Category: Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Categories
Dean King Hokum Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum Real Hatfield-McCoy History

Fake News is Older than Feuding

Fake news is as old as the news business. Mark Twain is widely quoted as saying: “If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”

So, how does a world-class historian end up writing a book full of fake news? The answer is simply that he had bad sources. John Spears traveled from New York to Pikeville, Kentucky, obviously determined to get the facts straight from the horse’s mouth. Spears names his sources as Randolph McCoy, his wife, Sarah and his son Jim. He also refers to “A lawyer familiar with the case,” which was certainly Perry Cline. At the time Spears was talking to them in Pikeville, Randolph and Jim McCoy were under indictment in Logan County, West Virginia for the murders of James Vance and William Dempsey. The eldest son of Perry Cline was also charged in those murders. Is it any wonder that persons who were charged with murder in the ‘feud’, or had children facing those charges would give a slanted version of events? Is anyone surprised that Jim Vance, recently murdered by the men who were talking to Spears, is the chief villain of the story?

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

Categories
Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Why Do We Have the Supersized Feud Story?

My books, this blog, my Facebook “Hatfield-McCoy Truth” page and Ryan Hardesty’s “Real Hatfield, Real McCoy, Real Matewan” Facebook page have proven—by the historical records—that the Hatfield and McCoy feud yarn is a libelous screed against our ancestors. It follows that, by extension, we are also libeled by it. Yet the tale persists, presented to the world as “History.” Why?

The answer is simple: People with power and money were behind it from the beginning, and they still are. The same financiers who owned the newspapers that published the original yarn in 1888 also controlled the land and coal companies who were scooping up the land of the “Feudists.”

The first expansion of the original 1888 tale was by a man named Charles Mutzenberg. If you buy Mutzenberg’s book today, it will show a copyright date of 1917. What few people know is that the book originally appeared in 1897, and it was published by a coal company that owned tens of thousands of acres of Eastern Kentucky.

Scroll forward to the 21st century, and you see the same forces at work. In 2013 Dean King wrote the most voluminous and the most outrageous compendium of libels against our ancestors and us. That book presents our ancestors as bloodthirsty and stupid. But it goes further, claiming that we are still the same.

King claims that he and his teenaged daughter were fired upon TWICE, first in 2009 and again in 2010, as our cousins attempted to “warn him off” as he did his ‘research’ in Tug Valley. Of course these attempts to murder the intrepid writer were not reported to law enforcement.

Most importantly, King tells us that he was accompanied on his sojourn in our valley by the man in charge of the biggest absentee land owner in West Virginia. King says that Mr. Craig Kadevarek, Senior Director of Forest Operations for the Appalachian Region for the Forestland group, accompanied him as he came under fire from the descendants of the feudists.

A man who is overseeing three quarters of a million acres does not take a few days out of his schedule to travel around with a writer unless he knows that the end product will be a book that benefits his company. He was not disappointed. After nearly 400 pages about our barbarous ancestors, King wrote: “I can attest to the continuing ferocity of the neighborhood.” (p. 377)

We are the only demographic group that can be safely denigrated on network TV. The foundation stone of the stereotype with which we are still saddled to this day is the feud story. People who will fight a decades-long war and kill dozens of each other over a pig will do anything.

Ten to twelve thousand children in Flint Michigan were exposed to lead poisoning in their water, and there was a justifiable national uproar over it. Three hundred thousand people in West Virginia were exposed to poisoned water in 2014, and it was a mere footnote.

As long as the hillbilly stereotype exists, nothing will change significantly. That stereotype is founded on the tale of people who went to war over a pig, and the stereotype will not die until the feud yarn dies.
That’s why we fight the feud liars on every front, using the historical record as our weapon.

Victory will not come easy, but it will come.  The power of big money remains sufficient to cause people who are paid by the taxpayers to preserve and present our history to write and say things that they know—from the records—are not true.  That will end. Maybe not in my lifetime, but it WILL end!

 

Categories
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……..

