William Manon Cornett’s name surfaces in Kentucky history at curious moments.
In March 1921, readers of the Lexington Herald opened their paper to find two heated letters signed “Manon Cornett, Deputy Insurance Commissioner.” In them, a lawyer from Hazard who had risen into the inner circles of state government took aim at mob violence in the Bluegrass and compared it to a recent murder on the far side of Pine Mountain: the brutal killing of Pine Mountain Settlement School worker Lura Parsons.
Those letters pull together the threads of his life. Cornett was a son of Perry County feuding country, married into the Eversole clan of French–Eversole feud fame, made his career in insurance and law, wrote publicly against lynching, and in retirement was himself beaten nearly to death by a Florida gangster.
This is the story behind that signature from Hazard.
Cornettsville Roots
William “Manon” Cornett was born 9 September 1882 in Cornettsville, Perry County, Kentucky, a small community near Hazard that bore his family’s name. His parents were Elias “Eli” H. Cornett and Mary Jane “Jane” Combs Cornett, descendants of two of the pioneer families who helped carve Perry County out of the Kentucky wilderness.
The Cornetts had already been in the area for generations. Genealogies of “Old William” Cornett and his descendants show a sprawling clan that spread down Leatherwood, across Hazard, and into neighboring Letcher and Knott counties. Within that extended family, the name “William Manon” was a favorite and a headache for genealogists.
One older kinsman, also named William Manon Cornett, was born in 1848, a son of Anderson Cornett. He settled at Cornettsville and appears in Perry County records through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Another, born in 1879 in Letcher County, surfaces in genealogical and grave records as a farmer tied to the Gilley and Gilley Creek communities.
The subject of this article is the younger lawyer and politician born in 1882, the eldest child of Eli and Jane. The 1900 Perry County census captures him at eighteen, listed simply as a “farmer,” still working under his father’s roof. That detail comes from a primary record, but it also sets the tone. Before he became “Deputy Insurance Commissioner” in print, he was another Cornett boy hoeing rows in a family hollow.
Sheriff’s Son in a Feuding County
Manon’s father, Eli H. Cornett, stepped out of that hollow into county politics. A sheriff list for Perry County records Eli as sheriff from 1898 to 1902, a time when the grime of the French–Eversole feud had barely settled into the clay.
Joseph C. Eversole, who led one side of that bloody feud, was himself a relative by marriage inside the tight knot of Cornett, Combs, and Eversole families that dominated Hazard’s early history. By the time Manon reached adulthood, most of the open gunfights were over, but the memory of lawyers and merchants cut down in downtown Hazard still hung over the town.
Manon had more schooling than many of his neighbors. Kerr’s History of Kentucky and later compiled biographies agree that he attended the University of Kentucky in Lexington for one year around age nineteen before returning home. That brief taste of Lexington life foreshadowed the way he would move back and forth between the mountains and the Bluegrass for the rest of his career.
Back in Hazard, he followed his father into courthouse work. Local accounts and later summaries describe him as a deputy county clerk and then a deputy sheriff under Eli, jobs that would have put him at the center of jury lists, tax rolls, and the messy business of keeping order in a county still haunted by feud stories.
Marriage into the Eversole Story
On 13 October 1903, Manon married Clara Belle “Pet” Eversole in Perry County. The marriage is documented in Perry County marriage records and in multiple genealogical compilations, including Clara’s own FamilySearch entry and her Find A Grave memorial.
Clara Belle was a daughter of attorney Joseph Castle Eversole and Susan Combs Eversole. Joseph C. Eversole, who ran a general store in Hazard and served in several public roles, was one of the principal figures in the French–Eversole feud. Newspapers across the United States followed that feud in the late nineteenth century, describing ambushes, courthouse battles, and the assassination of Eversole himself in 1888.
Their marriage, then, linked Cornett and Eversole lines that had been on opposite sides of some of the county’s bloodiest conflicts. By the early twentieth century, those conflicts had cooled into memory and local politics. The children of Cornetts and Eversoles did business together, intermarried, and traded on family names that once drew rifle fire.
Manon and Clara had three children, a fact recorded both in Kerr’s biography and in the Wikipedia article built on census and directory evidence: Juanita Nell (later the wife of banker Arch Glass Mainous), Joseph Eversole Cornett, and Claribel Cornett.
From Hazard to Washington City
The first great leap in Manon’s career came in 1912. That year, he left Perry County for Washington, D.C., where he served as private secretary, effectively chief of staff, to Congressman John W. Langley of Kentucky’s mountainous 10th District.
Primary evidence for those years survives in city directories and a Washington Post notice. The 1912, 1913, and 1914 Washington city directories place “W. M. Cornett” at 1801 First Street NW, identifying him as Langley’s secretary. A December 1913 Washington Post article about the temperance-oriented “Sons of Jonadab” lists him among officers of that fraternal group, showing that the young Perry County lawyer was already comfortable in the capital’s reform circles.
A portrait from this period, preserved at Pine Mountain Settlement School and shared via Wikimedia Commons, shows a thin-faced man with slicked back hair and a stiff collar, gaze lifted just above the camera. It is a long way, visually and socially, from a Cornettsville farmhouse to a Washington parlor, but those directory entries and that photograph show that he made the jump.
