For somewhere around 150 days , the Hatfields and the McCoys have been synonymous with sorry neighbour . Theirs is the quintessential American feud , in all its glorious pettiness and startling violence .
The very rightful story of the Hatfields and McCoys , though , goes well beyond dim-witted scrap and killing . The feud literally reached across border , reflect a troubled metre in American chronicle that bridged theCivil Warand theIndustrial Revolution . It was a period in which the commonwealth itself — and , sure , much of misunderstood and still largely misrepresent Appalachia , the background of the Hatfield - McCoy feud — was tear between past and future tense .
Plus , the feud feature a love story . Romeo and Juliet had nothing on young star - frustrate lovers Johnson " Johnse " Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy .
" I ’m a native West Virginian . I grow up around the history . My specialization is Appalachian account , " enunciate Charles " Chuck " Keeney III , a history professor atSouthern West Virginia Community and Technical Collegein Mount Gay , West Virginia . " So the Hatfield - McCoy feud is something that I ’ve develop up with , and the Hatfield - McCoy feud has played such a Brobdingnagian role in shaping multitude ’s perceptual experience of my habitation . "
Who Were the Hatfields and McCoys?
The Hatfield - McCoy feud is , as the good feuds are , populated with a cast of colorful characters doing sometimes dastardly human action . It begins with two principal :
" Devil Anse Hatfield was a bad - than - life character , " read Bill Richardson , West Virginia University Extensionprofessor and the curator of a short - hold up Hatfield - McCoy museum in Williamson , West Virginia . " There were 3,000 people at his funeral . He was sort of a gentleman’s gentleman ’s man . He was one of the first entrepreneurs in this arena . A passel of mass used him for their employment . He was very influential in politics . He was a very outgoing and gregarious individual . He was a man that mass gravitated to .
" Randall , on the other hand , " Richardson adds , " was this subsistence farmer . His parents divorced after 50 year of marriage , which was unheard of at the time . And Randall was sort of a beaten - down man . He was 15 years older than Devil Anse . He had a very unvoiced life . Anse was the person who prospered , and Randall did n’t . So there ’s some hard feelings from that .
The Hatfields and McCoys were not neighbor in a strict geographical gumption . travel by horseback or loopy , going up and down mountains and across the Tug River , the patriarchs of these two families lived some six time of day apart .
But Devil Anse Hatfield and Randall McCoy were longtime acquaintances . They fight back in the same regiment during the Civil War . Hatfield forsake to form a sort of guerilla banding fighting for the Confederacy . McCoy was captured and spend around two years in a Union captive of warfare camp .
How the bad blood started between them is still up to debate . Some point to the split up during the Civil War . Other historians have different ideas .
How the Feud Began
" One of the biggest question I get asked most often is what started the Hatfield - McCoy feud . There ’s three possibleness , " sound out Richardson . " One is the Civil War , and all of the book written before 1940 attribute it to the Civil War . Another one is the land slew that variety of went faulty that admit Devil Anse Hatfield and a guy named Perry Cline . And then the third is the ' hog test ' [ see sidebar below ] . I know of three first - person accounts of people who were in the feud , and all three of those account , they start with the hog test .
" If you ask somebody who was in the feud what started the feud , they would say the hog trial . "
Keeney , who teaches a class on the guinea pig , does n’t grease one’s palms into that . He ’s of the belief that changing times , including postwar reconstructive memory and industrialisation ( in timber and the burgeon ember manufacture ) , outside influence from national and international investor , and land grabs ( include the one involving Cline and Devil Anse ) all contributed to the feud .
" Even a heap of my scholarly person think it was over a pig . You have the same misconceptions here now , " Keeney says . " Think about it : When Randall McCoy believes a pig is stolen from him , he does n’t catch his ordnance and pop shoot the property up . He goes to court . They have a case . And they lose the court pillow slip . And nothing happens for five years . But those types of ideas really digest for a long time . "
Whatever the start , the feud live on for nearly 30 years , from what might have been its start to what is widely regard as its closing . The feud was lowlighted by two instances of peculiarly roughshod ferocity .
The first was in 1882 , a few years after the Cline , when Ellison McCoy was jump , in world , during an Election Day words by three of Randall McCoy ’s Son . Ellison , Devil Anse ’s brother , was stabbed more than 20 time , and then shoot and kill .
The McCoy boy were stop , but Devil Anse , thurify at the murder of his dear young crony , took some of his sons and snatched the killers away from the authorities . The Hatfields finally read the McCoy boys into a tie-up of papaw bushes , tie them up and fool them some 40 clip .
The second big outcome in the feud go on on New Year ’s Eve 1887 , when Devil Anse ’s uncle , Jim Vance , lead a mathematical group of Hatfields into Kentucky to capture Randall McCoy at his farm . The group burned down his firm , shot and kill two of his children and badly injured his wife . But Randall McCoy escaped .
