Hello, known Cousins (Julie S.) & unknown Cousins. I've had some trouble with a Klez computer virus and it has slowed me down for a few days. My new firewall & scanning software seem to have things squared away, and I hope it allows my outward-bound messages to go cleanly as well. I'm still getting some bad incoming mail which I must junk. My name is Cole, and Billy Sutton in the Sutton-Taylor Feud is my great-grandfather's brother. My late father grew up hearing about the Feud from his father and uncles. With his career in the Air Force and worldwide travels, he developed a keen interest in history. He was very well-read, and exercised an interest in writing by publishing a few technical articles for gun magazines. Guns were another of his hobbies. Given enough time, his interest in his own family's history blended with his writing ability. He decided to do his own research on the Feud, draw his own conclusions, and then publish his book: "The Sutton-Taylor Feud". The ISBN number is "0 89015-066-4" (all numbers). The book is no longer in print and the publisher went out of business long ago. I'm sure it's available through some libraries, but I'm not familiar with the process for finding it. The Taylors were well-established in Dewitt County, Texas. Billy Sutton's grandfather came to Texas from Tennessee and settled in Fayette County, near Round Top. I don't know what led him to Dewitt County. My brother Rob is our family historian, and most of my limited knowledge comes from my father's book and my brother's research. Most of the source material my father found (and I suspect much of the source material mentioned in the Sutton list a few days ago) seems to point toward Billy Sutton as the cause of everything bad in the world including hunger, poverty and baldness. It's possible that these one-sided accounts are true, word for word, but it's more likely each event had another side. When my Father wrote his book, he tried to evaluate the accounts fairly and evenly. Besides the well-known articles in newspapers and magazines, he dug deeper and found other, more obscure reports. He read all he could find and tried to see what made sense to him. Despite the tendency for a Sutton or a Taylor to 'take sides', his book didn't draw conclusions as much as it compared the various versions and left it to the readers to make their own decisions. No one disputes that the feudists on both sides were capable of mean and tough behavior. Some of the Taylors were killing soldiers because they represented the post-Civil War North. Probably some of their violence was caused because the soldiers were black, tasked to maintain authority over the resident whites, and they were deeply resented. Sutton came into the initial fray as a State Police Regulator trying to arrest the Taylors who had murdered several of these soldiers. Perhaps his motives were pure (the good guy), perhaps he needed a job (everyone needs to eat), and perhaps he held long-term grudges against the Taylors using this as an excuse to revenge himself. I don't know which theme is true, or if there were totally different reasons. I probably never will. Whatever the seminal events, the people on both sides got in an ever-escalating war where participants, relatives and friends were shot down in gunfights and ambushes. These weren't the sort of folks you want at your school's PTA meeting. There were no saints on either side of the Feud, and it would be a mistake to believe otherwise. There is also a videotape available via the History Channel. The Feud was part of the "Vendetta" series they ran about a year ago. You can 'meet' my brother Rob in the video. The video tilts somewhat toward the Taylor side as the 'good guys'. My father's book disagrees strongly with some of the History Channel's accounts. For those who wish to pursue it further, please keep an open mind. Life events are rarely one-sided. Why should we expect history to be otherwise? - From a Feudist's Great-Grandnephew.