The Hatfields and the McCoys

by Otis K. K. Rice

  Bill Staton did not take Sam McCoy’s threat lightly. One day, while he was hunting about a mile from the Hatfield Tunnel of the Norfolk and Western Railway, between the present towns of Williamson and Matewan, West Virginia, Staton spied Sam McCoy and his brother Paris. Staton was certain that the McCoys had not seen him and hoped to make the most of his advantage. Accounts of what happened next, however, are so contradictory that none can be accepted as unquestionably correct. According to one version, Staton fired at the McCoys and hit Paris, who collapsed to the ground with a shattered hip. Sam then shot Staton and inflicted a mortal wound. Taking no chances that his enemy might fire again, Sam jumped upon the wounded Staton, who had either dropped his gun or had it forced from him, and shot his adversary again. Another account has Staton leaping upon Paris and sinking his teeth into Paris’s jugular vein, whereupon Sam, observing his brother in mortal peril, killed Staton. For good measure, the latter account adds that the hold of Staton upon Paris was so strong that Staton’s jaws had to be pried loose after he died.

  The McCoy brothers left Staton in the woods. When his body was discovered, the finger of suspicion pointed toward Sam and Paris, who, according to some versions of the story, hid in a cave. Ellison Hatfield, it is said, swore out a warrant for their arrest and asked Devil Anse to serve it, but the latter allegedly refused on the ground that he and the McCoys had been on good terms during the preceding months.

  In due course Sam McCoy stood trial for the murder of Bill Staton. He was arraigned in Logan County before Justice of the Peace Valentine, or Wall, Hatfield, a brother of Devil Anse, and a Hatfield-picked jury. Sam’s acquittal, on the basis of self-defense, came as a great surprise to the McCoys, but any satisfaction they may have taken in the workings of legal machinery in Logan County was more than offset by their anger that West Virginia authorities had brought Sam to trial at all. Nor did the possibility that Devil Anse himself may have given the word to his brother and the jurors to refrain from any vindictiveness, as some writers have suggested, ameliorate the hostility felt by the McCoys.11

  The trouble over the hog and the killing of Bill Staton added fuel to the fires of hatred that blazed between the Hatfields and the McCoys. Yet, neither marked a clear beginning of the feud, which seems to have had no single point of origin but to have developed from an accumulation of honest grievances and imagined wrongs. The two incidents, like the Home Guard and vigilante activity during the Civil War and the killing of Harmon McCoy, contributed to the tense relations that exploded in the bloody and dramatic events of the 1880s and made the names of Hatfield and McCoy familiar throughout America.

  3

  ELECTION DAYS ON BLACKBERRY CREEK

  IN THE MONTHS following the death of Staton the Hatfields continued to make frequent journeys into Kentucky, but they always traveled in well-armed bands. One reason for their caution lay in the numerous legal charges against them in Pike County. They included complaints against Devil Anse and Johnse for carrying concealed and deadly weapons, against Floyd Hatfield for giving spirituous liquors to a minor, and against Devil Anse and his brother Elias, as well as Thomas Chafin, Moses Chafin, John Staton, the brother of Bill, Elias Hatfield, Jr., Floyd Hatfield, and Frank Elam, for banding together for the purpose of annoying and disturbing other persons and committing a felonious act. Pike County officials, however, feared to serve warrants against the Hatfields and their friends, who violated Kentucky law with impunity and had no intention of formally answering any of the charges.1

  The display of armed might by the Hatfields did not prove a sufficient deterrent to further conflict between them and the McCoys. The spring election of 1880 in Pike County brought a new source of trouble. The polls for the Blackberry Creek precinct, where most of the McCoys voted, opened at the house of Jeremiah, or Jerry, Hatfield, which was centrally located at the confluence of Hatfield Branch and Blackberry Creek. The women of the precinct brought an assortment of homemade foods, which they served at convenient locations beneath the fine shade trees that surrounded Jerry Hatfield’s house. The men, particularly the candidates, provided more than ample supplies of whiskey for the voters, most of whom cast their ballots early and then remained with their families throughout the day to take advantage of the food and drink and the social opportunities.

