undertaking. When it failed, he promoted a bauxite mine in Arkansas. In that, too, he was unsuccessful. The depression found him penniless, but he succeeded in establishing a modest practice as a consulting engineer in and about Indianapolis. There, in the spring of 1934, he was stricken with paralysis. He died at the family home of his wife, Emily Hill Lester, at Augusta, Georgia, on January 5, 1935.
V
THE BLOODY VENDETTA
July 1868–January 1876
The feud is a disgrace to the whole State of Illinois—a disgrace to the courts of the State, to the government of the State, to the Governor of the State, and to the people of the State.
Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1875.
I N NEWSPAPER accounts of the Herrin Massacre the phrase, “Bloody Williamson,” occurred repeatedly. Most readers assumed that it originated in the killings that took place on June 22, 1922, but to residents of southern Illinois the words reached far into the past. They brought to mind, first of all, the days of the “Bloody Vendetta” half a century earlier, and after that, mine wars and riots that kept alive the county’s reputation for lawlessness and bloodshed. In such a background many a thoughtful observer found an explanation, if not a cause, of the savagery that had shocked the entire nation.
Like most of southern Illinois, Williamson County was settled by immigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Many of them came from the hill regions, and they were slow to lose the peculiar characteristics of mountain folk. They were generous, hospitable, hardy, independent, brave, and intelligent, but undisciplined by education. Their superstitions were many and strong, their prejudices deep and unyielding. In religion they were Protestant—usually Methodist, MissionaryBaptist, or Campbellite—and inclined to find emotional release in the excesses of the camp meeting.
Almost without exception they were hot-blooded, proud, obstinate, jealous of family honor, and quick to resent an insult. Given what they considered sufficient provocation, they could kill with little compunction. Milo Erwin, the first historian of the county, counted 495 assaults with a deadly weapon and 285 murderous assaults between 1839, when the county was organized, and 1876, the year in which he wrote. He also listed almost fifty murders that had been committed in those same years. Of the murderers, he could find only six who had been convicted and given prison sentences, although two were under indictment or awaiting trial at the time he made his compilation.All the others had either escaped detection, fled the country, or been acquitted on pleas of self-defense.
The Heart of “Egypt”: Williamson and Contiguous Counties
Murder, then, was no novelty. Yet in the “Bloody Vendetta” the taking of life became so commonplace that hundreds of people lived in mute fear, while to the rest of the state the mere fact of residence in Williamson County was a reproach.
By all accounts, the Vendetta began with an ordinary tavern brawl. On the Fourth of July, 1868, several members of a family named Bulliner were playing cards in a dramshop near Carbondale. Felix Henderson, commonly known as “Field” Henderson, took a hand in the game. Before long an argument developed, and Henderson made the mistake of calling one of the Bulliners “a damn lying son-of-a-bitch.” In the fight that followed, Henderson was badly beaten.
Thus the Bulliner and Henderson families became bitter enemies. Both clans were relative newcomers. The Bulliners—two families headed by brothers—had lived in southwestern Tennessee until the last year of the Civil War, when they settled south of Crainville, a hamlet in the west-central part of Williamson County. There they bought good farms, established several business enterprises, and quickly came to be known as honest, industrious, and enterprising.
They also acquired the reputation of having “sand in their craws” and of not liking to
V
THE BLOODY VENDETTA
July 1868–January 1876
The feud is a disgrace to the whole State of Illinois—a disgrace to the courts of the State, to the government of the State, to the Governor of the State, and to the people of the State.
Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1875.
I N NEWSPAPER accounts of the Herrin Massacre the phrase, “Bloody Williamson,” occurred repeatedly. Most readers assumed that it originated in the killings that took place on June 22, 1922, but to residents of southern Illinois the words reached far into the past. They brought to mind, first of all, the days of the “Bloody Vendetta” half a century earlier, and after that, mine wars and riots that kept alive the county’s reputation for lawlessness and bloodshed. In such a background many a thoughtful observer found an explanation, if not a cause, of the savagery that had shocked the entire nation.
Like most of southern Illinois, Williamson County was settled by immigrants from Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Many of them came from the hill regions, and they were slow to lose the peculiar characteristics of mountain folk. They were generous, hospitable, hardy, independent, brave, and intelligent, but undisciplined by education. Their superstitions were many and strong, their prejudices deep and unyielding. In religion they were Protestant—usually Methodist, MissionaryBaptist, or Campbellite—and inclined to find emotional release in the excesses of the camp meeting.
Almost without exception they were hot-blooded, proud, obstinate, jealous of family honor, and quick to resent an insult. Given what they considered sufficient provocation, they could kill with little compunction. Milo Erwin, the first historian of the county, counted 495 assaults with a deadly weapon and 285 murderous assaults between 1839, when the county was organized, and 1876, the year in which he wrote. He also listed almost fifty murders that had been committed in those same years. Of the murderers, he could find only six who had been convicted and given prison sentences, although two were under indictment or awaiting trial at the time he made his compilation.All the others had either escaped detection, fled the country, or been acquitted on pleas of self-defense.
The Heart of “Egypt”: Williamson and Contiguous Counties
Murder, then, was no novelty. Yet in the “Bloody Vendetta” the taking of life became so commonplace that hundreds of people lived in mute fear, while to the rest of the state the mere fact of residence in Williamson County was a reproach.
By all accounts, the Vendetta began with an ordinary tavern brawl. On the Fourth of July, 1868, several members of a family named Bulliner were playing cards in a dramshop near Carbondale. Felix Henderson, commonly known as “Field” Henderson, took a hand in the game. Before long an argument developed, and Henderson made the mistake of calling one of the Bulliners “a damn lying son-of-a-bitch.” In the fight that followed, Henderson was badly beaten.
Thus the Bulliner and Henderson families became bitter enemies. Both clans were relative newcomers. The Bulliners—two families headed by brothers—had lived in southwestern Tennessee until the last year of the Civil War, when they settled south of Crainville, a hamlet in the west-central part of Williamson County. There they bought good farms, established several business enterprises, and quickly came to be known as honest, industrious, and enterprising.
They also acquired the reputation of having “sand in their craws” and of not liking to
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