During the on - again , off - again life of the feud , legion effectual legal proceeding were filed , one that go all the path to theU.S. Supreme Court . Bounty hunters were hired to capture Hatfields ; one was an highly mean sort by the name of " Bad " Frank Phillips , who eventually hunted down and vote down Jim Vance .
And , during much of the feud , a sort of Capulet - Montague love story , which began with Johnse Hatfield woo Roseanna McCoy , played out . That subplot was further complicated when the imp Johnse — he ’d marry four time in his life — left the pregnant Roseanna to marry her cousin , Nancy McCoy , do a lot of fear and embarrassment on both sides of the conflict .
Roseanna ’s baby die in babyhood , and Roseanna died month later at age 29 . Nancy eventually left Johnse and took up with " Bad " Frank . ( It ’s puzzling , we know . Just stay with us . )
By the feud ’s final stage , after what is now known as theBattle of the Grapevine Creek(in which no one died but several member of the Hatfield kindred were appropriate , try and convicted of the New Year ’s Eve execution at the McCoy house ; one was finally hanged ) , 12 people had died — 13 , if you weigh Roseanna .
Who won the feud is argued to this day .
" By all definitions , the Hatfields came out on top , " says Richardson . " But here ’s the thing : If it happened today , the Hatfields would be the ones that everybody thought , ' These people ask to go to jailhouse . ' And that ’s what happened at the end of the story . "
Randall McCoy decease in 1914 after being seriously combust in a cooking ardour . He was 88 . He ’s entomb in a little plot of land in Pikesville , Kentucky .
William Anderson " Devil Anse " Hatfield died of pneumonia in 1921 in his cabin in Logan County , West Virginia . He was 88 . He ’s buried under a life - sized marble statue in a cemetery near Sarah Ann , West Virginia , in Logan County .
The Hatfield-McCoy Feud Today
The Hatfield - McCoy rivalry , as it was first portrayed by New York World reporter T.C. Crawford in the belated 1800s , was a fount of savagery carry out between two warring factions deep in the pitcher’s mound of Appalachia . Crawford ’s reportage , afterwards gathered in the ledger " An American Vendetta , " go even further in portraying the people of the area as uneducated , uncivilized and hick .
" When I was a kid , we used to vacation in Florida a muckle , and I can remember going down toCypress Gardens , and they had this body of water skiing show , and the water skiing show was the Hatfields and McCoys , " says Keeney . " They had the McCoy grouping and the Hatfield group , and then they had another skier that was dress as a copper . I think that was the late ' 80s , early ' 90s . I was a kid , but all that I mistily empathize is that we were being mocked . I jazz enough to know that I was being mocked . "
In fact , starting with Crawford ’s reporting in the World , much of America — much of the world — come to bonk West Virginia , Kentucky and all of Appalachia as an arena hopelessly lost in clock time , beset with violence , inbreeding and lawlessness . Crawford ’s coverage on the Hatfields and McCoys is credited with popularize the image of the toothless , simple hillbilly .
Before that time , the people of the expanse were better known as backwoodsman . believe Davy Crockett , Kit Carson and Daniel Boone . Once Crawford got hold of the Hatfield - McCoy story , though , the epitome alter . " In the West , the cowpuncher were domesticate the wilderness , " Keeney says . " In the East , these were people who had yet to overhaul . They were remnants of a bypast epoch . "
That image has endured . ( See Bugs Bunny in 1950 ’s " Hillbilly Hare , " an Ozarks reading of the Hatfields and McCoys , unadulterated with barbate , shoeless , overall - tire out , Moon - chug , trigger - happy hicks . )
Ironically , a2012 television miniseries , star Kevin Costner as Devil Anse and Bill Paxton as Randall McCoy , savour good reviews and cope to rework the image of the hillbilly , at least passably , even spark a boost in tourism to the area .
Today , in Pike County , Kentucky , visitant can snag an official map of the " Hatfields and McCoys Historic Feud Driving Tour " that include gravesites , the site of the papaw tree diagram executions , the land site of the hog test , and the site where Ellison " Cotton Top " Mounts — the son of Devil Anse ’s murdered brother Ellison — was cling , in effect ending the feud .
Every fall , the Hatfield McCoy Heritage Days Homecoming in Pikeville , Kentucky is attended by descendants of the family and curious visitors as a " solemnisation of the public security made between the Hatfields and McCoys . "
The locals have even come to embrace the narrative .
" You go into the ember fields of southerly West Virginia , " Keeney enunciate , " Devil Anse Hatfield is kind of seen as almost a mythological anatomy in that orbit . Everybody in southern West Virginia somehow or another claims to be associate to Devil Anse Hatfield .
" On one hand , it ’s kind of a point of pride . People have adopt it as something they kind of take pride in — even the stereotype , " he adds . " ' You say I ’m this style ? All right . I ’ll wear it as a badge of accolade . ' "
