The Hatfields and the McCoys (3 page)

Upon leaving Confederate service, Devil Anse formed a militia unit of Home Guards known as the Logan Wildcats, which operated in Logan, Wayne, Cabell, and other border counties of West Virginia. He and his men may also have ventured into Kentucky. A quarter of a century later, in an interview with a reporter for the
Wheeling Intelligencer,
Devil Anse named three McCoys who had served in his company. According to some accounts, which appear reliable, Randolph McCoy himself was for a time a member of the organization. The loyalties of these men appear to have been flexible, and there is no reason to believe that their activities differed from those of similar guerrilla bands in the Appalachian Mountains.
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Both Hatfields and McCoys engaged in irregular military activities, either in the name of the Home Guards or the Confederate Army, which left a legacy of bitterness and resentment between members of the two families. In 1863 Ellison Hatfield, Henry Davis, Moses Chafin, and probably one other person met Asa Peter McCoy and his brother John in the woods near McCoy's home on Brushy Creek, in Pike County, and an exchange of gunfire occurred. Later Hatfield and his companions drove off four of McCoy's hogs, weighing about two hundred pounds each. According to Davis and Chafin, they took the hogs to the home of John Murphy on Mate Creek, in Logan County, where they divided them. In 1872, nine years later, McCoy still had an unsettled suit against those who had taken his hogs.
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Significantly, Asa Peter McCoy was the brother of Randolph, and Ellison Hatfield was the brother of Devil Anse.

A similar suit involved a charge by Basil Hatfield, a first cousin once removed of Devil Anse, against nine men, among whom were Moses Chafin, Joseph Smith, John Murphy, John Gooslin, and Andrew McCoy, the last possibly a brother of Randolph McCoy. Hatfield charged the party with taking “six head of fat hogs” from him by force in January 1863. Gooslin contended that they had paid Hatfield for the hogs, which they allegedly acquired for Confederate military forces. Some of the defendants, however, settled their differences with Hatfield by compromise. Others were found not guilty.
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In 1864 Daniel McCoy and seven other men allegedly seized at gunpoint eight sides of leather belonging to Thomas Hatfield, scattered tan ooze throughout Hatfield's home, and destroyed one of his bee gums. In his defense McCoy declared that he and the others were regular Confederate soldiers under the command of Captain Melville Lawson of the Tenth Kentucky Confederate Cavalry and that they had been detached under Lieutenant Joseph Smith, one of those charged with taking hogs belonging to Basil Hatfield, to obtain the leather. Hatfield, who took his case to court in 1866, remained dissatisfied.
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Pleasant McCoy, a brother of Randolph, was accused by James H. Lesley of stealing three horses in 1863, but McCoy denied that he had ever taken “a horse beast of any description “from Lesley or anyone else.
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Other litigation of a similar nature sprinkles the pages of the Pike County Circuit Court records in the 1860s and 1870s. It leaves no doubt that both Hatfields and McCoys sought personal advantage from disturbed conditions in the Tug Valley and that the Civil War left a residue of ill will that provided a climate conducive to trouble, particularly at times when members of the two families were under the influence of alcohol.

By far the most serious Civil War incident involving the Hatfields and McCoys resulted in the death of Harmon McCoy on January 7, 1865. Harmon, a younger brother of Randolph, waited nearly two years after the war began before he chose sides. He remained at home and tended his farm, cut timber, and rafted logs down the Tug Fork and the Big Sandy. By 1863, however, Union armies had cleared most of Kentucky of Confederate forces, and much of the remaining fighting took the form of guerrilla warfare. Shortly after the birth of his fifth child, Harmon broke with most of his own family and went to Ashland, where he joined Company E of the Forty-fifth Regiment of Kentucky Infantry Volunteers of the United States Army. He enlisted as a private for twelve months. Harmon's military record is spotty, but he spent some time in a Lexington hospital with a broken leg. On December 24, 1864, he was mustered out of service at Catlettsburg.

About the end of December Harmon returned to his home on Peter Creek, but his former friends and neighbors did not extend him a cordial welcome. According to one account, James Vance, an uncle of Devil Anse Hatfield, met Harmon and promised him that the Logan Wildcats would soon pay him a visit. A few days later someone fired at him from ambush as he drew water from his well. Knowing that to remain at home would mean almost certain death, Harmon hid out in a nearby cave. His black slave, Pete, carried him provisions. The guerrillas, most of them apparently West Virginians, traced Pete through the snow to the cave. There they found Harmon, lame and suffering from lung troubles, and killed him.

