The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys: The True Story

by Dean King

  10. William Ely, The Big Sandy Valley, 203–4.

  11. John A. Velke III, The True Story of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, 8–9.

  12. Louisville Courier-Journal, “Death by Law,” and Virgil Carrington Jones, The Hatfields and the McCoys, 179.

  13. According to the 1880 U.S. Census, Elison [sic] Mounts was born in 1864. U.S. Census of 1880, Magnolia, Logan, West Virginia, Daniel Mounts household, sheet 299A, family 2.

  Chapter 1: War Comes to the Big Sandy

  1. Jean Thomas, Big Sandy, 73–80, and Jerome Doolittle, The Southern Appalachians, 54–59.

  2. Charles Darwin took a keen interest in the spike-horn, noting that its sharp single horn, projecting unicorn-like from the brow, allowed it to run more swiftly through forests than the common buck with its cumbersome rack and that the single horn was an even “more effective weapon.” This exemplar of natural selection was gaining on its more common relation, propagating the “peculiarity in a constantly increasing ratio” and might one day surpass it in numbers, he theorized. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, xvii, 5.

  3. Doolittle, 148–51. The story of the bear hunt is adapted from Coleman C. Hatfield and Robert Y. Spence, The Tale of the Devil, 20–23. Descriptions of Devil Anse are found in Sanders, “Emma Hatfield Reminisces.” While there is no Big Pigeon Mountain on contemporary topographical maps, Pigeon Creek passes through the area. Horsepen Mountain, at 2,534 feet the highest peak in southwestern West Virginia, is also nearby.

  4. Doolittle, 154; “Logan County History,” www.polisci.wvu.edu/wv/Logan/loghistory.html; and “Early History of Logan County, West Virginia,” SHG Resources: State Handbook & Guide, www.shgresources.com/wv/counties/logan/. In the 1990s, a group I was with spotted a wildcat in the woods near Helvetia, in eastern West Virginia.

  5. Hatfield and Spence, 20–23, and Helen Vance Anderson and John Vance, Tug River Memories, 52–55. Hatfield and Spence (18) said Nancy Vance was the illegitimate daughter of the Reverend John Ferrell and Betsy Vance. They said Big Eph was “six-feet-four inches and weighed 260 pounds.” While various accounts claim Big Eph was six feet six or more, his service records put him at six feet even.

  6. Hatfield and Spence, 18.

  7. Ibid., 23–24, and Thomas, 179. The nicknames used for Anse Hatfield—as well as their timing and intent—have been debated. Writing in the New York Sun in 1888, John R. Spears called him “Bad” Anse, as did the Louisville Courier-Journal, which explained that this was to distinguish him from another Anse Hatfield, presumably “Preacher” Anse. In what is the first verifiable use of the nickname that came to be more popular, T. C. Crawford, also writing in 1888 in the New York World (and the only reporter at that time to meet him face-to-face), said he was “commonly known as Devil Ance.” Hatfield and Spence gave several anecdotes indicating that the name was a term of endearment.

  8. Ely, 203–4.

  9. Ibid.; Truda McCoy, 239; Mutzenberg, 49–50 ; Ron G. Blackburn and Betty Howard, “Ephraim Hatfield Genealogy Chart”; and John Frederick Dorman, “Petitions from Kentuckians to the Virginia Legislature,” The Kentucky Genealogist 11 (Jan.–Mar. 1969): 27. Four McCoys and nine Hatfields signed the petition to the Kentucky legislature. A partially legible signature transcribed on the petition by Dorman as “Asa Harmon ‘Rumby’ ” is possibly Asa Harmon McCoy, and thus a fifth McCoy to support the effort, which, had it passed, might have saved his life.

  10. Truda McCoy, 11, 308; Kephart, 326–27, 342–43 ; Margaret Hoffman, “Hatfields, McCoys Bury the Hatchett,” 9; and Jeffrey Carleton Hause, “Appendix 4: Allied Families: McCoy Family Genealogy,” Sons of Johann Hause Genealogy, www.hausegenealogy.com/mccoy.html.

