Hatfield–McCoy feud

The Hatfield clan in 1897.

The Hatfield-McCoy feud (1878–1891) is an account of American lore that has become a metaphor for bitterly feuding rival parties, something like an Appalachian Capulet-Montague rivalry, involving two warring families of the West Virginia-Kentucky backcountry along the Tug Fork River, off the Big Sandy River. However, unlike the fictional Romeo and Juliet, this feud was violently real.

The Hatfields lived on the West Virginia side of Tug Fork, and the McCoys lived on the Kentucky side. Both families were part of the first wave of pioneers to settle the Tug Valley. Both were involved in the manufacture and sale of moonshine. Both apparently were involved in pro-Confederate guerrilla activity during the American Civil War. The Hatfields were led by William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield (1839–1921). The McCoys were led by Randolph "Ole Ran'l" McCoy (1825–1914). Both family leaders outlived the feud.

Although both families lived in the appalachian mountains and are considered "hillbillies" they were actually very intelligent people. They had both acquired much land and respectability. The Hatfields were actually more affluent than the McCoys and very politically connected but both families owned a good amount of property. The McCoys, with a Scotch-Irish heritage, were, and are, a very proud family.

As legends go, the first recorded instance of violence in the feud occurred after an 1878 dispute about the ownership of a hog: Floyd Hatfield had it, and Randolph McCoy said it was his. But in truth, it was over land or property lines and the ownership of that land. The pig was only in dispute because one family believed that the pig was theirs because it was on their property. The matter was taken to court, and the McCoys lost because of the testimony of Bill Staton, a relative of both families. In June 1880, Staton was killed by two McCoy brothers, Sam and Paris, who were later acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

The feud escalated after Roseanna McCoy began an affair with Johnse Hatfield, leaving her family to live with the Hatfields in West Virginia. Roseanna eventually returned to the McCoys, but when the couple tried to resume their relationship, Johnse Hatfield was kidnapped by the McCoys, and was saved only when Roseanna made a desperate ride to alert Devil Anse Hatfield, who organized a rescue party.

Despite what was seen as a betrayal of her family on his behalf, Johnse thereafter abandoned the pregnant Roseanna, marrying instead her cousin Nancy McCoy in 1881.

The feud burst into full fury in 1882, when Ellison Hatfield, brother of "Devil Anse" Hatfield, was brutally murdered by three of Roseanna McCoy's brothers, stabbed 26 times and finished off with a shot. The brothers were themselves murdered in turn as the vendetta escalated.

Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of these families, becoming headline news around the country and compelling the governors of both Kentucky and West Virginia to call up the National Guard to restore order after the disappearance of dozens of bounty hunters sent to calm the bloodlust. The Hatfields claimed more lives than the McCoy's did by the time order had been restored.

Eight Hatfields were kidnapped and brought to Kentucky to stand trial for the murder of a female member of the McCoy clan, Alifair. She had been shot after exiting a burning building that had been set aflame by a group of Hatfields. Because of issues of due process and illegal extradition, the U.S. Supreme Court became involved. Eventually, the eight men were tried in Kentucky, and all eight were found guilty. Seven received life imprisonment, and the eighth was executed in a public hanging (even though it was prohibited by law), probably as a warning to end the violence. Thousands of spectators attended the hanging in Pikeville, Kentucky. The families finally agreed to disagree in 1891.

In the popular imagination, the Hatfield-McCoy feud became a curiosity, a proverb, and even a joke. In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain's description of a feud between the Grangerford and Shepherdson families fits this pattern, as does the Harkness-Folwell vendetta (set in the Cumberland Mountains) from O Henry's "Squaring The Circle". Buster Keaton portrayed a similar feud in his 1923 comedy Our Hospitality. Many cartoon characters, from Bugs Bunny to Ren and Stimpy and the Flintstones, have exploited the notorious feud with the feature character caught literally in the crossfire. In the 1970s, the popular television game show Family Feud reunited descendants of the two families for a week of competition with the overall winning family (the one winning 3 out of 5 games) taking home a pig representative of the original creature at the center of the initial dispute. (Of course, the winning family each day played "Fast Money" under normal rules.)

On June 14, 2003, descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families signed a truce in Pikeville, though the conflict had ended a century earlier.

External links

• Hatfield-McCoy Feud; Roseanna: Juliet of the Mountains; from Blue Ridge Country, March/April 1996.
• Hatfield-McCoy: Reunion of the Millennium; includes a family tree of Michael Chatman
• CBS News: Official End Of Legendary Feud
• IMDB entry about a similar-themed Disney cartoon, The Martins and the Coys