Author: Thomas Dotson

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I Accuse!

Five weeks after the vigilante executions of the three McCoys who had killed Ellison Hatfield,  the Pike County Grand Jury returned indictments against Devil Anse and nineteen other men accused of being members of the lynch mob.  Of the nineteen, four were Hatfields and three were McCoys. The three McCoys indicted for following Devil Anse in the paw paw killings were three more than ever followed Ran’l McCoy anywhere.

A researcher not already enthralled by the “feud story” would surely wonder why only four were Hatfields.  One not affected at all by the feud story might go further and ask: “Who were the three McCoys indicted, and why were they included?”

This essay, in its entirety, can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1977716814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511238586&sr=1-1&keywords=Lies%2C+Damned+Lies%2C+and+Feud+Tales

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Hatfield & McCoy Hokum in Books

More History from a Historian

Otis Rice told us on the first page of his Preface that newspapers “were so biased or so grossly inaccurate that they must be used with considerable discrimination.” Then he proceeded to cite newspaper reporters over one hundred fifty times in one hundred twenty-six pages of text in “The Hatfields & The McCoys.” The book is now considered one of the “standard and most reputable” sources on the history of the feud.

The majority of the citations in the footnotes to every one of Rice’s fourteen chapters are to newspaper writers. In three of his chapters, 6, 10 and 11, every one of the notes refers to a newspaper man.

In his coverage of the “quiet years,” 1883-86, in Chapter 4, Rice gives detailed accounts of both the “ambush of the innocents,” and the “tale of the cow’s tail.” In each case Rice’s book reads like either the testimony of an eyewitness, or a novel.

Rice writes: “Through mountain gossip and their own intelligence, the Hatfields learned that Randolph McCoy was planning a trip to Pikeville, evidently to consult with Cline.”  Of course this presumes that Devil Anse was so concerned with Ran’l’s activities in 1884, when absolutely nothing had happened between the pair during the two years since Anse balanced the scales by executing his brother’s killers, that he was conducting some kind of elaborate intelligence operation to learn about Ran’l’s comings and goings.

It also presumes that Anse was too obtuse to know that the woods came down so close to Ran’l’s homestead that any Hatfield over the age of ten could have assumed a position in the edge of the woods and dispatched the old man at his leisure. The feud story demands an elaborate ambush.

Since we know that Rice looked at the Pike Circuit Court records—he mentions them several times—we know that Rice knew that Devil Anse didn’t have to exert any special effort to know when Ran’l would be going to Pikeville.  The records show that when the Circuit Court was in session Ran’l McCoy was usually on the docket in either a civil or criminal matter, so, all Anse had to do was find out when the next session of Circuit began, and he would almost surely be able to ambush Ran’l on his way to Pikeville.

Rice’s description of the beating of the Daniels women with the cow’s tail is equally detailed. It reads exactly like it would if Rice had been physically present when the event occurred.  Of course he adds a few details to tie it more directly to the feud, such as saying that when Cap beat the two women, he was “acting for the family.”

For both of these detailed accounts of events which are integral parts of his supersized “Hatfield and McCoy feud,” Rice gives ONLY newspapers as sources. For the ambush of the innocents, he cites an article from the Louisville Courier Journal, which appeared six years after the purported event, and one from the Pittsburgh Times, which appeared four years afterwards.

In support of his yarn about Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace spraying the surface of Tug River in a vain attempt to hit Jeff McCoy from a distance of a few yards with Winchester rifles, he cites articles from the same two papers, written two years after the supposed event.

His primary source for the tale of the cow’s tail is the newspaper reporter, Virgil Jones.

Whether academia will admit it or not—and they haven’t yet admitted it—Otis Rice did not write a history of the Hatfield and McCoy feud.  He aggregated the writings of newspaper reporters, which he said were “grossly inaccurate,” and seasoned them with a light dusting of actual historical records, and produced a book he hoped would sell to a gullible public. Of course he succeeded;  not only do folks like the West Virginia Encyclopedia use Rice as a major source for “history,” but the book remains one of the best-selling books on the subject of the feud, more than thirty years after its appearance.

 

 

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A New Hatfield and McCoy Feud Tour for 2014: The Dean King Excursion

I have reached a tentative agreement with a much younger relative to join me in forming a new “Hatfield and McCoy Tour” enterprise.  I am too old to do the actual driving, but I will furnish all the financing, in return for half the profits.  The profits should be substantial, as we will be avoiding all the old and much-seen sites and showing our guests sites that are not included in any of the current low-priced tours, which will allow us to charge at least twice the going rate for the cheap tours.