  11. Jeffrey C. Weaver, The Civil War in Buchanan and Wise Counties: Bushwhackers’ Paradise, 18; Jones, 16.

  12. James M. Prichard, “The Devil at Large: Anse Hatfield’s War,” in Virginia at War 1863, 58; Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud: William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield in the Civil War, 65. Harmon McCoy was not unusual in being a slaveholder in Kentucky, where slaves were nearly 20 percent of the population.

  13. Prichard, 61; Howard, “Descendants of William ‘Yankee Bill’ Francis” and “Descendants of Thompson Hatfield.” After the war, Thompson Hatfield would marry a McCoy, Mary, in Pike County. According to Johnse Hatfield’s cousin Emma Hatfield (Sanders, “Emma Hatfield Reminisces”), Johnse is pronounced with two syllables, as noted.

  14. Prichard, 59. Devil Anse might have previously served in the Confederate 129th Militia, leading to his commission as an officer. Although he would frequently be referred to as Captain Hatfield, lieutenant is the highest recorded rank that he attained.

  15. Prichard, 65; Kentucky, Pike County Circuit Court Cases 2177 and 2183; and G. Elliott Hatfield, The Hatfields, 188, 192. Also, correspondence between Lee Crutchfield and Betty Howard in her “Descendants of William ‘Yankee Bill’ Francis.” The Dec. 17, 1862, Richmond Daily Dispatch called the Peter Creek home guard “a terror along the Kentucky State Line.”

  16. Dan Cunningham, “The Horrible Butcheries of West Virginia,” West Virginia History, 40, and Prichard, 62–63. After the war, only the other man, Riley Sanson, would be charged with the murder. Though Devil Anse was implicated, during the trial he was called on only to testify on behalf of Sanson, who he said was a regular soldier following orders.

  17. Weaver, Civil War in Buchanan, 169.

  18. John R. Spears, “A Mountain Feud: A Remarkable Story of Murder and Outrage,” New York Sun; Prichard, 58, 66, from the Logan Banner, Dec. 2, 1938; G. Elliott Hatfield, 211; Cunningham, “Horrible Butcheries,” 41; and Howard, “Descendants of William ‘Yankee Bill’ Francis.”

  Chapter 2: Un-Civil Warfare

  1. Prichard, 60, 69, and Robert Baker and Brian E. Hall, “Organization and History of the 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Regiment and Company ‘F,’ ” Blue Gray Historical Group, www.bluegrayhistoricalgroup.org/39thktymtdinfhis.htm.

  2. Prichard, 66–68. There is much confusion regarding the Logan Wildcats. For example, G. Elliott Hatfield (197) said that Devil Anse “served as a Lt. and Capt. in Co. A, 45th Va. (Confederate) Infantry, famous ‘Logan Wildcats.’ ” But the Logan Wildcats were actually Company D of the Thirty-Sixth Virginia Infantry, assembled in June 1861. Led by officers Henry Beckley, James Nighbert, Dick Ferrell, and others, the company of eighty-five mustered into the Confederate Army under Colonel John McCausland at Charleston. Reorganized, it served at Fort Donelson under General John B. Floyd and in the Shenandoah Valley from 1864 to 1865. According to West Virginia historian Robert Spence (in e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia), a band of armed irregulars active in Logan and Wyoming counties late in the war under Devil Anse also called themselves the Logan Wildcats. There is no known muster of this group of irregulars.

  3. Prichard, 68–69. After the war, many of the raiders, including the Hatfields, Johnson McCoy, and Jake Cline, would be sued. In an 1869 deposition, Devil Anse testified for Cline and confirmed that Cline had been forced to go on the raid.

  4. Prichard, 70, and Cunningham, “Horrible Butcheries,” 40.

  5. Cunningham, “Horrible Butcheries,” 40. Cunningham, perhaps with excessive zeal, discusses Devil Anse’s wartime record and specifically accuses him of these crimes, though the records show that it was often associates of his who pulled the trigger. Prichard, 61–62. Regarding Charlie Mounts’s death, while Cunningham might have heard it differently, postwar court records indicate that a Virginia State Line party scouting on Peter Creek shot and killed Mounts in a gunfight. Devil Anse may well have led the party.

  6. Prichard, 71, and G. T. Swain, History of Logan County West Virginia, 113–14. This was probably tongue-in-cheek, as McClellan was popular with his men but considered a tepid fighter.

