by Lisa Alther
The only blip of rancor to appear on this screen of harmony is a lawsuit brought by Bo and Ron McCoy in 2002 against John Vance, a descendant of the notorious Bad Jim. John Vance had closed the access road to the cemetery containing the graves of the five McCoy children killed during the Pawpaw Murders and the New Year’s Night Massacre. In the end, the descendants of Ranel McCoy, though not the general public, were awarded access across Vance’s property to the cemetery.2
In 2003, perhaps in response to hard feelings generated by the cemetery conflict, Reo Hatfield and Bo and Ron McCoy organized an official truce between the two families—even though hostilities on both sides had largely faded over the ensuing decades to bemused disbelief at the strife promulgated by their forebears. Reo stated that, in the wake of 9/11, Hatfield and McCoy descendants wanted to illustrate that Americans could overcome their differences and band together in the face of adversity.3 And it appears that they have.
Special thanks to the following people: Debra Basham, of the West Virginia State Archives, for her help in tracking down feud photos; David Carriere and Laurie Kenney, for their work in drawing this book to the attention of interested readers; Ina Danko, for her cheerful company on research trips, some of them pretty strange, and for her pithy observations on life in Appalachia; James Jayo, for the idea for this book and for his sharp editorial eye; Meredith Dias, for shepherding this project from manuscript to finished book; Jan Hanford, for designing and managing my webpage featuring this book; my agent Martha Kaplan, for her usual good advice and guidance; Sheryl Kober and Justin Marciano for the design and layout of the text, Diana Nuhn for the cover design, and Sally Neale for the family tree; Ava and Doug McCoy, for sharing their family history and memories with me; and my late grandparents William Henry and Elizabeth Vanover Reed, for their courage and resourcefulness. I also thank all the authors of previous books about this feud for their tireless research and engrossing writing.
APPENDIX
“GREEN ARE THE WOODS”
BY ABNER VANCE
Green grows the woods where Sandy flows,
And peace along its rills;
In the valley the black bear lies secure,
The red buck roves the hills.
But Vance no more shall Sandy behold,
Nor drink of its crystal wave;
The partial Judge pronounced his doom—
To the hunter a felon’s grave.
The Judge called me “incarnate fiend,”
For Elliott’s life I saved;
I couldn’t agree to Elliott’s guilt,
Humanity belongs to the brave.
That friendship I to others have shown,
Has never been shown to me;
Humanity, I say, belongs to the brave,
And I hope it belongs to me
’Twas by the advice of McFarland
Judge Johnson did me call;
I was taken from my native home,
And placed in yon stone wall.
My persecutors have gained their quest
Their promise to make good;
They often swore they’d never rest
Till they had my life’s blood.
Daniel Horton, Bob, and Bill,
A lie against me swore.
In order to take my life away,
That I should be no more.
But they and I together must meet
Where all things are made known;
And if I shed a human’s blood,
There’ll mercy me be shown.
Bright shines the sun on Clinch’s hills,
And soft the west wind blows;
The valleys are covered o’er with bloom
Perfumed by the fragrant rose.
But Vance no more Sandy shall behold
Nor smell the sweet perfume;
This day his eyes will close in death,
His body laid in the tomb.
Farewell my friends, my children dear,
To you I bid farewell;
The love I have for your precious souls,
No mortal tongue can tell.
Farewell to you my loving wife,
To you I bid adieu;
And if I reach fair Canaan’s shore
I’ll wait and watch for you.
—Composed in jail and sung by Abner Vance, while standing on his coffin, at his hanging in Abingdon, Virginia; reproduced in L. D. Hatfield’s The True Story of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud
Introduction
1T. C. Crawford, An American Vendetta: A Story of Barbarism in the United States, ed. Eldean Wellman (Verdunville, WV: Eldean Wellman, 2004), 52. Originally published in 1888.
2Diane K. McLaughlin, Daniel T. Lichter, and Stephen A. Matthews, Demographic Diversity and Economic Change in Appalachia (University Park, PA: Population Research Institute, 1999), www.arc.gov/images/reports/demographic/demographics.pdf.
3Crawford, An American Vendetta, 2.
4Ibid., 37.
5Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY), February 12, 1888, as quoted in Otis K. Rice, The Hatfields and the McCoys (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1982), 83.
6Coleman C. Hatfield and Robert Y. Spence. The Tale of the Devil: The Biography of Devil Anse Hatfield (Chapmanville, WV: Woodland Press, 2007), 130.
7Ibid., 15.
Chapter 1: The Path to Pikeville
1This description of Harmon McCoy derives from photo #038435 of him from the West Virginia State Archives.
