.
Modern researchers have been able to reconstruct the occupation in more detail by pairing those official histories with local reporting. A narrative published online as “The Militia Invades Jackson,” built on Guard records and Jackson Times clippings, describes the troops arriving on May 19 and surrounding the courthouse. Two days later a guarded grand jury handed down indictments against Curt Jett and Tom White for the murder of J. B. Marcum. That same narrative traces how soldiers patrolled the streets and discouraged gatherings in town, turning Jackson into a temporary garrison community.
The guarded jury was only the beginning. Trials would be moved out of Breathitt County on change of venue, and state officials would return to Jackson again in later years when other Breathitt killings threatened to restart the cycle. In that sense the militia encampment of 1903 marked a turning point. It signaled that the state could no longer ignore what was happening in Jackson and that outside forces were willing to intervene in what locals had been calling a private feud.
Curt Jett, Tom White, and the problem of proof
Even with the courthouse ringed by soldiers, the case against the alleged gunmen was hardly straightforward. Curt Jett, a young man from one of Breathitt’s feud families, already had a reputation for violence. Later writers would call him “the wild dog of the mountains.” Tom White was another local man aligned with the Hargis faction. Both were suspected of serving as hired killers, part of a network of men who carried out shootings while elected officials tried to keep their hands clean.
Witnesses were plentiful. Too many had heard the shots. Too many had seen Jett and White near the courthouse doors just before the attack, or glimpsed a man with a rifle in the corridor. But fear hung over the case. Local newspapers and later reminiscences describe witnesses who would talk freely in private yet refuse to repeat their stories under oath. In one narrative a merchant named B. J. Ewen privately identified Jett as the assassin while insisting in public that he had not recognized the shooter, openly admitting that he feared being killed if he told the truth.
Change of venue was one answer. Prosecutors argued that no impartial jury could be seated in Breathitt County and that open trials there risked more violence. The case moved through other Kentucky counties, with one early trial reportedly ending in a hung jury and later proceedings culminating in convictions. Wire stories from August 1903 reported that Jett and White had been found guilty of Marcum’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. These dispatches reached small town Colorado papers and beyond, closing the loop for readers who had followed the killing four months earlier.
Yet the story did not rest there. In later years Jett recast himself as a converted man and Baptist preacher. Time magazine ran a brief notice in the 1930s under the title “Wild Dog into Preacher,” calling him a “primitive Kentucky murderer” who had embraced religion. Local historians have traced his later years in church work and his role in other Breathitt killings, underscoring how thin the line could be between feud gunman and redeemed mountain Christian in national imagination.
Murder in print and on the page
While troops guarded the courthouse and jurors argued over verdicts, writers were already turning the Marcum case into print narratives. Some were near contemporary. The Louisville Courier Journal ran a long feature in 1903 under the heading “A Plain Story of the Deadly Quarrels That Have Made the Name of Breathitt a By Word,” weaving Marcum’s death into a broader history of feuds and election struggles. Later bloggers have reprinted that article in full, making its turn of the century prose available to a new audience.
In the 1910s and 1920s several authors wrote true crime style books on Kentucky feuds that included the Marcum murder. Charles G. Mutzenberg’s Kentucky’s Famous Feuds and Tragedies devoted a substantial chapter to the Hargis Cockrell Marcum Callahan conflict, combining courtroom summaries with vivid, often moralizing commentary. Lewis F. Johnson’s Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials placed the Breathitt feud among other high profile murder cases, presenting Jett and White’s trials as part of a larger gallery of sensational crimes.
Despite their melodramatic tones, those books are important near primary sources. Their authors spoke with participants and drew on now lost press accounts and legal records. Later historians have treated them cautiously but still mined them for details that do not survive elsewhere. Jean Thomas’s Blue Ridge Country, a mid twentieth century memoir that blended travel writing and oral tradition, also included a frequently quoted passage about the Curt Jett trials and their connection to earlier Breathitt violence.
Modern scholarship has added more context and skepticism. T. R. C. Hutton’s Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South documented the political economy of Jackson’s machine and argued that much of what was labeled feud violence was really about power, contracts, and state building in a remote county. Hutton and other historians have shown how men like Judge Hargis used the language of feud to mask their own role in orchestrating lethal force against rivals such as Marcum, and how the label “Bloody Breathitt” helped outsiders flatten complex events into a familiar mountain stereotype.
“Curt Jett shot Marcum dead in the courthouse”
The most enduring retelling of the courthouse murder did not appear in a law report or bound volume. It showed up in a song.
