James Monroe Bentley

I originally had this photo with a story about John Martin Bentley. I had been given the picture by an aunt who said it was John Martin. Recently, my cousin, Janice, saw the picture and said she thought she had seen it and something wasn't right. She went through her mother, Edna Bentley's pictures and found it along with other pictures that were taken the same day. This is not John Martin Bentley, but his brother, James Monroe Bentley.

In the picture is Otho Bentley and Elbert Bentley, seated. They are nephews of James Monroe.

Standing is Laura Bell Bentley, a sister to Otho and Elbert and niece of James Monroe, James Monroe himself, Mary Webb Bentley wife of James Monroe, Caldonia Bentley Watkins sister of Otho Elbert & Laura and none of us could quite figure out who the last man was though he is very familiar looking.

What happened was Uncle Willie, Otho's son, and his wife, Edna Bentley took Poppy (Otho), Uncle Elbert, Aunt Laura, and Aunt Caldonia to visit their uncle and his great uncle. Here are the other pictures that were taken that day:

Aunt Laura Belle Bentley who married Sherman Bentley and Aunt Edna Bentley who married Willie Bentley. Laura was the daughter of John Martin Bentley and Malinda Addington. Edna was the daughter of Sherman Bentley and Ada Sergent.

James Monroe Bentley and Laura Belle Bentley.

James Monroe Bentley, son of John Vint Bentley and Annie Potter, and his wife, Mary Webb, daughter of Benjamin Webb and Eleander Pace.

James Monroe Bentley and Willie Bentley, son of Otho Bentley.

James Monroe & Mary Webb Bentley

James Monroe Bentley home with visitors on the porch.

Edna Bentley, wife of Willie Bentley, and Willie's aunt, Laura Bentley.

5,000 Attend Adams-Craft-Webb Reunion in 1937

While I am waiting for my laptop to be returned I have been going through the 350 news clippings that I found which mention James Taylor Adams name in them. I haven't found another on our family members. Some are interesting stories, but not the kind of thing I write about or would include here. I found this little clipping that I thought was interesting. Where in the world would you hold a reunion in Mayking that 5,000 people could attend?

Middlesboro Daily News
Middlesboro, Kentucky
July 12, 1937, page 5

5000 Present for Reunion

Jenkins, Ky. – Nearly 5,000 persons trekked to Mayking Sunday for the old Adams-Craft-Webb reunion. The families are three of the oldest in the mountains, whose ancestors made the first settlements in Eastern Kentucky.

Dr. Wily J. Adams, Oklahoma City, Okla., was one of those present who came from a distance to honor the families.

Dr. Adams responded to the address of welcome by Prof. Watson Webb. Dr. Joseph D. Webb, Lexington; James Taylor Adams, Big Laurel, Va., and Prof Kearney Adams of Richmond State Normal spoke on the family histories. Dr. Adams gave data on the first John Adams buried in old cemetery here. Others traced the career of BenjaminWebb, first of the Webb family, a Revolutionary War hero and descendant of Daniel Boone.

Many counties of Kentucky were represented at the reunion.

Appalachian Tale By James Taylor Adams

This article is printed from the story in the Kingsport Times, Kingsport, Tennessee on page 32 published November 26, 1950.

When I was eleven my mother married, as her second husband, a man named Jesse Adams, an old fellow -- up around eighty. The folks, round about, spoke of him as "Colly Jess" because he lived on the head of a stream called Crafts Colly and also to distinguish him from the three or four other Jesse Adamses in that immediate section. Genealogically speaking , he was a
second cousin - uncle to my father, Joseph Adams. I was fond of the old man and treated him with all respect due his step-fatherly position and age; but I could never bring myself to call him father, daddy, pap, or anything like that. I referred to him as he, him, or the old man; and addressed him personally, simply as you.

The old man, when he was a young man and first married, had built himself a two-pen story-and-a-half, log house. There he had reared a large family of sons and daughters; and there he had lived for fifty-nine years, busy from star to star, with never the time to floor and otherwise finish the broad hallway between the two pens of the big house; nor had he ever found time to build a stairway from the ground floor to the loft or upstairs, depending on a rickety ladder, set against the wall of the living room, to reach the skuttle hole, leading to the big, unfinished room above, used to store foodstuffs and a half century's accumulation of plunder.

