Carter County Detention Center Inmate Search

As with many places in the area during and after the Civil War, Carter County has a history with the partisanship the war brought. The violence after the Civil War was still a part of the county for a while, but the state government was able to help when it was a need. The Underwood War left a mark in the area with several of the violent participants ending up in the jail. The Carter County participation was as an area usually seen as a safe haven. In 1877, Governor McCreary sent men to aide the sheriff and several were arrested peacefully. Sadly, this only brought peace for a short while. It took several more years for the unrest to settle.

In 1905, Willard, Kentucky saw six men rob the local bank. Charlie and Steve Stamper, known local criminals, set up a plan to rob the plan with four other men. The four men went by aliases and knew explosives when robbing banks. Their names people knew them by were Tom Hall, J.W. Wood, Thomas Brown, and J.D. Roderick. The four were on the run because of robbing a local post office. The men blew the outer door in a spectacular fashion, which brought guards. The inner door was cause for them to run from a fight with the people wanting to protect their money. They ran via a train, but were caught. Two were to die and four went to jail for their troubles.

The last to talk about was even part of a poem. Austin Porter was a local teacher that got into an argument Charlotte “Lottie” Porter in 1892. Lies were told by a student to Lottie to break them up. The argument became bad and Austin had a knife to end the argument. Austin went to jail in Carter County, but a lynch mob came in a few weeks and left him for dead from a tree. Elijah Adams wrote a ballad about the murder called The Murder of Lottie Yates.

The mines and the railroad both brought violence, but none were notable. There were strikes, some that had a basis in ethnicity, but never for long. The police were always able to contain the threats.