Ballad scholars catalog the piece under the title “J. B. Marcum (A Kentucky Feud Song),” Laws E19. Their summary is blunt. Curt Jett shoots “J. B. Markham” dead in the courthouse, Judge Jim Hargis tries to fix the jury, the case moves to another county, and Jett and his accomplice Tom White end up in prison. In a few stanzas the song names the killer, the victim, the judge, and the problem of justice in Jackson.
Commercial recording came first. In 1928 Ted Chestnut, recording under the name Cal Turner with Fiddlin Doc Roberts, cut “The Death of J. B. Marcum” for the Gennett label. Asa Martin later recorded another version, and the song appeared on old time compilations as “Death of J. B. Marcum.” Donald Lee Nelson’s article “The Death of J. B. Marcum,” published in the JEMF Quarterly in 1975, traced these commercial sides alongside field recordings and printed texts, concluding that the ballad clung to the historical outline even as details shifted.
Fieldworkers for the Library of Congress gathered their own versions. In 1937 and 1938 Alan and Elizabeth Lomax traveled through eastern Kentucky and recorded “The J. B. Marcum Song” from several singers, including a performance at the Lower Hell for Certain school in Leslie County. One recording, now cataloged as “The J. B. Marcum Song (#1)” from Big Creek in Clay County, features Maynard Britton singing a local version that he said he had known for years.
These recordings, now preserved online by the Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings project and the Library of Congress, show how the Marcum story moved through communities far from Jackson. Verses describe Marcum as a “brave attorney” who fought the Hargis gang, tell how Jett shot him down as he entered the courthouse, and close with his widow’s grief. The song usually mentions the transfer of the case to another county and the eventual imprisonment of Jett and White, making clear that some measure of justice was finally done.
Stephanie Hall’s essay “Caught My Ear: The Ballad of J. B. Marcum,” written for the Library of Congress Folklife Today blog, ties these pieces together. Drawing on Marcum’s affidavit, Feltner’s warning, and the Lomax recordings, she notes that the ballad’s outline matches the documented narrative with unusual closeness. Where many murder ballads distort or invent, this one largely confirms the events it recounts. In Hall’s reading that fidelity reflects how deeply the courthouse killing shook the region and how determined local singers were to keep the facts straight.
Remembering Bloody Breathitt
Today the old courthouse that saw Marcum’s last walk is gone. The building in which he was shot, built in the late nineteenth century and remodeled around the turn of the century, stood until the 1960s. Later courthouses and a modern judicial center now occupy the site, reflecting a century of attempts to bring more conventional government to a county once famous for its feud killings.
Yet the phrase “Bloody Breathitt” still surfaces in popular writing and social media. Genealogists swap clippings about the Hargis dynasty and the Callahan shooting. Local historical societies reprint Hazel Green Herald excerpts about Marcum and the later deaths of key witnesses. Writers who pass through Jackson still note that from the 1870s to the 1920s more than a hundred officials and leading citizens were killed in feud related violence.
For historians, the challenge is to see both the blood and the structures behind it. Marcum’s affidavit and Feltner’s warning show that men on the ground understood they were living under a political machine that used patronage, intimidation, and deadly force. The militia occupation of 1903 and the decisions to move trials out of Breathitt County reveal a state struggling, belatedly, to assert its authority. The ballad tradition, from commercial records to Lomax’s field tapes, captures how mountain communities absorbed these events into a moral story about courage, corruption, and justice finally secured.
For Breathitt County, the courthouse murder of J. B. Marcum remains more than a sensational headline. It marks the moment when local violence, long dismissed as private quarrel, erupted into full public view and forced Kentuckians and outside observers alike to ask what it would take to bring the rule of law to a place that outsiders had already branded dark and bloody.