Our tour will feature locations and events which were unnoticed or even unknown before the 2013 publication of Dean King’s “True Story.”

Our tour will begin at the Belfry courthouse. We will first go a short distance up Church House Hollow to show our guests where 1,200 people gathered on every fair Sunday at a church with 25 members, and where about 800 horses and wagons ridden to church by the 1,200 attendees were parked. We will certainly point out the significance of that great crowd assembling every Sunday at a church where services were held only one weekend each month.

Then we will turn right at Toler and point out the spot where seven Hatfield sharp-shooters set up an ambush thirty feet off the road, and not being able to recognize Ran’l McCoy from that distance, loosed a fusillade of bullets from their Winchesters at three innocent men without a single torso hit.

We will, of course, not waste any time at the site of the McCoy cabin where the two McCoys were killed on New Year’s, 1888, and the place where the election was held in 1882; after all, just any old cheap tour will show them those places. We won’t tarry there, lest we run out of daylight before our guest see the really important places which were unknown until the “True Story” was written by Dean King in 2013.

After we turn left at the mouth of Blackberry Creek, we will point out the ancient burial ground for sheep-killing dogs, where, incidentally, three McCoys were shot on August 9, 1882. We will credit Professor Otis Rice for this, as he is the source for the mutton-chopping mutts.

We will cross the bridge at Matewan and take a left turn down the river to where Bill Staton scratched the face of Paris McCoy with dirty fingernails, and where Staton, wounded through the chest by a high-powered rifle slug, was winning a fist-fight against Paris McCoy, who had been shot through the hip, only to be shot in the head by Sam McCoy.

Back-tracking up the river we will note the mouth of Thacker Creek, where Cap Hatfield and Tom Wallace fired many shots with their Winchesters at Jeff McCoy while he was swimming across forty feet of water, missing him every time.  We will, of course, note that this is also the very place where the intrepid writer, Dean King was twice fired upon by local descendants of the feudists. We will note also that, just like their ancestors who couldn’t kill the McCoys from thirty feet in the ambush, or hit Jeff McCoy from less than forty feet, the modern would-be murderers also missed the visiting feud chronicler every time they shot at him in 2009 and 2010.

We will then take a short detour up Happy Hollow, to point out the location of the famed bawdy house run by the hillbilly hooker, Belle Beaver.  This location is important because it was second only to Aunt Betty McCoys whorehouse at Stringtown as a favorite Saturday night destination for the ever-over-amorous Johnse Hatfield. We located the spot where Belle’s establishment once flourished in a recent dig, which yielded three buried primitive lambskin condoms and a porcelainized bowl, from which  originated  the name, “Peter Pan.”

We will then cross the mountain to show the place where Cap Hatfield mistook his uncle for Ran’l McCoy, from a distance of sixty-five yards, and shot at him with his Winchester, missing the “kill zone” by about three feet and knee-capping the poor man. As one of the victims in the foregoing “ambush of the innocents” was also shot in the knee, we will note that the Cosa Nostra probably copied its knee-capping technique from Cap Hatfield.

We will then visit the nearby location of the famous encounter between Devil Anse and the bounty hunter, whom Anse shot and killed while the bounty hunter was reading Anse his Miranda rights, sixty years before the Miranda decision.

We will not waste any time pointing out the location of the Battle of Grapevine, or where Devil Anse lived in the former home place of the Perry Cline family, as they, too, are included on all the cheap tours.

Our tour will end after we cross the river at Delorme and re-enter Kentucky, where we will point out the ancestral Daniels home, where Cap Hatfield beat two women for forty minutes with a cow’s tail.

While our tour will end there this year, it may have one additional stop in years to come.  We have heard by the grapevine that the soon-to-be-published paperback version of King’s opus will feature Jim Vance beating Nancy McCoy Hatfield all night with an elephant’s trunk.  As soon as we determine the exact location of that terrible event, it will be part of the tour.

NOTE: To any reader who is easily taken in by tall tales about “The Feud:”  Although all the foregoing places and events appear in the “supersized feud story,” this article is satire!

