Newton Jasper Wilburn

Captain Newton Jasper Wilburn (November 9, 1874–January 31, 1927) was a Kentucky National Guard officer who played a crucial part in ending the Black Patch Tobacco Wars, the most sustained and violent civil uprising in America since the Civil War.

Capt.N.J. Wilburn 1908

Born in Pineville, Bell County, Kentucky, Wilburn came to prominence as a National Guard officer after serving two enlistments in the United States Army Infantry in the 1890s. In 1906, then Lieutenant Wilburn attracted attention by capturing a notorious fugitive criminal. He led a National Guard detachment into Virginia on horseback to hunt Frank Ball, who had escaped from the penitentiary where he was serving a life sentence. The pursuit ended in a shootout at Rufus Ball’s farm. Ball was captured and one of his men killed. “The capture of Frank Ball was a thrilling chapter in the criminal history of the Virginia Mountains,” said the local press.

In 1907 and 1908, a vigilante group known as The Night Riders terrorized the "Black Patch" region of Kentucky and Tennessee. Initially formed as a response to the James B. Duke tobacco conglomerate (ATC), the Night Riders whipped disloyal members, murdered opponents, burned buildings, and seized entire towns. In 1908, the New York Times reported, “There now exists in the State of Kentucky a condition of affairs without parallel in the history of the world." Wilburn was sent with his soldiers to end the violence.

In the spring of 1908, now living in Sturgis, Union County, Kentucky, Wilburn made a series of arrests of Night Rider leaders and protected numerous key informers. He gained the help of former Night Riders, including Macon Champion, who implicated fifteen other local farmers. The arrests broke the power of the Night Riders and effectively ended the Black Patch War. Lieutenant Wilburn was rewarded with a promotion to captain.

The battle against the American Tobacco Company continued, but now in the courts. On May 9, 1911 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the American Tobacco Company was in fact an illegal monopoly and violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890. 5. 221 U.S. 106 (1911). The tobacco farmers had won.

After the Black Patch Tobacco Wars, Wilburn met his future bride, Lula Wren, in a dramatic scene on the train station platform in Springfield, Tennessee. He worked as a coal miner in Union County and later was a postmaster in Muhlenberg County. He died in January 1927 age 52 of peritonitis following a "fall on rough ground".

Wilburn came from a military family. Both his grandfather, Reuben Wilburn, and father, Louis Wilburn, fought for the Union during the Civil War despite the region's strong Confederate sympathy. Reuben Wilburn enlisted in the Union Army at the age of sixty. Newton Jasper Wilburn’s own sons served in World War II, his grandsons in South Vietnam, and his great-grandsons in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, and Afghanistan.