Transcription
This video is brought to you by Squarespace, the all-in-one website platform. More about them later in the video.
Welcome back to Biographics. I'm your host, Cosmic Horror Storytelling Madman, Eric Malachite. And today's script was once again provided by the talented Ru Alexander, so be sure to show him some love in the comments as you're deploying your likes, telling us who you think started this famous feud, and checking the links in the description and pinned comment.
With that said, let's go ahead and meet these two families. On June 14th, 2003, the people of Pikeville, Kentucky, witnessed the final chapter in one of the country's most bitter rivalries when the two families, known as the Hatfields and the McCoys, signed a truce, thus proclaiming to hereby and formally declare an official end to all hostilities, implied, inferred, and real, between the families, now and forevermore.
During the 19th century, few people hated each other more than these two clans. Why? Some say it was over a land dispute. Others, due to their opposing allegiances during the Civil War. Some say it was even because of a stolen pig. Yeah, a pig. Whatever the reason, the Hatfields and McCoys engaged in a legendary, bloody feud that lasted for decades and left dozens of kinsmen on both sides either dead or in prison.
To be at our tale, we must travel to a remote area of the Appalachian Mountains known as the Tug Valley, where Kentucky and West Virginia are separated by the Tug Fork, a tributary of the Big Sandy River. Here, we had two families. First, there were the McCoys of Kentucky, originally from the lowlands of Scotland. The clan first immigrated to Ireland at the beginning of the 18th century before ultimately crossing the Atlantic Ocean and reaching America a few decades later. At that point, John McCoy was the patriarch of the family, and he settled in Maryland, where he bought hundreds of acres of land and had a bunch of kids. By the time he died, McCoy had left behind a sizable fortune, most of which went to his eldest son, Archal, who married a woman named Elizabeth Blair and went on to have a dozen children. And of course, most of his siblings lived long enough to have their own families. So, already, America was starting to fill up with little McCoys.
It was Archbald's oldest son, William, who served as the forefather of the McCoys we are concerned with. In 1772, he married a woman from Virginia and relocated there, where the couple had 13 kids. They got busy then. When the Revolutionary War started, William McCoy joined the Virginia Continental Army, and his loyal service earned him a war bounty voucher good for 200 acres of land in Kentucky. It wasn't until 1794 that William McCoy relocated there and put down his roots in Pike County. Six of his sons settled close to him, so it had become official: the McCoys were in Tug Valley. By the time our feud got started, the clan patriarch was Randolph McCoy, AKA Old Rell, who married his cousin Sally and had 16 children together, most of whom would become involved in the feud in one way or another.
Now, let's move on to the other side of the river and meet the Hatfields. Originally, they came from the town of Hatfield in South Yorkshire, England. They beat the McCoys to America by over half a century, as Matthias Hatfield made it to the new world during the 1660s. Soon after his arrival, Matthias married a woman named Maria Melin in New Haven, Connecticut, and later settled down in Elizabeth Town, New Jersey, where Hatfield owned several successful tanneries. From that point on, it's a similar tale to the McCoys. Matthias and Maria had a bunch of children, who had a bunch of children, who then had a bunch of children, and some of them probably married their cousins. Rumor scout Cassidy, Zoey, Ian, Lauren, Cubert. It was actually George Hatfield, Matthias's great-grandson, who made the move to Virginia, where he established that side of the clan. But subsequent generations slowly drifted westward, so that by the time that George's great-great-grandson, Ephraim, started his own family, he was living in Logan County, West Virginia. Ephraim and his wife, Nancy, had a formidable 18 children together, but the only one we are concerned with was William Anderson Hatfield, better known as Devil Anse, born on September 9th, 1839. Since he would serve the role of the Hatfield family patriarch during the violent struggles with the McCoys, Anse married Levisa Chafin in 1861, and the couple raised 13 children together.