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Hatfield & McCoy Hokum in Books

Sheep-Killing dogs and Deadly Buzzard Dung

What would be considered hyperbole in a novel is often history in the feud stories.

Otis Rice obviously considers the blood and brain spattered ground on the riverbank where the three sons of Ran’l McCoy were executed to be insufficiently gory without embellishment.  Rice says that the “bullet-riddled bodies” were “swinging from the bushes.” (p.28) Then he makes it far more repugnant to the reader’s senses by introducing the carcasses and bones of dead dogs.

It is bad enough to execute men among heaps of dog carcasses, but these were dogs of distinctly inferior character. These were sheep-killing dogs!

This essay, in its entirety, can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1977716814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511238586&sr=1-1&keywords=Lies%2C+Damned+Lies%2C+and+Feud+Tales

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Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Wildcats Along the Border?

 [Another example, wonderfully documented, of the process by which a fictional tale was transformed into “historical fact” and a talking point that just won’t let go.  Once factified, it can then be cited without fear of contradiction by all subsequent writers.  The idea that Anse fought in a guerilla group called The Logan Wildcats has become a commonplace among feud writers.  – RH]

 What is a Logan Wildcat, other than a member of an athletic team from Logan High School?  Well, to readers of recent Hatfield and McCoy feud books, a Logan Wildcat was someone who rode with Devil Anse Hatfield and his band of Rebel raiders during the last year of the Civil War.

The misuse of the name “Logan Wildcats” is not an important part of what is wrong with our history as written, but it is a good example of how our history is “made.” It is such a colorful name that a person writing a feud story would naturally grab it and go with it. But it was not always so.

The New York reporters, John Spears and T.C. Crawford wrote highly sensationalized books about the Hatfields and McCoys in 1888-9. Neither of them had any Logan Wildcats.

Charles Mutzenberg wrote his own supersized feud story, first in 1899, then a revised version in 1917. Mutzenberg had no Logan Wildcats prowling the border during the War.

In her 1940 book, “Big Sandy,” Jean Thomas says that Devil Anse was a Logan Wildcat (p.177), but she says that it was the regiment he originally joined, not a separate group of raiders during the war’s last year. Anse never appeared on the roster of the real Logan Wildcats. She says in the same paragraph that Ran’l McCoy joined the Union army, so we know how much credibility that book deserves.

L.D. Hatfield wrote his own collection of yarns, including the Abner Vance tale, in 1944, but he had no Logan Wildcats in Tug Valley.

Not even the newspaper and magazine reporter, Virgil Jones, in his highly fictionalized 1948 book, had the Logan Wildcats riding with Devil Anse. If such a moniker had indeed existed, surely Jones, with his practiced skill at appealing to a mass audience, would have picked it up.

  1. Elliott Hatfield wrote his “Hatfields” in 1974. This man, who claimed to know even the thoughts and words of the feud characters, had no Logan Wildcats.

The Logan Wildcats, as a unit led by Devil Anse Hatfield, entered the literature in 1976, with the publication of Truda McCoy’s “The McCoys.” McCoy, whose history was so garbled that she had Wall Hatfield tried, convicted and dead before he was even arrested, is the mother of the now famous “Logan Wildcats” of Devil Anse Hatfield.

Six years later, the West Virginia “Historian Laureate,” Otis Rice, had Truda McCoy’s Logan Wildcats in his book. At his first mention, he gives a footnote (historians always have footnotes) to the Wheeling Intelligencer, November 22, 1889.  He is obviously referring to the interview Devil Anse purportedly gave a reporter from the Intelligencer during his trip to Charleston to stand trial for moonshining. The date was actually November 23, but I won’t quibble over that triviality. I will, however, note that while the interview quotes Anse’s version of his war service, the term “Logan Wildcats” appears nowhere in the report.

A few pages later, when describing the death of Asa Harmon McCoy, Rice cites the pages from Truda McCoy wherein she writes of the Logan Wildcats, so it is almost certain that Rice got his Wildcats from Truda, although he never credits her for it.

All the feud books that followed Rice—except for my book and “Tale of the Devil”—refer to Devil Anse and his “Logan Wildcats,” just as if that had been the common parlance along the Tug River in 1865, although it was unheard of until 1976. This is permissible, apparently, simply because Otis Rice used the term, and Otis Rice is a recognized “authority” on the subject.