One day, when no one was home but the old man and me, I climbed the ladder and explored the loft; and there, neatly stacked on the open joists, I found a dozen or so of the most beautiful black walnut boards I had ever seen. Most were twelve inches wide and eight feet long, but there were two
pieces that were all of 18 inches across and just bout two feet in length. They all looked old, weather-stained: and I decided they were leftovers, stored there and abandoned, from some cabinet-making project in the years gone by. So, with one of the short pieces under my arm, I scrambled through the skuttle hold and descended the ladder.

The old man was sitting in the front of the fire, scratching in
the ashes with the end of his walking stick. As my feet hit the
floor he looked up. His eyes fastened on the board under my arm. He looked to me like he as going to have a fit or something.


"I was gong to make something, " I said, shifting my gaze from the old man's face to the walnut board.

"Make something!" shouted the old man. "That's a piece of my
coffin!"

I dropped the plank and mashed my big toe.

The old man didn't fuss, threaten or scold. All he did was to
look sort of hurt and tell me to take the board and put it back where I had found it. I backed away from the thing, refusing to touch it again: the first and only time I ever failed to obey the old man's command.

When the old man had struggled down from the loft, and had gone back to scratching in the ashes, he told me how he had, long before, set his heart on being buried in a coffin made from the lumber of a certain walnut tree, under which he had cooled himself through forty years. Then he told me the story of Benjamin Webb.

Benjamin Webb, a native of Wilkes County, North Carolina, was one of the first settlers in that neighborhood. He was a man of peculiar notions; and , it seems, he was a man of education above the average of his day.

Soon after he had settled in his new home, and while the wilderness still hemmed him in, his eighteen-year-old son, Nelson, was stricken with a strange malady. He made a stretcher of deer skins and with the help of several neighbors, carried the young man all the way to Baltimore, a distance of
more than four hundred miles. The doctors in the Maryland City shook their heads; and Benjamin and his friends carried him back home. He didn't live long; and he was the second white man to be buried in what is now Letcher County, Kentucky. His grandfather, John Adams, who died in 1815, was the first.

Many years before Benjamin died he employed an expert to make him a coffin. The old man (Jesse Adams) said it was a dandy;; a beautiful thing, made of carved black walnut and trimmed with polished brass.

I gathered from what the old man said that he had a mind to pattern Benjamin Webb's coffin, maybe better it, for himself. But I asked no questions, and he didn't say for sure.

The old man went onto tell me how Webb kept this coffin under the bed; and when company dropped in, he would drag it out, remove the lid, and live down in it to show them how well it fit. Sometimes, the old man said when the Webbs had over-night visitors and they were crowded for bed room, Benjamin would
haul out his coffin and sleep in it.

When old, Benjamin finally came to die, he made a strange deathbed request. He said that he wanted them to take up his body on the day when he had been buried seven years, or if the weather or other conditions would not permit on that day, to take him up the day he had been buried eleven years.

His folks promised to carry out his dying request; and at the exact hour on the very day the seven years expired, they dug old Benjamin up, removed the lid from the coffin, let all who would, see. They they sealed the coffin again, and lowered it into the grave for the second and last time.

Had you ever heard the story about the coffin or digging Benjamin up seven years later? I had never run across it til this week. What a story. Believe me, I will be on the lookout for anything else I can find by James Taylor Adams.

James Taylor Adams

The man who wrote the article about the dreams that Letty Adams had predicting deaths in the family wrote them in a column he wrote in the Kingsport Times called "Appalachian Tales." I wasn't all that impressed with the way he wrote that article. However, I found another that impressed me to the highest. I will print it tomorrow, but I wanted to find out more about the man.

I figured from the Adams name he was probably a relative, and he was. His father was Joseph Adams. He lost his father when he was young. When he was about 11 his mother remarried. Her second husband was Jesse "Colly Jesse" Adams. The article I will reprint is one that he tells about an encounter with Jesse when he was alone with him one day shortly after the wedding. You will find it fascinating.

