Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1893 — A Reformed Virginia Town. [ARTICLE]

A Reformed Virginia Town.

* The recent hanging of Virginia desperado, Talton Hall, has brought Into prominence a remarkable little town called Big Stone Gap, situated among the mountains, twenty miles from Wise Court House. It furnished the courageous judge who tried Hall, eight of the jury who convicted him, nnd the captain and two-thirds of the guard who saw tho sontenco oxocuted. Three years ago Big Stone Gap was the worst spot in this bad region. It was settled then by young blue grass Kentuckians and Eastern Virginians, “furriners,” as the mountain people cal) them. Thoy represent the best blood in both States, and most of them are graduates of the three big Eastern colleges and one Southern university. It was the habit of "toughs” to come into the town and gallop through the streets, firing their pistols right and left, while the storekeepers shut up shop and went to tho woods. These young Kentuckians and Virginians settled at Big Stone Gap, organized themselves into a volunteer police force, equipped with revolvers, billies, and whistles. Thoy fought the toughs with Winchesters and pistols, and for a time street fights came daily. They maintained tho law, however. To-day a whistle anywhere in the town, at any hour of the night or day, will bring a dozen men to tho spot in as many minutes. It is the one place in all the Cumberland Range where a feud or a fight is now impossible—the one place where the law is enforced with Spartan sternness, and In whloh there reigns the peace of a Quaker town.— New York Sun.