Sacred Ground: The Ranse Boyatt Farm
Near the head of No Business Creek, hidden deep in a peaceful forest of hemlock and poplar where there is seldom any sound besides that of the stream gurgling nearby and the birds in the treetops overhead, is a cemetery that helps tell the story of the tragedies that played out in this valley in 1933.
Buried here, on the edge of what was once the Boyatt farm, are Ransom Boyatt and several members of his family. Ranse, as he was known, was the father of Jerome Boyatt. Jerome Boyatt was accused of killing the sheriff of Pickett County and the sheriff’s lawman son. By the time the final bullets had been fired, both Ranse and Jerome were dead — both murdered at the hands of vigilantes in a sequence of events that still elicits raw emotion from descendants of those involved, more than 90 years later.
Today, all that remains of the Boyatt farm is a field that is kept cleared by the National Park Service and the chimney that once stood in the center of Ranse Boyatt’s home. Everything else has been reclaimed by nature and time.
The family cemetery was about a half-mile up the creek from Ranse Boyatt’s home, which is about a half-mile up the creek from the Longfield Branch Trail that was once the main road out of No Business.
Between Ranse Boyatt’s home and the cemetery was the home of his father, Jordan Boyatt. Jordan was buried by himself on the ridge overlooking his farm.
Ransom Boyatt
Born Aug. 16, 1869, Ranse Boyatt was the son of Jordan Boyatt III (1828-1900) and Mary Ann Slaven (1847-1925).
Jordan Boyatt — pronounced “Jurdan” — was the son of Thomas W. Boyatt (1806-1864) and Susannah Maxwell (1806-1863), who founded the Foster Crossroads community and are buried in the cemetery there. The Foster Crossroads installment of the Sacred Ground series began the story of the Boyatt family, as did the installment profiling the Davey Boyatt Cemetery nearby.
Jordan Boyatt’s marriage to Mary Ann Slaven explains how he wound up at No Business, several miles west of where the rest of the Boyatt family settled down in the Foster Crossroads area. No Business was Slaven country, beginning with the arrival of Richard Harve Slaven — the BSF’s first settler — around 1800.
Mary Ann Slaven was a granddaughter of Richard Harve Slaven. Her parents were James Slaven and Dolly Brown. James was one of at least 14 children born to Richard and Susanna Mounts Slaven.
Ranse Boyatt married Poppie Litton, the daughter of George Washington Litton (1857-1935) and Helen Emily Terry (1856-1933). George Washington Litton was the son of Littleton Litton and Polly Coile, and a brother to John Litton, of the Litton Farm near Bandy Creek.
Ranse and Poppie had nine children, beginning with daughter Delma who was born in 1907. She died as a young girl and was buried at the family plot on No Business.
Jerome, who would later wind up at the center of the tragedies of 1933, was the second-oldest, born in 1911. He was followed by Eugene, Lola, Violet, Bonnie, Plez, Dulcie and Albert.
The Boyatts lived what must have been a peaceful life on No Business. Their home was nearly a mile up the valley from most of the other homes in a settlement that was near its peak in the early 1900s.
Jordan Boyatt died in 1900 and was buried on the ridge overlooking the valley, his grave marked by a fieldstone and accessible today from Terry Cemetery Road. His wife, Mary Ann, lived a quarter of a century longer at her home just up the creek from Ranse’s place.
Ranse Boyatt was a farmer, working the fields around his home on No Business Creek.
The start of the cemetery
There are several unidentified graves at the Boyatt Cemetery. There are about a dozen graves there in all, most of them marked by uninscribed field stones. That wasn’t at all uncommon in remote settlements like No Business. The Nancy Smith Cemetery a couple of miles down the creek, which was the community cemetery in the early years of the No Business settlement, is full of unidentifiable graves. It was not unusual in these remote areas to simply bury the dead and mark their grave with a fieldstone that might include their initials or might include no engravings at all. That’s unfortunate to those of us who are chasing history many generations later, but was common practice at the time.
It’s likely that the first graves at the Boyatt Cemetery came before 1904. In fact, the historian Robert Bailey noted in his 1994 cemetery book that there are two Slaven children buried in an unmarked grave here. His information was provided by Bonnie Chambers.
It’s almost certain that this cemetery dates back to the late 19th century, and to the Slaven family that was so prominent on No Business Creek.
But the first identifiable grave at the cemetery is Bertha Boyatt, who died in 1904 at age 24. She was Ranse Boyatt’s sister. According to genealogy sources, she was born with dwarfism.
The next identifiable grave at the cemetery is little Delma Boyatt, who died at the age of four in 1911. “Delmey,” her parents called her, was the first-born child of Ranse and Poppie Boyatt.