  The West Virginia Hatfields customarily attended the local elections in Pike County, since they were related to many of the candidates and, like the Kentuckians, enjoyed the social atmosphere. About midmorning a Hatfield party, including Devil Anse and his sons Johnse and Cap arrived at the Blackberry Creek polling place. Their presence transformed what might have been merely a day of raucous inebriation into another tragic event in the lives of the Hatfields and the McCoys.2

  Johnse Hatfield endeavored to add a bit of romance to the potentially dangerous mixture of politics and liquor that characterized elections on Blackberry Creek. G. Elliott Hatfield described Johnse as “a small-boned rounder of eighteen, on this occasion … dressed fit to kill—yellow shoes, new mail order suit, and a high celluloid collar. He was ruddy faced, ham-handed, and sandy haired, with a pair of insinuating blue eyes that set the mountain belles’ hearts all a-flutter. He was a great fellow for putting on the dog.”3 Johnse’s way with the girls in every way matched his talents for making and selling moonshine, which he carried on with a flagrant disregard for anti-liquor laws.

  Not long after the arrival of the Hatfields, a horse approached the polling place, bearing Tolbert McCoy, the twenty-seven-year-old son of Randolph, and, riding behind him, his twenty-year-old sister Rose Anna. Although Johnse had already met Rose Anna, he now found the dark-haired, dark-eyed girl, regarded as one of the most beautiful in the mountains of Pike County, entirely captivating. In the gala atmosphere of the election, he conversed with her in a way that gave no indication of the deep animosities between their families.

  Exactly what happened in the ensuing hours is not known precisely, although some writers have described events with an assurance born of their own invention. Apparently, in the afternoon, while many of the men traded stories and yarns or slept off the effects of alcohol and overeating and the women exchanged gossip, Johnse, his judgment already clouded by drink, and Rose Anna, who felt a singular attraction for him, wandered off to a secluded spot. When they returned about dusk, most of the people had left. Rose Anna evidently expressed great fear of returning home and facing the wrath of her father, and Johnse persuaded her to accompany him to the Hatfield residence on Mate Creek. Probably traveling by way of Peter Branch of Blackberry Creek and along Poundmill Run, they at last reached the narrow valley of the Tug. They passed a cliff of coal or slate, on the top of which grew a large chestnut tree, dying, so some said, because of the large number of buzzards that had roosted there in order to eat the dead Yankees that Devil Anse had killed. Finally, they crossed the log bridge that spanned the small stream in front of the Hatfield house.

  Once the Hatfields overcame their surprise, they welcomed Rose Anna with their customary hospitality. Most accounts state, however, that Devil Anse raised strenuous objections when Johnse announced his desire to marry Rose Anna. Johnse evidently did not press the matter, perhaps because he had interests in other girls, including Mary Stafford and Nancy McCoy, both cousins of Rose Anna.

  Randolph McCoy apparently endeavored to persuade his errant daughter to return home. According to most accounts, he sent three of her sisters, Alifair, Josephine, and Adelaide, to plead with her, but one writer names John Hatfield, a law officer related to both the Hatfields and the McCoys, as his messenger. Rose Anna waited several months before leaving the Hatfields. By then she had become convinced that Johnse would never marry her or cease his pursuit of other women. Most writers have stated that Rose Anna went at once to the home of her aunt, Betty Blankenship McCoy, at Stringtown, or present Burn well, Kentucky. Betty McCoy was the widow of Allen, the brother of Sarah McCoy, and herself the mother of eleven children. She received the unfortunate Rose Anna with kindness and affe
ction.4

  Johnse did not leave Rose Anna in peace. When he learned that she was with her Aunt Betty, he began to visit her. The McCoys heard of the visits and determined to put a stop to them. One October evening Johnse and Rose Anna met by prior arrangement at their rendezvous near Tom Stafford’s farm between Stringtown and Matewan. They were taken by surprise when suddenly several members of Rose Anna’s family, including Randolph and her brothers James, or Jim, Tolbert, and Pharmer, emerged from the bushes. Jim, an officer of the law, told Johnse that the McCoys intended to take him to Pikeville and turn him over to authorities to answer the many indictments against him, from carrying a concealed weapon to selling moonshine whiskey.

  Convinced that her family intended to kill Johnse, Rose Anna hastened to the farm of Tom Stafford, where she borrowed a horse, and sped off for Mate Creek to warn the Hatfields. At the cabin of Elias Hatfield, the brother of Devil Anse, she found the clan leader himself. Upon hearing Rose Anna’s story, Devil Anse quickly gathered several men, including his son Cap, his brothers Ellison and Elias, Jim Vance, Tom Chambers, and Moses Christian, to go to the relief of Johnse.

