Julie McDonald: Devil Jim Turner settled at Toledo in 1891 after release from Kentucky prison

Commentary by Julie McDondald / For The Chronicle
Posted 12/30/24

More than a decade ago, John Alexander, of Chehalis, mentioned to me that descendants of the Hatfields and McCoys lived in East Lewis County near Mayfield and Mossyrock, their ancestors having …

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Julie McDonald: Devil Jim Turner settled at Toledo in 1891 after release from Kentucky prison

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More than a decade ago, John Alexander, of Chehalis, mentioned to me that descendants of the Hatfields and McCoys lived in East Lewis County near Mayfield and Mossyrock, their ancestors having relocated from Kentucky and West Virginia.

Last Saturday, I learned that those famous brawlers aren’t Lewis County’s only imports from Kentucky. We also had “Devil Jim Turner” of Harlan County and his bootlegging offspring settle 8 miles southeast of Toledo in the Smokey Valley and Lone Yew Road area that came to be known as “Little Kentucky.”

James Turner, born near a fork of the Cumberland River in Harlan County on Aug. 15, 1836, was likely related to the Hatfields in Kentucky, according to his great-great-grandson Cary Collins, of Maple Valley, a teacher in the Tahoma School District who shared stories of his notorious ancestors with the Toledo Historical Society in a presentation I attended at the Toledo Community Library.

“I’ve been hearing about Devil Jim my entire life,” Collins said. “My dad talked about him a lot. People are very proud of Devil Jim, even though his past is rather notorious, to say the least. … They would steal other people’s livestock. They would fight at the drop of a hat if you made them mad. They weren’t beyond killing you.”

Devil Jim’s grandfather, one of the early white settlers in Kentucky and a slaveholder, claimed 5,000 acres and ran a general store, which he bequeathed to Jim’s father, a man who attended the Methodist church regularly but was ruthless, bloodthirsty and a fan of moonshine and bullets. As stated in a presentation by the Appalachian Storytellers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FimnOCwE0BU), “competitors would try to move in, but they were quickly escorted out of the region, either on a swift horse or in a pine box.”

Jim’s aunt, his father’s sister, married a Middleton and lived next door to the Turners on land given to her by her father, but the first cousins fought for decades like the Hatfields and McCoys. When a windstorm blew down fences separating their land, 15-year-old Jim Turner shot every Middleton cow that ventured onto Turner land. The Middletons fired at him, injuring his arm, and dubbed him a “devil,” a moniker that stuck throughout his life.

He lived up to the name, too, despite having been ordained while a teenager as a Methodist minister and even preaching at times. He and his brother, William, “grew up tough as barbed wire and learned the art of gunpowder and lead,” the video says.

Jim, a budding outlaw, drank moonshine, stole hogs for the thrill of it, and once robbed and killed an old man for $94, but lawyers defended him in court, and he was acquitted.

After the Civil War broke out, the 27-year-old living in Harlan County enlisted in 1863 to fight in the Union Army’s Company D of the 49th Kentucky Infantry but soon tired of following orders and deserted, banding together with his brother and other outlaws as guerillas, raiding political rivals, stealing horses, burning homes of Confederate sympathizers and killing anyone who stood in his way.

“Once, I was so hungry that I knocked a cow unconscious and I cut a portion of its hind leg off while the beast was still alive, and I ate it raw before running the animal screaming in agony back into the herd,” the Turner storyteller states in the video.

He heard that Carr Middleton and his brother were camped with Confederate forces, so he and his brother lay in wait for them, considering it payback for the injury to his arm. They crippled one Middleton boy and killed the other.

Turner also was accused of burning down the Harlan County Courthouse in October 1863, but others say Confederates destroyed it in retaliation for the burning of the courthouse in Lee County, Virginia, by Union troops.

“He was very opposed to the Confederacy,” Collins said. “Even though he’d been a slaveholder and came from a slaveholding family, he fought on the union side. They became very notorious during the war. Some people call him an outlaw group. Some people call him a guerrilla group. But they went out. They were vigilantes, and they hunted down Confederate soldiers, and they just simply killed them when they found them.”

After the war ended, deputies arrested Jim Turner and his brother, William, determined to make them pay for their war crimes. But while out on bail before the trial, Devil Jim shot and killed the state’s star witness, leader of the Middleton clan, and members of the Turner clan stabbed the court clerk to death and fired a pistol in the judge’s face — but the gun misfired three times.

The Middletons offered a reward to anyone who killed Devil Jim but, in 1874, both he and William were convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison. By 1890, after his brother had died in prison, Devil Jim at age 64 was pardoned after evidence showed the Middletons tried to kill him several times. He was released from prison on the condition that he left Kentucky. He and his wife, Sarrah (Jones) Turner, had more than a half dozen sons and daughters.



Accompanied by his son Hiram, Devil Jim crossed the United States and settled in 1891 southeast of Toledo on Lone Yew Road.

“If you take the worst case, he was accused of killing 13 people,” Collins said.

The offspring of Devil Jim hunted bears and deer in the woods around Toledo. They made moonshine in stills on their property. And at least one engaged in shootouts with local sheriff’s deputies and landed in jail repeatedly on drunk and disorderly charges.

A few entered the field of education, such as George “Dewey” Turner, a son of John and Emily Turner and a cousin to Devil Jim, who served as Toledo Elementary School principal for 32 years, retiring in 1964. He was known to use a leather strap for disciplining students.

But Devil Jim’s descendant and namesake Jim Turner lived up to his grandfather’s reputation during Prohibition, manufacturing moonshine in a still described in the Toledo Messenger in April 1917 as “one of the best ever discovered in Lewis County.” He often landed in jail for assault and drunk and disorderly conduct, at times after armed confrontations with sheriff’s deputies.

As for Devil Jim, the video says, “it’s probably safe to assume that a bit of karma played a part in his demise.”

While standing over his wood stove cooking breakfast on March 5, 1910, the 73-year-old man suffered a stroke and fell face-first into the stove, collapsing on the floor with his clothes on fire. His grandson heard his cries for help, but too scared to touch the body, ran a mile for help.

“By the time this son arrived the poor old man was too badly burned to give any account of the accident, and though everything that could be thought of was done for him, he passed away next morning, after terrible suffering,” The Morning Oregonian wrote about his death on March 9, 1910.

Devil Jim was buried at Fir Lawn Cemetery in Toledo.

“I think about 50 Turner relatives are buried in Fir Lawn,” said Collins, whose father grew up on Lone Yew Road in Toledo, served in a Civilian Conservation Corp camp in the 1930s, then joined the Marines and fought in the South Pacific during World War II. Cary Collins is a grandson of Devil Jim’s granddaughter Roosevelt “Rose” Turner,” one of Hiram’s daughters.

The white pages online show more than a dozen Turners still living in Toledo, with more elsewhere in Lewis County.

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at chaptersoflife1999@gmail.com.