The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story

by Dean King

  At the same time, Johnse and his younger brother William, better known as Cap, developed into prime salesmen, taking advantage of their extensive network of family and friends on both sides of the Tug. In Kentucky, they racked up dozens of trafficking indictments but avoided jail time. The indictments were something of a formality, since Kentucky law required grand jurors to issue an indictment for any legal infraction they happened to witness during the period prior to being called up. Many of the grand jurors were Hatfield customers, men who would not violate their oaths but who were not keen to prosecute either. Johnse and Cap understood the jurymen’s obligation and did not take the indictments personally.

  IN A BRASH PLAN that would profoundly affect property owners on both sides of the river, Devil Anse proposed to the authorities of Logan County in 1880 that he be allowed to dam up the Tug Fork. He chose to ignore the fact that he would be impeding traffic up and down the channel and chose to see only the benefits the dam might provide. His plan was to build a water gristmill and sawmill on his land at a shoal where the Tug met Peter Creek, which would be useful to the public, not to mention profitable to him, especially since it would allow him to mill his own corn for moonshine.

  Devil Anse seems to have seen the river simply as another watercourse through the area and not as a state boundary. His great-grandfather was buried on the Kentucky side, and he had more kin there than in West Virginia. He and his brothers and sons routinely influenced Kentucky elections and showed up at the polls, even though none of them could cast a vote. Devil Anse applied to the court to appoint commissioners to study his proposal. Despite the audacity of the plan, the court duly appointed a panel that included Uriah McCoy, Dr. Elliott Rutherford—a friend of Devil Anse’s—and several others to consider the proposition and report back around Election Day in October.3

  In the isolated hills of the Tug Valley, where work went on seven days a week year-round, Election Day was a welcome diversion. Families finished their chores early and prepared for a convivial day at the polling grounds. While baptisms, ceremonial foot-washings (practiced by the Hardshell Baptists), and funerals allowed for a certain amount of socializing, Election Day was more unbridled, like a wedding but without the preacher. It also attracted a greater spread of people. In these hills, where grievances had little room to dissipate, so too the young had few chances to make new acquaintances. It was routine for cousins to marry cousins and neighbors to marry neighbors, and on Election Day, matchmakers and parents with eligible sons and daughters—boys of seventeen and up and girls of fourteen or more—kept a vigilant eye for marriage prospects. The women all wore their best dresses and bonnets. News and gossip flowed freely. Gingerbread, hickory-nut pies, and other treats were served to like-minded voters and also sold. The men bartered, traded stories and information, played fiddles and coon-gut banjos, and drank copiously.4

  Only men twenty-one or older could vote, and that vote had a value in whiskey. The price of a man’s allegiance was a healthy tot. Candidates all had to vie in this liquid manner or face losing. On this particular Election Day, in the spring of 1880, a number of Hatfields crossed the Tug to join in the excitement around the Pike County polls, which were located beneath a massive beech tree at the mouth of Hatfield Branch. The impressive tree was in Jerry Hatfield’s yard near his apple orchard. Although the West Virginia Hatfields could not vote here, Eph of All’s grave was on the hillside above the polling site, and the family already had an outsize presence, with three hundred voters by name or marriage outnumbering almost all other families in the area. The West Virginia Hatfields gathered here to socialize with their cousins and to see to their interests. Together with the whiskey drinking, it could be a recipe for trouble, but on this occasion, tensions were eased by the fact that the Hatfields and the McCoys were supporting the same candidate.5

  Devil Anse and Vicey’s eighteen-year-old son, Johnse, was not eligible to vote in the election and did not much care about politics anyway. He did, however, have an abiding interest in pretty young women. He needed to look no farther than his uncle Wall, who was married but known to have fathered dozens of children with various widows and otherwise unattached women, to see an exemplar of the mountain Casanova. Weighing a lean 165 pounds, with blond hair and blue eyes and an outlaw’s swagger, Johnse had the looks and charm to be an apprentice of just such a life. A bootlegger, he roamed both sides of the Tug selling his father’s moonshine whiskey and always sported plenty of heat for protection. His brother Cap later described him as a great boozer, a fine shot with a pistol and a rifle, and a heartless lover. Twenty-seven arrest warrants, mostly on concealed-weapons charges (and the attendant fines, appealing to sheriffs), awaited him every time he entered Kentucky, enhancing his reputation in the eyes of many of the independence-loving mountaineers.6

