straw-mattress bed he shared with two of them. At age twelve, he was tutored by his father in the hallowed Scottish trade of stone masonry. By age fifteen, he had perfected that talent to where he was much in demand by land owners needing cisterns lined, chimneys built, and pasture walls erected.
Always what was termed in those days “a hoss,” he was the strongest of four powerful brothers, a fact they learned each in his own time, the hard way. Beginning in his teen years, his legendary strength became a crucial family asset. His older brother, James, also a giant of a man, had suffered a brain injury at birth. Predisposed to violent seizures that could strike at any time, he would lash out at anything and anybody in his path, once badly injuring his elder sister Nolie with a blow to her face. One evening at supper, when James was twenty-two, he emitted an anguished cry, jumped to his feet, and started beating the table with both fists. Seated next to him, eighteen-year-old Jess stood, locked his brother in a bear hug, and held on. For five minutes, the enraged James fought in vain to break the steel-trap grip. Jess continued the rigid embrace until his brother collapsed into the deep sleep that often followed his seizures. Thereafter, whenever Jess was nearby when James was stricken, the younger brother would bear-hug his older brother until the spell passed. He was the only person with the necessary brawn to overcome James’s frenzied strength. It was a doleful ritual that lasted until James died peacefully in his sleep at age forty-two.
Although he feared no man, Buchanan was afraid of the dark. Once, at a carnival in Morganfield where he consumed too many beers, his friends locked him in a nearby horse barn to sleep it off. He awakened to the pitch darkness of a tiny stall. Not knowing where he was, he became frantic and crawled along the dirt floor until he came up against a wooden wall. Jumping to his feet, he began to kick the wall with all his strength. In minutes, the entire side of the barn collapsed outward, bringing the rest of the building down around his head. In view of startled spectators, he walked out into the carnival brightness, uninjured. For the next three weeks, under his persuasive supervision, his friends rebuilt the structure.
Once asked why he feared the darkness, he attributed it to an older sister who teased him from the time he was a toddler about “goblins” that were coming to get him as soon as the lights went out. Often during those boyhood years, he would lie awake all night, terrified. When he was old enough to do so, he demanded that a lamp be kept burning throughout the night where he could see it from his bed. In later years the lamp became an electric light, and it remained an uncompromising requirement for the rest of his life.
As his reputation grew, friends began to encourage Jess Buchanan to run for public office. Sheriff was the position most often mentioned. To test the waters, he accepted a commission as Deputy Sheriff from Judge A. W. Clements. His fellow deputy was Earle Clements, later to become U.S. Senator from Kentucky. Recalling their tenure together, Earl Clements would remark: “Jess Buchanan is the only man I ever met who could quell a riot just by stepping into the room.”
In 1925 Buchanan married Clements’s divorced sister-in-law, Margaret Kagy Clements, from Uniontown, taking her two children to raise as his own. Over the years, two more children were born to the union. About his wife, Buchanan often remarked that the wisest move he ever made in life was to “marry above myself.”
Discovering a passion for law enforcement, in the same summer he got married, Buchanan followed the advice of his constituents and entered the race for sheriff. He won handily.
That was the job he held the following year, when the infamous Birger gang decided to invade Union County. In the rich annals of the Ohio River Valley of Western Kentucky, no story is more revered than that of the time the notorious Birger gang came up against Big Jess Buchanan.
Charley Birger was one of the most notorious outlaws in the Midwest. Rivaling Capone, whose murderous tactics he admired, Birger masterminded a widespread gambling and bootleg-whiskey operation from a well-guarded headquarters in Central Illinois. In the winter of 1926 he decided to expand operation into Kentucky, just across the river.
On Christmas Eve three of Birger’s lieutenants crossed the Ohio on the Shawneetown Ferry in their Oldsmobile touring car to scout the territory. That afternoon, in the rural village of Henshaw, they were caught in a severe snowstorm. Roads became impassable. To occupy their time the three decided to raise a little hell. Throughout that afternoon and night, fortified by their stock-in-trade, 100-proof moonshine bourbon, they terrorized the three hundred peaceable citizens of Henshaw by taking pot-shots at road signs, store windows, and stray dogs and cats.
Late Christmas morning, while frightened residents remained barricaded in their homes, Reverend H. B. Self, pastor of the Henshaw Christian Church, succeeded in getting a telephone call through to Sheriff Jess Buchanan in Morganfield, ten miles away.
Buchanan pondered the complaint. The roads to Henshaw were impassable, but there was a solution.
“Brother Self,” Buchanan said, “those fellows aren’t going anywhere in this storm. I’ll be down on the four o’clock train to arrest them. You tell them that.”
Braving the elements, Reverend Self found two of the trio, haggard from a night of carousing, seated at a back table in Gilbert Vaughn’s general store. At the meat counter, Vaughn was reluctantly preparing two baloney sandwiches. The third culprit was nowhere in sight.
Reverend Self delivered Sheriff Buchanan’s message.
The two men stared at the preacher in disbelief, then doubled over in laughter. “Arrest us! You hear that, Ed,” one of the men said. “Some hayseed sheriff’s comin’ down here on the train to run us in. God, is that rich!” He guffawed again. “Hey, when’s the last time you plugged a badge?”
The man called Ed wiped tears of laughter from his eyes. “No need to waste lead.” He withdrew a four-inch Russell Barlow switch-blade knife from his pocket and flipped it open. Spitting in his hand, he began to hone the blade against his palm. “Gawdamighty, Hank . . . this trip might turn out to be worthwhile after all.”
Throughout the afternoon, between eating and swilling booze, the two men described to the preacher and the storekeeper the gruesome reception they planned for the sheriff.
At 4:40, a distant whistle signaled the arrival of the inbound train. The man called Hank perked up. “Hey, Ed, let’s take the hayseed’s nose back to Charley.”
Fingering his knife, Ed heartily endorsed the idea. “Maybe Charley will give us a bonus,” he said, and they both settled back to wait.
Minutes later the front door opened and a gust of frigid air swept through the store. Crowding the doorway from hinge to latch, a giant man stooped low to clear the lintel and entered the room. The newcomer was wearing whipcord trousers with legs stuffed in the tops of size-15 lace-up boots. His heavy plaid Mackinaw coat, to which was pinned a six-pointed star, was buttoned snugly around his 22-inch neck. His broad-brimmed gray felt hat would have served any lesser man as an umbrella. The mackinaw was drawn back on the right side to reveal a holstered, silver-plated, stag-handle Smith and Wesson .44 Special revolver that looked every bit as formidable as the man wearing it.
The two scofflaws sat transfixed as Sheriff Buchanan stomped snow from his boots and walked over to them. He laid a ham-sized hand in front of Ed and tapped the table. “Put that knife down right here, son. If you boys got guns, lay them out here too . . . now.”
Two snub-nose .38s immediately appeared on the table.
The sheriff grasped each man by the shoulder, welding them to their seats. “Where’s your friend?”
“Down . . . down by the depot,” Ed said. He mentioned the name of a woman who lived in a shanty at the edge of town.
Buchanan
