Thursday,
December 16, 1915
This was my prayer: a piece of ground not over large; with a garden, and near to the house a stream of constant water; and besides these some little quantity of woodland. – Horace
When we read the above we come to the conclusion that many of us are better off than we had thought.
– – –
Irving S. Cobb says that when a bachelor maiden hangs up her stocking at Christmas eve, that she knows very well that the present she most desires could not be placed in a stocking, but that it comes in two socks.
– – –
The Weston Democrat tells the story of the discovery by Brown Yeager, surveyor, of the gun and bones of Phillip Wolf, a brave young Confederate soldier, who died in a thicket from a severe wound received in a fight with the enemy at Camp Bartow in the Valley between Cheat and Alleghany mountains shortly after the battle of Rich Mountain, in 1861. The gun was well preserved and went off when the trigger was pulled – Greenbrier Independent, in 38 years ago column.
—-
Captain W. W. Whitton, Jr., of the United States Army, was at Hillsboro on Monday, and took up six yearling Arabian colts for which he paid $150 apiece. He also bought two other horses, one from J. P. Beard and one from J. S. McNeel, for which he paid $200 apiece. Several hundred head of fine horses were there for inspection, but no cavalry horses were taken at this time. However, the Captain intends to return in the spring when he expects to buy several car loads. He appeared pleased with the number and kind of horses brought to him and said he had never inspected a better lot. The United States Army buys only the best horses and pays the best prices, and it will mean a great deal to the people of the valley now that an army buyer has discovered us.
– – –
T. S. Dulaney and U. S. Gilmore were here from Woodrow Tuesday night. In the past ten days they have killed two hundred rabbits about their farms, and there seems to be plenty of rabbits left. Mr. Dulaney has a pair of very fine English beagle hounds.
– – –
R. D. Moore was in town Monday. Some days ago he and some others explored the cave on the county farm near Hillsboro. For a number of miles they wandered around in several rooms, galleries and tunnels. It is a remarkable cave in size, and in many places are to be found beautiful formations.
BUCKEYE
We are having first class winter weather now, snowing to beat the band, and storming to beat the poor old cows and hard on the bachelors.
Butchering turkeys and making fires is the order of the occupation here now.
Clark Kellison killed one hog that net 355 pounds.
George Kellison is enjoying the fire around the old homestead.
Porter Kellison is out today gathering up turkeys.
CASS
A fine fall closed with some little snow; wheat has suffered some for lack of snow during the big frosts and freezes, the last few weeks.
As President Wilson’s wedding is billed for the 18th, we cannot expect very much settled weather until after that date.
Mr. Hamed’s store building is about completed. He expects to handle all kinds of produce.
Business is good and everybody that wants work is employed at good wages. This town is the business center of the district, paying 25 percent of the taxes and not until recently did the county court see the necessity of improving the road towards Green Bank by widening and otherwise improving it…
Pork, beef, potatoes, cabbage, milk, butter etc. is being hauled in almost daily and sells for a big price.
A MOUNTAIN TRAGEDY
The Killing of Kenna Elliott by Norman Wilfong
Last Thursday on a lonely mountain path two farmers met and quarreled and fought it out to the death, and one lies buried, and the other is in jail, the most repentant poor man who ever suffered remorse, whose dearest wish now that it had been himself who had been killed in the fight.
Wilfong is a man, forty-nine years of age, who has a wife and ten children living on a farm worth about $3,000 which he has acquired by a lifetime of hard work and saving.
Elliott was also a farmer, not quite so prosperous as Wilfong, with a wife and children, living some miles away.
Both of the men stood well in the community in which they lived.
On the day of the killing, Wilfong left his house to salt his sheep on Buffalo Mountain, in the Greenbank country. He took his gun with him. He had not carried a gun for two years, but he says that the last time he salted his flock of sheep that a fox closely pursued by hounds ran in and out among the sheep, passing him so closely that he could have shot it, and this put it into his head to take a shot gun loaded with number 4 shot with him.
As he went up the mountain by a little used path by a wire fence he met Kenna Elliott coming down the path on his way to a shoemaker’s for some shoes that he was having repaired for his children. The men had not met for some time and in the meantime Wilfong had placed in the hands of a constable a claim for $7 against Elliott, and Elliott stopped to talk about it.
The account that is given here is necessarily the statement that the prisoner makes, but the officers say that the marks on the ground bear him out in many important details.
Elliott said to Wilfong that he would pay that seven dollars when Wilfong paid for $27 worth of sheep that his dog had killed. The men lost their tempers and Wilfong says that Elliott said to him that he would kill him just as he had killed his dog, and that they clinched and fought, and worked down the mountain over about fifty feet of steep mountainside. That at this point Elliott had him down but that he got loose and ran as hard as he could up the mountain in the direction that he was going when he met Elliott. Elliott’s hat was found where Wilfong said that they were down, and Elliott’s glove and Wilfong’s mitten were found lying together at the point where Wilfong says they first clinched.
Wilfong says that as he ran up the hill that Elliott threw two sticks at him and he, Wilfong, grabbed his gun and turned to see what Elliott was doing. That Elliott threw a stone which was dodged, and Elliott came on and Wilfong retreated up the mountain, in all perhaps seventy five feet.
At this point, Wilfong says that he had become exhausted running up the steep mountain and turned and shot just as Elliott was in the act of throwing again. The shot took effect in Elliott’s left shoulder and face, one shot being directly in the forehead between the eyes, and the other shot back of the shoulder. Elliott must have expired instantly. Wilfong seems to have broken the weapon, a single barreled shotgun, but did not reload it. He dropped the gun near the body and ran to the nearest house and told them what he had done and asked that someone go to the body at one. He then phoned he was ready to surrender to the constable.
Within a few minutes Sheriff Cochran, Prosecuting Attorney Sharp, Squire Marshall and Dr. C. M. Young were on their way from the county seat to Buffalo Mountain. An inquest was arranged for and a jury composed of F. C. Sutton, Forest Grogg, M. F. Rader, Walker Ruckman, O. S. Wooddell and W.M. Gregory was impaneled.
As far as the officers could tell there is no public feeling for or against the prisoner, and the disposition is to await the developments of a trial, The people of the neighborhood seemed stunned and shocked into silence. Both men bore good reputations for peace in the community in which they lived.