Politically, Langley was a Republican who championed the mountain district’s interests in coal and internal improvements. To be his chief of staff meant navigating patronage requests from back home, committee work in Washington, and correspondence that stretched from creek-bottom post offices to federal agencies. For a young lawyer whose kin had spent decades fighting over coal lands and county offices, it was an education in how power worked far beyond Hazard.
Back to Hazard, Forward to Frankfort
By the mid 1910s, Manon returned to Hazard and turned more fully to law and business. Pine Mountain’s biographical sketch notes that he engaged in real estate and coal ventures. The Cornetts were already landholders, and new coal companies were steadily buying up mineral rights in Perry County, often from semi-literate landowners. The old feud stories about coal companies and local merchants, told in studies of the French–Eversole feud, were still vivid.
His Washington experience, however, positioned him for state office. When Republican Edwin P. Morrow was elected governor, Manon received an appointment as Deputy Insurance Commissioner of Kentucky, serving roughly from 1921 to early 1924.
City directories and newspaper reports form the backbone of this chapter of his life. The 1922 Frankfort city directory lists him at 416 West Main Street, confirmed by the biographical note in his Wikipedia entry. The State Journal in Frankfort ran a front page article on 13 January 1921 titled “Insurance Men Hear Speech of Manon Cornett,” reporting on a major address he delivered to Kentucky underwriters. Smaller papers such as The Clay City Times, the Breckinridge News, and the Mountain Advocate in Barbourville also mentioned his regulatory work.
Those newspaper items are primary sources that show a mountain lawyer speaking with authority about actuarial tables, insurance reserves, and the need for orderly regulation at a time when many Kentuckians still handled risk informally through kin networks and mutual aid. They also confirm that he had become a visible public figure, not merely an anonymous clerk in the statehouse.
“The Versailles Affair”: Mob Violence and Mountain Reputation
It was in this Frankfort period that Manon wrote the two letters that now anchor his memory at Pine Mountain Settlement School.
In March 1921, The Lexington Herald published “Two Letters from Manon Cornett Concerning the Versailles Affair” in its People’s Forum section. The Pine Mountain scrapbook finding aid reproduces the clipping and provides context.
The Versailles Affair began when a mob in Woodford County took a Black man, accused of assault, from jail and killed him. In his letters, Cornett questioned how local officials had handled the mob and challenged readers to compare the outcry over this Bluegrass lynching to what he had seen in Harlan County after the murder of Lura Parsons, a white teacher employed by Pine Mountain Settlement School who was attacked and killed on the Laden Trail in 1920.
Parsons’s case had already drawn statewide attention. A Black road worker was initially targeted as a suspect, reflecting the racial prejudice of the era. Pine Mountain’s leaders, including director Katherine Pettit, protested his treatment and pushed for a fair investigation that eventually focused suspicion on a local white veterinarian.
Cornett’s letters, as summarized by Pine Mountain, condemned mob violence and the selective enforcement of law. The scrapbook’s subject headings highlight his concerns with “race relations, Negroes, hangings, lynchings, [and] rural police force” in both Woodford and Harlan Counties.
Seen alongside his other public work, those letters complicate common stereotypes about “mountain whites” in the early twentieth century. Here was a Republican from feuding Perry County, writing from his Frankfort office to challenge mob law in both the Bluegrass and the coalfields, and to argue that mountain people were not uniquely lawless compared to their lowland neighbors. The primary evidence is brief, but it shows a man trying to defend both legal process and the reputation of his home region.
Lawyer, Coal Man, and Father-in-law to a Banker
In 1924, Manon left state politics and returned again to Hazard. The 1930 Hazard census lists him as an attorney, and Pine Mountain notes that he was a major stockholder in the Blue Grass Coal Corporation. World War I bond drives and later coal promotions often featured him as a speaker, suggesting that he remained a familiar public face in eastern Kentucky.
His children carried the family story into new corners of the Appalachian diaspora. In January 1927, his daughter Juanita Nell Cornett married banker Arch Glass Mainous in Miami, Florida. Their marriage license was noted in the Miami Herald and appears in Mainous family genealogies.
Arch Mainous’s later biography credits his father-in-law with helping him secure a job as a trust examiner for the Kentucky Banking Department in 1929, a step that eventually led to his leadership of Citizens Union National Bank in Lexington and his role as a prominent banker and insurance executive across the state. In other words, the Hazard lawyer who had once served in Washington brought a son-in-law into the world of statewide finance, and the mountain-to-Bluegrass pipeline continued into the next generation.
Retirement, Violence, and an Unfinished Story
In his later years, Manon retired to Florida. Pine Mountain’s biographical note, drawing on family recollections, states that he was assaulted there by a mobster with a baseball bat, a beating that left him incapacitated. Relatives eventually brought him back to Kentucky, where he spent his last days at Shady Grove Sanitarium in Eminence, Henry County.
