The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story

by Dean King

  “It was the custom then, as well as now, although the law has placed serious restrictions upon the practice, to supply voters with copious quantities of whiskey,” journalist Charles Mutzenberg would write in 1917. “A candidate who failed to do his duty in this respect was certain to lose many votes, if not the chance of election. On the occasion in question, ‘moonshine’ liquor was plentiful. Both the Hatfields and McCoys and their adherents imbibed freely and during the day grew boisterous and belligerent.”17

  On Election Day, drunkenness was standard, but there was nothing standard about drunkenness in these parts. As one moonshiner put it, the taste of corn liquor was so “mild and meller” that it might “fall on you like a ton of bricks.”18 As a result, the impulse of the rabbit to spit in the face of the bulldog was never more on display. The good thing about drinking corn liquor, folks said, was that, although it would make you desperately thirsty, it would not give you a horrible hangover. The unrestrained election of 1882 was to be a little different, however. Not only would there be a hangover, but it would last a decade.

  Chapter 7

  Tumult on Election Day

  August 7–8, 1882

  A father of ten, and at forty still a physically powerful man, Deacon Ellison Hatfield was not only a respected Confederate Army veteran but also a beloved church stalwart. His house of worship was not in his home state of West Virginia, however, but across the Tug in Kentucky. On one Sunday of every month, you could find Ellison at the Baptist church on Pond Creek, where his cousin Preacher Anse Hatfield presided. Big Jim McCoy went there, as did just about everyone else. On a fair day, eight hundred or more horses and mules were tied up to trees and bushes outside, and twelve hundred people were eager to hear the service, many more than could fill the pews inside the eighteen-by-thirty-foot log structure.

  When the first hymn was announced, it was Deacon Ellison’s sign to call in the parishioners. He went to the front door and roared, “Oh, ya-as! Oh, ya-as! Preachin’ is now about to begin. You alls as kaint git to come in please move away and keep silence.” When he spoke, people listened. The hundreds left outdoors shifted away from the holy edifice to continue their conversations beyond earshot, waiting for Preacher Anse to come outside, mount the horse block, and go from raising the roof to reaching for heaven.1

  On August 7, 1882, Preacher Anse, an election official as well as a justice of the peace, felt confident that the day’s balloting process would be relatively harmonious, since Tom Stafford was an overwhelming favorite.

  Ellison Hatfield in Confederate dress. (West Virginia State Archives)

  But the preacher was wrong.

  Devil Anse’s brothers Ellison and Elias, who lived near the mouth of Mate Creek, crossed the Tug Fork that morning as much to socialize with their Kentucky cousins as to influence the vote. Constable Matt Hatfield and his wife, Alice, known as Maw, had a cellar in their home, on a bend in the Tug above the mouth of Blackberry Creek, where their cousins often stayed when they visited. Maw, who was fond of a corncob pipe, which was a woman’s pleasure while the men chewed, warmed her family and guests in blankets she had produced from sheep to loom.2 She liked the West Virginia Hatfields. They were part of the greater family she had married into. However, Big Ellison and Good ’Lias, as they were known, also brought baggage concerning their McCoy neighbors: It was Elias who had hunted down and arrested Squirrel Huntin’ Sam, and Ellison who had urged a conviction. Although the case had gone in the McCoys’ favor and some family had even testified against Sam, other McCoys resented what Elias and Ellison had done.3

  New York Sun reporter John R. Spears, who visited the area in 1888 to report on the feud, placed the blame for the violence this day on the local scourge—whiskey. According to Spears, by noon “the boom for Stafford had swelled to magnificent proportions.” The candidate of choice for both families would win by a landslide—it was as good as over—so, having reason to celebrate, the Hatfields naturally sent for more moonshine. Runners went to known purveyor Joe Davis’s place at the mouth of Blackberry Creek, and more jugs of applejack and corn liquor soon arrived, perhaps that made by Devil Anse himself. Locals later told Spears, “Davis ought never to have sold both apple and corn moonshine, for the mixture always did and always will provoke men to wrath.”