2This description of Jim Vance derives from photo #133105 from the West Virginia State Archives. Virgil Carrington Jones, The Hatfields and the McCoys (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 4. Jones says that Vance had a long black beard to his waist, but the feudists no doubt varied their facial hair throughout their lives, according to the fashions of the times and their own personal preferences.
3Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 82. Some say his surname was Francis, others that he was called “Captain Bill.”
4Ibid., 63–64.
5Ibid., 82–84.
6Robert Baker, “39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry, US Volunteers 80.” http://hiramjustus.hubpages.com/hub/39th-Kentucky-Mounted-Infantry-US-Volunteers.
7This reconstruction of Harmon McCoy’s murder derives from accounts in the following sources: Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 84–86; Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud: William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield in the Civil War (Lexington, KY: Philip Hatfield, 2010), 63–64; Truda Williams McCoy, The McCoys: Their Story as Told to the Author by Eye Witnesses and Descendants (Pikeville, KY: Preservation Council Press, 1976), 3–11; Otis K. Rice, The Hatfields and the McCoys, 13–14. These accounts differ in some of their details. For instance, Hatfield and Spence’s version states that Jim Vance and Jim Wheeler Wilson followed Patty McCoy’s tracks home from the cave and that the two men circled around behind the cave and captured Harmon McCoy as he sat by a campfire outside it. They bound him with ropes and were marching him away as a prisoner when he began to argue with them, maintaining that he never threatened to kill Devil Anse. Jim Wilson started “flirting” with his pistol in its holster. Thinking Wilson was about to draw his gun to shoot him, Harmon tried to twist away from his captors, so Wilson shot him in the head.
Chapter 2: Dark and Bloody Ground
1Erika Celeste, Secrets of the Valley: Prehistory of the Kanawha (Huntington, WV: Paradise Film Institute, n/d), DVD.
2John Alexander Williams, Appalachia: A History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 60.
3George R. Stewart, Names on the Land (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1967), 140.
4John Alexander Williams, West Virginia: A History (New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1984), 96–97.
5“The State Nicknames,” The Commonwealth of Kentucky intro page, www.netstate.com/states/intro/ky_intro.htm.
6Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The
Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996), 4–5.
7Crawford, An American Vendetta, 42.
8Coleman C. Hatfield and F. Keith Davis, The Feuding Hatfields and McCoys (Chapmanville, WV: Woodland Press, 2008), 72.
9“The Matewan Floodwall,” adapted from the “Matewan Action Plan,” Town of Matewan, WV, website. www.matewan.com/Town/floodwall.htm.
10Henry D. Shapiro, Appalachia on Our Mind: The Southern Mountains and Mountaineers in the American Consciousness, 1870–1920 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978), 81.
11Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 34.
12Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 3.
13Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 52.
14Ibid., 18.
15Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 3.
16Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 55–56.
17Ibid., 18.
18Ibid.
19Ibid., 20–23.
20Ibid., 23.
21Ibid., 37–39.
22Joan Schroeder, “Mary Draper Ingles’ Return to Virginia’s New River Valley,” Blue Ridge Country, March 1, 1998. http://blueridgecountry.com/archive/mary-draper-ingles.html.
23Lisa Ratliff, “A Story of Jenny Wiley,” adapted from Arville Wheeler, White Squaw: The True Story of Jennie Wiley (Ashland, KY: Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2000). www.jeanhounshellpeppers.com/Jenny_Wiley_Story.htm.
24Altina L. Waller, Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860–1900 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 265–66.
25Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 51.
26L. D. Hatfield, The True Story of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud (LaVergne, TN: Kessinger Publishing, 1945), 12.
27Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 50–52.
28Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 32.
29Waller, Feud, 37.
30Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 193.
31Crawford, An American Vendetta, 23–24.
32Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 24.
33Crawford, An American Vendetta, 50.
34Ibid., 16, 50.
35Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 4.
36Waller, Feud, 54–57.
37Ibid., 59.
38Ibid., 158.
39Ibid., 59.
40McCoy, The McCoys, 3.
41Crawford, An American Vendetta, 18.
42Waller, Feud, 17, 30, 60; McCoy, The McCoys, 5; Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 82; Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 11.
43Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 72.
44Waller, Feud, 57.
45Ibid., 61.
46Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 31.
47Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 3.
48McCoy, The McCoys, 19, 91.
49Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 19.
50Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 106.
51Ibid., 61.
52Waller, Feud, 94.
53Ibid., 253–54. See list of Hatfield supporters.
54Ibid., 255–56. See list of McCoy and Cline supporters.
55Ibid., 17.
56Crawford, An American Vendetta, 40.
