Author: Thomas Dotson

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Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Kentucky Lawyers Learn Feud History, Part 2

This is a continuation of the post of January, 2014.  http://hatfield-mccoytruth.com/2014/01/24/kentucky-lawyers-learn-feud-history/

The  section entitled “Facts and Fiction,” features the standard disclaimer we see in all the feud yarns, to wit: As there are no actual records, all we can do is sort through the various feud tales and choose the ones we prefer. It says: “The following presentation of events that occurred throughout the Hatfield and McCoy feud is a collection compiled from authors that devoted their research to discovering the most accurate narrative.” Note that they were not told that the presentation would depend upon the actual public records. Like their cited sources, they were looking at prior “narratives,” which means feud books, all but one of which were compilations of unsubstantianted legend and fable. They were picking and choosing from writers who cited as fact sources almost exclusively prior writers who cited nothing.
The presenter writes: “Almost every incident in this feud has several conflicting versions that blame different participants, depending upon whether its source supported the Hatfields or McCoys. But which conveys what really happened? No one can possibly know except the participants themselves, and they are all long dead, the truth buried with them.” The foregoing is a verbatim quote from the group’s favorite source, the novelist, Lisa Alther. So, of all the events that have transpired since mankind discovered the art of writing, the Hatfield and McCoy feud is the only significant part of anyone’s history where the facts are now lost, because “Only the participants knew, and when they died, the truth died with them.” This is pure hokum, as the first two “feud events” in the presentation show.

The story says: “The first incident between the families was the murder of Harmon McCoy, Ranel’s brother. Harmon had been a Union sympathizer and was treated with hostility by Confederate supporters. One particular supporter, Jim Vance, threatened Harmon’s life. Vance was Devil Anse’s uncle and was well known for his ruthless and violent nature. After Vance’s threat Harmon went into hiding for fear of his life. Not long after, he was shot and most attributed his death to Vance.”

Harmon McCoy was more than a “Union sympathizer.” He enlisted first in a company of Union Home Guards, in February, 1862, and was shot through the chest in a skirmish the day after he enlisted.  With his chest wound still open and oozing, he was captured in October while operating with the Home Guards.

In April, 1863, he was discharged from the Union Army hospital in Annapolis Maryland, with his wound still oozing pus. HIs wound healed, he traveled a hundred miles and enlisted in the 45th Battalion, Kentucky Infantry in October, 1863. In May, 1864 he suffered a fracture of both his tibia and fibula, which caused him to miss muster until August. He was then back with his regiment until he was discharged on Christmas Eve, 1864. All of this is actually in the military records, which I have in my possession.

According to the sworn testimony of his widow, Harmon re-enlisted immediately, and was sent home on a holiday furlough. Martha McCoy swore that he was “Killed by Rebels while on his way back to the regiment.” Martha McCoy’s sworn affidavit was witnessed by Basil Hatfield, who served as both Sheriff and County Judge of Pike County. There are more written records about the military career of Harmon McCoy than about any other feud character. I have the records to prove everything I have written, right down to the oozing wound.

Except for the fact that he was Devil Anse’s uncle, the statements about Jim Vance are demonstrably totally false.  Jim Vance was elected Constable and appointed justice of the peace in Logan County. He was appointed a deputy sheriff in Pike County, and signed the sheriff’s bond for Harmons brother-in-law, Perry Cline. Vance was never even accused of a single crime in his long lifetime.

In addition to his close association with Harmon’s brother-in-law, Perry Cline, Vance also had dealings with Harmons daughter, Mary McCoy Daniels.  I have one record showing that Mary took a note from Jim Vance for a third of the purchase price on a large tract of land in 1875. In that same year, Jacob, the eldest son of Harmon McCoy married Jim Vance’s daughter, Elizabeth. The two families celebrated the nuptials in the home of the bride’s father, Jim Vance.
No one accused Jim Vance of murdering Harmon McCoy until after Vance was murdered. All of this is proved—by the record– in my “Crazy Jim” book.

