Twelve ‘Kentucky Colonel’ Stories.

Zoe Anderson Norris.

Twelve ‘Kentucky Colonel’ Stories.

J. S. Ogilvie,

1905

Philip Thompson, the twin brother of Zoe’s sister Mattie’s husband John Thompson, was a politician and notorious feuder in Zoe’s hometown. He inspired these tall tales, told in heavy dialect, of Kentuckians murdering each other in broad daylight over “affairs of honnah.” One mother-in-law’s gunshot injury causes generations of inter-family feuds, because she was widely hated and only injured rather than killed. Zoe published the collection in book form after it ran in the New York Sun and was widely syndicated.

From the Collection of Eve M. Kahn.