  One look at the eye-catching Roseanna McCoy with her wavy auburn hair and Johnse was captivated. Surprisingly, he had never noticed this gem from Pike County before and had to ask his uncle Jim Vance who she was. Roseanna was tall and slim with creamy skin, and at twenty-one—the ninth of Randall and Sally McCoy’s sixteen children—she was beguilingly older than Johnse. In this place, where girls often married before the age of sixteen, she was an unusually ripe fruit to be still on the vine. She had passed a few of her years in the elegant Pikeville home of Perry and Martha Cline, taking care of their children, and could thus be said to have seen some of the world. Crazy Jim warned Johnse not to mess with Randall McCoy’s daughter, but he shrugged off the advice and wasted no time in introducing himself.7

  If Roseanna resisted, her resistance wilted in his warm gaze. As the two chatted, Randall got wind of it and strode toward his daughter, scowling. He stopped in the shade of a tree and called her to him. He told her plainly to forget mixing it up with Johnse, and then he returned to his politicking. But Roseanna was at an age where finding a man was something of a fixation, and Johnse had her attention. She was too old to be living at home, and, Hatfield or not, he interested her. They strolled around to the back of the house, where some of the Hatfields were circled up, singing and dancing to the accompaniment of a banjo. But the couple shied away from the group and eventually walked into the woods. When they finally emerged at the end of the day, they found that Randall had left, thinking that Roseanna had gone ahead with her mother and the other women.

  Now Roseanna and Johnse mounted his horse and rode toward the Tug. Fearless in their affection, they covered only several miles, but they crossed a vast distance.

  When they arrived at the Hatfields’ house, Devil Anse was not there. All Vicey could do was gasp and shake her head. They would have to spend the night there at least. After Devil Anse returned late that night, Vicey told him what had happened. Devil Anse decided to sleep on it.

  In the morning, Johnse told his father that he intended to marry Roseanna. But Devil Anse had already been stewing on the matter and told his son that he would not allow it. Vicey urged him to let the two marry, but Anse was resolute. He did not kick Roseanna out of the house, however.8

  Johnse knew better than to argue with his father. He and especially Roseanna were now in a predicament: If she went home, she would be the subject of her father’s wrath and her brothers’ scorn. She would also be separated from Johnse and would surely lose him. If she stayed, she would almost certainly worsen her troubles at home but might have a chance to hold on to Johnse, since Vicey was on their side and perhaps Anse would soften.

  Johnse Hatfield. (Dr. Coleman C. Hatfield Collection, courtesy of Dr. Arabel E. Hatfield)

  Across the Tug, Randall at first worried about his daughter’s safety, but he quickly learned from neighbors that Roseanna was at the Hatfields’. Then he became enraged. Still, there were codes, and he expected that Devil Anse would respect them. Such respect, however, was not immediately forthcoming. Marriages happened quickly in these hills and were often consummated before a couple could exchange vows. That was acceptable enough, and Roseanna was but one of his sixteen children,
far from his only concern. Much to the frustration of Sally, who begged him to forgive the couple for their rashness and accept the union, Randall wrote off his daughter. To him, she was a Hatfield now, and he declared that he would never have anything to do with her again.

  Roseanna McCoy. (West Virginia State Archives)

  Later that month, however, Randall learned that the two had in fact not married but were living in sin, sleeping together in a bed in the same room with Devil Anse and Vicey and much of the rest of the family. While Randall could begrudgingly accept losing his daughter, he could not accept this disgrace to the McCoy name.