A Kentucky death record and compiled biographies agree that he died on 3 May 1956 at Shady Grove, his occupation still listed as lawyer. He was buried at Hillcrest Memorial Park in Lexington, where Find A Grave memorials show his grave alongside those of Clara Belle and their daughter Juanita.
Pine Mountain’s sketch quotes a Find A Grave biography by Bill James that describes Cornett as a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a third degree Mason, an Odd Fellow, a Knight of Pythias, and a participant in several other fraternal orders. That web of associations, from Hazard lodge halls to Washington temperance societies, helps explain how a sheriff’s son from Cornettsville could navigate the corridors of Frankfort and still speak in the language of his home county.
Why Manon Cornett Matters
William Manon Cornett’s life looks, at first glance, like that of many early twentieth century Kentucky lawyers. He practiced law, dabbled in coal, held a state office for a single administration, and raised a family that moved into banking and business.
What makes him interesting for Appalachian history is the way his story threads through other, better known narratives.
He was born into the tangle of Cornett, Combs, and Eversole kin that had already produced the French–Eversole feud and helped shape Hazard’s early power structure. He served a mountain congressman in Washington at a time when Appalachia’s image was being hammered out in national magazines and congressional hearings. He regulated insurance during the same decade when company doctors and adjusters figured so heavily in coal camp life.
Most strikingly, he stepped into the public eye at a moment when lynching and mob violence were reshaping Kentucky’s reputation. His 1921 letters on the Versailles Affair, written in defense of law and in memory of a murdered Pine Mountain teacher, show that at least some mountain Republicans tried to push back against the narrative that their home region was uniquely lawless, and they did so by comparing Bluegrass and mountain injustices side by side.
His story is not neat. We do not yet have a full archive of his legal cases or personal correspondence. Pine Mountain’s Cornett file, which includes clippings, correspondence, and family photographs, promises more material for anyone willing to make the trip to the archives. The city directories and newspaper columns that anchor his Washington and Frankfort years deserve closer reading. So do the coal company records that list him as a major stockholder, and the court files that record his work as a Perry County lawyer.
What we can say now is that, in the space between feuds and insurance statutes, between Pine Mountain and Versailles, William Manon Cornett tried to make the law mean something. That alone earns him a place in the story of the Appalachian highlands.
Sources and Further Reading
Lexington Herald, 22 and 24 March 1921, People’s Forum, “Two Letters from Manon Cornett Concerning the Versailles Affair.” Clipping preserved in Pine Mountain Settlement School scrapbooks, “Two Letters from Manon Cornett Concerning the Versailles Affair.” pinemountainsettlement.net
State and local newspaper coverage of Cornett’s service as Deputy Insurance Commissioner, especially The State Journal (Frankfort), 13 January 1921, “Insurance Men Hear Speech of Manon Cornett,” with additional reporting in The Clay City Times, the Breckinridge News, and the Mountain Advocate. Wikipedia
U.S. Census schedules and city directories cited in compiled biographies, including the 1900 Perry County census listing William M. Cornett as a farmer in his parents’ household, the 1930 Hazard census listing him as a lawyer, the 1912–1914 Washington, D.C. city directories placing him at 1801 First Street NW as secretary to Congressman John W. Langley, and the 1922 Frankfort city directory listing him at 416 West Main Street. Wikipedia
Pine Mountain Settlement School, “SCRAPBOOKS BEFORE 1929: Two Letters from Manon Cornett Concerning the Versailles Affair,” and the related “William Manon Cornett” biography file, which compile clippings, photographs, genealogical notes, and an interpretive essay on his life and writings. pinemountainsettlement.net+1
Vital and burial records for William Manon Cornett, Clara Belle “Pet” Eversole Cornett, and their daughter Juanita Nell Cornett Mainous, preserved in Kentucky death records, FamilySearch person pages, and Find A Grave memorials, including entries for Hillcrest Memorial Park in Lexington. Wikipedia+2fr.findagrave.com+2
Charles Kerr, History of Kentucky, Volume 5 (American Historical Society, 1922), pages 307–308, a near contemporary biographical sketch of Cornett based on interviews and local knowledge. Wikipedia
“William Manon Cornett” and “Arch Glass Mainous,” Wikipedia articles that synthesize Kerr’s biography, census and directory evidence, and scattered newspaper references; both include detailed reference lists that point to primary sources for further research. Wikipedia+1
“Joseph C. Eversole” and “French–Eversole feud,” Wikipedia entries that provide historical background on the Eversole family and the late nineteenth century feud in Perry County that shaped the political world into which Cornett and his wife were born. Wikipedia+1
Cornett and Eversole genealogies hosted by KYGenWeb, USGenWeb, and Yeahpot, including the “Lineage of William Jesse Cornett and Mary Everage” and Cornett family charts that distinguish between multiple men named William Manon Cornett in Perry and Letcher Counties. kygenweb.net+1
Local and regional writing on the Lura Parsons case and Pine Mountain Settlement School, including Pine Mountain’s institutional histories and modern retellings of the Parsons murder on tourism and heritage sites such as Harlan County’s Rebel Rock narrative and AppalachianHistorian.org’s own coverage of Pine Mountain history. pinemountainsettlement.net+2harlancountytrails.com+2