gave his converts the choice of baptism by immersion or sprinkling. Barnes began his mountain ministry at Jackson, in Breathitt County, on November 12, 1879, pledging to preach “the true gospel.” Jackson then consisted of a courthouse, twenty houses, and a mill. Barnes held a revival in the courthouse, during which he converted the county officials and the jail inmates. The incarcerated converts were baptized by immersion, then came out of the water to shake hands with the converted judge who had sentenced them. Deputy Sheriff Shade Combs brought a jail inmate charged with murder to the revival wearing handcuffs. The handcuffs were removed, and the jailer and the prisoner confessed their sins together. In all, there were 365 Jackson area residents converted. Reverend Barnes found Hyden, the county seat of Leslie County, the most unsympathetic mountain town in which he’d ever held a revival. Drunks brandished pistols, shooting right and left. Men walked restlessly in and out, constantly interrupting the services. One man walked up to the evangelist’s daughter who was playing the organ, an object of curiosity to everyone. Taking out his pistol, he laid it on top of the instrument. Barnes’s daughter, Marie, continued to play the organ while the man divided his attention between the preaching and the uproar outside. Sometimes the pistol fire outside increased in intensity, subsided, then got louder again. Suddenly, the man put his hand on the pistol as if to leave. Marie reached up, closed her hands over his on the pistol, and stared at him. He stared back for a moment, released the gun, and listened to the preaching. Reverend Barnes left Hyden for Hazard, grateful for his safety.
Hazard welcomed the clergyman with open arms. He preached at the courthouse to hospitable people who would not accept payment for lodging and refused to accept any money for items bought at the local stores.
Barnes left Hazard on July 14, 1880 headed for Whitesburg, in Letcher County. One of the people converted at a Reverend Barnes revival was Dr. Marshal Benton Taylor. Ten years later, Doc Taylor was involved in the infamous massacre of the Mullins Family at Pound Gap, Virginia. He was later hanged for the murders at what was then Gladesville, Virginia, and the execution was attended by author John Fox, Jr. During his work as an evangelist, Reverend Barnes is credited for 26,000 converts, with 20,000 of them in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
Chapter 1
Attempted Escape
Tom Smith gave his sister a frightened and desperate look. “Millie, you gotta help me get out of here. They’re gonna hang me! Them people mean it this time. You’ve got to help me get away!”
“Tom, what can I do? The jail is new and everybody says it’s escape-proof. I’d help you if I could, but I just don’t know what to do.”
“I been thinking about that. Can you get me one of them small hacksaws and some blades to go with it? Those bastards put me in this cell so I would have to look at them building the gallows. If I could get a hacksaw and blades, I could get out of here. The last laugh would be on them.”
“But Tom, how could I get something like that to you without them knowing it?”
“Hide the stuff in some food that you bring me. I think I can saw right through the bars.”
“What kind of food?”
“You’ve already brought me food before. Fix me a big bowl of soup beans and bake me a pone of cornbread. Then, put the little saw and blades in the cornbread batter before you bake it. Bring the soup beans and the corn pone to me at the jail. The jailer won’t suspect nothin’. He won’t tear my cornbread apart.”
“All right, Tom, I’ll do it. I just hope I don’t get caught.”
“You won’t, sis. You won’t.”
Millie Smith left the Breathitt County Jail in Jackson, where her brother was incarcerated for the murder of Dr. John E. Rader, a local physician. Millie didn’t like the idea of helping Tom break out of jail, but she didn’t want to see him hanged either. Millie was determined to do anything she could to help Tom.
A jury had found Tom Smith guilty of first degree murder in the doctor’s death and recommended execution by hanging. The judge agreed. He pronounced the sentence, to be carried out May 31, 1895. An appeal had moved the execution date to June 28, 1895. Smith, known as Bad Tom Smith throughout the southeastern Kentucky mountain counties of Breathitt, Perry, Knott, and Letcher, had been in jail since his arrest shortly after the murder on February 25th of that year.
He had been charged with murder before, but through political influence and intimidation had managed to elude justice. This time was different. Smith believed they would go through with it. He was deathly afraid for one of the few times in his thirty-five years.
That night, after Millie’s visit, he began to feel strange. Tom knew what was coming. It had happened before, but he could do nothing. Tom began to shake, then fell down on the cell floor. His body shook and he began to foam at the mouth and to howl in a long, deafening screech! The jailer noted in his record that at two o’clock in the morning, Tom Smith had a “fit” which woke all the jail’s residents. The jailer and prisoners discussed what they had heard and reached differing conclusions. Some thought it was the result of Bad Tom’s possession by demons. Others attributed his howling to a nightmare stemming from the unspeakable crimes he had committed.
Three days after the promise to smuggle a small hacksaw and blades into the jail for her brother, Millie Smith brought a big bowl of pinto beans and a freshly baked pone of cornbread to Tom. She approached the jailer, H.W. Centers. “Mr. Centers, Tom says he hain’t had no soup beans and freshly baked corn pone since being in here. I fixed some. Is it all right if I give this to him?”
Centers took the bowl of beans to look at, and stirred them a little with a letter opener on his desk. He then looked at the pone of cornbread, felt the weight of it, and told Millie, “That looks good. Go ahead and give them to him. Let me unlock the cell door for you.”
Millie took the beans and cornbread in to Tom and talked with him for a few minutes before leaving. She was nervous, afraid everyone would see her shaking. Feeling sure she would be found out, Millie’s back began to sweat. Not one person in the jail paid any attention to her.
When no one was around, Tom tore the cornbread pone apart to retrieve a small hacksaw and six blades. The tray from lunch was still in the cell. He took the cloth napkin from it to wipe the gooey cornbread residue from the saw and blades. Tom found a hard cardboard tube on the cell’s window sill. He placed the saw and blades inside the tube and put it back in the window. The tube had been there before he was placed in the cell, so no one would bother to inspect it.
Later that evening, after all the prisoners were asleep and the guard was dozing off, Tom began sawing on one of the bars. He did a little sawing each evening. Tom filled in the gaps on the bars with a mixture of soap and dirt obtained from the cell floor to hide the cuts. After each session, Tom placed the saw and blades back inside the tube on the window sill.
A week had gone by since Millie brought the cornbread. By sawing a little bit late each night, he had cut two bars on the window nearly in half. When Tom completed that, he would have just enough space to get his body through the window. The hanging was scheduled less than a month away, but just one more session with the hacksaw would make him a free man again. No hangman’s noose for Bad Tom!
“H.W., have you got the supplies from the lumber company to build the gallows for Bad Tom yet?” Sheriff Breckinridge Combs asked the jailer as he walked into the jail. Combs was the Breathitt County Sheriff and was known by the nickname of “Wild Hog.” He knew Bad Tom Smith well. Combs didn’t like being the official responsible for the hanging of a man he considered a friend, a man who was also his second cousin. But it was his job and society demanded