Knowing that the audience was a roomful of lawyers, the next paragraph truly shocked me. It says: “Ranel eventually retaliated against the Hatfields for the death of his brother when he sued Devil Anse in April 1866 for stealing a horse from his farm in 1864. Randall and Devil Anse filed several similar suits.”
All of the lawsuits in Pike Circuit Court are in the record, and could have been found by the lawyers in attendance. There never was a lawsuit filed by either Ran’l McCoy or Devil Anse Hatfield against the other. In fact, Ran’l never sued a single Hatfield, and Anse never sued a single McCoy.

It takes a mountain of audacity to spin such a yarn to a roomful of lawyers, who can easily do the research to prove it false in detail.
But the lawyers have already been told that there is nothing but the various tales to depend upon for facts, so they just accept the assurance given in the beginning that they are hearing “current and accurate information about the subject matter.”  The source given for all the imaginary lawsuits was, again, the novelist, Lisa Alther.
To be continued……..

 

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Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

LISA ALTHER: A VERMONT NOVELIST WRITES TUG VALLEY HISTORY

Lisa Alther is a Vermont novelist who has made a lot of money writing books that rely heavily upon lesbian sex. In 2012, she “caught the wave” in the wake of the Kevin Costner TV show by writing a book on the Hatfields and McCoys. In its review, the Wall Street Journal called Alther “An expert on the feud.”

There is not a single sentence in that book that is both new and true. She tells us that she parsed the prior books and chose the tales she liked for her book. It is obvious that she never laid eyes on a single original document in a courthouse or archive.  Ms. Alther entitles the introduction to her book, “Murderland.”  That title is a good indication of the validity of the tale that follows.

Lisa Alther said of Truda McCoy: “she wrote an account that reads like a novel — and is probably about as reliable as one.”  After stating early on that Truda McCoy’s book is “probably about as reliable as a novel,” what does the novelist, Alther do? Why, she cites that “unreliable” source one hundred and two times in her footnotes!

With one hundred and two citations of Truda McCoy in one hundred forty-seven pages of feud-related text, it is clear that this author can’t write two pages without falling back upon a book she says is no more trustworthy on historical fact than a novel.  And she touts her book as non-fiction!

The part of Truda McCoy’s book that reads most like a novel is the first chapter, which describes the death of Asa Harmon McCoy. A comparison of Truda’s original manuscript, which is in the Leonard Roberts papers at Berea College,  it is obvious thatthis chapter in Truda’s book is largely the work of Leonard Roberts.
Alther’s first chapter is also on Asa Harmon.

Truda McCoy, who did not claim to be writing a history, used her imagination to tell the story of Harmon McCoy’s death the way she envisioned it.  Since no one knows the details, McCoy does no great violence to historical fact by telling the story the way she imagines it might have happened.  Knowing what it represents, this chapter is actually the best part of McCoy’s book.  Although one can get a real feel for the situation in January, 1965 by reading McCoy’s chapter, no serious scholar would mistake it for real history.

It is a far different thing for a later writer to use it as if it was real history, but that is what Lisa Alther did, in a near-verbatim regurgitation of McCoy’s first chapter.  Alther said Truda McCoy’s book read like a novel, and that is true of most books by descendants.  Alther’s 2012 book, Blood Feud, reads even more like a novel than does the one by Truda McCoy.  In fact, in her fictional chapter on Asa Harmon, she follows Truda McCoy so closely that one has to look at the title to know which book one is reading.

Here are two examples among many sentences that are so similar that it is hard to distinguish Alther from McCoy:

TM: “Pete and Patty started toward the cave. They had not gone far after they reached the woods, until other tracks joined the tracks that Pete had made on his previous journey to the cave.”

LA: “they reached a junction at which new boot prints emerged from the woods to join Pete’s tracks up the hill toward the cave.”

TM: Then, “Halfway to the cave, they found Harmon lying across a snow covered log. The snow around him was red with his blood.”

LA: “Alongside the trail, just below the cave, they spotted a fallen oak tree.  Across its trunk sprawled Harmon McCoy.  The snow on the ground around him was stained scarlet.”

