A Bullet for Stolen Potatoes

As I have previously said, Mr. Burns was a member of a lodge, and he got his family evicted by his own unpredictable and rather shiftless sort of existence from first one and then another of his wife’s relatives’ pieces of property.

He kept meat in the family larder by keeping his children busy raising garden vegetables and by stealing and butchering sheep, lambs, calves, and so forth that my Grandfather had on pasture in the area of his various dwellings. When money got tight he would sue somebody for a trumped-up misdemeanor, and his lodge friends would stand by him—the case always ending up in court at McArthur and causing our family a lot of trouble and loss of money.

He had six sons and six daughters with the boys all having and being called by their double names, but for the life of me I could not remember any of them. The family all eventually moved away, the foremost of the reasons being that one Abraham Byers, was my Great-Grandfather on my Mother’s side of the house, moved directly back of Burns, there being three log houses in this particular cove.

Byers had four girls and four boys, namely: Joseph; George; John; and Linc (named Abraham Lincoln since Mr. Byers enlisted and served in the Civil War for some time). The girls were Sara Cook Hester, who was my Grandmother, Mary Stuckley, Eliza and Elizabeth, both of whom married Corrigans from the Poe’s Run area.

Thesd two families, the Burns and the Byers, had war, for the men did not get along, the children did not like each other, and the Burns would constantly steal from the Byers’ vegetables, fruit, or anything they could attach themselves to.

At one time a death occurred in the Byers family and it was thought by the Burns that everyone was gone to the funeral. So two of the Burns’ boys were sent back to the Byers’ garden to steal potatoes. Anticipating trouble beforehand, Aunt Liz and a nephew were left to watch over the premises while the family was away. They blocked the doors and made a place to shoot from, if necessary, and surely enough when the Burns boys began to dig the potatoes, the digger wearing a big old felt hat, Aunt Liz cut loose with the rifle bullet into his hat and that ended the problem for that day.