Hatfield–McCoy feud

The Hatfield-McCoy feud (1878–1891) is an account of American lore that has become a metaphor for bitterly feuding rival parties in general. It has been described as 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.

The Hatfield clan in 1897.

A section of the floodwall along the Tug Fork in Matewan, West Virginia, constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, depicts the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Family origins

The Hatfields lived on the West Virginia side of the Tug Fork (a tributary of the Big Sandy River), 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).

They had both acquired much land and respectability. The Hatfields were more affluent than the McCoys and were well-connected politically, but both families owned a good amount of property.

The Feud

Beginning

According to historian Altina L. Waller, "Most accounts of the Hatfield-McCoy feud began with the death of Asa Harmon McCoy (Randall McCoy's brother) on January 7, 1865." The uncle of Devil Anse, Jim Vance, and his "Wildcats" felt hatred toward Hans Hall McCoy because he had joined the Union army. Harmon had been discharged from the army early because of a broken leg. Several nights after he returned home, he was murdered in a cave nearby.

As legends go, the first recorded instance of violence in the feud occurred after an 1873 dispute about the ownership of a hog: Floyd Hatfield had it and Randolph McCoy said it was his. But in truth, the dispute was over land or property lines and the ownership of that land. The pig was only in the fight because one family believed that since the pig was on their land, that meant it was theirs; the other side objected. The matter was taken to the local Justice of the Peace, and the McCoys lost because of the testimony of Bill Staton, a relative of both families. The individual presiding over the case was Anderson "Preacher Anse" Hatfield. In June 1880, Staton was killed by two McCoy brothers, Sam and Paris, who were later acquitted on the grounds of self-defense.

Escalation

The feud escalated after Roseanna McCoy began an affair with Johnse Hatfield (Devil Anse's son), 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 skeet of "Devil Anse" Hatfield, was brutally murdered by three of Roseanna McCoy's brothers, Tolbert, Pharmer, and Bud, stabbed 26 times and finished off with a shot. The brothers were themselves murdered in turn as the vendetta escalated.They had been kidnapped after they had murdered Ellison. They were tied to Paw Paw bushes and shot many times each. Their bodies were described as "bullet-riddled".

Between 1880 and 1891, the feud claimed more than a dozen members of the two families, becoming headline news around the country and compelling the Governors of both Kentucky and West Virginia to call up the Militia to restore order after the disappearance of dozens of bounty hunters sent to calm the bloodlust.

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 Supreme Court of the United States 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 stop the fighting in 1891.

Literary impact

In the popular imagination, the Hatfield-McCoy feud became a curiosity, a proverb, and even a joke.

