[THE FRENCH-EVERSOLE WAR.]
The scene of this war was Perry County, Kentucky, one of the most mountainous sections of all Southeastern Kentucky. Hazard, the county seat, was then a small, but very thrifty and enterprising village. It was called a town. Rightfully it ought not to have aspired to that title. It is situated on the North Fork of the Kentucky River, and was built in scattered fashion, between abrupt hills in the rear and the river, with but a single street running through it.
Here at Hazard was the cradle of the feud which for years filled newspaper columns and furnished most sensational reading. Many of the stories which have gone out to the world had, however, no other foundation than a lively imagination of newspaper writers who were anxious to fill space and to please the readers that loved the sensational. In this purpose they have succeeded admirably.
Here at Hazard resided the chieftains of this war—Joseph C. Eversole, and Benjamin Fulton French.
Both were men of fine business abilities, successfully engaged in the mercantile business; both were prominent, able lawyers of the Perry courts; both were in easy financial circumstances.
Eversole was extensively related in Perry and adjoining counties.
French had originally come from the State of Tennessee, but had married a Kentuckian and by marriage had become related to influential families of Breathitt, Leslie and other counties.
Prior to the difficulties which eventually arrayed them against each other, Eversole and French had been apparently close friends.
A misunderstanding over a rather trivial matter furnished the basis of their future enmity, an enmity to the death.
The bird on the snowy alpine slope starts an insignificant slide. It increases as it rolls downward and becomes an avalanche; thundering into the valley below, carrying everything before it and leaving a path of desolation, destruction and death behind it.