Chapter 3: Border States
1Daniel E. Sutherland, A Savage Conflict: The Decisive Role of Guerrillas in the American Civil War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), passim.
2Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 76–77.
3Ibid., 13.
4Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 64.
5Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 31.
6Ibid., 35.
7Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 42.
8Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 16.
9Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 68–69.
10Waller, Feud, 159–60.
11Robert M. Baker and Brian E. Hall, “Alphabetical Roster,” The 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Webpage. http://reocities.com/rmbaker66/index.html.
12This description is based on a photo at: http://reocities.com/rmbaker66/index.html.
13Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 25–26.
14Baker and Hall, The 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Webpage. http://reocities.com/rmbaker66/index.html.
15Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 42.
16Ibid., 38–39.
17Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 79–80.
18Ibid., 62.
19Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 56.
20Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 81–82.
21Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 54.
22Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 84.
23Ibid., 165–66.
24Waller, Feud, 17.
25McCoy, The McCoys, 11.
26Philip Hatfield, The Other Feud, 72.
27Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 12.
28Baker and Hall, The 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Webpage. http://reocities.com/rmbaker66/index.html.
29Crawford, An American Vendetta, 49.
30Baker and Hall, The 39th Kentucky Mounted Infantry Webpage. http://reocities.com/rmbaker66/index.html.
31Waller, Feud, 158–59.
32“Last Will and Testament of Jacob Cline,” Cline Family Association, http://clinefamilyassociation.com/will_of_jacob_rich_jake_cline.
33Waller, Feud, 160.
34Ibid., 177.
35Ibid., 141.
36Ibid., 41.
37Ibid., 97.
38Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 31.
Chapter 4: Hog Trial
1Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 18.
2The reconstruction of the Hog Trial that follows is based on accounts from Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 18–21; McCoy, The McCoys, 13–19; and Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 14–16.
3Waller, Feud, 49, 63.
4Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 108. Coleman A. Hatfield maintained that two wayward hogs swam the Tug Fork to West Virginia, where Floyd Hatfield had already moved, and that the trial occurred in West Virginia under the jurisdiction of Wall Hatfield, Devil Anse’s older brother, who turned the trial over to a man named Stafford.
5Crawford, An American Vendetta, 31.
6Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 108.
7McCoy, The McCoys, 17.
8Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 107.
9Waller, Feud, 64.
10Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 109.
11Ibid.
12McCoy, The McCoys, 17.
13Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 20.
14McCoy, The McCoys, 16.
15Waller, Feud, 64.
16Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 107–9. Coleman C. Hatfield suggests that Devil Anse Hatfield regarded the Hog Trial as a falling out of McCoys that had little bearing on the Hatfields, since Floyd Hatfield, Bill Staton, and Selkirk McCoy all had ties of kinship to Ranel McCoy. Although Devil Anse is himself quoted in a newspaper as stating that the feud began with the Hog Trial, Coleman C. feels the feud began with the murder of Devil Anse’s brother Ellison by three of Ranel McCoy’s sons in 1882. However, John Floyd, a Hatfield family friend and West Virginia state official during the feud years, claimed the feud began during the Civil War (Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 108). West Virginia governor E. Willis Wilson, a Hatfield ally after whom Devil Anse and Levicy Hatfield named a son, concurred with Floyd, maintaining that the two families had embraced different sides during the war (Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 112). Crawford (An American Vendetta, 18), however, maintains that the bligh
ted love affair between Roseanna McCoy and Johnse Hatfield was the basis of the feud. So, as usual in accounts of this feud (just as during the feud itself), no one agrees on anything.
17McCoy, The McCoys, 19.
18Ibid.
19Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 4.
20McCoy, The McCoys, 141.
21Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 21.
22Waller, Feud, 65.
23McCoy, The McCoys, 21.
24Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 16.
25Waller, Feud, 36.
26This description is based on photo #038431 in the West Virginia State Archives.
27Crawford, An American Vendetta, 7.
28Waller, Feud, 272.
29McCoy, The McCoys, 22–23.
30Hatfield and Spence, Tale of the Devil, 109–10.
31Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 17.
32Waller, Feud, 66.
33Ibid.
Chapter 5: Montagues and Capulets of the Cumberlands
1The following reconstruction of the romance between Johnse Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy is based on accounts from Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 34–38; McCoy, The McCoys, 25–39; and Rice, Hatfields and the McCoys, 19–21.
2McCoy, The McCoys, 25.
3Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 32–33.
4Ibid., 33.
5McCoy, The McCoys, 27. But Jones, Hatfields and the McCoys, 35, describes Roseanna as having black hair, so who knows?
6Based on photo #038427 from the West Virginia State Archives.
