In the late 1930s, Ernest (1897-1981) and Elva Richards McCoy operated a road house and beer parlor on the Mt. Zion Ridge, a hamlet named Gunnville. It was huge operation for the time, booze, dance hall, food, groceries, farm supplies and auto repair shop. Later the Tom Moore family continued to operate the emporium, burning down in 1949.

According to newspaper accounts, a man named Chlo Fitzpatrick, 28, of Normantown, accompanied by friends, spent the night chasing drunkenness.

As Fitzpatrick's mental state worsened, he began to make moves toward Ernest's wife, Elva, which stirred Ernest's temper and asking Fitzpatrick to leave. He refused.

A slug fest started and McCoy struck the man in the head with a homemade blackjack, a rubber hose with a large bolt attached to the end. Fitzpatrick staggered from the emporium with his friends to head back to Stumptown, then losing consciousness and dying.

A Gilmer County corner said Fitzpatrick had a skull fracture, a three inch gash which led to a brain bleed.

McCoy was charged with murder and spent one year in the WV State Penitentiary. A side story to the incident was numerous articles by the editor of the Calhoun Chronicle denouncing McCoy. He was an alcoholic who earlier had been ordered to leave the emporium because of his drunkenness.

McCoy had been a one room school teacher in Calhoun for many years, despite a crippling infirmity caused by polio at an early age.

In 1928 he almost met his maker at a drunken election day riot at Hur, his father John Ira McCoy saving him from a man that held him to the ground with a knife.

His dad, a well-mattered man who never drank, clobbered the man in the head with a rock, after which he died, thus saving Ernest's life. He remained mournful of his actions for the rest of his life.

Ernest and his wife took off to Ohio to spend most of his life.

Elva Richards McCoy obtained a divorce years later. Ernest, in his old age, returned to the Village of Hur to lead a Christian life and be cared for by his sister Myrtle McCoy Weaver until his death.

READ: ELECTION DAY IN BUCKHORN HOLLOW