The feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys has become the stuff of legend, with movies,
books, and TV shows all telling their own versions of the tale.
But it's easy to forget there were real people at the heart of it.
Here's the untold truth of their legendary feud.
The Hatfields and McCoys lived along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River in what is now
West Virginia, with the Hatfields on the West Virginia side, and the McCoys on the Kentucky
side.
Both families made their living from timber and moonshining, and had coexisted peacefully
for decades - until the Civil War broke out.
Both families were generally on the Confederate side at the beginning.
They both also engaged in the unofficial fighting that was pretty common along the borders of
Union and Confederate states.
One McCoy, Asa Harmon McCoy, served in the Union army, however, and that led to disaster.
At the end of 1864, Asa returned home from the war, having been mustered out of the Army
with a broken leg.
Many at home were angry with his service, and on January 7, 1865, a group of Hatfields
tracked him down and murdered him in cold blood — the first shots in what would become
the Hatfield-McCoy feud.
If there's one thing the world knows about Americans, it's that we like to sue each other.
This hasn't changed since the late 19th-century, when the Hatfields and McCoys made their deteriorating
relationship even worse by taking each other to court.
According to The Herald-Dispatch, in the late 1870s Hatfield patriarch William "Devil Anse"
Hatfield sued a McCoy cousin over a land dispute.
Devil Anse won the case, and took possession of 5,000 acres of good land in the process.
This disgruntled the McCoys in part because the Hatfields were already more affluent and
politically-connected, but they took no action at first.
Some time later, though, McCoy patriarch Randolph McCoy visited Floyd Hatfield's farm and spotted
a pig that appeared to have a distinct McCoy family mark on its ear.
Randolph accused Floyd of stealing the pig.
According to History, the ensuing trial was a mess of convoluted family relations.
The trial took place in a territory with heavy McCoy influence, but the judge was a Hatfield
relative.
The star witness, Bill Staton, was part of the McCoy family, but he was married to a
Hatfield—and his testimony cleared Floyd of the charges, infuriating the McCoys.
Two years later, Staton was killed by other McCoy relatives, who were eventually acquitted
on grounds of self-defense.
But the temperature between the two families had risen to dangerously high levels.
You might think that the Hatfields and McCoys, two families that famously hated each other
so much they literally went to war against each other for decades, would have avoided
each other personally.
In fact, the opposite is true: The families were linked by numerous marriages and other
relationships.
The land each family owned was right next to the other, after all.
As the Herald-Dispatch notes, it was one of the many Hatfield-McCoy couplings that moved
the family feud to the next level.
In 1880, Johnse Hatfield, son of family patriarch Devil Anse Hatfield, met Roseanna McCoy, Randolph
McCoy's daughter.
By this point there was a lot of bad blood between the families due to recent litigation
and violence, so Randolph wasn't thrilled by this development.
When Roseanna traveled to West Virginia to live with Johnse, the McCoys were livid, and
rode after her.
Johnse himself wasn't particularly thrilled, as according to History, he didn't really
want to settle down with her.
Roseanna was by this time pregnant, but with both families forbidding the marriage, she
was forced to return home, where her father Randolph disowned her.
She reportedly never saw Johnse again.
Their child died just a year later of the measles, and the heartbroken Roseanna never
recovered.
She passed away in 1889 at just 29 years old - by which time, Johnse had married her cousin
Nancy McCoy, one of many women he had been messing around with the whole time.
By 1882, the Hatfields and McCoys despised each other, but their feud had been a limited
one so far.
There had been raids, kidnappings, and lawsuits, but these were isolated incidents that could
have been left behind.
Then came Election Day.
According to History, three of Randolph McCoy's sons ran into two of Devil Anse Hatfield's
brothers at the polls and exchanged angry words.
According to some accounts, the McCoys had been trying to get revenge on Johnse Hatfield
for his treatment of Roseanna, but had been prevented by Devil Anse.
Others claim the argument was over a small debt.
Either way, things grew more and more heated, and a brawl broke out.
Ellison Hatfield was stabbed several times, and was shot in the back as he tried to escape.
As Ellison lay mortally wounded, the authorities sent out officers to arrest the McCoys.
But Devil Anse had a better idea.
He organized a small army of Hatfields who rode out and apprehended the McCoys.
When Ellison died of his wounds, they took the boys across state lines and executed all
three of them in a hail of bullets.
This cold-blooded murder made the Hatfields wanted criminals, and warrants were quickly
issued for the arrest of dozens of family members.
The Hatfields were old-school country people, however, and melted into the countryside in
territory that was very friendly towards them, evading arrest—which made the McCoys even
angrier.
History reports that the Hatfields used their political connections to get the charges of
murder against them dropped.
But the McCoys had friends too.
They enlisted an attorney named Perry Cline who had married into the family, who successfully
got the charges reinstated—and added a reward for their capture.
The Hatfields started to feel the pressure of having a price on their heads, and decided
that drastic action against their enemies was required.
The plan the Hatfields settled on was elegant in its simplicity: The McCoys were the root
of their problems, so they would eliminate the McCoys.
The Hatfields organized an assault on Randolph McCoy's cabin on New Year's Day in 1888.
They set fire to the cabin and started shooting at the fleeing McCoys.
Randolph's son, Calvin, was murdered, while Randolph's daughter Alifair was gunned down
as she tried to put out the fire.
Randolph's wife, Sarah, tried to help Alifair and was beaten nearly to death, suffering
a crushed skull that left her disabled the rest of her life.
A bounty hunter named Bad Frank Phillips took up the McCoy case in the wake of this massacre.
Tracking them down, he killed one and arrested nine others.