When Harmon McCoys body was found, the blame for his death almost naturally fell upon Devil Anse and the Logan Wildcats. Some associates of Devil Anse, however, maintained that at the time of Harmon's death their leader was confined to his bed with a high fever. More likely the real culprit was Jim Vance, a close associate of Devil Anse, who lived on Thacker Creek about four or five miles from Harmon's home. The tall, heavy-set, dark-bearded Vance, himself a later casualty in the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, had a reputation, even among his rough associates, for ruthlessness and vindictiveness.

No one was ever brought to trial for the murder of Harmon McCoy. Most of the residents of the Tug Valley probably felt little sympathy for their Unionist neighbor, and even members of the victim's family may have reasoned that he brought his fate upon himself. Harmon's death and the suspicions that fell upon Devil Anse and Jim Vance added a new chill to relations between the Hatfields and the McCoys, which suffered already from the animosities and injuries incident to the Home Guard and guerrilla activities during the last years of the Civil War.
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The persistence of grievances deriving from the war does much to explain why a seemingly minor dispute over a hog could produce such enmity between the Hatfields and the McCoys that many writers have considered it the cause of the feud. Mountain families customarily allowed their hogs to run at large in the woods and feed on the mast of beechnuts and acorns that abounded there. Each owner identified his hogs, which were of the long, lean, sharp-nosed variety known locally as razorbacks, by marking their ears with slits, clips, or bits that clearly distinguished them from those belonging to his neighbors.

In the autumn of 1878 Floyd Hatfield, a cousin of Devil Anse, went into the hills, rounded up his hogs, and drove them into pens for fattening at his home near Stringtown, on the Kentucky side of the Tug Fork. Not long afterward, Randolph McCoy, who lived a mile or two away on Blackberry Fork, stopped to exchange a few remarks with Hatfield near the latter's pigpen, when he chanced to see a hog which he said bore the McCoy markings. The hot-tempered McCoy immediately accused Floyd Hatfield, who some writers have erroneously stated was Randolph's brother-in-law, of penning up one of his hogs. Floyd vehemently denied stealing a hog, a charge always taken seriously in the mountains.

Unwilling to forget the matter, Randolph went immediately to the Reverend Anderson Hatfield, a local justice of the peace, who lived a few miles away in Raccoon Hollow. There he brought suit against Floyd Hatfield for recovery of the hog. On the day of the trial, as G. Elliott Hatfield has stated, “the mountaineers deserted their corn fields, moonshine stills, and logging projects to witness the administration of justice at Deacon Hatfields cabin.” Hatfields and McCoys, along with relatives on both sides, arrived in considerable numbers. Members of the two clans, well armed with rifles and revolvers, were more interested in seeing their kinsmen vindicated than in observing the workings of justice.

Deacon Hatfields situation was fraught with danger. Any decision that he might render was certain to leave one side deeply aggrieved. He therefore resorted to the use of a jury consisting of six Hatfields and six McCoys, hardly the most promising procedure, considering the cold relations between the two families. Among the witnesses called was William Staton, a nephew of Randolph McCoy. Station's sister Sarah had married Ellison Hatfield, a younger brother of Devil Anse. Staton, who lived on Mate Creek not far from the leader of the Hatfield clan, swore that he had seen Floyd Hatfield mark the ear of the hog with his own brand. His testimony produced a wave of audible indignation among the McCoys, but the stern manner of Deacon Hatfield and the expectation that the McCoy faction of the jury would stand by Randolph combined to prevent more than angry mutterings.