 

Categories
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.“

Categories
Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Tug Valley Topography Kills the Feud Story

 

For years I have challenged anyone to show me a single location in the feud area where a man could have had a farm located where an assassin could not get within fifty yards of him as he went about his daily chores. No one has done so, but many still contend that those mountain hunters were out to kill each other for a generation.

I have personally hunted over most of the area between the homes of Ran’l McCoy and Devil Anse Hatfield, so I know whereof I speak.

The feud yarn is a crock, and the map proves it.

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

Categories
Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

EXTRA!! Read All about It!

Writers of “feud books” despise the historical record. Sometimes ignored and sometimes directly contradicted, the records take a back seat to newspaper reporters in feud writing.  The biggest selling feud book cites newspapers over two hundred times. The one hundred thirty page book by the “historian,” Otis Rice, cites them more than one hundred fifty times.

Let us examine two newspaper reports, one from the nation’s “newspaper of record,” the New York Times, and on from a West Virginia report.

The Times had the benefit of four decades of backward vision when it reported the death of Cap Hatfield on page 8 of it’s August 23, 1930 issue, but this is what the Old Gray Lady said:

“Cap Hatfield was called the most dangerous of his clan.” Born in 1862, the year after the famous McCoy-Hatfield vendetta commenced, he was the eldest of the thirteen children of Anderson (Devil Anse) Hatfield, chief of the clan and its leader throughout the forty-eight years of the feud. More than 100 men, women and children of the two families were slain in the battles, which raged in Logan and Mingo Counties, West Virginia, and Pike County, Kentucky. It was said in those days that 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.”

That paragraph contains one grain of truth: Devil Anse Hatfield was the father of Cap Hatfield. Everything else in the paragraph is false, by the record.

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

Categories
Hatfield & McCoy Hokum in Books Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Elias Hatfield, Jr.—The Rifleman

Elias Hatfield, Jr.—The Rifleman

 

[In this essay, originally a series of shorter posts, Thomas exposes exactly how writers have all along constructed their Hatfield McCoy feud tales.  He uses Dean King as the most recent example, but the same approach could be taken with any writer over the past 120 years who has ever put pen to paper and written out a description of the feud.  The entire process, as far as I can tell, is most often an elaborate sleight of hand, a shell game perpetrated by writers upon an audience with untrained eyes.  First, inundate the reader with footnotes, pointing out every newspaper article or family legend that has ever been put into print at any time over the past 120 years.  This shows the reader that you have done your “research” and proves your authority as a teller of these tales.  Second, construct any store you want from the wealth of accumulated detail.  After all, who can really know what happened so long ago?  -RWriters of feud stories have a choice. They can consult the actual records, or they can scour previous feud books for the most “interesting” yarns. With the lone exception of Altina Waller, all feud writers before my 2013 book opted to rely upon prior feud stories and ignore the actual records.

In my first book, I wrote:

“Devil Anse Hatfield’s notoriety was largely won for him by his sons, who participated in the killing of six McCoys and at least seven non-McCoys during their lifetimes.”

The most recent best-seller by Dean King has several pages about one of those incidents–the 1899 killing of Humphrey “Doc” Ellis by Elias Hatfield.

The killing of Doc Ellis had some relevance to the feud story, in that the proximate cause for Elias Hatfield to be gunning for Doc Ellis was that Doc had enlisted the aid of the notorious bounty hunter, Dan Cunningham, and kidnapped Elias’s brother, Johnse, taking him “across the line” to stand trial in Kentucky for the New Year’s 1888 raid on the McCoy home.

Doc’s enmity toward Johnse arose most likely from their being competitors in the timber business, and had nothing to do with any connection between Doc Ellis and the McCoys.

