     
 This
tale I'm sharing has sources other than family tradition although
family tradition is where I first encountered it and found it's most
colorful aspects. The central facts of the event can be read on the
internet at the Rockcastle County Archive page in the section where the
Mt. Vernon Signal has been transcribed. You can go to the May 1,
1908, edition of the paper on that website to see how the newspaper
covered it immediately after the fact. There's no problem with
copyright infringement with what I tell here. This is the stuff of
family lore. The newspaper account merely confirms what I've written. I
have John Lair's newspaper article from the 1980's in my possession,
but as far as I know, that's not available via the net. Here goes...
The
year 1908, was a hard one for my great-grandfather, Elza Langford. It
began with promise. On February 27, he married my great-grandmother,
Carrie Lay. Carrie was his third wife. The first two, Mary E. Smith and
Mattie Townsend had both died on him. Rockcastle County, Kentucky, was
haunted, literally, by a few would-be ghosts: diphtheria, scarlet
fever, pneumonia, measles, whooping cough, tuberculosis. And childbirth
was a chancy thing at best. It was hard to keep a healthy wife with
such an abundance of "visitors" who came to call uninvited. But third
time was charm. Carrie would outlive him if only by a short span of
time. Rockcastle
County in 1908, still held memories of other ghosts, ghosts that arose
after the Civil War still bent on vengeance. The war didn't end in
Rockcastle County just because Lee signed the surrender. Rockcastle
County had an active KKK in the later half of the 19th century. And the
Langfords crossed swords with them on more than one occasion. Elza's
father had been killed by the KKK. He was dead before 1880. Family
tradition says that Elza had a hard time forgetting his father's
murder. More than one Langford said that he swore to avenge his
father's death. From what I can discover, Elza Langford was responsible
for the death of five men. He was tried for two of the murders and
acquitted. The other three appear to have had no consequences for him. Justice
in Rockcastle County failed miserably at this time. There were more
than a few deaths due to guns fired in the heat of the moment or as the
result of long-standing, festering resentments. I can't find more than
one case where a conviction was the result. If your father and your
uncle, and your best friend were all murdered as Elza's were, the law
was not there to insure justice. I don't excuse Elza's decisions to
take the law into his own hands. I only know that he was not alone in
the choices he made. Many other Rockcastle men did the same. You made
your own justice or you got none. And right or wrong, Elza Langford was
not one to allow his family to be threatened or harmed with no
consequence whatsoever. About
the time that Elza married Carrie, he had a falling out with another
local man by the name of Dave Clark. Who knows what the dispute was
about. Maybe Elza called Dave a coward. Maybe Dave had called Elza a
liar. The fact is that they were on the "outs." Shots were fired. Elza
was wounded in the arm. The two sides agreed to disagree, and promised
to lay down their arms. On
the morning of April 25, 1908, about six weeks after marrying Carrie,
Elza was in Mt. Vernon. According to family tradition he had a bad
headache that day and went into the law office of his friend, Judge L.
W. Bethurum for some quiet. He sat down and placed his head in his
hands. Dave Clark must have been watching because he entered the office
and fired at Elza...at least three shots. Eza sustained a wound in his
arm and his shoulder. But it was the direct hit in the head that
appeared lethal. Elza
was carried to the jail residence and laid out on a table. A Doctor
Pennington of London, Kentucky, happened to be riding into town just as
the fracas occurred. Dock Langford, Elza's brother, asked for his
assistance. Doc. Pennington along with a couple of Mt. Vernon's own
physicians examined Elza. All three agreed that Elza was a dead man.
Convinced that the operation would hasten Elza's death, the doctors
opted for the operation anyway. There wasn't much to lose and maybe
something to gain. According to The Signal, the surgery began at 8:00
am. My
grandmother told me the story of the shooting when I was a child. There
was one part of the tale that I found morbidly fascinating. She said
that the doctor took the extruded brain material, put it on a dinner
plate, covered it with another, and had one of the bystanders run the
plate down to the nearby spring to keep it cool until he was finished
cleaning the wound and could replace the brain matter. As I grew into
an adult, I became skeptical of that part of the saga. I figured it was
only a tall tale that grew out of a sad family story. Then
in the early 1980's, John Lair, Rockcastle County's self-appointed
historian and founder of The Renfro Valley Barn Dance, did a series of
articles on the events that shaped Rockcastle County. His articles ran
in The Mount Vernon Signal. In one article Lair recounted this event.
