The key to the title question is the same as in all other historical writings: What is the source of the story?
In the case of the famous feud, the original source is John Spears, reporter for the New York Sun. Spears, a legitimate historian in his own right, visited Pikeville, Kentucky in 1888 and talked to the best witnesses he could find. Spears tells us that his prime sources were three men who were intimately involved in the ‘feud,’ Randolph McCoy, his son, James and Perry Cline.
The Kentuckians told Spears a story that, unfortunately for us, did not include the most important germane fact, which is that the sources were, at the time they gave Spears the story, under indictment in West Virginia for murder in the cases of James Vance and Bill Dempsey.
Is it any wonder that the basic feud story was, and remains, more akin to a Hatfield crime spree than a blood feud? This court record shows that Nancy McCoy Hatfield swore that Randolph and Jim McCoy were charged with murder at the time the spoke to Spears, and John S. Cline, son of Perry Cline was with them. Perry Cline certainly had a dog in the fight, and the two McCoys were members of the pack. They are the source of the Spears writings, and, by default, the sources for the “approved” version of the Hatfield and McCoy story today.
The biggest of all the feud yarns, written in 2013 by Dean King, cites Spears at least sixty-six times as a FACT source.
Here it is, in the original filing in Logan County, WV. The document was sworn by three people, one of whom was the best possible witness. (Click on the graphic to expand).
Nancy McCoy Hatfield was the daughter of Asa Harmon McCoy and the wife of Johnse Hatfield at the time she swore this affidavit. She was on Grapevine Creek when the events occurred, and she knew the Pike County men by sight.
A few months after she signed this document, Nancy left Johnse Hatfield and moved across Tug River to the home of Bad Frank Phillips on Peter Creek. Once Nancy was lost as a witness for Logan County, Logon could no longer sustain charges against two dozen Pike Countians. The list of wanted men shrank immediately to six, three of whom were arrested and confined in the Logan jail for several months. Those men were released for lack of evidence and a fourth, David Stratton, got drunk and sat down on the railroad track, where a C&O locomotive shrank the list of wanted men to two, Frank Phillips and Samuel King.
It’s all in the records in the Logan courthouse, but no feud writers pay any attention to the records. I will be 80 at my next birthday, but there will still be men who have actually studied these records after I have been gathered to my Hatfield and McCoy fathers.* Of course the feud industry will pay no attention to them, but here they are for those who may be interested: Ryan Hardesty, Eric Simon, owner of “Appalachian Lost and Found,” and Brandon Ray Kirk, author of “Blood in West Virginia.”
- Three of my great, great grandfathers were Hatfields and my mother was a McCoy.