Alther takes McCoy’s harmless fiction and transforms it into “history,” without even giving McCoy credit for her words.  This narrative exists nowhere else in feud literature, except with Truda McCoy and Lisa Alther. Knowing what it represents, this chapter is actually the worst part of Alther’s book.

Alther had a few new ‘facts’ in her book, but they are all egregiously false.

One of her “New” discoveries is where she wrote, (p. 35) of Ran’l McCoy: “he charged Devil Anse Hatfield with stealing a horse from his farm in 1864.” On the next page, she writes: “Ranel McCoy and Devil Anse Hatfield filed several similar suits against each other in the years following.”

This is not a minor human error that any writer might make. It is a whole cloth fabrication of something that is of central importance to her tale. And it is absolutely false in its entirety.

As you can see in this Index, Randolph McCoy filed several lawsuits, NONE of which had any Hatifeld–much less Devil Anse–as a defendant.

McCoy 1

Randolph Mccoy cases continue on the next page. He was actually quite litigious. Ran’l was involved in many suits contesting the value of hundreds of pigs, but no one knows about them.

There are NO lawsuits in the record where Randolph McCoy sued ANY Hatfield, much less Devil Anse Hatfield. The index also shows that Devil Anse never sued ANY McCoy, much less Ran’l McCoy.

McCoy 3

Lisa Alther, whose previous novels dealt a lot with sex, has much more sex in her fictional “history” than any other feud writer.  Everyone knows sex sells in 21st century America– and the kinkier the better.  Alther mentions at least three times that Ran’l McCoy’s cousin, Pleasant, was accused of copulating with a cow.

When describing the widely publicized photo of Ellison Hatfield in his Civil War uniform with his revolver in front of him, she says he is “fondling his pistol.”

In her chapter entitled The Corsica of America, Alther says: “If only the feudists had spent as much money and effort on acquiring contraception (which was, in fact, available in other regions of the United States at this time) as they did on acquiring guns, ammunition and moonshine, a different scenario might have evolved.”

I must admit that the scenario would have been quite different if someone had sold condoms to the feudists.  When Devil Anse went to federal court in 1889 on a moonshining charge, he faced the standard year-and-a-day if convicted.  Had he been peddling condoms, however, he would have faced up to five years in the pokey and a two thousand dollar fine plus court costs.

The Comstock Act became law in 1870.  That law read, in part:  “…whoever shall sell…or shall offer to sell, or to lend, or to give away… any drug or medicine, or any article whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for causing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale… shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less than six months nor more than five years for each offense, or fined not less than one hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court.”

Whether this declared expert is ignorant of history or simply chose to condemn several generations of Appalachians while knowing her statement was untrue, I know not.  The Comstock Law remained in full force against contraceptives until 1936.   The 1936 decision applied only to married couples.  The right to contraception for unmarried persons was not recognized until 1972.

We learn more about the mind of the novelist who penned this screed when she says she was driving through the Cumberlands and saw a billboard advertising an indoor firing range.  Alther says: “At the top stood a large cutout of a pistol, pointed upward at an angle.  The barrel resembled an erect phallus, the trigger guard outlining a testicle.”   Now we know why she thinks Ellison Hatfield was ‘fondling’ his pistol in his Civil War photo.  To some people everything is about sex, and those folks write a lot of books — and buy a lot of books.

The Wall Street Journal calls Alther “An  expert on the feud.” I place her in the top tier of the folks I lovingly refer to as “The feud liars.“

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SAVING THE DEVIL—A TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY FABLE

https://issuu.com/charismamediaproduction/docs/mtja16_dig

I have no way of knowing how much of the tripe in the linked article, which begins on page 18, is a result of ignorance and how much is dishonesty. Since it appears in a religious magazine, I guess I’ll just leave it up to God to sort it out.

I used to wonder how the first feud writers could have been ignorant of the existence of the public records when they wrote the original yarn in 1888. When I see stuff written in 2016 that is flatly contradicted by the records, I am dumbfounded!

