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whether this Hiram was the father of Wilson, and also owned a store and sold whiskey, is not known.
    In 1884 George Turner built a handsome home, usually referred to as the Turner Mansion, not far from the courthouse. The Howards looked upon the Turners as nouveau riche. Wix Howard opened a store in Harlan, but he claimed the Turners were threatening his customers and quit the business. This was not the only instance of friction. The Howards, with their friends the Gilberts, had angered the Turners as early as 1855 when they insisted that Devil Jim be arrestedand tried for theft, assault, and rape. He was, and sent to prison. Shortly after the trial, Will Turner met Bill Gilbert on the street and killed him, reportedly raising his pistol and shouting, “Dead center, by God, Sir!” He was arrested but freed on bond and never tried.
    But the Turners had poked a hornet’s nest.

The Turners Meet the Howards
    The Howards had been a large, peaceful family, mostly storekeepers and farmers, whereas the Turners had often been the source of friction and outright crime. Yet when historians write of the feud, many tend to refer to the Howards as “outlaws.” This may be due to the hostility between the Howards and County Judge Wilson Lewis, who was suspected of conspiring against the Howards to control the whiskey business in Harlan County.
    The Turners were naturally indignant when the Howards helped to send a Turner to prison. But several years elapsed between the time Devil Jim and Francis Pace were convicted and the time the feud began. As usual, the origins of the clash are murky. John Egerton, in Generations, reports that the Ledford family left Harlan because of feud violence that they said started when a Day, allied with the Howards, and a Cawood, a Turner ally, clashed. But the crucial conflict may have resulted from a poker game in which Wix Howard and Little Bob Turner got into a dispute over the pot and each accused the other of cheating. (Wix said that Turner, half drunk, was taking a nap when another player, as a joke, set his hair on fire. Turner accused Wix and threatened to kill him.) The next day they met on the street, and Little Bob shot Wix in the arm. Raising his shotgun with one arm, Wix fired, and the load of buckshot blasted a hole the size of a baseball in Little Bob’s chest. He died that evening in the Turner Mansion. Wix was arrested, tried, and acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Curiously, it was the last time Wix was involved with the Turners. Somehow the torch passed to his cousin and friend, Wilson Howard, who proved to be a real wildcat and turned the friction into a feud.
    Though Wilson (Wils or Wilse) had been in no trouble with the law, he was regarded as a tough, dangerous man. This may have stemmed from an experience he had when he was only fifteen. In an argument with one of the Cawood boys, Wilse was jumped by a half-dozen older boys, including Cawoods, Baileys, and Turners, and while two of the Cawoods held him, the others gave him a bad beating that he never forgot. He began carrying a gun.
    A few weeks after Wix killed Little Bob, Little George Turner and one of the Bailey boys went down to the Howard store, where Hiram and Alice Howard also made and sold whiskey. They ordered Alice, who was alone in the store at the time, to stop selling whiskey to George Sr., who was known to drink more than he could hold. Alice told them that if they didn’t want George to drink, they should tell him not to buy it.
    Little George apparently spoke roughly to Mrs. Howard. That was a mistake. Tall, slender Alice Howard had been a Jennings, a family known as tough, proud people. Hezekiah Jennings, Alice’s father, was in the thick of the Howards’ feud with the Turners. Alice’s brother Will and her son Wilse formed a team that more than held up the Howard end of the violence.
    It is significant that the running battle between these two families apparently started over