The McCoys and their partisans were totally unprepared for the verdict of the jury, which cleared Floyd Hatfield of the charge against him. To their astonishment, Selkirk McCoy, a cousin of Randolph, declared that he could find no evidence to contradict the testimony of Bill Staton and voted for acquittal of the defendant. From that time on, the McCoys considered Selkirk, whom they had counted on to be a safe juror, an enemy and a traitor to the family. During the months and years that followed, Selkirk, knowing that there was no neutral ground in the trouble between the two families, identified himself completely with the Hatfields.
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The unwillingness of the McCoys to accept the decision of the court illustrates one of the problems in establishing a reign of law in the mountains. Judges, justices of the peace, and jurymen, as well as sheriffs, their deputies, and constables, were often so closely related to the litigants that legal decisions were seldom accepted as impartial and final. For the litigious McCoys, legal machinery was but a vehicle for attaining their purposes. They, like the Hatfields and other mountain families, had little real appreciation for the majesty of the law or faith in its just execution. Consequently, when legal decisions did not satisfy them, they resorted to the law that might makes right, a concept that had received powerful reinforcement during the Civil War, when Home Guards and vigilante groups provided much of the law of the hills.

For Bill Staton the infuriated McCoys had no forgiveness. In the months following the trial, Staton, sensing that discretion was indeed the better part of valor, kept to the West Virginia side of the Tug Fork. Yet, he was involved in two or three incidents that arose from the seething hatred against him. The first occurred when he and his brother John, who were laboriously poling a pushboat up the Tug Fork, rounded a bend in the river and suddenly came upon a boat headed downstream and manned by Floyd and Calvin McCoy, sons of Randolph. Both parties immediately poled their crafts to shore and from opposite sides of the river opened fire upon each other. Fortunately, darkness fell before anyone was killed.

Another incident allegedly took place when Sam McCoy, a nephew of Randolph, encountered Staton and Ellison Hatfield tracking a deer on Mate Creek. Sam shot Staton's gun out of his hand and then rushed at him with the intention of killing him. Ellison quickly jumped between the two men and prevented Staton, as well as Sam, from firing. Ellison told them that the trial over the hog had been fair and advised them to forget the matter. Sam left, vowing that he would yet get Staton.

Bill Staton did not take Sam McCoy's threat lightly. One day, while he was hunting about a mile from the Hatfield Tunnel of the Norfolk and Western Railway, between the present towns of Williamson and Matewan, West Virginia, Staton spied Sam McCoy and his brother Paris. Staton was certain that the McCoys had not seen him and hoped to make the most of his advantage. Accounts of what happened next, however, are so contradictory that none can be accepted as unquestionably correct. According to one version, Staton fired at the McCoys and hit Paris, who collapsed to the ground with a shattered hip. Sam then shot Staton and inflicted a mortal wound. Taking no chances that his enemy might fire again, Sam jumped upon the wounded Staton, who had either dropped his gun or had it forced from him, and shot his adversary again. Another account has Staton leaping upon Paris and sinking his teeth into Paris's jugular vein, whereupon Sam, observing his brother in mortal peril, killed Staton. For good measure, the latter account adds that the hold of Staton upon Paris was so strong that Staton's jaws had to be pried loose after he died.

The McCoy brothers left Staton in the woods. When his body was discovered, the finger of suspicion pointed toward Sam and Paris, who, according to some versions of the story, hid in a cave. Ellison Hatfield, it is said, swore out a warrant for their arrest and asked Devil Anse to serve it, but the latter allegedly refused on the ground that he and the McCoys had been on good terms during the preceding months.

In due course Sam McCoy stood trial for the murder of Bill Staton. He was arraigned in Logan County before Justice of the Peace Valentine, or Wall, Hatfield, a brother of Devil Anse, and a Hatfield-picked jury. Sam's acquittal, on the basis of self-defense, came as a great surprise to the McCoys, but any satisfaction they may have taken in the workings of legal machinery in Logan County was more than offset by their anger that West Virginia authorities had brought Sam to trial at all. Nor did the possibility that Devil Anse himself may have given the word to his brother and the jurors to refrain from any vindictiveness, as some writers have suggested, ameliorate the hostility felt by the McCoys.
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The trouble over the hog and the killing of Bill Staton added fuel to the fires of hatred that blazed between the Hatfields and the McCoys. Yet, neither marked a clear beginning of the feud, which seems to have had no single point of origin but to have developed from an accumulation of honest grievances and imagined wrongs. The two incidents, like the Home Guard and vigilante activity during the Civil War and the killing of Harmon McCoy, contributed to the tense relations that exploded in the bloody and dramatic events of the 1880s and made the names of Hatfield and McCoy familiar throughout America.