All the feud yarns pushed by the folks I call “The Feud Industry” have a hog trial as an integral part of the yarn. Some of the writers simply never looked at the historical record, but many of them knew when they wrote the tale that it was categorically false. They include the pig trial because it is a condition precedent for the remainder of the yarn. Once it is established that a community considered a ten-dollar pig to be, as Dean King wrote, “The scandal of the day,” and harbored a killing enmity as a result of the trial over the porker, then all else becomes believable.
Many of the “facts” in all the fabricated episodes in the supersized feud story conflict directly with the actual historical record. The pig trial story is among the worst offenders.
The sign says that Preacher Anse and Devil Anse were cousins, and that is true. They were first cousins once-removed. The sign says that Bill Staton was killed by two of Ran’l McCoy’s nephews, and that is true. Every other “Fact” stated on the Kentucky Tourism sign that is amenable to proof is absolutely false—by the record.
Ran’l McCoy never charged Floyd Hatfield with stealing a hog. Had such a charge been brought, it would have been brought in the Circuit Court, because hog stealing was a felony under Kentucky law and could not be tried by a justice of the peace. Had such a charge been brought, it would be in the Pike Circuit Court records, and no such case appears in the record. Here is a hog stealing case from the year before the fictitious trial in the feud yarn.
The case is recorded in the Pike Circuit Court records, as are ALL felony cases. Feud writers tell their readers that there are no records, but they lie. Every felony charged in Pike County during the feud era is in the Circuit Court books.
The Pike County Court records, which are in the Pikeville Courthouse, prove that Preacher Anse Hatfield was NOT a justice of the peace in 1878.
A record from the Pike County Court Order book shows that Preacher Anse was sworn in as county tax assessor at the same time Perry Cline was sworn in as sheriff, in September 1875. That term ended in 1879. One of the three men who signed Perry Cline’s bond was none other than James Vance!
The twelve-man jury is a legal impossibility, as Kentucky law restricted a jury in a justice of the peace court to a maximum of SIX members.
Section 2252 of the Kentucky Statutes, in effect at the time, says: “A petit jury in the circuit court shall consist of twelve persons, and in all trials held in courts inferior to the circuit court, or by any county, police, or city judge, or justice of the peace, a jury shall consist of six persons; but the parties to any action or prosecution, except for felony, may agree to a trial by a less number of persons than is provided for in this section.” Article 248 of the Kentucky Constitution incorporates the same requirements for juries in courts inferior to the circuit court. West Virginia law had the same restriction on the number of jurors in a Justice of the Peace court.
It is also a physical impossibility, as the 1880 Census shows that Preacher Anse’s District did not have enough McCoys, outside Ran’l McCoy’s immediate family, to produce six McCoy jurors. (I can’t reproduce the Census, but it is on line.)
The Census also shows that Selkirk McCoy was a resident of the state of West Virginia at that time, and thus ineligible to serve on a Kentucky jury.
The Logan County Court records show that AW Ferrell, NOT Wall Hatfield, presided over the proceedings against the McCoy brothers who killed Bill Staton.
I delivered newspapers to my Great, Great Uncle, Ransom Hatfield, son of Preacher Anse, from 1952-55. Ransom lived his entire life in the house where the feud liars say the trial occurred. Ransom and his brother, Jeff, who lived directly across the creek from Ransom, both categorically denied that such a trial ever occurred. As a teenager on Blackberry Creek where the trial is claimed to have occurred, I talked to more than a score of people who were born before the first feud violence, and NONE of them had any knowledge of such a trial. Neither did ANY of them have any recollection of anyone ever telling them that such a trial occurred.
The documents reproduced here agree with what the people who had personal knowledge told me back in the 1950’s. Except for the names of some characters, every “fact” in the pig trial story that is amenable to proof is patently FALSE! The pig trial story is a fabrication, and the writers who repeat it are either ignorant of real history, or they are lying. They are especially lying when they tell their readers that there are no records of the feud era, making it necessary to depend upon fables and legends for “facts.”