Later, Ranse’s mother, Mary Jane Slaven Boyatt, was buried at the cemetery when she died on Dec. 14, 1925.
The tragedies of 1933
The No Business saga began in April 1933, with a fight between 22-year-old Jerome Boyatt and his 55-year-old uncle, Albert Boyatt, at a logging camp at Rock Creek, which was across the ridge from the head of No Business Creek, several miles away. The fight apparently stemmed from moonshine.
The fight occurred at about quitting time on a Friday evening. The camp foreman locked Jerome and his younger boyatt, Eugene, and several others in a box car while he summoned for the law. Among them were Walter and Charlie Boyatt, and Lige Terry.
George Winningham, the sheriff of Pickett County, made the journey to Rock Creek from Byrdstown. His son and deputy, Floyd Winningham, was with him, as was another deputy, Bram Garrett.
What happened when the lawmen arrived at the logging camp remains an unsettled debate. Some — including all the major newspapers at the time — said that Jerome opened fire, unprovoked. That’s the story you’ll be told today if you inquire in Pickett County.
Others said that it was someone else — perhaps Floyd Winningham — who fired first. That’s the story that you’ll hear in Scott County.
Either way, the short gunfight ended with Floyd Winningham dead and George Winningham mortally wounded. Jerome Boyatt escaped into the forest.
A massive manhunt ensued, led by George Winningham’s son, Willie Winningham, who was the sheriff in Clinton County, Ky. In the process, Boyatt’s family — Ranse and Poppie and the younger children at home — were taken into custody and escorted to Pickett County.
Regardless of who was at fault at the Rock Creek camp, the events that followed it would be considered highly illegal today. Willie Winningham had no jurisdiction in Scott County, and the Boyatt family were wrongfully detained. Those events were illegal then, too, but there was a lot more leniency for rogue lawmen in those days, and Willie Winningham was determined to capture the man who had killed his father and brother.
At some point, Ranse Boyatt was released from custody to tend to the farm. Some accounts say that he promised to talk Jerome — who was still hiding in the craggy woodlands around No Business, with some aid from the residents of the community — into giving himself up.
Sometime later, concerned neighbors entered the Boyatt home and found Ranse’s decaying body on his bed. An inquest was held, and it was determined that he had been murdered.
It has always been assumed that Ranse Boyatt was hanged in his barn, then his body carried to the home and left on the bed. But his body was so badly decomposed by the time it was discovered that it was impossible to say for sure how he had died. Also noteworthy: the door to the home was locked from the inside.
No suspect was ever named in Ranse Boyatt’s killing.
Poppie and her daughters were released from jail and allowed to return to their No Business home, where they buried Ranse in the family cemetery a half-mile up the creek. He was the last person buried there.
Poppie was adamant that she didn’t want Jerome to know of his father’s death. She feared that when he found out, he would turn himself in, and that would mean certain death.
A couple of weeks later, well-meaning neighbors decided that Jerome needed to know his father had been killed. When he learned of Ranse’s death, he did exactly what his mother feared he would do: he turned himself in.
On June 9, 1933, a mob of 25 masked men showed up at the Scott County Jail, beat the jailer, and hauled away Jerome Boyatt and another prisoner — Harvey Winchester, accused of killing a Scott County lawman.
The next morning, the men’s tortured and bullet-ridden bodies were discovered in the woods off Highway 27 in Helenwood. Harvey Winchester had been the first to die. His body was found by a tree, shot dead, a rope noose nearby.
Several hundred yards away, Jerome Boyatt’s body was discovered. He had been stripped naked and turned loose to run while the mob fired at him. Then he was shot twice in the back, and once in the back of the head at close range.
No one was ever officially named as a suspect in the death of Jerome Boyatt and Harvey Winchester, although a forthcoming book from an out-of-state author plans to reveal the names of all who were allegedly involved.
Jerome Boyatt was buried at Foster Crossroads. His mother left No Business and even remarried. She died in 1978 and was also buried at Foster Crossroads. She had 12 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren at the time of her death.
Eugene Boyatt — Jerome’s deaf younger brother who was present at Rock Creek the night the tragedies began (and later cleared of any wrongdoing by a Pickett County grand jury) — died in a railroad accident on the O&W in 1951. The last of Jerome’s siblings, sister Violet, died in 2012 in Akron, Oh.
Cemetery Census
GPS Coordinates: 36.58771, -84.69842
First Burial: Unknown*
Last Burial: 1933
Bertha Boyatt, 1880-1904
Delma Boyatt, 1907-1911
Mary Ann Slaven Boyatt, 1847-1925
Ransom Boyatt, 1689-1933
Children Slaven, N/A-N/A
*There are several unidentified graves at Boyatt Cemetery, and they likely date back to the late 1800s.
This story is part of the Scott County Cemetery Project.