  7. Truda McCoy, 11, and Prichard, 72. War records show several prisoner-of-war entries for a Randall McCoy from Pike County, but it is impossible to say with certainty which, if any, pertains to the Rand
all McCoy of the feud. According to tradition as well as historian Leonard Roberts (Truda McCoy, 225), Ellison Hatfield “fought for the Confederacy from the heroic stand at Gettysburg to surrender with Robert E. Lee at Appomattox.” However, while he did serve a long stint, he probably did not see service at either of these monumental events.

  8. Creelman, “Bloody Border War”; Richard Vance enlisted in the Virginia State Line in Dec. 1862 and died at Wytheville in Jan. 1863.

  9. Cunningham, “Horrible Butcheries,” 41–42, and Truda McCoy, 6–11. Prichard (58, 62, 73–74) compared Cunningham’s account with other accounts and added details. Charlotte Sanders added details from Lark McCoy through his family in the Williamson Daily News (“Ollie Jane McCoy Smith Going Strong at 87”). Some say it was one of the slaves, Pete, who went to warn McCoy (Hatfield and Spence, 164–66, and Anderson and Vance, 145). L. D. Hatfield (31) tried to shift the blame to Harmon and exonerate Devil Anse, who he said “was confined in his bed with fever” when “he received a letter from Harmon McCoy stating that he (Harmon) was coming to kill him.” According to L.D., Jim Vance was at Devil Anse’s when the letter arrived and told him to look out for Harmon that night, “but if he don’t get here tonight you need not be afraid.” The next morning Harmon McCoy was found dead.

  10. Prichard, 73–74 ; Sanders, “Ollie Jane McCoy Smith”; and Truda McCoy, 11. Waller said that Harmon’s killing was “the expression of a consensus which branded him an outcast and a traitor,” which, as we have seen, is incorrect. Although Waller relied on Truda McCoy at other times, she ignored her assertion that the murder of Harmon would have been avenged if Randall had been present, arguing instead that “there was no attempt at retaliation, public or private—strong evidence that even Asa Harmon’s family was not prepared to defend his behavior.”

  11. Truda McCoy, 11.

  Chapter 3: Timbering the Sublime Forest

  1. Governor Henry D. Hatfield in his Mar. 4, 1913, inaugural address.

  2. Doolittle, 148–51, and George R. Stewart, Names on the Land, 139–40. Yet another possible source is the Cherokee word tugulu, which means “the fork of a stream or river.”

  3. Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 18, 37–38, 56; Donnelly, 29–30 ; L. D. Hatfield, 10–16 ; G. Elliott Hatfield, 71, 188; Sanders, “Emma Hatfield Reminisces”; Helen Blankenship Roesch, “Hatfields of Southwest Virginia, Kentucky,” Henry P. Scalf Papers; and Thomas, 11, 20, 95–96, 136–38.

  4. Anderson and Vance, 3–4, 52–55 ; Lee Maynard, Crum, 101; and Truda McCoy, 226.

  5. Truda McCoy, 4–6 ; Doolittle, 54–57, 59, 63, 147; Charles R. Bourland Jr., “Biography of Henry Solomon White,” 5; and Thomas D. Clark, “Kentucky Logmen,” Journal of Forest History, 150.

  6. Clark, 150–53.

  7. New York Sun, “Logging on the Big Sandy.”

  8. West Virginia, “Ellison v. Torpin et al.,” 416–17, and Waller, 41–44.

  Chapter 4: The Importance of Razorbacks

  1. Merle T. Cole, “Soldiers of the New Empire: The Gaujot Brothers of Mingo County,” West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly.

  2. Michael A. Broadstone, History of Greene County, Ohio, 421, and L. D. Hatfield, 9.

  3. Truda McCoy, 281; Swain, History of Logan County, 184; Jones, 18; Donnelly, 1–2 ; and Matewan.com, “Matewan, West Virginia.”

  4. Anderson and Vance, 147. “I have often been asked why anyone would be willing to kill someone over a lowly swine,” John Vance, who penned one of the chapters in his sister’s Tug River Memories, told me. “My answer has always been the same—survival.”

