By Stephen D. Bowling

It was one of the saddest stories to ever come out of Bloody Breathitt, and it had nothing to do with the feuds. The details of the horrific event were printed and then reported in hundreds of newspapers around the world, and it was all just a terrible, terrible accident.

Rosa (Deaton) Combs, the young wife of Richard Craig Combs, Jr., was typical of the strong mountain woman of the early 1900s. She and Richard were married on October 12, 1900, in Perry County, Kentucky, by Rev. Jesse B. Turner. The young couple settled into everyday life.

The Combses lived in a small house just south of the Crockettsville Post Office, and soon after the wedding, the children started coming about every two years in a cycle. Daniel Combs was born in 1901, followed by Luther in 1902, and a small baby girl in August 1903. The baby grew and prospered.

Around the house, Rosa had a long list of daily chores, including cooking, washing, cleaning, milking, feeding, and more. She often worked in the fields with her husband and took on other tasks beyond her household chores.

During the last week of April 1904, Richard Combs and his wife were working in separate fields, cutting brush to open a new field to meet the needs of their expanding farm and family. The annual practice was to cut and pile the dry corn stalks for burning, but new ground was prepared by burning the weeds and brush cleared from the hillsides. The rich ash was then plowed under to enrich the soil and improve crop production.

The day before, Rosa Deaton had made several large piles of brush and decided to burn them despite the high winds early that morning. She prepared their breakfast, and she and Richard ate. She had gone into the field to clear ground for planting corn and taken her three children, including the babe, then only 8 months old.

Near the end of the new field and far away from the woodline, she set fire to a large pile of limbs and cut undergrowth. As the flames worked to melt the pile, a strong burst of wind plowed across the field and scattered embers into the air. Within seconds, the adjacent woodland was ablaze.

Rosa Combs ran to the edge of the field and started stomping and “beating out” the spreading flames to protect the “threatened fencing” of the Combs farm and the neighbor’s. She worked for several minutes and “by heroic efforts subdued the flames.” Meanwhile, the lighted embers continued to swirl around her in the wind, and as the occasional flicker of a new fire could be seen, she ran to knock it out. In the excitement of the moment, she forgot the children.

After nearly half an hour, the winds subsided, and she was able to at last breathe a small sigh of relief. She could see Daniel and Luther sitting under a tree near the edge of the woodline, watching the excitement, but there was smoke around the children.

Rosa Combs ran to her baby, but was soon horrified by what she found. There, in a small pile, were the remains of the wooden crate that she used as a crib. Inside, she found the charred body of her eight-month-old child.

Neighbors who heard her cries for help ran to the field and found her face down in the dirt. Her face was covered in mud created by the union of the fertile ground and her tears.

Family members reported that as she fought to save her home and property, sparks from the inferno had drifted onto the bedding and “fired the bed in the box in which the infant lay.” They told newspaper men who inquired that the “box and bed were burned to ashes and only a nearly cremated corpse was all that remained.”

Col. Thomas M. Morrow, the Editor of The Jackson Hustler, received news of the tragic event and worked to verify its authenticity. The next week, he reported the sad affair in the pages of his paper. The horrific news was picked up by hundreds of other papers, which soon helped spread the knowledge of Mrs. Combs’ pain.

A small coffin was built, and a simple service was held not long after sunup the next day. The remains of the small baby girl were interred in the family lot in the Crockettsville Cemetery. No marker bearing her name has survived the destructive power of time and the elements. No family record includes the painful details of her death or records her name. She is truly “Known But to God.”

Richard and Rosa Combs never fully recovered from the horrible tragedy. They had five more children before Rosa “grieved herself” to death. Her death certificate does not list an actual cause of death, but she passed from this world on May 28, 1918. She was buried next to her child without a marked tombstone. She was 35.

Richard Craig Combs, Jr., remarried and had seven more children by his second wife, Martha Strong. He died on October 22, 1936, and was buried in the Crockettsville Cemetery.

Breathitt County has a long history of violence, meanness, and murder. Most of those killed during the “Bloody Breathitt” period were far from innocent and often were involved in actions that contributed to their own demise.

Rare is the sad case of the little Combs baby, whose death was purely an accident- a terrible, terrible tragedy. Even sadder is the fact that little is known about her, and her name has been lost. If there is any solace, we can rest assured that the innocent child rests today in a land of peace and joy.

© 2026 Stephen D. Bowling