Fred and Ed Cooper had become heads of one fraction - a Cooper clan, but backed by certain of their numerous cousins. Kenny and Jonas led the other clan, backed by the majority of the Lewis's, whereas the older two 'had doins' more with the Holsingers. Between these clans, bad blood developed. The 'rig' destroyed must have been, obviously, the property of some one identified with the elder Cooper clan, for its members accused the younger group, and were biter, and exactly whom it belonged to didn't make much difference, though Twin creek knew of cousins. This was the situation when in 1927; State Prohibition agents and sheriffs deputies closed in on a 'rig' in the head of Twin Creek. There was a gun battle, by the course of which Tom Cooper, son of Fred, was killed. A new Cooper grave was dug and a fourth Cooper went to stay in the hills where Clate had gone peacefully, and where Lawrence and Grant Cooper had gone as was more likely everything considered.
And a blood fued was on between the clans, for Fred and Ed swore that Kenny and Jonas had "tipped off" the law and brought the officiers into their seclusion to their expedition that ended to the death of Fred's son. This fued was not long in coming to a head. September 28, 1927, Kenny Cooper was shot in the breast, shot guns being used. He was wearing heavy underwear, a heavy woolen shirt and over these the "bib" of his overhalls. These broke the force of the charge. Kenny's story is that he was going through the woods on his way to his own home after a trip to see his mother when he heard a noise and looked up to see his brother Ed and Boyd Evans, who he had married one of Fred Cooper's daughters. At that moment, he told officers, they fired, and he went rolling down the hill "yellin for his ma" as the elder Cooper clan seemingly having inside information on the circumstances, decisively related afterward. "I knew they were goin' to shoot Kenney", Jonas relates, "and when I heard the shootin', I went up and found him and brought him out." They had to haul Kenney out to the highway in a jolt wagon, and when on the way out they were passed by Fred Cooper, who it was testifies, peered into the wagon and saw the bleeding victim. "Hooray", Fred yelled, it was sworn "Hooray". Kenney had pneumonia in his injured lungs and to this day one can hear the shot crunch in his chest as he breathes, so his two-to-twenty year stretch in the "big house" at Columbus isn't going to do him any good.
Ed Cooper and Boyd Evans were indicted, and Ed brought to trial and convicted. He did not "go up" however, until recently, appeals to the higher courts having left him free under bond. Boyd Evans never was apprehended. Sheriff's deputies have sighted him and taken a shot and "burned" him slightly with a bullet. But the sheriff is not optimistic about bringing him in. Twin Creek is a hard country and is given to the uses of its somewhat hard citizenry.Ed Cooper's term was fixed at three-to-twenty years, and it "broke his heart and he had to go up before Kenney went", the family relates. Kenney recovered and went back into the Twin Creek hills. The fued smoldered. The clansmen amused themselves naturally by firing shots into each others houses. It was only a question of time. Their mother died. She had been forced out of her native hills by advancing age and the fact she could no longer care for a place of her own and there is little room in Twin Creek one or two-room homes for an added mouth and body, what with new generations of Coopers coming along. So she had gone into Portsmouth to reside at her daughter's, Lilly May McGraw, who's husband was a Twin Creeker. When Lillie and her husband had domestic difficulties, according to Twin Creek account of it, "the old woman" went back home to die May 26, 1928. Mrs. Cooper does not lie beside her husband. The Cooper clans met for her funeral, rifles in hand and pistols in belt and whatever grief they felt was not as great as the anger that sight of each other aroused within. So "the old woman" was laid away in a little cemetery at the mouth of Twin Creek, and the Cooper clans left her there to go back into the hills.August 29, 1928, Kenney was starting home from the grocery that is on the highway, out where Twin Creek flows into the Ohio bottoms.
Ed Cooper, driving a wagon, passed, and recognized him and yelled that he was "goin" to finish that job from last fall, according to testimony at Kenney's preliminary hearing. A pitched gun battle at the distance of a few yards resulted, until Ed's horses settled the matters by running away. Ed dropped his pistol, which Kenney later presented to officers and failed to wound Kenney, although himself receiving wounds in his side and arms. Honors were even for the Cooper clans. "Kenney and Jonas are a right good sort", they say at the courthouse, and the Sheriff merely telephones down for Kenney to "come in". The next morning that fuedist marched in, carrying a rifle, shotgun, and pistol, identified them for officers, and was released on bond. It was in this case that he was sentenced to serve from 2 to 20 years. In one way and another, Kenney's case dragged along while Ed's was going through the courts, with both continuing at liberty under bond.
Everett Lewis and Jonas Cooper were arrested in conjunction with the episode, but were freed by the jury. Kenney taking sole responsibility "with the intent thereby to deceive", if one may believe the other clan, which insists Kenney's scheme was to tell the court he had to kill Ed to protect his own life, and thereby wipe the case from the books cheaply. If that was the plan, it went exactly 2 to 20 years wrong. Subsequently, Kenney and Jonas relate, one of the elder Cooper clan made a practice of shouting down the hillside that night. "I'm a gonna crack a half bushel of hickory nuts on the old gray haired woman's head, and act-cracking nuts on their mother's tombstone being considered the last word in affluence. A shot at the roof would emphasize the thing. Finally, Ed's case was pressed on by the Supreme Court, and it became apparent that within a short time, he would have to go to prison as at about the time in May that Kenney again was annoyed and Kenney filed charges against Fred Cooper and Troy Holsinger.
"There warn't nothin to it", the Fred and Ed Coopers contend. "He jes' said he was shot at". But Kenney took officers to the scene and showed them bushes cut off by the shots, several of the lead pellets being found imbedded in larger branches or picked up where they had spent their force. And there the fued of the Coopers of Twin Creek rests until Ed and Kenney shall come out of the pententionary or until others of the clan take up their differences to carry on to a conclusion. Twin Creek lies 20 miles and 100 years from Portsmouth; and Portsmouth, a thriving, bustling town such as one might find most anywhere, in the industrial parts of the midwest.It is "Forbidden Twin" and thousands who reside outside its mysterious limits are separated from the 100 or 200 who live in that valley by a barrier quarter than time or space -- the difference between a stern tradition lifted bodily out of the past and the humdrumness of the everyday present. There was a U.S. highway leading westward from Portsmouth - The River Road - and this is a paved highway that is 17 miles from the city, crosses by an old covered bridge over a stream that slips silently down out of the hills on the traveler's right.
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