J. W. Massie was elected by the Blue Ridge bunch. This was a new crowd. There were not populists, there weren’t any yet. They had a big mass meeting at Blue Ridge. The election was close. Massie was elected sheriff by a short margin, and Professor Ralph P. Edgar was elected county clerk. (Think that is right). [Massie was sheriff from 1886-1890.--Elreeta Weathers] It seems the Gentry bunch didn’t hold the boys down from shooting up the town and old George Gentry really ran things in those days. (It is told elsewhere how Massie, reputed to have been one of the best sheriffs, put guards on the roads Saturday night, collected the guns and quelled the boys. (Q. Brunk told me in the old days when his mother ran the old two-story Brunk hotel down present Bell Avenue, you would put out the lights in the lobby on Saturday nights, or they might be shot out. I can remember when the boys whipped the horses in a run going out, yelling. Sign boards often bore bullet holes on the roads.

BLUE RIDGE BAPTIST CHURCH

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