And now that the introductions are out of the way, let's go ahead and play our very own version of Family Feud. If you want to get ahead of the competition, then you're going to need an awesome website, and the sponsor for today's video, Squarespace, has you covered. Squarespace is the all-in-one website platform, perfect for entrepreneurs with wares to sell, bloggers with a message to spread, and artists looking to reach the masses with their work. Whether you're just starting out or you're looking for a way to better manage your brand or win a bitter feud between warring families, Squarespace makes it easy for you to create beautiful, professional websites, engage with your audience, and make sure the right people are getting your message. Squarespace's Fluid Engine makes it easier than ever for pretty much anyone to dive in and make a beautiful website. Answer a few questions about the goals you'd like to accomplish with your site, choose a template, and get dragging and dropping elements onto your template. Drag-and-drop technology is also included in every Squarespace site. And now, introducing Design Intelligence, Squarespace's brand new service that combines two decades of industry-leading design expertise with cutting-edge AI technology to unlock your strongest creative potential. Design Intelligence empowers anyone to build a beautiful, more personalized website tailored to their unique needs and craft a bespoke digital identity to use across one's entire online presence. Best of all, if you're selling stuff on your website, you'll be able to offer a simple yet seamless checkout experience. With Squarespace's powerful tools, you'll be able to accept credit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and in eligible countries, offer customers the option to buy now and pay later with Afterpay and Clearpay. Ready to get started? Check out squarespace.com for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com/biographics to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.
There is no certain beginning to this famous feud, although it probably wasn't the pig. As amusing as that might be, the source of the animosity that most historians subscribe to seems to be the Civil War. Both families were affected by the conflict, and both had members who served in it. The Hatfields fought for the Confederacy, while the McCoys, um, also fought for the Confederacy. So, wait, why did they argue over it then? Well, there might be two reasons. First, Devil Anse Hatfield deserted the Confederate Army in February 1863 after feeling that the war was was lost. He returned home and, besides taking part in some guerrilla warfare, spent the rest of the war years taking care of his family. Meanwhile, Old Rell McCoy was captured by Union forces in July 1863 and spent those same years in captivity, mainly at the Camp Douglas POW camp in Chicago. When the war was over and McCoy returned home, he found his family poor and starving, whereas the Hatfields were prosperous and well-fed, all because Anse had a two-and-a-half-year head start on him to develop his timber business. So, yeah, you can understand why McCoy might have felt a bit cheated that his family suffered because he chose to stand and fight, while Hatfield had been rewarded for his desertion.
The other impossible reason for the bad blood was Asa Harmon McCoy, the brother of Old Rell, who was the only one to fight on the side of the Union Army. This kind of brother-versus-brother scenario wasn't that unusual during the Civil War. H.I.C. Earth made a song about it, which you should listen to because it rocks, especially in border states such as Kentucky. However, since most of the Tug Valley was firmly on the Confederacy side, it didn't make him many friends back home. In fact, he was warned not to return, but return he did. And one day, he was attacked by the guerrilla unit that Devil Anse had been a part of. The Union soldier made a run for it and hid out in a cave for a while, but the bushwhackers tracked him down and murdered him on January 7th, 1865. Devil Anse was initially pegged as the killer of Asa McCoy, although it was later determined that he was at home when the shooting began. Even so, some historians think that the real gunman, possibly a man named Wheeler Wilson, was an acquaintance of the Hatfields and was acting under their orders, specifically under the orders of Anse's uncle, Jim Vance. The other McCoys might not have been too fond of Asa at the time, but they probably didn't want him dead. So, it's understandable that many consider this the beginning of the feud. However, going by their actions, Asa McCoy's death did not seem to bother them that much. There was no immediate retaliation, neither legal nor extrajudicial. In fact, we don't know of any other serious altercations between the two families for the rest of the decade.
It wasn't until 1872 that the Hatfields and McCoys found themselves on opposing sides, this time in a court case over illegal logging. The defendant was Perry Cline, a member of the extended McCoy family, whose sister Patty also happened to be the widow of Asa McCoy. He owned land adjacent to Hatfield property, and Anse had accused him of cutting down trees from his side of the woods. Why exactly he would do that remains a mystery, since he owned a whopping 5,000 acres of land, but Hatfield seemed confident that he would win the suit, since he borrowed a lot of money to give bond to pursue the case. It took five years, but the case was eventually settled out of court. This means that the details on the matter are scarce, but Perry Cline was forced to hand over the deed to his entire property. Just like that, Cline's fortune had dissipated, and Devil Anse Hatfield had become one of the richest landowners in the county. Although it has never been substantiated, there have been rumors that Hatfield and his rich backers used their influence to obtain a ruling in their favor. For the time being, a defeated Cline left Tug Valley to start a new life somewhere else, but he found a successful career as a lawyer and would get his revenge on the Hatfields later.