There was a group known as the Logan Wildcats: It was a militia group formed in Logan County before the War. When the Civil War broke out, it became Company D of the 36th Infantry, and remained in service in the regular Confederate Army until it was mustered out three days after Lee’s surrender. Anderson Hatfield never appeared on its roster.

The “Tale of the Devil” by Coleman Hatfield and Robert Spence, has several pages on the history of the real Logan Wildcats. It does not call Anse’s Tug Valley raiders the “Logan wildcats.”

So, we now have a historical “fact” that was unknown for more than a century. It became a historical “fact” by being mentioned by a historian, Otis Rice, who gave no historical foundation at all for the claim.  That is how history is made, when it pertains to the Tug Valley.

 

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Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Tilting at the Feud Windmill in Feud Country

On a recent trip to the hills, I was asked by a descendant of one of the “feud” families who I thought was the hero and who I thought was the villain of “the feud.” I told him to define for me what he meant by “the feud” and who were the main players in it, and I would see if I could find a hero or a villain.

He said that the feud was between the Hatfields and the McCoys, and that it started when Asa Harmon McCoy was killed in 1865, and ended when Ellison Mounts was hanged in 1890. I told him how the New York Times described the feud, reporting the death of Cap Hatfield: “Whenever a McCoy head showed out of a window a Hatfield gun would bark; whenever a Hatfield gazed from his home at the surrounding hill country a McCoy gun would bark.” (The New York Times obviously knew the definition of the word, “feud,” and they gave the reader one in which 100 Hatfields and McCoys were slain).

I then asked him to tell me when, during the quarter century he ascribed to “the feud,” the conditions described by the Times existed in Tug Valley. Of course he couldn’t, so he resorted to the old canard:”You deny IT happened!”

I asked him what he thought I was denying, and he said you are denying that “the feud” happened.  I said, “I deny that there was ever a situation prevailing in Tug Valley that fits either the dictionary’s definition or the New York Times description of a “feud,” but I certainly don’t deny the things that actually happened, which form the germ for the “feud story.” I don’t deny that Harmon McCoy was killed in 1865, according to the sworn statement of his widow, “by rebels.” I don’t deny that there was an argument about a hog–or hogs– in 1878. I do deny that Preacher Anse Hagtfield tried a case over it, because he wasn’t even the JP at the time.  I deny that there was a 12 man jury, and at least that many more people in Preacher Anse’s front room, because Kentucky law restricts a Justice of the Peace jury to a maximum of SIX. I was in that room many times, and I know that it would never hold the number placed there in most of the feud stories.

“I don’t deny that Bill Staton was killed by Sam and Paris McCoy in 1880, but I believe that it was far more likely precipitated by Staton’s adulterous affair with a McCoy woman, as evidenced by many entries in the Pike county Circuit Court records, than by his purportedly swearing a lie about a pig.

“I don’t deny that Tolbert McCoy arrested Johnse Hatfield in 1880, and that Devil Anse “sprung” Johnse free, because the court record supports it.  I don’t deny that the sons of Ran’l McCoy killed Ellison Hatfield on Election Day, 1882, and Devil Anse lynched the three McCoys two days later.  I don’t deny that either Cap Hatfield or Tom Wallace killed Jeff McCoy in 1886. I don’t deny that Frank Phillips raided into West Virginia in December, 1887 and January, 1888, which was answered by a raid on the McCoy home that cost two young people their lives, and led to the murders of Jim Vance and Bill Dempsey by the Frank Phillips gang.

“What I do deny is that there was ever a time when the conditions described by the New York Times existed in Tug Valley.  Of course that means that I deny all the stories of events for which no proof exists which are used to tie the actual happenings together in the “feud story.”

Then he swung what he evidently thought was a real “haymaker” at me, saying, “I bet you that Tolbert, Pharmer and Bud McCoy thought there was a feud going on when they were held in that schoolhouse for two days, then taken across the river and shot.”

I asked him why he thought Devil Anse did that, and he said, “To get even with them for killing his brother.”

I said, “So, it was revenge, then?” and he answered, “Yes.”

I then told him that the answer to my next question was very important, and I asked him: “Are you saying that Devil Anse killed the three because they killed his brother, and NOT because their name was McCoy?”

He began to squirm a little, and I pressed him with, “If those three had had the surname “Smith,” would Devil Anse had done the same thing?”

He said, “I’m sure he would have.”

