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Dean King Hokum

Have We Edited Dean King’s Book?

 

We don’t have as big a megaphone as does the “feud industry,” but we a ARE making progress!  Dean King has this photo of my great uncle, Constable Floyd Hatfield on page 53 of his book, The Feud.  King captions the photo “Hog Floyd Hatfield.”

The  West Virginia Culture website had the photo, properly captioned, on it website.  After King’s book came out, someone at the Culture and History Department obviously read it and changed the caption to “Hog Floyd” Hatfield, just as it is in King’s book.

Jack Hatfield, grandson of my great-great-Uncle, Constable Floyd Hatfield, got in touch and gave them the facts. That photo is now again correctly captioned  http://www.wvculture.org/history/hatfield/hfindex.html

Will King persist in calling Constable Floyd Hatfield “Hog Floyd” when his paperback is issued?  Will the paperback continue to use the bogus photos of “Randall McCoy” (p. 22), Asa Harmon McCoy (p. 37), and the three unknown corpses as the sons of Ran’l McCoy (p. 120)?

Many serious feud scholars are wondering how much of the spurious “data” will be excised for the paperback. I don’t expect many changes, because to “clean it up” would require a complete re-write, which would not even resemble the first edition.

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