The Hatfields get the worst of it in all the tales, from 1888 to the present. This one has Devil Anse a horse-thief in his younger days, saying that at the end of the Civil War, Ran’l McCoy “filed a lawsuit alleging that Devil Anse had stolen his horse.”

Either this writer, Mr. Ken Walker, does not know that all such lawsuits are in the records, or he just doesn’t give a hoot about truth. The attached is from the index of all Pike County lawsits from 1830 to 1910. There are several suits with a plaintiff named Randolph McCoy, but none with a defendant named Anse Hatfield. Mr. Walker’s lawsuit is pure fiction.

McCoy 1

The article says that the early photos of Anse always had a gun, but after his epiphany, Anse was never seen with a gun again. According to Coleman Hatfield, this photo of Anse was taken a dozen years before he got religion. He is armed with a cane.

Anse-cane

According to Coleman Hatfield, this photo shows the old Rebel a few years after Uncle Dyke dunked him in Island Creek. He’s packing a Winchester.

Anse rifle

Here’s the regenerated old Devil in a publicity shot for his 1915 motion picture. He ain’t just testifyin’!

DA movie

Coleman Hatfield says that the local papers reported Devil Anse coming to a theater where his movie was playing in 1915, carrying his Winchester. (Tale of the Devil, p. 259)

Coleman Hatfield wrote that Devil Anse, a year after he was baptized, had his rifle across his knees in the courtroom where his son, Willis was being tried. (TOTD, p. 273)  You just can’t make this stuff up!

Here are some facts about William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield:

He lived for fifty-six years after the Civil War ended. He was accused of leading the mob that lynched the three McCoys on August 9, 1882. He was never tried and convicted of that crime. He adamantly denied it until he died. He never admitted guilt during the ten years after he was baptized. The only sworn testimony connecting him to that crime came from two men who “turned state’s evidence” to save their own necks. They admitted in court that they were living in the home of “Uncle Ran’l and Aunt Sally McCoy” at the time they testified.

Anse Hatfield was never even accused of participating in the arson and murders of January 1, 1888. Not even by Ran’l or Sally McCoy. Although charged with various minor offenses–mostly relating to illicit liquor–Anse Hatfield was never accused of harming a single human being, except for the three lynched McCoys.

Anse Hatfield was unlettered, but he had the Hatfield brains. He actively supported the publication of the idea that he was a man not be trifled with during the final three decades of his life, in order to cause potential bounty hunters to think twice before coming to Island Creek.

I think there are some dry bones in the woods of Island Creek, belonging to bounty hunters who came looking for him and found him, but I can’t prove it. Neither can anyone prove the other murders charged to him.

Anse Hatfield was wise to avoid being tried in Pikeville. All you have to do is look at the record of Wall’s case to see that a fair trial for Anse would have been impossible. The Court of Appeals said that Wall gave the order to shoot the McCoy brothers. They said he gave the order from the VIRGINIA side of the river. They didn’t even know what state Wall was in, but they knew that he was the commander of the venture.

By his own testimony, Wall Hatfield was–by the law– guilty of being an accessory. It is also apparent that he considered himself blameless. He obviously tried to prevent the killings. The only alternative interpretation is that he was stupid.

If the Kentucky gang would make Wall the leader of the Hatfield gang in order to try to hang him, there is no limit to which they would not have gone to hang Anse.

I personally believe that Anse Hatfield was in charge of that lynching. I also know that there were hundreds of white men lynched during the last third of the nineteenth century, and that the leaders of many–if not most–of those lynch mobs were leading citizens of their communities, who suffered no punishment for their actions.

According to the Tuskeegee Institute, 64 white men were lynched in 1882. Three of them were Tolbert, Pharmer and Bud McCoy. Nobody knows who the other 61 were.

