Clay County AlArchives News.....Feud in Clay County results in Fatal Shooting December 30, 1903
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Linda Ayres http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00031.html#0007674 January 18, 2023, 10:58 pm

Our Mountian Home December 30, 1903
On Saturday night. December 26th the boys of two families engaged in a fight at 
Idaho, Clay County, and as a result one man is dead and four wounded. Walter 
Wesley is the dead man, and the wounded are Geo. Wesley, shot in the neck; Jess 
Wesley, shot through the shoulder; Alvin Hobbs, scalp wound; and Erit Hobbs, 
supposed to have been hit in the face with knucks. The fight was the result of 
bad feeling between the families of L. M. Wesley and C. N. Hobbs, whose sons 
were the participants. The trouble started at a party, and when the Hobbs 
brothers started home, they were followed by the Wesleys a fight resulted, in 
which Alvin Hobbs was knocked down. The three Wesleys commenced shooting at him, 
and while thus engaged Erit Hobbs succeeded in wounding his brother's 
assailants, one of them fatally. None of the others are considered seriously 
wounded, though Alvin Hobbs may lose an eye from a powder burn. Geo. Hobbs was 
the more seriously. Wounded of the serious Walter Wesley, the dead man, was 
about 27 years old, and leaves a wife and two children.

Birmingham Post Dec 29, 1903:
At Idaho, fifteen miles southeast of Talladega in Clay County, last night, there 
was a duel between the Wesley and Hobbs family, in which fifteen shots were 
fired. Two of the Wesley's were seriously wounded. There was a family feud 
running back a year or more. Particulars cannot now be obtained.

Birmingham News:
Dec. 30. 1903 News has reached here of a terrible shooting affair about 8 miles 
west of here, near Idaho, in which Walter Wesley was shot and killed and his two 
brothers, Jesse and George, were shot seriously. Mack Hobbs, Alvin Hobbs and 
Terrell Hobbs, have been arrested and placed in the county jail here, charged 
with being connected with the shooting. Robert Ingram has also been arrested. 
Warrants are out for W. E. Hobbs and Sylvester Wesley. There was an old grudge 
between the Hobbs and Wesleys, but the direct cause of the shooting has not 
ascertained here yet. The funeral of Walter Wesley took place yesterday, he was 
a young married man and the father of one child.

The Montgomery Advertiser Dec 29, 1903:
Ashland, Ala. A terrible tragedy occurred about ten miles northwest of this 
place, near Idaho Saturday, by which Walter Wesley and two brothers were shot, 
the first named dying from the effects of the wound yesterday at 1 p.m. Only 
meager details of the shooting have been learned. It seems that there was a 
party in the neighborhood and that a young man named Hobbs went into the house 
in which the party was held and used insulting language to the wife of one of 
the Wesleys. He induced the Wesley boys to go out of doors where all three of 
them were shot in each case in the back. It is now said that Syl Wesley a 
relative of the Hobbs boy did the shooting. There was bad feeling between the 
Hobbs and Wesley boys. Of the two surviving Wesley's one his seriously wounded 
but it is thought that both will recover. The assailants have not yet been 
apprehended, though it is thought that they are still la the neighborhood. 
Efforts are being made to capture them but as yet they have been futile.


Additional Comments:
Watler Wesley is buried at Sardis Methodist Cemetery, Clay County, AL. 

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/clay/newspapers/feudincl1964gnw.txt

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