For now, let's get to that pig we kept hearing about. It was the fall of 1878, and Old Rell McCoy had got it into his head that Floyd Hatfield had stolen one of his prize porkers. Farmers back then would earmark their pigs with a distinct pattern of notches, and Rell saw one of Floyd's hogs and claimed that it had his pattern. Hatfield, of course, said this was nonsense, so they took the matter to the local court. Floyd Hatfield, as you could probably guess by the name, was related to Anse. He was a cousin, but he also happened to be related to the McCoys through marriage, and he lived on the Kentucky side of the river, which, for lack of a better term, could be considered McCoy territory. However, the Justice of the Peace was Reverend Anderson Hatfield, AKA Preacher Anse, yet another kin to Devil Anse. But it seems that their nicknames match their personalities, because the Justice of the Peace tried to make the trial as fair as possible by selecting a jury composed of six McCoys and six Hatfields. We can infer a few things from this. For starters, Rell McCoy didn't hate all Hatfields, at least not yet, since he was the one who went to Preacher Anse in the first place. It was mostly Devil Anse and his brood. Asa McCoy's death notwithstanding, there is no written record of the trial, but in the end, the jury sided with Floyd Hatfield. Some saying this was due to the testimony of Bill Stone. He, like Floyd, was related to both families and testified that the pig belonged to the Hatfields. Some say it was because of one of the jurors, Selkirk McCoy Bo, who voted against his kin. He did this either because he was having an affair with a Hatfield woman or because he and his sons worked for Devil Anse's timber business. Either way, this had violent repercussions. Two years later, a couple of Randall's nephews, Sam and Paris McCoy, got into an altercation with Bill Stone and shot him dead. Curiously enough, even though they were tried for murder in a court mostly controlled by the Hatfields, they both got off, pleading self-defense. Local legend says that it was Devil Anse himself who wanted to see the boys go free to prevent their family feud from turning into an all-out war. Alas, his efforts were in vain, because from here on out, things were about to get a lot bloodier.
Although we're due for some bloodshed, the next chapter in the feud was actually a love story. A real-life Appalachian Romeo and Juliet, because in 1880, the daughter of Old Rell, Rosanna McCoy, fell in love with Devil Anse's son, Johnson Hatfield, better known as Johnny. Rosanna even moved in with the Hatfields for a spell, and when she heard that her brothers had captured Johnny and intended to take him to Pikeville jail on some outstanding Kentucky warrants, she rode frantically to Devil Anse to warn him. In return, Anse gathered a posse and retrieved his son safely and without further violence. Unfortunately for Rosanna, her devotion was not reciprocated. Even though she had become pregnant, John C. either refused to marry her or was forbidden to by his parents and slept around with other women, ultimately marrying one of Rosanna's cousins, Nancy McCoy, in 1881. Poor Rosanna was eventually kicked out of the Hatfield homestead, and her father refused to take her back in, so she had to move in with an aunt in Springtown, Kentucky. Her baby died in infancy, and Rosanna actually found work as a governess for the aforementioned Perry Cline.