  There were two Elias Hatfields at the polling grounds that day. One was Good ’Lias, who was by most accounts of upstanding character and whose children would go on to remarkable heights, one of them, Henry, improbably becoming a medical doctor, a Republican politician, and West Virginia’s fourteenth governor. The other was Preacher Anse’s brother, a mean drunk who had earned himself the name Bad ’Lias.

  Bad ’Lias owed Tolbert McCoy a small sum of money for a fiddle he had recently purchased, and after all had partaken of the moonshine, Tolbert decided it was a good time to try to collect the balance due. Spears, who reported the events of this day in the greatest detail, claimed that Tolbert “wanted the money to buy moonshine with, and asked for it.” Bad ’Lias saw the situation differently, and in fact, according to Spears, “declared he did not owe Tolbert a cent.”4

  Tolbert did not need the money; he had a thriving business as a timber trader and a substantial interest in many rafts of logs floating down the Tug. If anything, it was a point of pride. The two began to argue. Backed up by his brothers, nineteen-year-old Pharmer and fifteen-year-old Bill, Tolbert dug in his heels.5

  The dispute occurred about a hundred yards from the beech tree where the election was being conducted. The men were drunk and loud. Tolbert’s wife, Mary, who had an infant daughter, Cora, to care for in addition to her stepson, Melvin, came to retrieve her husband. Sally also begged them to stop arguing. But Tolbert was immovable. Someone went and told Preacher Anse that trouble was brewing between his brother and the McCoys. Preacher Anse made his way to the group of bellicose men. He first admonished his brother, but, true to form, Bad ’Lias, now ornery drunk, would not heed his advice. Then Preacher Anse tried to reason with Tolbert: “Tolb,” he said, “Election Day is no day for a settlement.” But Tolbert, though he respected Preacher Anse, had worked himself into an explosive rage—as the McCoys had a tendency to do—and continued to insist that Bad ’Lias pay up. Finally, the McCoys were persuaded to move in the direction of the beech tree, back into the thick of the election proceedings. The spectators, however, only increased the tension.6

  In addition to Preacher Anse, there were a number of public officials in the crowd that day, including two Pike County constables, both Hatfields, yet as Tolbert and Bad ’Lias did the inevitable dance, no one attempted to intervene. The two went after each other. Spears, who adopted a somewhat sympathetic view of Bad ’Lias, claimed that Tolbert “jumped on him to pound him into paying the money.” Bad ’Lias had few friends, and fewer still who would interfere with a pigheaded drunk just to keep him from getting what he deserved. Older and more inebriated, he took the brunt of the blows.7

  Friends, foes, and kin quickly gathered around. Good ’Lias joined the crowd, along with his brother Big Ellison, who had been lying in the shade of a tree trying to avoid the heat.

  As Tolbert beat Bad ’Lias into submission, the law officers attempted to separate them, but a fever pitch had been reached, and there were multiple parties to watch. Good ’Lias showed his revolver, and Big Ellison held a nasty jackknife in his hand. Pharmer drew a pistol. Still, Constable Matt Hatfield managed to grab Tolbert while Constable Floyd Hatfield seized Bad ’Lias.8

  Big Ellison had the habit of wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat and took the kidding for it good-naturedly. Some say that in an attempt to defuse the tension with humor, he offered Tolbert his prized hat in exchange for forgetting about the money he was owed for the fiddle; it would feed their cattle for some time, he jested. But Tolbert, who by now was hell-bent on trouble, would not be appeased. According to some sources, he glared defiantly at the former Confederate lieutenant considered a hero by many and shouted in his face, “I’m hell on earth.” />
  Amused, Big Ellison looked Tolbert square in the eye and replied: “You’re a damn shit hog.”9

  But it seems more likely that, as others claim, Big Ellison suddenly became the aggressor. “Unfortunately for all concerned, the mixture of two kinds of moonshine had so worked on the mind of good Deacon Ellison Hatfield that he was not now a peacemaker,” Spears wrote, “as he had tried to be on a former occasion.” Big Ellison was incensed that Tolbert, the strongest of the McCoys, had picked a fight with and humiliated Bad ’Lias, one of the weakest of the Hatfields. Mutzenberg described Big Ellison as “enraged and on fire with copious drinks of whiskey” and said he challenged Tolbert “to fight a man of his size” (although Tolbert was no more his size than Bad ’Lias was Tolbert’s).10

  The bickering continued, and Big Ellison grew more animated. He waved his jackknife in Tolbert’s face.11 Hemmed in by the crowd and seeing that Tolbert might get stabbed if he continued to hold him, Constable Hatfield let him go.