Hailed as a hero by the McCoys, he ended up marrying Nancy McCoy - by now the ex-wife
of notorious womanizer Johnse Hatfield.
After several Hatfields were arrested for the violent and deadly assault on Randolph
McCoy's cabin in 1888, the feud moved from the open country into the courtroom — and
on to the front page.
As you might suspect, that meant that the pace of events slowed to a crawl.
The state of West Virginia, home to the Hatfield clan, sued the state of Kentucky, arguing
that the Hatfields had been illegally arrested by bounty hunter Frank Phillips, and illegally
transported into Kentucky.
The case crawled through the courts for months, and the two states became increasingly angry
at each other over the issue.
According to the Herald-Dispatch, things got so heated the governors of both states actually
activated their National Guard units, preparing for a possible mini-Civil War between them.
The court case eventually made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which decided in
Kentucky's favor by a vote of 7-2.
Although the legality of the arrests wasn't settled, the Court's ruling allowed the trial
to be held in Kentucky - a big win for the McCoys.
All of the Hatfields were eventually convicted.
Eight were sentenced to life in prison, including Johnse Hatfield, and one was sentenced to
death - Ellison Mount, son of Ellison Hatfield, who had been killed by the McCoy boys in 1882.
Despite reportedly struggling with intellectual disabilities, Mount was executed by the state
on February 18, 1890 after confessing to shooting Alifair McCoy.
Contrary to popular misconception, the Hatfields and the McCoys weren't actually at war with
each other for very long.
With eight Hatfields sent to prison for life and another sent to the grave, the Hatfield-McCoy
feud quickly cooled.
A few more trials occurred with a few more convictions, but the fight had really gone
out of both families—both patriarchs, William "Devil Anse" Hatfield and Randolph McCoy had
suffered devastating losses, and neither seemed eager to continue the violence.
In fact, according to The Baltimore Sun, an official end to the feud was announced in
1891.
Cap Hatfield, Devil Anse's son, published a letter in a local newspaper that read in
part,
"The war spirit in me has abated [...] a general amnesty has been declared in the famous Hatfield
and McCoy feud."
History reports that Randolph McCoy was haunted by the loss of his son Calvin and his daughter
Alifair, and became a ferry boat operator, dying at the age of 88 in 1914.
Devil Anse Hatfield, who had never been a religious man, suddenly found faith and had
himself baptized at the age of 73, and died of pneumonia at the age of 81 in 1921.
There was no further violence between the families, although there were some minor legal
dustups.
All in all, the Hatfield-McCoy feud lasted a little less than 30 years.
So why did the feud really happen in the first place?
The reasons behind the Hatfield-McCoy feud seem simple enough, of course: Familiarity
breeds contempt, after all, and two families living so close to each other were bound to
have disagreements.
Add in guns and a level of isolation from society at large and you have the perfect
recipe for a violent war between families.
But there was more to it.
Economics played a part as well.
Isolated rural areas like the home of the Hatfields and McCoys were increasingly pinched
as the industrial revolution ramped up and big businesses swooped in to buy up land rich
in natural resources.
That increased poverty and forced families that had once coexisted peacefully to begin
competing for dwindling opportunities.
More than that, though, there may also have been a genetic component.
According to History, in 2007, a scientific team performed a detailed
study on the descendants of both families and discovered a very high incidence of Von
Hippel-Lindau disease, an extremely rare genetic disorder that results in tumors, high blood
pressure—and enhanced stress hormones.
As a result, the disease can make people very short-tempered and easy to provoke.
While no one claims it's the sole reason for the feud, scientists now believe family members
secretly suffering from the condition may have made things worse because they were so
easily enraged as a result.
Researchers matched the genetic findings with oral histories of the violent and angry nature
of many Hatfields and McCoys and concluded that the disorder almost certainly pushed
many of them to overreact to provocations.
If medical science had been aware of the condition in the 1860s, the entire feud might have been
avoided.
The Hatfield-McCoy feud ended in every practical sense in 1891, but it has loomed large in
the public imagination ever since - something members of the family aren't always happy
with.
So in 1976 members of the two families tried to change perceptions by staging a symbolic
handshake, which kicked off a series of joint family reunions.
1976 also saw the debut of the hit game show Family Feud, which pitted two rival families
against each other for cash and prizes.
Of course, Family Feud was a much friendlier competition than the blood feud that inspired
it, so it was only natural that in 1979, the Hatfields and McCoys appeared on the show
to prove just how congenial they all were by then — though they still played things
up for the cameras.
"There's no hard feelings?"
After September 11, 2001, though, the families took a more sober look at their place in history
and decided that something more was needed to underscore their rejection of their violent
legacy.
So in 2003, Reo Hatfield and Bo McCoy got together and drafted a real, official peace
treaty between the two families.
They argued that the historic nature of the feud required a physical document proving
it had ended—and expressed the hope that the nation would follow their example and
become more united.
So far America has become united in at least one thing: everyone loves the feud between
the Hatfields and the McCoys, to the point where a thriving tourism industry has sprung
up to serve people making pilgrimages to Kentucky and West Virginia to see where it all happened.
Tourists love to visit places like Dils Cemetery in Pikeville to see the gravesite of McCoy
patriarch Randolph McCoy and some of his family members, the spot where Floyd Hatfield was
put on trial for stealing a McCoy pig in the late 1870s—and the spot where three McCoy
boys were tied to trees and executed in cold blood by vengeful Hatfields after the death
of Ellison Hatfield.
In fact, according to ABC News, the United States Congress appropriated $500,000 to build
walkways and make some of the sites a bit more tourist-friendly, recognizing the historical
and cultural importance of the feud.
The feud may be long over, but as long as there's money to be made from it, it will
never truly be allowed to end.
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