  He weighed his options, including an armed raid on the Hatfields. That would be bloody at best, though, and reclaiming his daughter that way—a daughter he had already turned his back on—might cost him a couple of sons. He decided instead to ask a friend, John Hatfield, who was half McCoy, to go to the Hatfield place and deliver a message to his daughter. It was brief: “Come home now.”9

  John delivered the message, but Roseanna refused to leave, and he was forced to return empty-handed. Predictably, Randall did not take the news well. He growled to Sally that he would bring his daughter home “if I have to kill every Hatfield in West Virginia to do it.” He then sent John Hatfield back to Devil Anse’s with an ultimatum for Roseanna: Return home now, or I am coming to get you, and I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me.10

  Here, then, was the next red flag of the feud. While Johnse’s behavior regarding Roseanna was reckless and possibly dishonorable, and while Devil Anse’s response was peevish and vindictive, it was Randall in his fury who crossed the line: issuing an ultimatum in this circumstance was akin to declaring war.

  John Hatfield, who was an officer of the law in addition to being a cousin of both families, told Roseanna that her father meant business and was ready to come in with lethal force. This time Roseanna buckled under the pressure. For the peace of the families, she decided to return home in shame. Randall did not beat her—he considered her beneath it—but he never spoke to her again. From that day forward, he acted as if she did not exist and walked away whenever she tried to talk to him. Even feud chronicler Truda McCoy, while trying to put her kin in the best light, admitted that he was an intolerant and angry man. “God forgives the sinner,” she wrote, “but Randall McCoy was not so lenient.”11

  ON THE OCTOBER 12 ELECTION DAY in West Virginia, voters in the Magnolia District of Logan County reelected Wall Hatfield justice of the peace and elected Elias Hatfield constable, giving the Hatfield family two powerful positions in the community. The brothers would appear before a judge at the Logan County Courthouse to take their oaths of office, and their four-year terms would start the first of the following year. The bonds were substantial, but the Hatfields had means and were capable of forming alliances with others of wealth and power who could help them put up the money. In December, Wall, Jim Vance, and Moses Chafin would also be appointed to review a proposal for building a road from the mouth of Thacker Creek to the head of it and over to Grapevine Fork of Beech Creek. Crazy Jim would eventually be commissioned to oversee its construction.12

  It was sometime in the latter part of October that Roseanna moved back home. She was shunned not only by Randall but also by her brothers. With winter coming, it was a busy time. Hogs had to be collected, slaughtered, and smoked. It was a time to chop wood, can vegetables, hunt, and cure meat for the winter. Roseanna went about her chores, and in the days leading up to Christmas, she realized that she was pregnant with Johnse’s baby. It was only a matter of time before her slender frame would reveal its secret. Roseanna knew she had to do something drastic or her life was going to be even more miserable. She went to see her aunt Betty McCoy for help.

  Aunt Betty, who was married to Sally’s brother Allen and who was sometimes called Betty Allen to further identify her among the expansive family tree, lived in Stringtown (now Burnwell), half a mile up the Tug from the mouth of the McCoy Branch. The mother of eleven children, she was a devout but tolerant woman and agreed to take in her desperate niece.

  When Johnse discovered that Roseanna had moved out of her parents’ house, he determined to see her again. Now, however, he was a marked man. He might get away with running moonshine, since most mountain people considered making and selling whiskey their right and agreed that the government could be damned for interfering in it, but sneaking over the border to see Roseanna was a different story. The McCoy clan, ashamed and irate over the scandal, knew Johnse would return to Kentucky to sell whiskey sooner or later. Randall’s twenty-six-year-old son, Tolbert, asked Pike County sheriff Joe Radcliffe to issue a warrant for Johnse’s arrest for carrying a concealed deadly weapon.13 With an eye toward the potential income from Johnse’s many fines, Radcliffe was only too happy to deputize Tolbert. He also offered a reward for Johnse’s arrest.