I then said, “Well, you have just denied the existence of a “feud” between the Hatfields and McCoys on the bloodiest day of the entire quarter century. You have admitted that Devil Anse killed the three because they had killed his brother, and not because their name was “McCoy,” so how could their deaths be part of a “Hatfield and McCoy feud?”  Did other McCoys fear to show their heads in a window, as the New York Times said? Or, were other McCoys totally unconcerned about their safety around Hatfields on that fateful day?”

He feigned ignorance, saying, simply, “I don’t know.”

I said, “Well, I’ll tell you enough to prove that the killings on August 7 and 9, 1882, were stand-alone incidents, having nothing to do with any blood feud between the Hatfields and McCoys. Acording to his own sworn testimony in the trial of Wall Hatfield, Jim McCoy, the eldest son of Ran’l McCoy, and the man Truda McCoy said was the actual leader of the family, spent the day of August 9, on Mate Creek, in West Virginia, just outside the schoolhouse where his three brothers were prisoners. Not only did Jim McCoy “show his head in a window,” he actually spent the entire day right in the middle of more than a dozen armed Hatfields, who were holding his three brothers prisoner. And he was not harmed at all! Then, he swore that when word came that Ellison had died, he left the school house where his brothers were being held. He did not flee to safety by crossing the river into Kentucky—going rather to the West Virginia home of his uncle, Asa McCoy, a short distance from the Mate Creek school, at the mouth of Sulphur Creek.

“Asa McCoy was the brother of Jim McCoy’s mother, Sally, and also a first cousin of Ran’l McCoy. Asa McCoy lived in West Virginia, with Hatfields all around him. In 1883, only months after the triple slaying across the river from his house, Asa McCoy bought 200 acres of land on Mate Creek, which bordered the land owned by Ellison Hatfield.  In 1888, only months after the raid on the home of his sister and cousin, he combined his land with a bordering tract owned by Devil Anse Hatfield, and the partners sold it in July, 1889, to Cotiga Land Co.

“Obviously neither the eldest son of Randolph McCoy nor the brother of Sally McCoy thought that there was a Hatfield and McCoy feud ongoing on August 9, 1882, the bloodiest day of the decade.”

He looked at me with the queerest little grin on his face, as if he thought I should be be committed, and walked away.  I have no doubt that he still believes that there was a blood feud between the Hatfields and McCoys underway on August 9, 1882. That Jim and Asa McCoy were unaware of it means nothing to him.

He is representative of millions of Americans, who will never let go of a good story, no matter what the historical facts are.  I labor under no illusions of ever being able to disabuse anyone of their belief in legends and folklore. You can argue about facts, but you cannot argue against a “belief.” I shouldn’t waste so much time trying, but I have both Hatfield and McCoy blood, which makes me stubborn as hell.

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Hatfield & McCoy Hokum on the Web Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Kentucky Lawyers Learn Feud History

This drawing of Ol’ Ran’l and Devil Anse is by the talented Tug Valley artist, Vera Kay Fink Hankins.

On June 21, 2013, the Kentucky Bar Association held a Continuing Legal Education seminar in Louisville, entitled: “THE HATFIELDS AND MCCOYS: FROM FILING SUITS TO FIRING SHOTS   https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.kybar.org/resource/resmgr/2013_Convention_Files/ac2013_61.pdf  Attending barristers received two CLE credits for absorbing the wisdom imparted by an all-star panel, made up of lawyers and professors.

A note at the beginning assures the attendees that they are about to receive the “straight scoop” on the feud: “The materials included in this Kentucky Bar Association Continuing Legal Education handbook are intended to provide current and accurate information about the subject matter covered.”

Let’s examine some more of the “current and accurate information” which was imparted to the lawyers of Kentucky:

This essay, in its entirety, can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1977716814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511238586&sr=1-1&keywords=Lies%2C+Damned+Lies%2C+and+Feud+Tales

[i] McCoy, 9.

[ii] McCoy, 10.

[iii] Alther, 9.

 

[iv] Alther, 9.

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Hatfield & McCoy Hokum in Books

Do Historians Write History?

The Vances, Abner (My 4th great grandfather) and James, are grossly misrepresented in the feud yarns, and that includes the book by Professor Otis Rice.  If the outrageous lies of popular novelists like Lisa Alther and Dean King were all we had to overcome, it would be a piece of cake. Unfortunately, with the Vances—and much of the rest of the story– we also have a problem with the historians.