The true point of no return for the feud happened in August 1882. It was Election Day, and the McCoys were still simmering over the Hatfields' treatment of Rosanna. Her brother, Tolbert McCoy, in particular, picked a fight with Bad Lias Hatfield over an unpaid debt. But Bad Lias was one of the Kentucky Hatfields, brother to Preacher Anse, not to be confused, of course, with Good Lias, who was the brother of Devil Anse. He had little to no involvement in the feud and insisted that he had paid that debt years earlier, but one Hatfield was as good as another for Tolbert that day, so he kept badgering him. Eventually, he got his wish when one of the Hatfields he actually hated, Devil Anse's other brother, Ellison, got involved in the fight. Blinded with rage, Tolbert McCoy lunged at Ellison Hatfield with a knife and started stabbing him. But Ellison had a significant size and strength advantage and would have probably killed Tolbert were it not for his brothers, Farmer and Bud McCoy, who jumped in to help Tolbert. Bud stabbed Ellison Hatfield a bunch of times, but it was Farmer who ended the fight when he picked up a gun and shot him. Ellison Hatfield did not die immediately but lingered for two more agonizing days. Everyone understood that there would be deadly consequences when Devil Anse found out, and they were right. Preacher Anse, trying to prevent further bloodshed, had the McCoy brothers arrested and sent to the relative safety of Pikeville jail, but they were intercepted by Devil Anse and a posse of his supporters. They took the brothers to the bank of the river, blindfolded them, tied them to some poplar bushes, and gunned them down in cold blood. According to local lore, Anse originally intended to spare Bud McCoy, since he was only 15 years old, but changed his mind at the last moment, walked up to him, and shot him in the head. Not only did the Hatfields enact their vengeance, but they seemingly got away with it too. Despite over 20 indictments being filed for Devil Anse and his supporters for the triple murder of the McCoy brothers, the local law made no attempts to serve the warrants or to extradite any Hatfields to Kentucky. The community more or less either saw the retaliation as justified or were simply afraid of the Hatfields and pleaded with Old Rell to let the matter drop, because any other course of action would only cause more trouble for everyone involved. And believe it or not, that's exactly what happened.
For the next few years, although Rell kept demanding justice, nobody local seemed willing to take up his cause. And when renewed violence erupted between the families, it was the Hatfields again shedding blood. In 1886, Logan County Special Constable Cap Hatfield, Devil Anse's son, delivered a serious beating to Mary McCoy Daniels under the impression that she had been spying for her family. Her brother, Jeff McCoy, swore vengeance, but he had a warrant for murder out on him, so Cap tracked him down and killed him under the pretense that McCoy tried to escape. Whether or not this was the case, we can't say, but it looked like the Hatfields would get away with it again. But not so fast, because now it was finally time for Perry Cline to get his revenge. Remember that Cline was cheated out of his land by Devil Anse? Allegedly, he also happened to be the uncle of Mary and Jeff McCoy, and now was an influential attorney with powerful friends, including the new governor of Kentucky, Simon Bolivar Buckner. So, Cline requested that the indictments against Devil Anse and his brood for the murder of the McCoy brothers be revived and actually served this time. And his appeal came at an opportune time. Pike and Logan counties were on the verge of an economic boom. They were rich in minerals and timber, the railroad was being constructed through the region, and the local government intended to improve steamboat transportation on the Big Sandy River. The last thing the governor wanted was a violent hillbilly feud scaring off investors. And of course, it helped his voter base if he was seen as the man protecting his fellow Kentuckian from those devilish West Virginians. So, Governor Buckner agreed to crack down on the Hatfields. He sent an extradition request to West Virginia, assigned a special deputy named Frank Phillips to the case, and offered rewards for the capture of Devil Anse and his associates.
For the first time, the Hatfields had their backs up against the wall. They were dealing with an unfamiliar danger, bigger than anything they had encountered. Their initial reaction was to send threatening letters to Cline, warning him that, "If you come into this county to take or bother any of the Hatfields, we will follow you to hell or take your hide. And if any of the Hatfields are killed or bothered in any way, we will charge it up to you, and your hide will pay the penalty." This didn't work, of course, but it just goes to show you that the Hatfields resorted to the only tactic they knew: intimidation and threat of violence. Their one saving grace was the reluctance of West Virginia Governor E. Willis Watson to approve the extradition request. Just like Buckner wanted to be seen as the protector of his electorate, Watson didn't want to be the guy who threw his voters to the wolves in Kentucky. If the Hatfields had been patient and quiet, they might have gotten away scott-free. However, they decided to be the exact opposite and took the feud to a violent extreme that would spell their doom.