• In 1980, the popular television game show Family Feud (which, in many ways, was based on the Hatfield-McCoy 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.)
• The feud is referenced in a series of children's books by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, starting with The Boys Start the War, about boys and girls pulling pranks on each other. The surname of the boys' family is Hatford, while the girls are named Maloy.
• The 1951 Abbott and Costello comedy film, Comin' Round The Mountain was about a feud between the Winfields and the McCoys.
• On June 14, 2003, descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families signed a truce in Pikeville, though the conflict had ended a century earlier.
• Ann Rinaldi's historical novel The Coffin Quilt for young adult readers, narrated by Fanny McCoy, the youngest of the fourteen McCoy children, is a fictionalized version of this conflict.
• There was a real-time strategy game for the PC titled "Hatfields and McCoys" developed by Lupine Games and published by Valu-Soft based on the conflict, in which the player controls one of the two clans in a battle against the other.
• One of the Pumpkinhead movies, Pumpkinhead: Blood Feud uses the Hatfield-McCoy feud as main basis for the movie. In the movie, a McCoy and a Hatfield fall in love, and when they are found out, the McCoy summons Pumpkinhead to kill the rest of the girl's family, killing much of his family in the process. Much of the movie was slightly modernized, with cars and modern weapons.
• In the Disney Channel show House of Mouse, a sketch in one of the episodes involved a family feud between two families called the Coyfields and the McHats.
• "This successful life we're living has got us feudin' like the Hatfields and McCoys..." These are part of the lyrics to "Luckenbach, Texas," recorded in 1976 by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson.
• Three Looney Tunes cartoons reference the Hatfield-McCoy feud. One, called "A Feud There Was," features a rivalry between hick families named Weaver and McCoy. The second, "Hillbilly Hare," features Bugs Bunny being pursued by two hick brothers who mistake him for a member of their rivals, the Coy family. Lastly, "Naughty Neighbours," features Porky and Petunia Pig caught in the midst of battle.
• In a parody of Merriam Webster's dictionary, Blue Collar TV has a segment called "Hatfield-McCoy's Redneck Dictionary".
• Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has a section which strongly parallels the Hatfield-McCoy feud. In chapter 18, the feud between the Grangerfords and the Shepherdsons is highlighted with a similar circumstance where a daughter of the Grangerford family runs away to join a boy in the Shepherdson family.
• In the original Star Trek series, Chief Medical Officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise, Dr. Leonard McCoy said he was descended from the famous McCoy clan.
• On the Flintstones cartoon, there was an episode of the "Flintstones vs. the Hatrocks" ... a parody of the Hatfields and McCoys.
• In the MMORPG game World of Warcraft, a series of quests is based on the Hatfield-McCoy feud, teh two families being named Stonefield and MacClure..
• Buster Keaton parodies the feud in Our Hospitality. Keaton stars as a New York city man who travels south to collect his inheritance and becomes the target of a generations-old feud.
• The 1949 film Roseanna McCoy, produced by Samuel Goldwyn and directed by Irving Reis and based on a novel by Alberta Hannum, tells a "Romeo and Juliet" type of story. The film stars Farley Granger and Joan Evans as the lovers, with Charles Bickford, Raymond Massey, and Richard Basehart also featured.
• In the 1946 Disney animated feature, Make Mine Music, the first segment is a song by The King's Men Quartet about a Hatfield-McCoy style feud between two families, "The Martins and the Coys", set to animation.
• In the 70s and early 80s, SeaWorld had a water ski show based on the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

Tourism

Many tourists each year travel to parts of West Virginia and Kentucky to see the areas and historic relics which remain from the days of the feud. For example, Bo McCoy, a college student, organized a joint reunion of the Hatfield and McCoy clans in 1993, and, according to the About.com website:

As the McCoys's plans evolved, Pike County Tourism, Pikeville College, and the City of Pikeville joined the McCoys in the development of the reunion. Word about the McCoy reunion in Pikeville, Ky [sic] quickly spread to the national level. Bo McCoy extended an invitation to the Hatfields on the McCoy reunion Web site, and when the Hatfields learned about it, they wanted to join. The West Virginia Division of Tourism joined forces with the Corridor G Tourism Project to provide some funding for a Hatfield event in WV to coincide with the McCoy event in Kentucky, and the reunion of the millennium was born!

Additionally, an entire recreation area, the 400-mile Hatfield-McCoy Trails system, has been created around the theme of the Hatfield-McCoy Feud.

Possible genetic explanation

There has been some recent speculation in the press (Associated Press, April 6, 2007) that the feud may have been fueled in part by a rare tumor, pheochromocytoma ("pheo"), that sometimes leads to "hair-trigger rage and violent outbursts". In the McCoy family pheos are one of the consequences of a rare disease known as Von Hippel-Lindau disease (VHL), which is prevalent among McCoy descendants. The condition sometimes produces tumors of the adrenal gland (pheochromocytomas), leading to excess adrenaline production. According to the National Cancer Institute, most people interpret these surges as panic attacks or palpitations. Pheos occur also in the general population, and in families with any of five other genetic mutations.

Further reading

• Jones, Virgil Carrington. The Hatfields and the McCoys. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948. (Still regarded by local historians as the best and most balanced narrative history of the feud.)

• Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia, 1860-1900, Altina L. Waller, University of N. Carolina Press, 1998 ISBN 0807842168

External links

• West Virginia Division of Culture and History Hatfield-McCoy Feud 100th Anniversary
• 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
• The Hatfield and McCoy Feud — Matewan, West Virginia website
• Hatfield-McCoy Feud West Virginia Division of Culture and History
• Hatfield-McCoy Trails Hatfield-McCoy Trails