Mr. King could have learned the details of the case by simply reading the case file; but that is a lot of work, as the case file is about four hundred pages. Here is my copy of the case file:

Mr. King could read two or more of the previous feud books in less time than it would take to read the case, and the cost of the feud books would be much less. King opted for the feud stories, as his note to the section on the Hatfield-Ellis case shows:

“10. Hatfield and Spence, 251-252, drawing on writings by and interviews of Cap’s son Coleman; Andrew Chafin interview transcript, 6; and Charlotte Sanders, “Feud Was Revived in 1899 After the Killing of ‘Doc’Ellis,: Williamson Daily News, based on the Bluefield Daily Telegraph of July 4, 1899.  In both the Hatfield and Spence and Daily Telegraph versions, Elias Hatfield was boarding the train as a passenger, heading to Wharncliffe, according to the latter.  Though Elias was Devil Anse’s son, the Daily Telegraph referred to him as Elias Hatfield Jr., presumably to differentiate him from Devil Anse’s brother Elias. In Hatfield and Spence (252), Coleman A. Hatfield said the gun was a “new Winchester.”  In Sanders’s and Chafin’s accounts, it was a pistol.  In Hatfield and Spence (251), the bullet ricocheted off Ellis’s gold cuff link.”King, Dean, “The Feud,” p. 401

A reader would think that there are no better sources than newspapers and family lore and legend, as King never mentions the actual case record. This allows him to pick and choose from his many “sources” and produce the most interesting version that the sources allow. This he does, and his version of the event is false in almost every detail, as the record plainly shows.

This post will take apart King’s yarn, piece by piece, and compare it to the case record.

King mentions the “Junior” on the name of Elias Hatfield. As the reader can see in the first graphic above, the case is styled, “The State of West Virginia versus Elias Hatfield, JUNIOR.  It was the court and NOT the Bluefield Telegraph which made that distinction. Anyone who is familiar with the usage of that time is not surprised, as many men who bore the name of an older relative who was NOT their father were designated as “Junior” in legal documents.

In the Torpin case, which deals with the land on Grapevine Creek that the feud yarns falsely claim was “taken” from Perry Cline by Anse Hatfield, the issue was the part of the land owned by the two sons of Perry Cline’s brother, Jacob. One of them was named for his uncle, Perry, and is referred to throughout the case file as “Perry Cline, Junior.”

Of course the feud writers are not familiar with that case, because it is about the same length as the case under consideration. No one expects a feud writer to devote the time to reading such voluminous records.

(Note: The reader should be mindful of the fact that Dean King promised in his “Author’s Note,” to “correct the record, to deflate the legends, to check the biases, and to add or restore accurate historical detail.”)

Feud writers are not constrained to using only newspapers and prior yarns as support for their tales. When needed, a “source” can be conjured up out of thin air. In this case, the imaginary source is N&W call boy, Andy Chafin.

This ability to invent sources allows the writer to give minute details, such as location, time of day and even conversations between the fictitious characters. It is just such detail that causes prestigious reviewers such as The Boston Globe and Professor Clyde Milner to laud Mr. King for his “meticulous research.” But it is almost entirely FICTION!

There was an N&W call boy there that day, but his name was Ed Guntner, not Andy Chafin. And he was not sitting in the car, but was outside, standing just below Doc Ellis when he was shot. Of course anyone who was so close to the shooting would be called as a witness, and here is the testimony of call boy, Ed Guntner:

E.K. Guntner, sworn for the defence, testifies as follows:-

 Examination by Governor E.W. Wilson:-

 Q: What is your given name.
A: Ed.

Q: How do you spell your name?
A: Guntner.

Q: What are you employed at?
A: Call Boy at Gray Yard.

Q: What were you employed at July 3rd of this year?
A: I was Call Boy there.

Q: Employed by the Norfolk & Western?
A: Yes, sir.

Q: Where abouts?
A: At Gray.

 

King says that Elias Hatfield, like the imaginary call boy, Chafin, also worked for the N&W Railroad, as a railroad security officer. The case record tells us about a dozen times what Elias Hatfield was doing for a living at the time. He was running his saloon on the Kentucky side of Tug River, opposite the Gray railroad yard.

Q: How long have you known Elias Hatfield?
A: Three and one half months.

Q: Were you ever in his saloon frequently?
A: I was in his saloon probably twice before this occurred.