  5. “Mingo County,” West Virginia Cyclopedia, www.wvexp.com/index.php/Mingo/County (Jan. 10, 2011); John Vance, “The Hatfield and McCoy Feud Connection,” in Anderson, 146–47 ; and United States Department of Agriculture, Fourth and Fifth Annual Reports of the Bureau of Animal Industry for the Year 1887 and 1888, 216–17.

  6. Anderson, 146–47, and Mutzenberg, 32–34.

  7. In his memoir, Sam McCoy (Squirrel Huntin’ Sam McCoy, 60–61) gave an account of this dispute that, while uncorroborated by others, offered the detail and ring of truth. However, Sam, the only feudist to record his memories in full—in 1931, at the age of seventy-one—presents problems for historians because his memories were often at odds with the known sequence of events. After this point in his account of the razorback dispute, he conflated elements of other feud episodes with this one. Truda McCoy’s account of this event (13–19) differed in that she did not mention Thomas Stafford. Instead, Randall McCoy went directly to Floyd Hatfield’s farm, where he discovered what he thought were his hogs. Stafford and Floyd Hatfield were married to Staton sisters.

  8. Spears, “Mountain Feud”; Sam McCoy, 61; Jones, 18, 19, n. 1, 169–70 ; Truda McCoy, 222, n. 2; Donnelly, 2; Waller, xiv–xvii; and L. D. Hatfield, 17, 20 (caption). Devil Anse and Floyd were the sons of brothers Eph and John Hatfield (respectively), who were a year apart in age, and Nancy and Isabella Vance (respectively), sisters of the feudist Crazy Jim Vance. Spears incorrectly identified Floyd Hatfield as Devil Anse’s brother and Matthew Hatfield as the presiding justice of the peace. Donnelly incorrectly identified Floyd as a son of George Hatfield; he was a son of John Hatfield and a cousin of both Preacher Anse and Devil Anse. Jones and others mistakenly identified Randall McCoy and Floyd Hatfield as brothers-in-law. In Mutzenberg’s account (32–34), Floyd Hatfield drove a number of hogs from the forest and confined them in a pen at Stringtown. A few days later, Randall McCoy saw the hogs, claimed they were his, and demanded their return. Floyd refused to hand them over, leading to a hearing before Wall Hatfield.

  9. Truda McCoy (16) noted that for this trial “jurymen would be as scarce as hen’s teeth” because no one wanted to fall on the wrong side of either family.

  10. Jones, 19, 273, and Truda McCoy, 16.

  11. Spears, “Mountain Feud,” and Sam McCoy, 61.

  12. Jones, 19–20.

  13. Mutzenberg, 32–34 ; Spears, “Mountain Feud”; Truda McCoy, 280–81 ; and Waller, xiv. Most chroniclers of the feud do not differentiate between the elder Bill Staton and the younger. Mutzenberg and Spears made this distinction, though Spears confused the issue by saying that “old Bill Staton” was a “brother of Floyd Hatfield’s wife, Esther” and that “his sister Sarah Ann was married to his brother, Ellison Hatfield.” In fact, old Bill Staton was the father of Esther and Sarah Ann, and young Bill Staton was their brother. Most remarkably, while some histories point out that the elder Staton daughter, Sarah Ann, was married to Ellison Hatfield, none point out that Staton’s youngest daughter, Esther (born 1849; listed as “Polly Easter” in G. Elliott Hatfield, 198), was actually married to Floyd Hatfield (born 1847).

  14. Truda McCoy, 17.

  15. Leck Hatfield was probably Lexious Hatfield, Preacher Anse’s next older brother, born in 1833 and married to Lydia (Musick) Smith in 1859. G. Elliott Hatfield, 192.

  16. Truda McCoy, 17, and Waller, 64, 79; also, Jones, 17–24, and Mutzenberg, 32–34. Jones (20) mistakenly called Selkirk McCoy the “husband of a Hatfield.” Otis K. Rice (The Hatfields and the McCoys, 55) wrongly suggested that he gave “testimony against the claims of Randolph McCoy.”