This essay, in its entirety, can be read in my book, “Lies, Damned Lies, and Feud Tales.”  https://www.amazon.com/dp/1977716814/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1511238586&sr=1-1&keywords=Lies%2C+Damned+Lies%2C+and+Feud+Tales

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Hatfield & McCoy Hokum in Books

Perry Cline–The Man–Hatfield and McCoy Feud

The two most misrepresented of all the feud characters are James Vance, whom we covered in an earlier post, and Perry A. Cline.

The treatment of Perry Cline by the feud writers is as atrocious as is that of Jim Vance. As in the case of Vance, the picture of Cline painted by the yarn-spinners is a mixture of ignorance and lies.  The historical Perry Cline was far more different from the one the feud writers portray than Ronan Vibert is from the real Perry Cline.

PACreal

There is a lot of Cline history that does not appear in the feud stories. Here is a small part of it.

This photo is a Pike County Court document from December, 1874, showing Perry Cline becoming Sheriff of Pike County, at the age of 25. His bond was signed by the two wealthiest men in the county, O.C. Bowles and John Dils. Dils and Bowles were Republicans, and Cline was a Democrat. Dils was also foster father to Perry Cline.

Click the thumbnails to expand them.

I know it will shock people who know nothing but what they have read in the feud tales, but the third signer of Perry Cline’s bond was none other than his close friend, James Vance. The feud yarns tell us that Perry Cline thought that James Vance murdered Cline’s brother-in-law, Asa Harmon McCoy in 1865. This record shows that Perry Cline and James Vance were the closest of friends ten years later. Does any sentient human being think that Perry Cline had a man sign his sheriff’s bond whom he thought had murdered his sister’s husband? I don’t think so.

Perry Cline then appointed James Vance as his first Deputy Sheriff.

Perry Cline’s record for being the youngest man ever elected sheriff was broken a few months after Perry Cline’s death in 1892 when his son, John Sinclair Cline, was elected sheriff at the age of 23. The December, 1892 bond for John S “Sink” Cline, shown here, was signed by the same O/C. Bowles who signed his father’s bond. The first signature on Sink’s bond was his mother, Martha Adkins Cline.

The Kevin Costner movie showed Perry Cline chasing Roseanna McCoy for years. That is a slander of the man who, as the record shows, was devoted to his wife, Martha Adkins Cline. In 1875, Perry Cline sued a man for ten thousand dollars—a fortune in those days—for spreading the tale that he had slept with Cline’s wife. In 1877, Perry Cline sued several men for five thousand dollars because they made too much noise outside his home when he was away, disturbing his wife‘s sleep.

John “Sink” Cline was not only the youngest man ever elected to Pike County’s highest office, he was also the only man ever elected who was facing a murder charge at the time. This photo is the January, 1888 Logan County warrant for the men charged with the murder of Logan County Deputy, Bill Dempsey. John S. Cline is among the men charged.

One may wonder how Logan County identified 24 men from Pike County, even to such detail as saying that George McCoy was the George who lived on Johns Creek. The answer is at the top, where the three people who swore out the warrant are listed. One of them is Nancy L. Hatfield. Nancy was the daughter of Asa Harmon McCoy, married to Johnse Hatfield at the time, and living on Grapevine Creek where the murder happened. Nancy knew them all.

A few months after that warrant issued, the Pike County boys caught a BIG break. Nancy left Johnse and moved in with Frank Phillips on Peter Creek. Without Nancy as a witness, the charges against 18 of the 24 were not pursued further by Logan County, because they had no witness to identify them in court. Of course the charges remained–murder has no statute of limitations–but Logan had no witnesses against most of them. John S. Cline was one of the men against whom no witness other than Nancy was available to testify.

Perry Cline’s political power had two foundations. First, the richest man in the county, Colonel Dils, was his legal guardian. Second, and most important, Perry had virtually unanimous support on Peter Creek. Peter Creek, which was about 80% Republican, voted almost unanimously for the Democrat, Perry Cline.

My Dotson ancestors were Union sympathizers, Union soldiers in the Civil War, and the strongest Republicans on Peter Creek. My Great Grandfather, Ransom Dotson was one of only five Republicans who showed up to vote for U.S. Grant in 1868. In 1878, he named my grandfather after the Democrat sheriff. Squire James L. Dotson, long-time Republican justice of the peace and the richest of the Peter Creek Dotsons, gave a son the full name of the Democrat sheriff—Perry Cline Dotson. When I asked my Grandma Dotson, nee Hatfield, why Grandpa was named Perry after Perry Cline, she had a simple answer: “Perry Cline was a great man.”