  Word soon spread among the McCoys that Johnse had been seen skulking around Allen and Betty’s place. It was true. Although Aunt Betty would not let Johnse in the house, she otherwise did not object to his visits, hoping for the best between the two. Randall sent his teenage sons Bud and Bill to spy on the house and let him know when Johnse showed up again.14

  Tolbert and his seventeen-year-old brother, Pharmer, in turn followed Roseanna. They watched her from a safe distance one day as she left the Pond Creek road and climbed up a dreen, the dry bed of a creek. The brothers quietly turned up the mountainside, gained the dreen from above, and followed it down. Rounding a stand of bushes, they came upon the couple making love. All parties were taken aback. Tolbert and Pharmer raised their guns. They cursed their sister, not for fornicating—they were not prudish but matter-of-fact people who lived close to the earth and to their livestock and were used to couples and singles sleeping in the same room—but for doing it with a hated Hatfield and betraying her family. They seized Johnse’s guns and placed him under arrest. After binding his hands tight, they shoved him roughly down the gully and onto the Pond Creek road.15

  Humiliated and afraid, Roseanna watched how roughly her brothers were treating Johnse and could only imagine what would happen when her father got ahold of him. In an instant, she made a fateful decision, one that her family would find even more unforgivable than her choice of a Hatfield suitor or her decision to have sex with him without getting married first. She knew she had to act decisively, and she hurried around the mountain near Stringtown to the farm of her cousin Tom Stafford.16

  With no time to try to find Tom, she tore off a strip of her petticoat, tied a loop in it with a slipknot, and made a makeshift hackamore bridle. She slipped it over the nose of one of his horses, a bay. Never mind that she was several months pregnant—she threw a leg over the animal’s bare back and dug her heels into its sides, lurching into a gallop.17

  Roseanna crossed the mountain over a well-marked route, later known as Sledge Road. She topped the ridge, then sped down toward the Tug River through McGinnis Hatfield’s cornfields. She forded the river in the shoals of the Hatfield bottom. On the West Virginia side, she raced on to the logging camp at Elias’s, where Devil Anse and Elias and a number of other Hatfields were cutting timber.18

  When he heard what Roseanna had to say, Devil Anse moved with the assurance of the military leader that he had been. Within half an hour, he had raised a small force, including several of his sons, his cousin Floyd, and a few neighbors.19 Elias and his wife had been standing there when Roseanna rushed up. Elias was tall and powerfully built, though he had the sloping shoulders typical of the family, with high cheekbones and sharp features beneath a short rough mustache and sideburns. A journalist later described his face as “very decidedly English in its lines,” with a “broad forehead, deep-set, clear, blue eyes, a big Roman nose, hooked, and a very determined chin.” It was clear that trouble was brewing, and Elias’s wife told him not to go with the group; Elias, who considered himself a man of peace, wavered. Devil Anse glared at him. “Come with me,” he demanded, “or you are no Hatfield.” Elias went.

>   Devil Anse was dead certain that his son was being taken to Pikeville to jail, and he had an idea where he could cut the party off if he and his men rode fast enough. In short order, they forded the Tug Fork and set off at a gallop, heading for the top of Stringtown Mountain. The McCoy contingent, which now also included Randall and Big Jim, was shocked when they crested the peak to find a troop of well-armed Hatfields waiting for them, not only led by Devil Anse but also possessing overwhelming force.20

  Among the fiercest in the waiting group was Johnse’s brother Cap, who was only seventeen but was soon to become one of the most vehement and hated feudists. Cap was mean-looking, snub-nosed, and wall-eyed. “Next to eating, killing was Cap’s favorite sport,” Truda McCoy wrote. “He loved to watch things die. When he was still small, he would dissect frogs while they were still alive, and stick terrapins with his knife. Later, he insisted on killing the chickens that his mother prepared for their Sunday dinner. He liked to see them flop all over the yard.” He had yet to commit a homicide, she noted, but was eager to get his first notch.21

  When Cap was ten, out of curiosity, he had picked up a rock and used it to hammer a percussion cap for a firearm. The charge exploded and blinded him in one eye. The other eye, left a milky blue, darted around trying to do the work of two good eyes, giving him a disturbing appearance. The accident had earned him his nickname. There was another factor that might have contributed to his antisocial behavior, though it is impossible to date: after Cap died, doctors found a fragment of a bullet inside his skull, pressing on his brain.22