Click image to buy item from Amazom.com

The sequel—with a great cover by Jim Asher—appeared in 2004 and included these chapters:

 

       DANIEL BOONE: In which it is suggested that Boone might not have been such a great frontiersman after all. The second-most controversial thing I wrote, just barely exceeded by the chapter on Edgar Cayce in Offbeat Kentuckians. I hasten to note that I am a fan of Old Dan’l, whether his reputation was exaggerated or not.

      THE HARPE BROTHERS: The savage tale of two frontier murderers whose legend lives on. Worth reading for all the disembodied heads carried in sacks, stuck on poles, or used as tree decorations.

      TOM JOHNSON, JR.: Danville’s Johnson was a drunkard and a poet—a very bad and vulgar one—but he also was the first published poet in Kentucky, possibly the first published poet in what was then called “the west.” Only two copies of his collected poetry exist; therefore his poems are seldom reproduced and exceedingly difficult to find, but I found them and gave them the first wide exposure they have received since the 1820s.

      CONSTANTINE RAFINESQUE: The chronicle of a hard-luck scientist whose genius could not save him from being buried in an unmarked grave, despite having an ornate tomb at Lexington’s Transylvania University.

      DAVID RICE ATCHISON: Politician born near Lexington who was alleged to have been President of the USA for only one day. I like this chapter.

      GEORGE WATTERS: This Bourbon County resident craved the excitement of the big city, went to Civil War-era Cincinnati, got foully murdered for his trouble, and ended up with an attention-getting epitaph on his gravestone. This chapter was memorable to me for the amount of research it required, and it now seems a dry run for a later book, Murder in Old Kentucky.

      TOM BOYD: A daredevil Irishman who made his living in 1880s Louisville by jumping off bridges and doing other very foolish things.

      JOHN KLEIN: More material from my never-published biography of Joe Mulhattan surfaces here. Klein was an amateur astronomer in Ohio County who had an uncanny ability to predict approaching comets—in fact, he often beat professional scientists. But he was also a friend of the infamous hoaxer Mulhattan, who reported Klein’s findings to the press, with the predictable result that no one believed Klein.

      HENRY KUIPERS: Kuipers was found dead in a Louisville pond in 1881—with his hands in his pockets! Was it murder, suicide, or an accident? This chapter is another dry run for Murder in Old Kentucky.

    MARY SULLIVAN: Female bandit and gang leader, and the only woman to be hanged in the history of Caldwell County. Among other things, she may have hanged her cheating boyfriend.

    WILLIAM CLAYTOR: An incompetent Louisville cemetery sexton on the take. Warning: Do not read this chapter just after eating.

   REUBEN FIELD: The amazing tale of a gluttonous “half-wit” from Bath County who also happened to be a mathematical prodigy. This seems to be the favorite chapter for lots of people, including Ben Eshbach of the great band The Sugarplastic, who noted that short stories by Borges and Maugham feature characters reminiscent of Field, and punk-pop wizard Joe King (a/k/a Joe Queer), who said Field’s eating habits reminded him of his roadies.

   WILLIAM SIDES: Perhaps you know a crazy person who resides in a house full of cats. If so, Mr. Sides was that person’s spiritual ancestor.

   MR. AND MRS. JOHN FOWLER: An elderly couple of Spiritualists who lived on a beached flatboat in Louisville. When Mr. Fowler died in January 1887, his wife, unconvinced that he was dead, kept him aboveground longer than was absolutely necessary.

   LINVILLE COMBS: This nine-year-old from Breathitt County became the youngest prisoner in Kentucky history—and for the murder of his little sister, at that. This is yet another true crime chapter that I enjoyed researching and writing so much that it convinced to write Murder in Old Kentucky.

   DR. EVERETT WAGNER: A Metcalfe County physician who got fed up with his relatives’ greedy behavior as he was dying of tuberculosis. He left them a bequest in his will that must be read to be believed. Let’s just say he gave away some mighty personal possessions.

   CHARLES KINCAID: Newspaper reporter who assassinated ex-Congressman Taulbee at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., in February 1890.

   MARY STUCKENBORG: A Louisville woman who may have been the first reported stigmatic in the USA. Though she was never officially caught, she probably faked it. I am very fond of Kyle’s illustration for this chapter.

   JERRY CONSTANTINE: When this Gallatin County native set out to collect a debt, he was serious about it. Hence the folly of a neighbor who promised Constantine that he could shoot him if he did not repay a loan by a certain date.

   THE LYON QUINTUPLETS: The melancholy story of the first quintuplets known to be born alive in North America (Graves County, to be precise).

   RICHARD TWENTE: Twente, of Pendleton County, apparently was something of an architectural genius. He moved his wife and daughters to the prairies of Minnesota. There he went crazy, as well illustrated by the peculiar notions about the proper burial of the dead which he displayed after the passing of his daughter Annie.

   BASIL HAYDEN: Mr. Hayden, a Nelson County hermit, held such a grudge against God when the Confederacy lost the Civil War that he vowed he would “never put foot to the Lord’s ground again.” So far as anyone knows, he kept his word.

   JOHN MILBURN DAVIS: Davis was born in Warren County, but he became a Kansas legend when he moved to Hiawatha in that state. After his wife died, this wealthy miser spent his entire fortune building a fitting monument on her gravesite. It is now a tourist attraction. Another great illustration by Kyle.

   WILL H. JOHNSON: Is it possible for a semi-literate miner in post-World War Two Middlesboro to impersonate Adolf Hitler by mail, thus tricking unpatriotic suckers into sending him their heard-earned money? Yes!

   THE MARTIN SISTERS: The tale of two deeply eccentric sisters who taught music in Knox County for decades, and who had strange ideas regarding home décor, dress, diet, makeup, personal hygiene, pets, death, and nearly everything else. I have been gratified to hear from many Knox Countians who remember the Martin Sisters well, and who tell me that my portrait of them is quite accurate.