  Making use of shortcuts, the Hatfields overtook the McCoys and their captive with little difficulty. They surprised the outnumbered McCoys and released Johnse without firing a shot. According to some accounts, Devil Anse intended to shoot Jim McCoy, who had arrested Johnse, but Elias and Johnse himself dissuaded him from violence. Descriptions of the rescue, like other events of the feud, vary so greatly that there is no way of determining exactly what happened. One version of the story maintains that after Devil Anse rescued Johnse, he commanded the McCoys to kneel down and pray. All allegedly obeyed except Jim, who remained standing and dared the leader of the Hatfield clan to shoot. Forced to respect Jim’s courage, Devil Anse refrained from using his gun.5

  By the time of the capture and rescue of Johnse, Rose Anna may have been expecting a child, a circumstance that undoubtedly would have contributed to the unforgiving attitude of her father. Whether a child was actually born, however, remains uncertain. A McCoy tradition maintains that Rose Anna gave birth to a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, who lived for about eight months and at her death was buried in the McCoy Cemetery near Stringtown. Cap Hatfield, interviewed in 1929, also stated that Rose Anna had a daughter. G. Elliott Hatfield, however, seems to accept a statement attributed to the Louisville Courier-Journal that Rose Annas child was a boy named Melvin, who was still living on January 1, 1888. Yet another tradition is that Rose Anna contracted measles and had a miscarriage.6

  Rose Annas later years were not happy ones. Although the Hatfields, including Devil Anse, held her in new respect for her part in warning them of Johnse’s capture by the McCoys, she was never to be a Hatfield. Johnse was a man of wandering ways, and after his narrow escape at the hands of Rose Anna’s father and brothers, he abandoned her. Nor did Rose Anna’s family show a forgiving spirit. Randolph McCoy, in particular, regarded her message to the Hatfields as an unpardonable sin. The troubled relations between Johnse and Rose Anna ended on May 14, 1881, when Johnse married her cousin Nancy, the daughter of Harmon McCoy, who had been killed in 1865, the year of Nancy’s birth.

  Dramatic as was the romance of Johnse and Rose Anna, it did not cause the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. By the time that Johnse took Rose Anna home to Mate Creek the two families had grown accustomed to periodic outbursts of trouble, which eventually subsided. Moreover, the battle lines were never as distinct between them as some writers have maintained. When the McCoys killed Bill Staton, they ended the life of a man who was really more McCoy than Hatfield. Jeff McCoy, Nancy’s brother, visited the Hatfields on Mate Creek and received a warm welcome, and the Hatfields continued their ventures into Pike County, although Johnse, in obedience to the wishes of Devil Anse, discreetly remained in Logan County and did not exacerbate the wounds of the McCoys.

  Considering the trouble that grew out of the election of 1880, the Hatfields might very well have given serious thought to the danger of attending another one on Blackberry Creek. Such, however, was not their way. When the polls opened at the Blackberry Creek precinct on Monday, August 7, 1882, at the home of Jerry Hatfield, the West Virginia Hatfields appeared, as was their custom. Among them were Elias and Ellison, brothers of Devil Anse. Also present was another Elias, “Bad Lias,” the brother of Deacon Anderson Hatfield. “Bad Lias,” a hard drinker and a contentious man, lived about two miles up Blackberry Creek. Early in the day, after the whiskey had begun to flow, Tolbert McCoy, the son of Randolph, accused “Bad Lias” of owing a small sum of money, about $1.75, for a fiddle, but Hatfield angrily protested that he had paid Tolbert about three years previously.

  With a fight in the making, Tolbert’s younger brothers, nineteen-year-old Pharmer and fifteen-year-old Randolph, Jr., backed up his accusation. Deacon Anse, however, broke up the argument. As the day wore on, trouble flared anew, but the constable, Matthew Hatfield, was able to reduce the weapons from guns to fists. At that juncture Ellison Hatfield roused from a drunken slumber and made remarks to Tolbert which led him to turn his wrath upon Ellison. He attacked Ellison with a knife and slashed away at his stomach. Ellison tried unsuccessfully to take the knife away from Tolbert, but the two younger McCoys rushed to the aid of their brother and began cutting away at Ellison. When Deacon Anse again tried to separate the antagonists, Ellison grabbed a rock. At that instant Pharmer resorted to his pistol and shot Ellison in the back. Elias, the brother of Ellison, although still under the influence of liquor, forced the revolver from Pharmer’s hand and tried to shoot him. The McCoys at that point ran and sought cover in the nearby woods.