Q: Did you drink with him?
A: No, sir he did not.

Q: Did you drink?
A: Yes sir.

Every witness called by the defense was asked on cross-examination if he ever visited Elias’s saloon. Witnesses testified that Elias came across the river to Gray every day to pick up ice for his saloon.

Cross Examination by Attorney J.S. Marcum:-

Q: Did you see Hatfield around there before you head the shooting?
A: No, sir.

Q: Had you seen him around there frequently, around your place?
A: He was up there nearly every morning to get his ice.

Q: Do you know whether he came there that morning to get ice?
A: Yes, sir.

Q: How do you know it?
A: It came billed to him.

Q: That day?
A: Yes, sir.

Readers of Dean King’s feud yarn think that the saloon-keeper, Elias Hatfield, was a security officer for the N&W Railroad. The record shows that Elias owned Skinner’s saloon, just across the river in Kentucky, and that ice was shipped to him every day,billed to Elias Hatfield.And they are told that it is history!

Mr. King’s yarn continues with a description of the actual shooting of Doc Ellis. It is false in detail, as proven by the record.

King writes:
“Chafin saw Ellis rush onto the platform and raise a pistol, and he shouted, “Look out, ‘Lias!” The passenger with whom Elias was talking saw what was happening too and shoved Elias aside.  Elias, dropping out of the way, pulled out his pistol and fired.  Some witnesses would say that only one gun fired, but Chafin saw two flashes. Elias’s shot, taken in haste, was off the mark but not by much: the bullet struck Ellis’s wrist, broke it, ricocheted into his neck, severed his jugular vein, and exited through the top of his head.  The wealthy timberman fell to the platform, dead before he hit.”

The story says that the fictitious call boy, Andy Chafin, said that Ellis had a pistol. The real call boy, Ed Guntner, said Ellis was aiming at Elias with a Winchester rifle when Elias shot him. He testified that he took the rifle into the depot and gave it to his boss. Here’s that man’s testimony about Ellis’s weapon:

Q: After the shot was [sic] where were you?
A: When the shooting took place?

Q: Yes, sir?
A: I was in the office, I had been out to the train and had turned back in the office to write out some tickets.  I went out again and I saw some man lying on the second class car platform.

Q: Did you see a gun brought into your office?A: The Call Boy brought a gun into my office.

Q: What boy?
A: Edward Guntner.

Q: Gunther or Guntner?
A: Guntner.

Q: He brought a gun into your office?
A: Yes, sir.

Q: What kind of a gun was it?
A: It was a rifle; repeating rifle.

Q: Did you notice the caliber of it?
A: I cannot say what the gun used.

Q: What was done with it?
A: I asked him to let me see the gun, and he handed it to me, and I opened it.

Q: Then what?
A: I opened it and threw and empty shell out of the chamber.

Then King says that Elias shot Ellis with a pistol. Several witnesses testified in detail about the weapon Used by Elias. It was a .45-90 Winchester rifle, which was introduced into evidence in court, and examined by several witnesses, who identified it as the rifle used by Elias. Of course the Winchester used by Ellis was also introduced into the case, and was examined in the courtroom. But, in King’s tale, they both used pistols.

Then we see more of the minute detail which earns Mr. King so many plaudits from people who know nothing of the real history, when he writes that the bullet “exited through the top of his head.” That is a gory result, but it is entirely false. There was a doctor on the train, in the same car as Ellis, and he examined the body immediately after it was carried into the depot. The doctor testified that the bullet did NOT exit!

Cross examination by Governor E.W. Wilson:-

 Q: Doctor, which of these wounds that you speak of, did you see first?
A: This one in the center of the neck.

Q: Why did you speak to the jury that you had seen the one in the shoulder first, before you spoke about the one in the neck?
A: It came into my mind first.

Q: Do you know that as a physician, that the wound he received in the neck would have proved fatal?
A: Yes, sir.