  Spoiling for a fight, Tolbert leaped back within the ring of onlookers that had formed and whipped out his own curt but fat-bladed jackknife. He and Ellison sprang at each other, the crowd surging with their violence as they tried to observe the blows yet avoid them. Tolbert, smaller and quicker, sank his knife into Ellison’s side, so fiercely that it might have killed him if the blade had not been deflected by his rib cage. The towering Ellison—in Mutzenberg’s description, “straight as an arrow… six feet six in his stocking feet and weighing considerably over two hundred pounds”—responded by slashing through Tolbert’s felt hat, leaving a bloody groove from his left ear to the top of his forehead.

  The two men backed away from each other for an instant. Then, in less time than it took to catch their breath, they heaved together again. In the clash, Big Ellison’s blade accidentally snapped shut on his fingers, forcing him to drop it. He attacked with his massive, bleeding fists instead, pummeling Tolbert and spattering blood everywhere. One punch knocked Tolbert to the ground, and Big Ellison leaped on top of him, his left hand going for Tolbert’s throat while his right fist battered his rib cage. Desperate, Tolbert, who had managed to keep a grip on his knife, focused all his power on his flailing right arm. He stabbed, pulled the blade back, and stabbed again. The broad two-inch blade shredded Ellison’s side and hip, and then it did real damage, plunging into his stomach and piercing his liver. As the crowd converged, Tolbert’s youngest brother, Bill, also managed to reach in and stab Ellison several times with his knife, before throwing it down and running off.

  Preacher Anse, disturbed by the ferocity of the fight, tried to separate the two men, but it was beyond his powers at this point. With fire in his side and the realization suddenly upon him that this was no longer a struggle for subjection but one of life and death, Big Ellison let go of Tolbert’s neck and reached for a rock weighing no less than ten pounds. With both hands, the Civil War veteran lifted the rock overhead and then thrust downward with all his might toward Tolbert’s skull.

  At the same time, Pharmer, who had been braced for action and waving his revolver with the flow of the struggle, squeezed the trigger. Preacher Anse, who was crouching nearby, heard the report of the gun and then saw a slight twist of Ellison’s flax shirt as the bullet entered his back, just above the right suspender button. The slug deflected up into his body.12

  The impact of the shot jolted through Ellison’s core and loosened his grip on the stone. Tolbert shifted. The trajectory of the stone hiccupped, and it missed its mark, thumping the earth beside his head.

  Pharmer flung the smoking revolver to the ground and ran. Stunned by the sudden turn of events, Good ’Lias set off after the boy.

  Big Ellison sat back and groaned, “I’m shot and shot for dead.” Losing blood from multiple wounds, he struggled to his feet, stumbled over to a tree, squatted against it, and skidded into shock. Across the river, his pregnant wife was nursing their four-month-old son, Andy. Louis and Lydia, two and six, respectively, were running around her while Nancy, eight, and Emma Jane and Floyd, both ten, all demanded attention. His son Elliott, known as Indian, was fifteen. If their father died, he and Valentine, fourteen, would be the men of the house. Polly, twelve, would have to help her mother with the young ones. 13

  As he ran, Elias fired his revolver at the barefoot boy. Pharmer ran even faster, and Elias, who had been gulping moonshine, emptied all five chambers of the gun without hitting his mark. Matt Hatfield joined in the chase, and when Pharmer tripped and fell, the two men pounced on him. They dragged him back to the big beech tree at the polling station.14

  Tolbert, who was battered and spent, was also arrested. Moments later, his seventeen-year-old brother, Bud, who had been exploring a nearby spring when he heard the gunshots, arrived and surveyed the bloody battleground. He picked up the knife that fifteen-year-old Bill had used to stab Big Ellison. Joe Davis, the bootlegger who had provided the now-accursed mix of apple and corn whiskey, saw Bud holding the bloody knife and seized him. According to both John Spears and Truda McCoy, Bud was mistaken for his younger brother Bill. “The officers were puzzled. Which one of the boys had done the cutting?” Truda McCoy wrote. Bill was “somewhat large for his age” and Bud “about the same size…. They looked so much alike that even their closest neighbors could not always tell them apart.” Bud, who had not even seen the fight, protested his innocence, but when he learned that his younger brother was involved, he grew silent.15

