Elza's Brain

 

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.