Q: Did you see that missle that went in there (Illustrating).  Do you know whether it struck the verterbrae or not?
A: When we were using the probe it made a restriction like a loose bone or some other solid substance, and I took it to be the shoulder blade.

Q: When you probed, you thoughts the bullet that went in, came out at the shoulder blade?
A: It did not come out.

Q: If it did come out, you did not see it?
A: No, sir.

Q: You never saw it?
A: No, sir.

Q: But you probed in there?
A: Yes, sir.

King’s sttement that Ellis fell dead is true. Everything else is totally false, by the record. But it’s a good story, and, where “the feud” is concerned, that’s all that matters.

When I asked Google for images of “The Rifleman” I get a screen full of results. The one at thed top of this article was chosen deliberately, because it shows the exact pose of Elias Hatfield when he fatally shot Doc Ellis.

Elias Hatfield was on his daily trip across Tug River from his saloon in Kentucky to get ice to cool his beer. He had a letter to mail, but the post office had already taken the day’s mail to the mail car on the train. So, Elias walked alongside the train to mail his letter at the mail car.

Elias gave his letter to the man in the mail car and started back toward the depot. As he passed the second class coach, which was just behind the combination baggage/mail car, Doc Ellis was standing on the steps at the rear of the second class car. From a distance of only five or six feet, Elias said, “Doc Ellis, you son of a bitch, I bet you can’t take me the way you took my brother, Johnse.”

Elias had his Winchester in his hand, pointing down at the ground. Doc had a .38 Smith & Wesson in his right hip pocket, and several witnesses said that his hand went there, but he did not pull the pistol out of his pocket. It was seen only when the body was examined in the depot after he was dead.

An elderly gentleman, Captain Parrill, took Elias by the arm and started leading/pushing him away from Ellis. Ellis said, “Maybe I am a son of a bitch,” and walked back into the car.

The man had led Elias across one set of tracks, about 20-25 feet from the back of the car when Ellis reappeared in the doorway with his Winchester at his shoulder, taking aim at Elias. Elias wheeled, and with the butt of his rifle near his right hip, shot Ellis dead center. The bullet hit Ellis’s left wrist as he aimed his own rifle, shattered the radius bone and deflected slightly upward, striking him near the center of the neck, just above the collar bone.

Two witness testified as follows: The first paragraph is the testimony of Captain Parrill, and the second is the Call boy, Edward Guntner.

 

Q: You came down on which side?
A: I came down here (Illustrating) and caught him by the arms and pushed him back.

Q: How did you take hold of him?
A: I just caught him this way (Illustrating) and pushed him back, and told him that “he could not have any trouble here.”

Q: Push me back just exactly as you did Mr. Hatfield.
A: I shoved him just this way (Witness places his hand on Governor Wilson’s arms and pushed him backward.)

Q: Now I want you to show me how Hatfield threw his gun around and shot.
A: As I pushed him around his gun came in range and he fired in this shape. (Witness places the stock of the gun near his thigh, imitating how Hatfield held his gun when he fired.)  He never put it to his shoulder.

Q: What did Hatfield do, if anything, in going away from the car?
A: He did not do anything.

Q: Did you see him at any other time bring it up in both hands?
A: No, sir.

Q: Then he did not have it in both hands?
A: I did not see him.

Q: You watched him?
A: Yes, sir.  I do not know as I watched him all the time.  I never did see him bring the gun up in both hands.

Q: You never did see him bring the gun up in both hands?
A: No, sir.

Q: What position did he bring it up in when he shot Ellis?
A: He had it in both hands then.

Q: Did he have it up to his shoulder?
A: No, sir.

Q: How did he have it?
A: I think he had the stock under his arm.

Q: You could see that?
A: I do not think he had it up to his shoulder.

Q: At that time you were looking immediately at him?
A: Yes, sir.

Q: You could look at him and see that he had it under his arm?
A: I am not positive about it.  I think so.

