Sarah Nigbor

If you’re a regular reader of this column, you know our family has had a tough couple of years. And that is why I decided that there’s no time like the present to check off one of my mother’s bucket list items.

She has always been fascinated with the famous Hatfield & McCoy feud. The ironic thing is, my daughter is a Hatfield descendant (on her dad’s side). Her paternal grandmother’s maiden name is Hatfield. A family genealogy shows that they are indeed a branch of the famous Hatfields; this bunch migrated north to Wisconsin to become loggers.

Back to that bucket list item. Once this newspaper is put to bed and off to print, my mom, daughter and I are road tripping to the Tug Fork River Valley along the West Virginia/Kentucky border to see all the Hatfield & McCoy historical sites. I am thankful that sometimes my job can be flexible; I can work in the evenings while we are away and play Mom’s tour guide during the day for a few days.

The Hatfield & McCoy feud really is a fascinating story about two families who lived along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River along the West Virginia/Kentucky border in the Appalachian Mountains.

According to the Hatfield McCoy Foundation, the most storied and bloody feud in American history began with the 1865 murder of Randolph “Old Ranel” McCoy’s brother, Asa Harmon McCoy, by the Logan Wildcats, a local militia group populated by William Anderson Hatfield, more commonly known as “Devil Anse,” and other Hatfields. Many people, even in the McCoy family, saw Asa as a traitor because he served in the Union Army during the Civil War.

The two families’ relationships continued to deteriorate over the next 10 years and finally blew up in an argument over a pig. Ranel McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield, Devil Anse’s cousin, of stealing a hog in 1878. At the trial, a Hatfield relative was the judge. The star witness, a McCoy relative named Bill Staton, was married to a Hatfield and testified in Floyd Hatfield’s favor, resulting in the case being dismissed. This of course angered the McCoys and two years later, two McCoy nephews murdered Bill Staton. One nephew was tried for the crime, but was acquitted due to “self-defense.”

The feud intensified when Devil Anse’s 18-year-old son Johnse began a love affair with Roseanna McCoy. He eventually abandoned her, now pregnant, and married her cousin Nancy. Legend says that Roseanna never recovered.

Most historical accounts label the feud’s turning point as election day in August 1882. Three of Ranel McCoy’s sons became involved in a fight with two of Devil Anse’s brothers. One of the McCoys stabbed Ellison Hatfield multiple times before shooting him in the back. A group of Hatfields kidnapped the McCoy boys, tied them to some pawpaw bushes and shot them over 50 times, killing them. Twenty men were indicted for the executions, including Devil Anse and his sons. However, they eluded arrest, which made the McCoys even more furious. A local attorney, married to Asa McCoy’s widow, announced a reward for the Hatfields’ capture. This is when the national media began reporting on the feud, in 1887.

Devil Anse’s son Cap and his friend, Jim Vance, gathered a group of Hatfield men together to ambush the McCoys’ home on New Year’s Day 1888. Ranel escaped the attack, but his son Calvin and daughter Alifair were killed. His wife, Sarah, was badly beaten and had a crushed skull. Bounty hunter Frank Phillips went after the group and killed Vance. He rounded up nine Hatfields and took them to jail. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and at an 1889 trial, eight Hatfields and their supporters were sentenced to life in prison. Ellison Mount, Ellison Hatfield’s rumored son, was sentenced to death.

The feud eventually lost steam as the patriarchs aged. Ranel McCoy died in 1914 at the age of 88 from burns he sustained in an accidental fire. Devil Anse became a born-again Christian at age 73; he died in 1921 at age 81 of pneumonia.

It’s time to hit the road!