This is Uncle Ransom Hatfield, son of Preacher Anse Hatfield. He is sitting in the same metal chair he usually sat in on warm days, waiting for me to deliver his copy of the Williamson Daily News, from 1952-55.
Click on graphics to enlarge.
This is Cornie Rell Norman–my 8th grade teacher–and his grandfathers, Ransom Hatfield and Tom Norman. Cornie has just delivered him the paper Uncle Ransom is holding in his hand.
The large chimney rock at the point of the red arrow, was loose. When removed, there was just enough space behind it to store his “Emergency pint” of bourbon. He had me retrieve it for him a couple of times. He thought no one in his household knew where it was, but his daughter, Polly Faye knew, and sometimes sabotaged him by hiding it elsewhere. Once he sobered up, she would replace it in the chimney.
The space was not big enough to hide a fifth, but a pint fit perfectly.
This is Uncle Ransom in the last year of his life. The corner etagere behind him was bought by his father, Preacher Anse, before Ransom was born in 1881.
One time I retrieved his pint from the chimney, and he told me something that stuck with me. He took a long drink and said, “Don’t ever start drinkin’ this stuff, son. You are Hatfield on BOTH sides and any Hatfield who drinks whiskey after he is 40 will die drunk.”
I quit when I was 37.
Uncle Ransom had a generous amount of the Hatfield brains and an eidetic memory. His supply of tales was endless, and I never, even after I had done thousands of hours of research, caught him in a lie.
He told me one about my Dad, Monroe Dotson and my uncle Ancie, being charged with public drunkenness when they were in their late teens. Dad never drank, but Ancie did. Dad made whiskey during the depression to feed his family, but he never drank it.
Uncle Ransom, who was a lawyer, represented the Dotson boys, who faced as much as a ten dollar fine in the JP court. He produced one witness, Rev. John Riffe, who swore that Monroe Dotson never had a drink in his life. He said nothing about Uncle Ancie. The jury found the boys not guilty, at which time, they began to celebrate. Dad grabbed Ansie’s hat off his head and tossed it into the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the courtroom. The JP immediately fined the boys $20 for contempt of court.
My 2g uncle, Ransom Hatfield was my grandma Mary Hatfield Dotson’s uncle. He was also the uncle of my grandpa. Phillip McCoy, whose mother was Ransom’s sister, Nancy Hatfield McCoy.
Uncle Ransom didn’t hate anyone, except for the people who wrote lying feud books about his family. He had a special contempt for Virgil Jones, who spent two days interrogating Ransom and his older brother Jeff, and then proceeded to write a book full of legends and lies, calling it history.