He said that he was a boy at the time and in town the day of the
shooting. One of his friends called several curious youngsters to the
spring, Lair being one of them. Said he had something exciting to show
them. Once at the spring the young "newsman" showed them the plates and
lifted the top one. Lair remembered seeing a grayish-pink mass on the
bottom plate. Lair says that he, himself, saw Elza Langford's brains on
a dish. So much for doubting family legends! Skeptical descendants,
take note! Sometimes, sometimes, mind you, a family's tall tale can be
gospel!! Family
legend goes on to say that Doctor Pennington used a hammer and chisel
from the local hardware store during the surgery, and that eventually
he called for the plates and replaced the part of Elza's mind that had
been so unceremoniously lost that day. He then stitched Elza back
together and pulled the skin over a small opening in the skull which
had been shattered by the headshot. At noon, to everyone's surprise,
Elza awoke. He knew everyone around him. He could speak and seemed
rational although "restless." And, of course, his headache was much,
much worse. Elza
spent about six weeks in London, Kentucky, at Doctor Pennington's
Institute so that the surgeon could give him immediate attention during
the recovery process. Grandma Carrie visited him at least once. The Mt.
Vernon Signal records that she did, anyway. Elza lived until 1918, and
although he never again wore the mantle of blood avenger for the
Langford clan, he did part his hair in such a way that a saucy auburn
lock of it fell over the indentation left by Dave Clark's bullet
(ex-Sheriff Dave Clark). Four years after the event, my grandmother was
born. My
grandmother remembered that she liked to sit on his lap as a little
girl and push back that devil-may-care lock of hair to see the memory
Dave Clark left in Elza's flesh. Who knows why children like to do the
things they do? Maybe it remained a central part of the mystery of her
own existence. Just a fraction of an inch deeper, and she would never
have been able to tell me the story. And I would never have lived to
hear it. There
is a picture on my living room wall. It's faded and cracked with age.
Elza looks back at me with clear eyes and from the vantage point of his
extraordinarily handsome features, features that are marked by
"Cherokee" cheekbones, that trademark of all the Kentucky Langfords
I've ever encountered. There on his brow is that lock of auburn hair,
combed nonchalantly so that his secret could be kept from prying eyes
and nosy neighbors. I've touched that lock of hair on more than one
occasion; I'll admit it. It almost feels that if I could reach through
the glass and push the lock aside with my own fingers, I could see all
the way beyond the mere facts of his life and into the heart of this
man who is my grandfather. Oh, the questions I would have for him! As
it is, he remains there on my wall staring back at me from yesterday,
coloring my todays. Elza,...how I wish I had known you! -- Shiron Wordsworth (this story was first published in The Meridan Magazine. The version posted here was obtained from Shiron Wordsworth)
Note
by Allen Leigh: I served a mission for the LDS Church from 1956 to
1958, and my mission home was in Louisville, Ky. After I was released
by my mission president, I took the bus to Crab Orchard and spent a
couple of days looking for genealogical connections. One of the people
I talked with was an announcer for the local radio station. He told me
a story similar to Shiron's story about brains kept in ice. He said
that after the Civil War, some of the Langfords were robbers. During
one of their robberies, they were involved in a gun fight, and one of
the brothers was shot in his head, and his brain protruded from his
skull. His brothers placed the brain material in ice until they could
get medical treatment for him. He never was quite the same after that.
I don't know if the radio announcer was referring to Langford brothers
who lived in Crab Orchard, or if he was referring in a more general
sense to Langfords living in the region. Crab Orchard and Mt. Vernon
are only 12 or 13 miles apart. [Home] [Up] [The Langford House] [Liberty's Gold] [Elza's Brain] [Ina Judith Langford] 
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