Perry Cline is known to feud book readers as a sneaky shyster lawyer, lurking in the shadows. Some say that he was afraid of Devil Anse Hatfield. In fact, it might have been the other way around. Peter Creek had the reputation of being the ‘roughest’ part of Pike County during and for decades after the Civil War. Granny always said that Peter Creek was a good place to get yourself killed.

Perry Cline did not become the political force he was by being a sissy. At the time my grandfather was named for Perry Cline, Cline was facing the charge of Voluntary manslaughter. He had killed a man he was arresting, and the grand jury thought he had used excessive force and indicted the sheriff. Cline stood trial in 1878, and was acquitted.

Perry Cline was the only major character in the feud story who killed a man outside of war before 1880.

In 1878, while serving as Sheriff, Perry Cline and his wife were both charged with assault and battery. Perry pled guilty and the charge against Martha was dismissed.

After I read the book by Virgil Jones in 1952, I asked Uncle Ransom Hatfield, son of Preacher Anse, to whom I delivered the Williamson Daily News from 1952 to 1955, about Perry Cline. He said that Perry Cline was the most feared man in Pike County, even moreso than his foster brother Bad Frank Phillips.

Perry Cline was feared by all, including moonshiners. The Big Sandy News reported on May 31, 1888 that Jailer Cline burst into a warehouse where SEVEN moonshiners were tending their wares and arrested them all.
Uncle Ransom was right, and the feud liars who present him as a cowardly shyster are LIARS!

Ransom said that Perry stood trial for manslaughter while serving as High Sheriff, and was acquitted. He said that, on the way out of the courthouse after being cleared on the manslaughter charge, Perry “Beat Hell out of the main witness against him on the courthouse steps.” He said that Perry’s wife, Martha, helped him whup the man. I wondered if that was just a front porch tale, until I researched the feud story as a college student several years later.
Look at the two incidents reproduced above and you will see that Uncle Ransom was telling the truth. Cline was acquitted of manslaughter on March 15, 1878, and both he and his wife were charged with assault and battery on the 16th.

The feud yarns say that Perry Cline signed his Grapevine land over to Devil Anse because he was afraid of Devil Anse. Testimony by both sides in the Torpin case says that Cline sold that land to Devil Anse. In March, 1877, Perry Cline signed the deed transferring ownership of the Grapevine land. Land that is transferred by deed is NOT stolen

One year after that deed, the record proves that there was NO ill-will between Perry Cline and Anse Hatfield in 1878. Devil Anse lost a lawsuit to G.W. Taylor, and the court ordered the sale of 800 acres owned by Anse on Peter Creek to settle the judgment. That 800 acres, centered on Point Rock Hollow, was the subject of multiple court actions. One can learn a lot of our history by following that acreage through the courts over a half century.

During the Civil War, the Peter Creek Union Home Guards, under Bill Francis and Peter Cline, raided the farms of George (my 3g grandfather) and James Hatfield on Blackberry Creek. George had four sons serving in the Union army at the time–including James–but that made no difference to the Peter Creek raiders. They robbed everyone that could not defend their homes.

After the War, both George and James sued the raiders. George won his suit and collected. When James won his suit a year later, Peter Cline could not pay the judgment and 800 acres that Cline owned on Peter Creek was sold by the court to settle the judgment. James Hatfield bought the land at the courthouse door, and then immediately traded it to Devil Anse Hatfield.

That is the land that Perry Cline, as Sheriff, was ordered to sell in 1878, to pay the judgment against Devil Anse.

Now, we are in 1878, when all the feud stories say that Perry Cline hated Devil Anse because Devil Anse stole Cline’s land in 1877. If that were true, then surely Cline would have enjoyed very much selling Anse’s land at the courthouse door. But Cline did NOT sell the land, even though, as Sheriff,  he was required by law to do so. Instead, he took his brother-in-law, Boney Adkins and a Peter Creek neighbor, Martin Smith, and went across the river to the Logan county home of his friend, Anse Hatfield.