In the meantime, I had started finding things about him and right in the middle of my research the computer died. The fan went out. It will not start again with the fan out to keep it from overheating. I have it in being repaired now. This backup computer is slow.

I googled Mr. Adams and found this on the Wise County Historical Society website which is

http://www.wisevahistoricalsoc.org/Historians/adamsaddington..htm

This is what they had to say about James:

James Taylor Adams was a prolific writer, a folklorist and a preserver of Appalachian culture. He wrote thousands of articles for magazines and newspapers of which only a few have been collected.

James Taylor Adams was born February 3, 1892, a son of Joseph and Mary Jane (Short) Adams. He was born in Letcher County, Kentucky and lived in Alum Cove, Little Colley and other small communities in Kentucky.

He moved to Wise County, Virginia while yet a young man. He married in 1908 to Dicy Roberts. They had a family of eight children. Among James Taylor's work was at the coke
ovens in Wise County, selling fruit trees; owned a grocery store; sold insurance, and owned and ran a print shop. He was a Notary and built houses to rent. He also established a post office at Big Laurel where he lived and was postmaster there. His wife Dicy also worked in the post-office. He built a Church house; built and ran a library to store his many books, manuscripts, and publications, and to distribute books for people to read. He also built a museum to collect and preserve antiques and old items.

James Taylor worked in the Works progress Association, (WPA). While working for the WPA he collected old songs and stories of the area and wrote them down to preserve. He became interested in family history and compiled the Adams Family history among others.

James Taylor only had a second grade education in the public schools but was a self educated man. He published several newspapers, some of which was The Vagabond Gazette, Adam's Weekly and The Cumberland Empire. He wrote columns for several newspapers, and Detective stories for Detective
magazines and wrote stories for some Canadian magazines under a pen name of Roland Rivers.

Among the books he wrote was one called "Death in the Dark," which is a collection of Factual Ballads of American Mine Disasters with historical notes. He also visited cemeteries of the area and compiled a book of the names and dates on the stones, with a short history of some of the people. The book is called, "Family Burying Grounds in Wise County, Virginia."

He and his wife and family moved to Arkansas to homestead land there, lived in Missouri, then back to West Virginia and finally settled on Rocky Fork at Big Laurel on Rocky Fork. He died in 1954 and is buried at the homeplace there.

James and I share a love of family history. We also share a birthday. I bought an Adams Family History back in the 70's. The name that comes to mind as an author was Dorothy Adams, but there was a man's name attached, too. I will have to get that book out to see if it were one of James'. I also bought the "Buryin' Book".

What an interesting man.

The story is a doozie about our g-g-g-g Grandfather Benjamin Webb.

James Taylor Adams writes about Benjamin Webb as told to him by Colly Jesse Adams

In researching Letty Adams and her dreams, I found another article written by James Taylor Adams.  He is a relative and so far, I know that he was born about 1899.  He wrote a column called Applachian Tales in the Kingsport Times News.  I plan to more work on him.  At this point I know his father was Joseph Adams.  I don't know his mother's name yet.  After Joseph died she married Jesse "Colly Jesse" Adams who was a second cousin to Joseph.  James was about 11 at the time.  His article starts out telling about Colly Jesse, who was about 80 and something that happened to him which caused him to tell the story of Benjamin Webb.  I am going to save that part til I have more about James Taylor Adams.  He was another keeper of the family stories.

On November 26, 1950 this is what he wrote about Benjamin Webb as told to him by Colley Jesse Adams:

Hello Mr. President

While we were at the How Do You Measure Up booth having our picture taken with Anna and Martin we saw President Lincoln enjoying some homemade ice cream.

We told the photographer we would have another picture taken if she could talk Abraham into joining us. He graciously agreed. While we were being set up he did say, "you know, Martin was a confederate." I told him that maybe he would feel a bit more comfortable knowing that he was also a relative. He knew that he was related to the Boones and Webbs, but he said he had never heard of the Bates connection.

He stayed totally in character. He is the same height as Lincoln at 6'4". He has been doing Lincoln for about ten years now. We got to talk to him for several minutes. So we met another famous relative while visiting the Bates.