Among the many questions I had after reading that article is: “Did poor Ol’ Ran’l McCoy get saved, too? It’s hard to grasp the idea that, after all he suffered in this vale of tears, Ol’ Ran’l ultimately went to Hell. If I find out anything about Ran’l’s final destination, I’ll put it in the blog. There’s not a bit of information on that subject in the current magazine article. It just doesn’t seem right for Devil Anse to be strolling down gold–plated streets while poor Ol’ Ran’l is “weeping and wailing and gnashing his teeth,” but who am I to judge?………………….To be continued…………….

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SAVING THE DEVIL, Part 2

https://issuu.com/charismamediaproduction/docs/mtja16_dig?e=6700021%2F36534617

The article, which begins on page 18 of the linked magazine, says that, for many years, no one in the area would talk about “the feud.” That is one of the most outrageous claims in the feud yarns. I grew up talking to more than a dozen people who remembered the 1880’s. I delivered papers to two of the sons of Preacher Anse Hatfield, and a son of Floyd Hatfield for three years, 1952-55. My Granny, who lived about 50 feet from us all the time I was growing up, attended the funerals of Ran’l McCoy’s murdered children. Granny’s parents were BOTH Hatfields by birth.

Uncle Jeff Hatfield, a son of Preacher Anse who was there on August 7, 1882, took me to the spot where Ellison Hatfield fell.  It was a few steps behind the house where Jeff lived with his daughter, Katherine, and her husband, Dovil Scott.  Jeff and his brother Ransom also told me about attending the funerals of Ran’l McCoy’s children.

I never asked a question of anyone who refused to tell me what they knew about the subject. Of course no one talked about most of the “events” in the feud books, simply because they never happened. All the old people knew that the McCoy brothers butchered Ellison Hatfield on Election Day, 1882, and that the Hatfields lynched them two days later. They all knew that a gang–mostly from Peter Creek and Johns Creek–invaded Logan County in December, 1887 and January, 1888, and killed “Old Man” Vance and Deputy Dempsey.

All of them knew that a gang which probably included members of the family of  Devil Anse burned the McCoy home and killed two of Ran’l’s adult children on New Years, 1888. None of them believed that Devil Anse was personally involved in that raid.

They all knew that Wall Hatfield and his sons-in-law were sent to prison in 1889, and Ellison Mounts was hanged in 1890. They ALL talked freely about what actually happened. But, the claims of the writer are true about most of the feud story. The old folks had nothing to report on most of the events we see in the feud books, simply because they are fiction!

There were a few old people in the area when I was growing up who did not like to discuss “the feud.” They were the McCoys, who were descended from Samuel McCoy. Those McCoys, the wealthiest and most influential of the clan, had absolutely nothing to do with Ran’l McCoy or his”feud.”

Those McCoys had good reason to be reluctant to discuss what they called “Ran’l’s feud.” My book, “The Missing McCoys” tells the story. It is the only place where anyone can get the real facts about the McCoys of the feud era. Ran’l McCoy was an outcast, shunned by most of the McCoy clan, and he never led anyone anywhere at any time.

My GG Grandfather, Uriah McCoy, a son of Samuel McCoy, was a first cousin to Ranl and a brother to his wife, Sally. Uriah was the wealthiest McCoy of his time. In 1876, he forfeited most of his fortune. He walked into the Pikeville Courthouse and plunked down $20,000, in cash, to satisfy a judgment. That is three times what Devil Anse got for his 5,000 acres a decade later.

UriahJ

Uriah McCoy was stripped of a fortune, mainly on the testimony of his cousin and brother-in-law, Randolph McCoy, and his nephew, Tolbert McCoy. Here is the witness list for the plaintiff who sued Uriah McCoy.

TolbertWitness

Everyone knows that Ran’l McCoy was involved in a court case about a pig, but no one who has not read “The Missing McCoys” knows that he was involved in a case that was worth a couple of thousand pigs. Of course one of those trials never happened, and the other is in the records

Like most feud tales, this one slanders a pure warrior, Asa Harmon McCoy, as a coward. It says (p.24), that the Hatfiels were “evil” for murdering Asa Harmon while he hid out in a cave after leaving the Union Army. No one ever accused anyone connected with the Hatfields of murdering Asa Harmon McCoy for decades after the event. His widow swore that he was discharged, and immediately re-enlisted. Sent home on a holiday furlough, Patsy swore that he “Was killed by Rebels while returning to his regiment.” Martha “Patsy” McCoy’s affidavit was witnessed by Basil Hatfield.