  ELIAS TOOK CHARGE OF HIS wounded sibling and sent a messenger to tell their brothers Anse and Wall, who were at the Peter Creek precinct, about ten miles away, that Big Ellison was near death. In the meantime, he had to act on his own to try to save his brother. He decided that he needed to get him back across the river to West Virginia. With the help of some friends, he improvised a stretcher using quilts and poles and carried Ellison across the Tug Fork to the home of Anse Ferrell in Warm Hollow. Dr. Elliott Rutherford, better known simply as Doc, examined Ellison and found twenty-seven distinct stab wounds, including one that had penetrated his right lung. “The course of the bullet could not be traced,” Spears later wrote.16

  Back at the now subdued polling site, Constable Floyd Hatfield, at age twenty-four a much younger brother of Preacher Anse, had taken possession of the three McCoys, who had been arrested at around two in the afternoon and were kept under heavy guard for two more hours while others discussed what to do with them. It was decided that Floyd should take them to the Pikeville jail, some twenty-five miles to the southwest as the crow flies but farther over winding mountain trails. Since the journey would take ten hours on horseback, he decided to set out the next day. They would stay the night at his house, about two miles away.17

  Knowing that trouble was sure to come once Devil Anse saw his brother, especially when he heard the particulars of the fight, Preacher Anse advised Matt Hatfield to help guard the McCoys. He also urged them to set out for Pikeville immediately. Floyd refused; he had no desire to be on the treacherous mountain trails with three prisoners after dark or to spend the night under the stars while trying to keep them secure.

  The constables compromised with the preacher. Floyd directed the group to his place for supper. Afterward, they carried on farther up Blackberry Creek to John Hatfield’s place, where they, along with the boys’ father, Randall, would stay that night. Preacher Anse, in his capacity as justice of the peace, put the brothers in the charge of two Pike County deputies—more Hatfields: Tolbert and Joseph. Matt and Floyd were relieved of that duty.

  Early—but as it turned out, not early enough—the following morning, Tuesday, August 8, the two deputies, several other guards, and the three prisoners and their father set out for Pikeville. By the time they began their journey, news of the fight had spread along the river and up the creeks and branches like moonshine on payday. In West Virginia, Wall Hatfield had already rounded up his two sons-in-law Doc and Plyant Mahon and their brother Sam. Doc and Sam were thirty-two-year-old twins, Plyant a year older. All three were lumberj
acks who worked for Devil Anse. They set out for Kentucky at dawn, following Pound Mill Run and heading up the banks of Blackberry Creek. There they met up with Elias, who told them that Big Ellison had been moved across the river and that the McCoy boys were on their way to Pikeville. Wall and Elias powwowed and decided to send the Mahons back home and to move fast to waylay the Pikeville-bound party by themselves.18

  After visiting Big Ellison, who was barely clinging to life at Anse Ferrell’s house, Devil Anse had spent the night with his men, including his son Johnse, in an abandoned house beside the Tug. In the morning, the Mahon brothers joined them, and they all continued on to Preacher Anse’s, where they ate. Other Hatfields and their allies were headed for Blackberry Creek.19

  THE KENTUCKY DEPUTIES TOLBERT AND Joseph Hatfield and their contingent had gone less than a mile from John Hatfield’s house when Wall and Elias caught up to them. Wall, himself a justice of the peace for more than a decade, albeit in West Virginia, not Kentucky, coolly made the Hatfield case that the McCoys should be tried not in Pikeville but in the district in which the crime had occurred so that the testimony of Doc Rutherford, the doctor attending Ellison, could be heard without delay. Wall might merely have been stalling, since the crime did occur in Pike County, not Logan County, where the Hatfields intended to take the prisoners. Fearing for the safety of his sons, Randall vigorously opposed the idea. But after conferring with each other, the Kentucky constables—Wall’s cousins—agreed to the request.”20