If you reconstruct it, you will realize that Elias’s bullet would have hit Doc Ellis in the breast bone, had his left arm not been extended on his rifle. Of course Dean King could not tell his readers that Elias Hatfield could wheel and, in one motion, shoot a man dead center, without even bringing his rifle up to aim it. He couldn’t do that, simply because he had earlier written that seven Hatfields set up an ambush only thirty feet above the road and emptied their Winchesters at three men riding abreast without a single torso hit.

Hatfields who fire half a hundred shots from a position only thirty feet off the road without a single shot finding a victim’s torso, can’t then turn around and shoot a man dead center without even raising the rifle to take aim.

Hatfields and McCoys who can’t hit a barn door exist only in feud fairy tales. In reality, if Sam McCoy or Elias Hatfield shot at you with a Winchester, you were in a world of hurt. Count on it!

As Elias Hatfield was probably only a fraction of a second from being shot when he killed Ellis, one would think that a plea of self-defense would work, but it didn’t. Elias started the altercation by cussing Ellis, while holding a Winchester in his hand. The judge instructed the jury, properly so, that if they believed that Elias had instigated the fracas, they might find that he had forfeited a claim of self-defense.

Elias was not helped by the testimony of several witnesses that they had heard him say that if he ever laid eyes on Doc Ellis, one of them would die. One might argue that Elias Hatfield did not go to prison for shooting Doc Ellis, but, rather, for having a big mouth!

While I believe that Elias was guilty of a crime, simply because he started it, I think it was manslaughter—not the second degree murder he was tagged with. Elias got twelve years in the penitentiary, but the governor obviously agreed with me, pardoning him less than two years later.

I think the real story is at least as good a tale as is the fictional yarn in the feud book.

Finally, we will take another look at an earlier quote from Dean King:

“10. Hatfield and Spence, 251-252, drawing on writings by and interviews of Cap’s son Coleman; Andrew Chafin interview transcript, 6; and Charlotte Sanders, “Feud Was Revived in 1899 After the Killing of ‘Doc’Ellis,: Williamson Daily News, based on the Bluefield Daily Telegraph of July 4, 1899.  In both the Hatfield and Spence and Daily Telegraph versions, Elias Hatfield was boarding the train as a passenger, heading to Wharncliffe, according to the latter.  Though Elias was Devil Anse’s son, the Daily Telegraph referred to him as Elias Hatfield Jr., presumably to differentiate him from Devil Anse’s brother Elias. In Hatfield and Spence (252), Coleman A. Hatfield said the gun was a “new Winchester.”  In Sanders’s and Chafin’s accounts, it was a pistol.  In Hatfield and Spence (251), the bullet ricocheted off Ellis’s gold cuff link.”

 

Considering the totality of these three end notes, it is obvious that Dean King intends to convey to his readers that there is no way to know the truth about the event, so it is up to each of us to decide which “source” to credit.

This ploy is used by ALL the feud yarn spinners. All of the recent “feud historians” notify their readers early on that the truth can never be known. In his “Author’s Note, King says: “Like every feud historian, I have occasionally had to rely on oral tradition…Parts of the feud remain shrouded in mystery and probably always will.”

 Lisa Alther, another novelist who caught a wave in the wake of the Costner movie to ring the cash register with a “feud history,” wrote: “My version of the feud derives from these sources and others. It may be that some anecdotes I excluded actually happened; it may be that some I did include didn’t happen. In the end, it comes down to the judgment of each person.”

 The history professor, Otis Rice, wrote: “Moreover, many of the details of events in the feud may never be known with certainty, for accounts, even by participants, were often so contradictory that there is no way of determining precisely where the truth ended and fabrication began.”

 It is amazing to me that more intelligent readers do not wonder why writers who claim to be writing history begin their books by saying that there is no real history. Of course there is a method to this madness, because, once the reader is convinced that the truth can never be known, then any “truth” posited by the novelist masquerading as a historian becomes as much a truth as anyone else’s truth.

The obvious purpose of the three end notes above is to convince readers that there is no choice but to decide which of the prior yarn-spinners we should believe. King never mentions the fact that the details of the Elias Hatfield case are available for anyone who will pay twenty-five cents a page for the four-hundred-page file, and read it. He never mentions that case!