MM pension app

Anyone who has seen the real history, as laid out in “The Missing McCoys,” knows that it would have been more likely that the Hatfields were hiding out from Asa Harmon McCoy than that he was so scared that he crawled into a hole in the ground. Asa Harmon McCoy was a warrior to the bone, and the record proves it!

For those who think the Hatfields and McCoys were enemies who were reconciled only in 2003, consider my first cousin, J.P Hatfield.

James Phillip Hatfield, who was in my class at Belfry High, was one of the best atheltes of my time, equalled only by his brothers, Ernest and Floyd. His brother Floyd, was named for his father and his great grandfather. Their great grandfather was Floyd Hatfield, who was the Constable who took custody of the three McCoys who killed Ellison Hatfield on Election Day, 1882.

His brother, Ernie, was a four-sports star at Belfry High school. His brother, Floyd, who set a record for touchdown passes at Belfry, was probably the best all-around athlete who ever attended Belfry.

James Phillip is named for his two grandfathers, Landon James Hatfield and Phillip McCoy. Yep, his father, Floyd Hatfield, married his mother, Daryl McCoy in about 1935.

His father, Floyd Hatfield, was the son of Landon James Hatfield and Annie McCoy. Yep, Landon Hafield, son of Constable Floyd Hatfield, married Annie McCoy about 1905.

His grandfather, Phillip McCoy, was the son of Asa McCoy and Nancy Hatfield, who married in 1875.

J.P. Hatfield is living proof that the Hatfields and McCoys were “reconciled” long before 2003.

Also in 1875, Thompson Hatfield married Mary McCoy on Blackberry Creek. Thompse was killed in a shootout in his living room in 1902. Thompse and his son, Ephraim, shot it out with two Baldwin-Felts detectives, and all four of them were killed. That’s the biggest shootout in the history of Blackberry Creek, but only a handful of people even know about it.

We rented a house and general store from their son, Tolbert, just after World War II. Tolbert lived until I was in my twenties. He told me about the shootout many times.

I am directly descended from Valentine “River Wall” Hatfield. The only connection the descendants of River Wall have with the feud is that one of them hauled the three McCoy corpses home after they were lynched in the paw paw grove. River Wall was Grandma Dotson’s grandfather. Her other grandfather was Preacher Anse Hatfield. Granny took great pride in being a “Pure Hatfield.” Three of my eight great grandfathers were Hatfields, and my mother was a McCoy. We have been at peace for a very long time

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The Great Trial that Never Happened—Randolph McCoy’s Pig

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.”

 

 

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Hatfield and McCoy Feud Books Libel My Ancestors

This photo, owned by Ron G. Blackburn, shows my great great uncle, Ransom Hatfield, near the end of his life. This is how he looked when I delivered his newspapers from 1952-55. He is sitting on the porch of the ancestral Hatfield home, where he spent his entire life. That is the house where Ransom told me that there never was a trial of Floyd Hafield for stealing a hog from Ran’l McCoy.
I spent many hours leaning against that porch post and listening to REAL history from the man in that old metal chair.

This story can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://tinyurl.com/ycqlg3oy

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Some Hatfields I Knew

Being descended from Hatfields on both sides, and having had a mother who was a McCoy, I have personally known seven generations of Hatfields and six generations of McCoys. They were/are my family. None of them resemble the barbarians seen in the newspapers, books and movies.

This story can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://tinyurl.com/ycqlg3oy

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Do Politicians Really “Make” History?

A copy of a Joint Resolution by the Kentucky legislature is at the link below.

