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“Judge Holt’s bad mood that day was to have terrible consequences: it would destroy 20 years of work by a man and his wife to build reputation and fortune on the Canaan Valley frontier; it would bring the death of a young only son and it would cause the mother of that son to lose her mind to the blackness of insanity,” Bob Ridley’s historian reported.
Eastham was the group’s spokesman in court, arguing
fiitilely that the right of petition could not constitutionally be denied. “Holt not only denied it; he fined all of them on the spot for contempt of court in trying to exercise that right,” today’s Bob Eastham noted.
“Sometime after leaving “ the court house, the disgruntled, but apparently not overly depressed, petitioners boarded their chartered railway car for the return trip to Davis. While waiting, Eastham affixed a placard to the car, a sign termed ‘insulting’ by the local paper, The Parsons Advocate. The words on the placard were taken from the title of a Civil War song popular among Confederate cavalrymen, ‘Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still.’ Bob Ridley was saying, and all understood him to mean, that Judge Holt was still haunted by the bright smile of Alice Williams. Thus the epithet ‘insulting,’ from the newspaper.”
Most of the petitioners were already seated in the CftR when Eastham boarded. Bui among the other passengers was an unwanted addition, Frank Lemer Thompson, enroute to his home in Davis.
Eastham’s old enemy knew he was not welcome. Before Bob Ridley had stepped aboard, Thompson was informed that the hailroad car was privately chartered. Eastham testified later that he saw Thompson for the first time as he came opposite the seated man while walking down the car’g aisle. He testified that fie stopped, slapped Thomjv^ son’s face, called him a “per~ jured son of a _,” and ordered him off the car.
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