Sources & Further Reading
Morning Herald (Lexington, KY). “Startling Charges in Affidavits Filed in Breathitt Circuit Court.” November 11, 1902, 1. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ The Library of Congress
Breathitt County Circuit Court. Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Moses Feltner, case file, ca. 1902. Referenced and summarized in Stephanie Hall, “Caught My Ear: The Ballad of J. B. Marcum,” Folklife Today, Library of Congress, May 4, 2018. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/05/ballad-of-j-b-marcum/ The Library of Congress
“Killed in Feud.” Humboldt Times (Eureka, CA), May 6, 1903, 1. California Digital Newspaper Collection. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=HTS19030506.2.31 California Digital Newspaper Collection
Virginian Pilot (Norfolk, VA). “Marcum Killed by an Unknown Assassin in Entrance of Jackson Ky Courthouse While Talking to a Friend.” May 5, 1903, 1. Virginia Chronicle. https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=VP19030505.1.1 Virginia Chronicle
True Northerner (Paw Paw, MI). “James B. Marcum Was Shot and Killed by an Unknown Assassin.” May 8, 1903, 2. Digital Michigan Newspaper Portal. https://digmichnews.cmich.edu/ Geni
“Fell Victim to a Feud. Hon. James B. Marcum Is Shot Down in the Front Entrance of the Courthouse at Jackson, Ky.” Granada Times (Granada, CO), May 14, 1903. Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=TGS19030514-01.2.102 Colorado Historic Newspapers
“Curtis Jett Arrested. He Is Charged with Assassination of J. B. Marcum.” Los Angeles Herald, May 11, 1903. California Digital Newspaper Collection. https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=LAH19030511.2.3 The Library of Congress
“Kentucky Vendetta.” Plymouth Tribune (Plymouth, IN), May 7, 1903, front page. Hoosier State Chronicles: Indiana’s Digital Historic Newspaper Program. https://newspapers.library.in.gov/?a=d&d=PT19030507.1.1 Hoosier State Chronicles
“More Trouble in Kentucky.” Yakima Republic (Yakima, WA), July 24, 1903, 5. Washington Digital Newspapers. https://washingtondigitalnewspapers.org/?a=d&d=YAKIRPBC19030724.2.58 washingtondigitalnewspapers.org
“Mord och oroligheter i Kentucky” [report on Marcum murder, militia occupation]. Minnesota Stats Tidning (Minneapolis, MN), June 17, 1903. Chronicling America, Library of Congress. https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ digmichnews.cmich.edu
Champaign Daily Gazette (Champaign, IL). “Proceedings Against Jett for Marcum’s Murder.” May 21, 1903. Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections. https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/ digmichnews.cmich.edu
Saturday Blade (Chicago, IL). “The Assassination of James B. Marcum, at One Time a Federal Attorney.” February 15, 1908, 3. Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections. https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/ Appalachian History
“Kentucky Vendetta.” Advertiser (Adelaide, South Australia), July 24, 1903, 4. Trove, National Library of Australia. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections
“Kentucky Vendetta.” Otago Witness (Dunedin, New Zealand), July 1, 1903, 4. Papers Past, National Library of New Zealand. https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/ Hoosier State Chronicles
“Jett and White Guilty.” Granada Times (Granada, CO), August 20, 1903. Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection. https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/ Illinois Digital Newspaper Collections
Breathitt County Historical and Genealogical Society. “Curt Jett Charged with Murder of James B. Marcum” (Hazel Green Herald, 1903, excerpt). Breathitt County Historical and Genealogical Society Newsletter, Fall 2016. PDF via Kentucky Historical Society. https://www.kyhistory.com/ kyhistory.com
McClain, G. Lee, comp. Military History of Kentucky. Frankfort, KY: State Journal, 1939. Kentucky National Guard History site, PDF. https://kynghistory.ky.gov/media/publications/dma/militaryhistoryky1939anlrpt.pdf KY National Guard History
Schwarz, W. R., and J. T. Milligan. History of the First Regiment of Infantry, Kentucky National Guard: From Its Organization in 1817 to the Present Time. Louisville, KY: 1915. PDF via Kentucky National Guard History. https://kynghistory.ky.gov/Media/Publications/Documents/1streghist1915pt2.pdf KY National Guard History
“The J. B. Marcum Song (#1).” Sung by Maynard Britton, Big Creek, Clay County, Kentucky, October 15, 1937. Alan and Elizabeth Lomax Kentucky Collection, AFS 1521A1, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings. https://lomaxky.omeka.net/items/show/923 Lomax Kentucky Recordings
“The J. B. Marcum Song.” Unidentified singer, recorded October 1, 1937, AFS 1452A. Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings, American Folklife Center. https://lomaxky.omeka.net/items/show/683 Lomax Kentucky Recordings
Chestnut, Ted (as Cal Turner), with Fiddlin Doc Roberts. “The Death of J. B. Marcum” backed with “The Letter From Home.” Gennett 15544, 78 rpm, recorded May 10, 1928, Richmond, Indiana. Discographical details summarized in JEMF Quarterly and at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/jemfquarterlyser1971john Internet Archive