By Cline’s own sworn testimony, we see that he arranged for Martin Smith to co-sign a note for Anse. Then Cline took the note, paid off the judgment, and allowed Devil Anse to keep the land.

Now that’s one heckuva favor to do for someone you hate, ain’t it?

How strong was the friendship between Perry Cline and Anse Hatfield in 1878? Well, that 800 acres that Perry helped Anse to keep when he was supposed to sell it at the courthouse door once belonged to Perry Cline’s brother, Peter Cline!

Then, three years later, Perry Cline’s niece married the son of Devil Anse. Not only did Cline bless the wedding, he signed the $100 bond guaranteeing that the wedding would take place. A hundred bucks was a lot of money in 1881.

Perry Cline and Anse Hatfield were enemies in 1887-8, but that is a whole ‘nother story. It had nothing to do with anything that happened in the 1860’s (the killing of Cline’s brother in law, A.H. McCoy) or in the 1870’s, or anything else connected to a “feud,”. The problems in 1887-8 sprang from what was going on with respect to the valuable coal lands owned by the Hatfields. And it was controlled by people much higher up than Perry Cline.

John Sinclair “Sink” Cline was left out of all the feud books until 2013. Dean King has a lot about John S. Cline in his book, but it is all just fiction, telling you nothing that is real about the man. I know folks are surprised by the affidavit from Nancy McCoy Hatfield, shown above, which listed Sink as one of the murderers of Deputy Dempsey. OTOH, no feud writer before me ever told folks that Sink Cline was elected High Sheriff of Pike County at the age of 23.

There were folks alive on Blackberry Creek when I was growing up who remembered Perry Cline. My Granny was one of them. There were many who remembered John S. Cline. they pronounced his nickname “Sank.” Until I was a college student and researched the records, I thought his name was John SAINT Cline. I mistook the Blackberry pronunciation of “Sink” as “Sank” for the word “Saint.”

I am dedicated to the real history of our ancestors, who have been slandered for a century and a quarter. They are all one-dimensional characters in the feud fables, but the actual record shows that they were complicated, multi-dimensional characters, who behaved as normal people of their time behaved.

Perry Cline was a low-down crooked politician to his enemies. To his friends, like my Great Grandfather, he was, as my Granny told me, “A great man.” I have tried in my books to show the complete Perry Cline. I endeavor to do the same for all our ancestors.

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Impeaching the Testimony of Some Early “Witnesses”

These drawings are from “An American Vendetta,” by T.C. Crawford.

The supersized feud story influences all of us—including this writer.  The minor errors in my book which have been pointed out to me are the result of vestiges of the “feud story” remaining in my own mind.

As the feud story originated with the yellow journalists of the late nineteenth century, I have been working on a short book that will take them on in detail. The title will probably have the words “Impeaching the witnesses” in it.  When a witness is shown to have prevaricated on a material fact, then his entire testimony is impeached.  I intend to examine the writings of the 1888 supersizers in detail, comparing the Tug Valley and the people  they describe with the  actual court records.

In the case of these yellow journalists who wrote about our feud, impeachment is easy.  When John Spears tells us that he saw with his own eyes the seven-year-old son of Johnse Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy, we know that he is lying, because no such child ever lived.  Why then would we believe anything that John Spears says—including what he says that he personally saw.

T.C. Crawford tells us that he had a lengthy face-to-face conversation with Elias Hatfield on a certain Sunday.  He gives a detailed description of Elias, right down to the fact that Elias had sideburns, but no beard.  Then Crawford says that only three days later as he and John B. Floyd are approaching the home on Devil Anse on Island Creek, they meet a man with a rifle.  The man is shabbily dressed, and has a beard.  Crawford doesn’t recognize the man, and the man does not recognize Crawford. Neither does the bearded, rifle-toting stranger recognize the long-time Hatfield family friend, John B. Floyd, until Floyd calls out to him, identifying himself.  Then Crawford tells us that the intimidating stranger was none other than Elias Hatfield, the well-dressed and clean-shaven man he said he had a long talk with just three days before!

Of course no one should take Crawford’s word for anything, including his purported interview with Devil Anse, but, when his screed was re-issued earlier this year, the feud industry referred to it as a “Classic.”  As Crawford says in the book that he dictated the important parts of the book in only three hours, it is hardly what anyone should call “a classic,’ but, because it super-sizes the story and makes our ancestors appear to be semi-savages, the feud industry loves it.