On January 1st, 1888, a group of Hatfields and their supporters committed something that even the West Virginia newspapers decried as the crowning piece of devilry. In the early hours of the morning, Cap Hatfield, his Uncle Jim Vance, John C. Hatfield, and about 10 others launched a full-scale attack on the home of Old Rell and his family. Their reasoning, if you could call it that, was that if the McCoys weren't alive to testify against them, the Hatfields could not be convicted for the murders of Tolbert McCoy and his two brothers. First, they set the house ablaze, then they opened fire on whomever they saw fleeing the scene. Out of the 15 or so people inside, the Hatfields killed two of Rell's children, Calvin and Alfair McCoy. One of the gunmen also attacked Rell's wife, beating her over the head with his rifle butt until he thought she was dead. She survived but was left debilitated and later had to be committed to a mental asylum. The other McCoys managed to escape into the woods. This heinous attack made front-page news all over the country, and for the first time, turned the Hatfield-McCoy feud into a national sensation.
This time, there was no more waiting around for extradition. Frank Phillips rounded up a posse, which included a few of the McCoy men, and conducted raids into West Virginia to catch Hatfields. On the first one, they ran into Cap Hatfield and Jim Vance. While Cap made a run for it, Phillips shot Jim Vance dead. After another half dozen raids, Phillips captured about 10 members of Hatfield's company and took them to Kentucky to stand trial for murder. But now, West Virginia was upset that Kentuckians were crossing state lines to basically kidnap its citizens. So, a counter-posse was formed, led by Constable John Thompson, to patrol the boundary of the Tug Fork and prevent any further incursions. On January 19th, the two sides met during one of these raids on the banks of Grapevine Creek. A pitched battle ensued, which ended quickly with a few injuries and one death on the Hatfield side: that of Bill Dempsey, a Logan County resident who had been deputized by Thompson. The Battle of Grapevine Creek marked the end of the violence. From then on, the feud was carried on in the courthouse and the newspapers.
But before the trials could even begin, the case was taken all the way to the Supreme Court on account of the illegal extraditions carried out to capture all of the accused, thus further enhancing the notoriety of the scandal. In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court sided with Kentucky. The trials began in the summer of 1889. Nine men were tried for the murders of the McCoys. Five of them were Hatfields, and four were associates. They were all found guilty and sentenced to life in prison, except for Ellison Mounts, who confessed to the deed and was sentenced to death by hanging. Some see him as a scapegoat, one of the few who didn't have the money to pay for a good lawyer. Also, as the last one to be sentenced, some regard Mounts as an example. Perry Cline was even reported to say, "We have to hang someone," and it appears that the people of Pikeville agreed. Ellison Mounts was hanged on February 18th, 1890, with his last breaths crying out, "The Hatfields made me do it! The Hatfields made me do it!"
But what about Old Rell and Devil Anse? The two men at the core of the feud, emotional and financial damages aside, they both managed to escape the conflict physically unharmed and as free men. Randolph McCoy moved to Pikeville after the New Year's Massacre and operated a ferry across the Big Sandy River. After the initial interest in the feud died down, he lived in relative anonymity until he died in 1914. As for Devil Anse Hatfield, the heavy debts forced him to sell most of his lands in the Tug Valley at a loss and move with his remaining family members somewhere more remote. His extradition was never approved, but he was still paranoid that detectives would come to arrest him and bring him to Kentucky to stand trial. In 1889, he struck a bargain to voluntarily show up in federal court on charges of selling illegal whiskey in exchange for protection from any other outstanding warrants. On that occasion, he gave a long interview with his side of the story, in which he relayed most of the facts truthfully, besides admitting his role in the murder of the three McCoy brothers, of course. It was an attempt to salvage the Hatfield name somewhat, but by that point, nobody really cared anymore. So, Devil Anse was also allowed to live in quiet obscurity until he passed away in 1921.
The modern era saw occasional renewed interest in the feud, be it in books or movies, or most memorably, an episode of Family Feud where the Hatfields and McCoys faced off one last time. I hope you learned something today, and if you dug today's video, be sure to deploy your likes, comment down below, check out my storytelling video essay channel, Story Rant, and share this video with someone who loves learning about history. I'm Eric Malachite, and I'll see you next time, space cowboy.
[Music]