The Resolution begins with: “WHEREAS, the Hatfields and the McCoys were two families who lived in the Tug River Valley on the border of West Virginia and Kentucky in the middle of the 19th century and who carried on a bitter, violent feud for more than 25 years;”

Is this Resolution, as it plainly is intended to be, a statement of historical fact? Or, is it a representation of fable and fiction as history, under the imprimatur of a state government?

This story can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://tinyurl.com/ycqlg3oy

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Feud Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them: Part 2

Although John Spears, in 1888, wrote an account of the Hatfield and McCoy feud that was “wildly inaccurate,” Spears was not a “feud liar.”

John R. Spears was a gifted writer, and a serious historian. His “History of the United States Navy” proves his worth. He was a dedicated researcher, who tried to find the best sources for his writings.

When his paper, The New York Sun, assigned Spears the task of chronicling the events in Tug Valley, Spears made the arduous trip from New York to Pikeville, Kentucky. Spears intended to get his information “Straight from the horse’s mouth.”

Spears names his sources. He said he talked to many of the leading citizens of Pikeville, and names specifically Randolph and Sally McCoy and their eldest son, Jim.  Spears spent more than a day touring the area of the feud events in the company of Jim McCoy. He also cites “A lawyer familiar with the affair,” who was certainly Perry Cline. Therein lies the rub.

Spears had unwittingly gone to the worst possible sources for a factual accounting of the events. Both Ran’l and Jim McCoy were charged in West Virginia for the murders of Jim Vance and Bill Dempsey. The eldest son of Perry Cline, John S. Cline, was also under indictment for those murders. Is it any wonder that two men facing the noose, a woman whose husband and three sons were in the same jeopardy, and the father of a son likewise exposed would give Spears a story that exonerated the Kentucky feud protagonists and condemned the West Virginians?

Spears does not begin his feud with the 1865 death of Ran’l’s brother, Asa Harmon McCoy. That embellishment would not come until the middle of the twentieth century. Spears’ story begins with the infamous “Hog trial.” The story, which is advanced in all the feud books save mine, is essentially as set out on the sign placed by the Kentucky tourism folks.

Pig Trial

I have several posts on my blog and Facebook page which prove conclusively that every single “fact” on that sign which is amenable to documentary proof is absolutely FALSE!  Every writer who has read either my books or my internet postings who then has the pig trial yarn in his/her “history” is either too lazy to do research, or is a feud liar.

I am sure that Spears related what he was told when he wrote what Sally said about Jim Vance during the New Year’s, 1888 raid on her home: “He (Vance) struck me in the side with (his gun) and knocked me down.” (p.29)

Without citing Spears, West Virginia Historian Laureate, Otis Rice, wrote: “Vance bounded toward her and struck her with the butt of the rifle.” (p.62) Rice not only knew that Vance was the culprit, he even knew that he “bounded toward her!”
Citing Spears and several other writers who had also cited Spears, Dean King wrote: “Crazy Jim swung the gun butt at her, breaking two of her ribs and knocking her flat.” (p.191) The Richmond novelist knew, even in those pre-X-ray days, exactly how many ribs were broken by “Crazy Jim.”

We are fortunate to have evidence from four persons who were present at the time Sally McCoy was struck. In the newspaper report of his ‘confession’, Charles Gillespie said he thought Ellison Mounts struck Sally. In the ‘confession’ written for him by the Pike prosecutor, Ellison Mounts said he thought Johnse Hatfield struck Sally.

In the trial of Ellison Mounts, Sally McCoy swore under oath that “SOMEONE struck me.” As she was talking to a man she thought might have been Jim Vance at the time, Jim Vance is the ONLY person in the universe who could not possibly have been the one who struck Sally!

The only eyewitness to the attack who testified under oath was Melvin McCoy, grandson of Sally. In the 1899 trial of Johnse Hatfield, Melvin McCoy swore: “Johnse Hatfield struck her with a Winchester.”

These two examples of proven feud lies are sufficient for my purposes here. Both the hog trial and “Crazy Jim Vance” are vital to the feud yarn, and all versions have them.  With the proofs that I have published, readers can know right away if they are reading a feud yarn or history.