  17. Spears, “Mountain Feud,” and Swain, 184–85. This incident is based on Spears, who mistakenly called Ellison Hatfield Floyd’s brother. He was a cousin of Floyd’s and a brother-in-law. Jones, writing later, mentioned it in one sentence with distinctly different detail: “The only demonstration of violence came when Randolph McCoy called Bill Staton, one of the Hatfield witnesses, a liar and hurled a rock at him” (21).

  18. Sam McCoy, 62; Truda McCoy, 249–50, 252–53, 280–81 ; Waller, 62–65 ; Mutzenberg, 32; and Jones, 21–22. Lon and Lark McCoy were the sons of Allen McCoy, nephews of Sally, Randall’s wife; this Lark is not to be confused with the Lark who was the son of Asa Harmon McCoy.

  19. Sam McCoy, 62–63 (regularized name spelling), and Truda McCoy, 226.

  20. Spears, “Mountain Feud”
; Sam McCoy, 93, 132; Mutzenberg, 34; Waller, 65–66 (trial 1878), 272, n. 31; Truda McCoy, 314; Swain, 184–85 ; and Charlotte Sanders, “ ‘Squirrel Huntin’ Sam’ McCoy Played Active Role in Feud,” Williamson Daily News.

  21. Truda McCoy, 280–81, 311, 315–17. Truda McCoy gave the birth dates of 1855 for Squirrel Huntin’ Sam and 1860 for Paris. However, Sam McCoy (132) gave Paris’s birthday as Nov. 27, 1854, making him a year older than Sam.

  22. Mutzenberg, 35; Sam McCoy, 124; and Sanders, “McCoy Played Active Role.” Crawford (American Vendetta, 19) got this backward, with Paris pulling the trigger as Sam grapples with Staton. In Sam McCoy (93), Sam’s son Hobert claimed his father killed 38,000 squirrels with one rifle and 40,000 with another.

  23. Swain, 185–87. While Squirrel Huntin’ Sam McCoy left out his involvement in the killing of Staton in his memoir, Truda McCoy (316) wrote: “In 1940 ‘Squirrel Huntin’ Sam’ told a grandson about the killing of Bill Staton. Sam said that he and his brother, Paris, were farming. Two little girls were playing nearby. Bill Staton rode up and told Sam and the little girls to stand back. With that, he shot Paris. He then began beating Paris with a pistol butt. Paris cried for help and Sam shot and killed Staton.”

  24. Logan County Courthouse Law Order Book B, 247; Mutzenberg, 35; Jones, 23; G. Elliott Hatfield, 190; Howard, “Descendants of Richard Ferrell”; and Waller, 87, 272, n. 31. For trying Paris and, separately, another man accused of a felony offense, Wall billed Logan County twenty-one dollars. He also billed the county fifty cents for “warming” road workers, probably giving them temporary shelter and possibly feeding them a meal. Donnelly (1–2) incorrectly said it was Ellison Hatfield, as opposed to Elias, and went on to say that he “vigorously prosecuted the two McCoys” and was thus “hated by all the McCoys.” Truda McCoy’s version (21–24), as told to her by her father, Jim Williams, is a McCoy screed and seems to be less credible than most of her other re-creations of events. Some accounts place the shooting of Bill Staton shortly after the hog trial, and the capture and trial of Sam and Paris McCoy within months of Staton’s death. Wrote Spears (“Mountain Feud”): “Within six months young Bill Staton was shot dead in the road on one of the Pike County creeks. Parish [sic] and Sam McCoy, Randall’s nephews, waylaid him. They were young men who had been persuaded into making trouble for young Bill by their uncle, the Hatfields say.” Jones (23) had Paris arrested “in a few days” and Sam “in a few weeks.” Waller was inconsistent, writing: “Paris was arrested within a month and was tried… in September” (66) and “Paris was arrested the following summer” (272, n. 31). In reality, the shooting happened nearly two years after the hog trial, the arrest of Paris McCoy nearly a year after that, and the arrest of Sam McCoy another year later. A recap of the feud in the Mar. 29, 1902, New York Times (and another on July 11, 1904) showed that many of the distortions had already crept into the record: The article had Paris and Sam killing young Bill from ambush a few months after Randall McCoy called his father a “perjurer” and Bill hit him in the head with a stone. It also said the brothers were acquitted in a Kentucky court, though it was in West Virginia.