  Pursuers quickly overtook the fleeing McCoy brothers and put them in the custody of Justices of the Peace Joseph and Tolbert Hatfield and Constable Matthew Hatfield. Preferring the mercy of the law to the wrath of the Hatfields, the McCoy brothers offered no resistance when the constable placed them under arrest. Observing twenty-six deep gashes among Ellison’s wounds, in addition to the bullet hole, and anticipating quick revenge by the Hatfields, Deacon Anse urged that the McCoys be moved to the Pikeville jail immediately. Randolph McCoy reminded the minister, however, that the McCoys were also fighters.7

  Meanwhile, some of the men made a crude stretcher and carried Ellison across the Tug Fork to the home of Anderson Ferrell, in Warm Hollow, just below the mouth of Blackberry Creek. Believing Ellison to be dying, they sent word to his family. Upon receipt of the news, Valentine, or Wall, Hatfield, the brother of Ellison, sprang to action. He rounded up three Mahon brothers, Dock and Plyant, his sons-in-law, and Sam, all nephews by marriage of Ellison, and the next morning about daybreak they set out for Kentucky. Proceeding by way of Poundmill Run and Blackberry Creek, they very soon encountered Elias, who informed them that Ellison had been taken across the river to Logan County and that the McCoys were under arrest. Wall and Elias agreed to continue on alone and sent the Mahons home.

  The guard escorting the McCoys to Pikeville, contrary to the advice of Deacon Anse, had taken the prisoners to Floyd Hatfields for food and spent the night at the house of John Hatfield, farther up Blackberry Creek. The party left for Pikeville about eight o’clock on the morning of August 8. It had gone only about a mile when Wall and Elias overtook it. Wall, himself a justice of the peace, insisted, in tones of reason and restraint, that the McCoys be tried in the district in which the crime had occurred. He also expressed a desire to obtain relevant testimony from his aged uncle, Valentine Hatfield, and Dr. Jim Rutherford. After some consideration the Kentucky authorities agreed to Wall’s request.

  Before the men resumed their journey, Devil Anse and a large party of Hatfield supporters arrived, all fully armed. After visiting Ellison at Warm Hollow, Devil Anse and his men had spent the night in an abandoned house near the mouth of Blackberry Creek. The next morning they met the Mahon brothers, who joined them, and all continued to Deacon Anse’s, where they obtained food. Devil Anse then stepped forward and called upon all friends
of the Hatfields to form a line. Those who joined him included Johnse, Cap, Alex Messer, Joe Murphy, the Mahon brothers, Charley Carpenter, Dan and Jeff Whitt, Tom Chambers, and others. Devil Anse announced to the helpless guards that the Hatfields would take charge of the McCoys, who had been placed in a corn sled, a boxlike vehicle on runners. Carpenter then tied the McCoys with a rope, which he had obtained at Jerry Hatfield’s.

  Clearly the Hatfields had the upper hand. Wall allegedly turned to Randolph McCoy, who had remained with his sons, and threatened that they would die if any attempt were made to bushwhack the Hatfields. Knowing that he could do nothing to aid his sons and having no confidence in Wall’s assertion that all that the Hatfields wanted was that the civil law should take its course, Randolph mounted his horse and sped away for Pikeville for help. After the Hatfield party had ridden about a mile, Devil Anse told Jim McCoy, the older brother of the prisoners, to go back and, according to his own admission, considered forcing the Pike County officials to return also.

  At the mouth of Blackberry Creek the Hatfields found a skiff. Devil Anse, Wall, Johnse, Carpenter, and Murphy forced the McCoys into it and crossed the Tug to the West Virginia shore. They led the McCoys upstream and, with dusk approaching and rain threatening, conducted them to an unused log schoolhouse on Mate Creek. About dark, in the midst of a drenching rain, a messenger arrived with a report that Ellison’s condition had worsened. The Hatfields hung a lantern near the schoolhouse door, posted guards inside the building and in nearby areas, and waited for further developments.