If the story has either a hog trial as set out on that sign as real history, or a “Crazy Jim Vance” striking Sally McCoy, the writer is either too lazy to do rudimentary research, or he/she is a FEUD LIAR!

The only possible exceptions would be writers who got their story directly from Ran’l and Sally McCoy, and John Spears is the only writer who qualifies under that exception.

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Feud Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them

In the politically correct 21st century, there is only one demographic group which can be safely ridiculed on network television; Southern Appalachians. The stereotype of the ignorant and barbaric hillbilly remains as strong today as it was when the yellow journalists of the late 19th century first presented it in the big-city newspapers of that day. The foundation stone of that stereotype is the tale of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud.

Having been born and raised on Blackberry Creek, in Pike County, Kentucky, where the most important feud events transpired, I am personally acquainted with that stereotype. I came face-to-face with it during my first week as a graduate student at Cornell University, in upstate New York. A fellow student from New York City asked me in the grad student’s lounge: “What kind of people kill a hundred of each other over a pig?”

With half a dozen of my fellow students listening to the query, I was shocked and deeply embarrassed. “What the hell are you talking about? I asked.

He then produced a print-out of the microfilm of the New York Times article from 1930, reporting the death of Cap Hatfield. That article said that the feud started over a pig, lasted for half a century and claimed over a hundred lives. I told him it was a crock, and left the room.

I did not stay to argue the point, simply because I knew that my fellow students would not take the word of someone who spoke a dialect that they associated with Southern ignorance over that of the nations “Newspaper of record.” After all, they frequently cited the “Times” as a fact source in their written essays and dissertations.

The feud story existed in two forms when I was growing up on Blackberry Creek in the 1940’s and 1950’s. The version given by the folks who were old enough to remember the events of the 1880’s had a brief story, which began with the Election Day, 1882 killing of Ellison Hatfield and the lynching of his killers two days later. They then spoke of the invasions of West Virginia by the Pike County gang under Frank Phillips in December, 1887 and January, 1888. In this period, they told of the raid on the McCoy home when two more of Ran’l McCoy’s children were killed, and of the killing of two men by the Phillips gang in Logan County, in January, 1888. Their story ended, as the feud books end, with the hanging of Ellison Mounts in February, 1890.

The story given by those born after 1890 was much bigger, and different in many respects. People of my parents’ generation (they were born in 1912) were hugely influenced by the feud books which had been written since the ending of “the feud.” Their feud story had many events and characters which did not exist in the story told by the old folks who were alive when it happened. Many of that later generation had read one or more of the feud books, and all of them had talked to people who had read the books.

All the feud books, except for my books, derive from the original telling of the story by the New York reporter John Spears. His little book, nine pages in the magazine Current Literature when it appeared in the fall of 1888, is still the basic story. Dean King’s 2013 opus, “The Feud: The True Story,” cites Spears sixty-six times.

The feud story is largely fable, folklore and fiction. Some writers repeat it out of ignorance, simply because they never did any actual research into the historical records, and are not aware of the historical evidence adduced in my three books. Others know what the real history is, but they repeat the yarn from Spears—usually embellished with some fiction of their own creation. Those writers, who actually know that they are writing fiction as history, are FEUD LIARS.

Every writer who repeats the feud yarn and has either read my books, or has perused my Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/HatfieldMcCoyTruth/ or Ryan Hardesty’s Facebook group, “The Real Hatfield, Real McCoy, Real Matewan” Facebook page, is, ipso facto, a feud liar!  https://www.facebook.com/groups/hatfieldmmcoy/

In the current (Spring, 2016) issue of Goldenseal, a magazine published by the State of West Virginia, Keith Davis writes: “John R. Spears wrote one of the early—and highly inaccurate—accounts of the feud. (p. 16) Davis is, of course, correct. Spears’s account of “The feud” IS highly inaccurate, but Spears is not on my list of “Feud liars.” The next installment will explain why Spears did not make that dishonorable list.