Jay Legg

DESCRIPTION: "Come all you true brave river boys... We've lost one of our river boys, And the one we love so well." His wife shoots Jay on a Friday night. His boy asks his mother why she did it. She says it was an accident. She is imprisoned even so
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1960 (collected from Maggie Hammons Parker, according to Cohen)
KEYWORDS: death homicide husband wife children
HISTORICAL REFERENCES:
Feb 10, 1904 - Shooting of Jay Legg by his wife Sarah Ann. She will be convicted of murder, but the conviction will be overturned on appeal
FOUND IN: US(Ap)
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Bush-FSofCentralWestVirginiaVol2, pp. 51-54, "The Murder of Jay Legg" (1 text, 1 tune)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia1, pp. 219-220, "Jay Legg" (1 text)
Roud #7030
NOTES [162 words]: The Historical Note is based on information in Cohen. Records from the 1900 U. S. census list James R. Legg as being born April 1879 in West Virginia and living at that time in the Buffalo District of Clay County, West Virginia (which is along the Elk River). His wife Sara A. Legg was born December 1880, also in West Virginia. (A record at FamilySearch.org says her married name was Sarah Ann Dickey.) The census taker estimated they were married in 1899, even though they had a daughter, Dona J. Legg, born June 1898. Records at FamilySearch.org indicate another child, John Sherren Legg, who presumably was born after the 1900 census recorded the family. FamilySearch.org concurs that Jay Legg died in 1904 but lists his birth date as 1878 (this sort of confusion occurs in a lot of census records, when the census-taker simply recorded the person's age at the time of recording, not the date of birth).
FamilySearch.org says that Sarah Ann Dickey lived until 1975. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.0
File: CAFS1219

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