Martin, Asa. “Death of J. B. Marcum.” Originally issued on 78 rpm; reissued on The Art of Old Time Mountain Music and other compilations. Discogs entry. https://www.discogs.com/ American Historical Recordings
Waltz, Robert B., and David G. Engle. “J. B. Marcum (A Kentucky Feud Song) [Laws E19].” In The Traditional Ballad Index: An Annotated Bibliography of the Folk Songs of the English Speaking World. California State University, Fresno. http://www.fresnostate.edu/folklore/ballads/ Lomax Kentucky Recordings
Nelson, Donald Lee. “The Death of J. B. Marcum.” JEMF Quarterly 11 (Spring 1975): 7-22. Referenced in Alan Lomax Kentucky Recordings bibliography. https://lomaxky.omeka.net/exhibits/show/bibliography/articles Lomax Kentucky Recordings
Burt, Olive Woolley, comp. and ed. American Murder Ballads and Their Stories. New York: Oxford University Press, 1958. WorldCat entry. https://search.worldcat.org/title/american-murder-ballads-and-their-stories/oclc/8989049 WorldCat
Cohen, Norm, et al., eds. American Folk Songs: A Regional Encyclopedia. 2 vols. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2008. Discussion of “J. B. Marcum” and references to Nelson, “The Death of J. B. Marcum.” https://epdf.pub/american-folk-songs-2-volumes-a-regional-encyclopedia.html epdf.pub
Mutzenberg, Charles G. Kentucky’s Famous Feuds and Tragedies: Authentic History of the World Renowned Vendettas of the Dark and Bloody Ground. Louisville, KY: 1917. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/kentuckysfamousf00mutz catalog.hathitrust.org
Johnson, Lewis F. Famous Kentucky Tragedies and Trials: A Collection of Important and Interesting Tragedies and Criminal Trials Which Have Taken Place in Kentucky. Louisville, KY: Courier Journal Job Printing Company, ca. 1911. Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/famouskentuckytr00johnrich Project Gutenberg
Thomas, Jean. Blue Ridge Country. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942. Public domain text via Reading Rooms. https://readingroo.ms/2/5/4/1/25413/25413-8.txt readingroo.ms
Hutton, T. R. C. Bloody Breathitt: Politics and Violence in the Appalachian South. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2013. Publisher page. https://kentuckypress.com/9780813142715/bloody-breathitt/
Pearce, John Ed. Days of Darkness: The Feuds of Eastern Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1994. JSTOR and CORE reprint. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jck77 JSTOR
“Breathitt County – General History.” Unpublished county history manuscript, mid twentieth century, digital PDF in CORE repository. https://core.ac.uk/ Internet Archive
“A Plain Story of the Deadly Quarrels That Have Made the Name of Breathitt a By Word.” Louisville Courier Journal, 1903. Full text reprinted at KentuckyRoots.org as “A Plain Story of the Deadly Quarrels That Have Made the Name of Breathitt a By Word.” https://kentuckyroots.org/index.php?southcen= Kentucky Roots
Hall, Stephanie. “Caught My Ear: The Ballad of J. B. Marcum.” Folklife Today (blog), Library of Congress, May 4, 2018. https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2018/05/ballad-of-j-b-marcum/ The Library of Congress
Tabler, Dave. “Curt Jett, the Wild Dog of the Mountains.” AppalachianHistory.net, March 8, 2017. https://www.appalachianhistory.net/2017/03/curt-jett-the-wild-dog-of-the-mountains.html Appalachian History
Bowling, Stephen D. “The Militia Invades Jackson.” BookHiker.com, August 31, 2022. https://bookhiker.com/2022/08/31/the-militia-invades-jackson/ Bookie on the Trail
Bowling, Stephen D. “Where Is Curtis’ Pistol?” BookHiker.com, January 13, 2022. https://bookhiker.com/2022/01/13/where-is-curtis-pistol/ Bookie on the Trail
Bowling, Stephen D. “The Marcum Family.” BookHiker.com, January 19, 2023. https://bookhiker.com/2023/01/19/the-marcum-family/ Bookie on the Trail
“Religion: Wild Dog into Preacher.” Time, January 26, 1931. https://time.com/archive/6766931/religion-wild-dog-into-preacher/ TIME
“Bloody Breathitt: The Murder That Shook Appalachia.” AppalachianMemories.org, March 1, 2025. https://appalachianmemories.org/2025/03/01/bloody-breathitt-the-murder-that-shook-appalachia/ appalachianmemories.org
Bown, Sally. “Kentucky County Historical and Genealogical Society Newsletters at the Martin F. Schmidt Research Library, Kentucky Historical Society.” Kentucky Ancestors 42 (2007): 185-87. PDF and updated list of county newsletters. https://www.kyhistory.com/digital/api/collection/LIB/id/282/download kyhistory.com
Author Note: As I worked through Marcum’s own affidavit, the press reports, and the old ballad recordings, I kept circling back to the image of a lawyer cut down in the doorway of the courthouse where he had tried to seek justice. My hope is that laying out his story carefully, with both the violence and the politics in view, helps us remember Breathitt County as a real community of people and not only as a headline about “Bloody Breathitt.”