King tells us in note 11 that Governor Atkinson was the man who convinced Elias Hatfield to surrender. That, too, is false.  But he leaves it as if there is no way to know who facilitated the surrender. Of course he could direct the reader to the case record, where the man who got Elias to surrender actually testified, but if he even mentioned the case record, his entire yarn is dead.

Here is the testimony of Dr. Bartram, who arranged the surrender of Elias Hatfield:

Q: I will ask you what you did towards arranging the surrender?
A: I told Bob Hatfield that I thought it would be the best thing for him to do, to surrender, and he asked me to write to the Governor, and I did so, and he asked me to wire, and I did so.  And the Governor asked me to arrange the time of meeting, and I saw Bob Hatfield and arranged with him, and he came at the time when the meeting occurred.

Q: Where did it occur?
A: At Wharncliffe.

 

Elias Hatfield surrendered TO Governor Atkinson, after the doctor had convinced him that it was the proper thing to do.  The Governor actually came to Wharncliffe, and received the surrender of Elias in the saloon owned by Elias’s brother, Bob.  Devil Anse, Cap and Bob Hatfield were also present in the saloon with the Governor when Elias surrendered.

King says that Elias Hatfield was a N&W security officer, on his way to Wharncliffe, and the call boy, Andy Chafin, saw Ellis and Hatfield square off with pistols. King says that Hatfield shot Ellis in the neck, with the bullet exiting the top of his head. He would never admit that there is a record of sworn testimony, unrebutted by the opposing side, that Elias was there to get ice for his saloon, and the call boy was actually Ed Guntner, and the two men had rifles and the bullet which killed Ellis never exited.

If I wrote of every yarn in Mr. King’s book that is refuted in detail by the record, the book would be longer than the 430 pages used to spin the yarn. But this series of posts gives the reader an idea of how feud history is “made.”.

 

 

Categories
Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum Uncategorized

The Message of the Battle of Grapevine

Everyone who is descended from ancestors who lived in the Tug Valley during the quarter century following the Civil War will eventually face the same question that I was asked the first week I was in graduate school in New York, which is: “What kind of people kill a hundred of each other over a pig?”

The real genius of Altina Waller was that she laid the foundation for an answer to that question. Her greatest contribution was that she saw that what she called the “Second phase” of the feud (December 1887-January, 1888) had nothing to do with pigs or love affairs or moonshine whiskey. Waller found the records showing that once Devil Anse sold his Grapevine lands and moved two ridges away from the Valley, there was no more “feud.”

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

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

The West Virginia Encyclopedia on the Feud: Tilting at a Big Windmill

 

The Business Dictionary defines “Encyclopedia” as: “Single or multi-volume publication that contains accumulated and authoritative knowledge on one subject (such as an encyclopedia of architecture or music), a few related subjects (such as an encyclopedia of arts or engineering), or a wide variety of subjects arranged alphabetically (such as the Encyclopedia Britannica). Also spelled as encyclopaedia.
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/encyclopedia.html

One usually expects to find “authoritative knowledge” about a subject in an Encyclopedia. An encyclopedia on history, such as “The Encyclopedia of American Biography,” normally presents facts supported by the historical record. When it comes to the Hatfield and McCoy feud, the West Virginia Encyclopedia fails miserably in its duty to inform the public of the historical facts contained in the actual records. The editors prefer the unsubstantiated tales of “feud writers” to the record, and I will prove it by examining the treatment of two men named “Vance” in the West Virginia Encyclopedia.

First, we have Abner Vance, the grandfather of Jim Vance and the great grandfather of Devil Anse Hatfield. The Encyclopedia says: “There are two founding events in Hatfield family history: A 1792 Shawnee raid in Russell County, which widowed Anna Musick and eventuated in her marriage to Ephraim, who was among the party that rescued her from the Indians. And in 1817, preacher Abner Vance fled a Russell County murder charge, finding refuge in Tug Valley. Vance later returned to Virginia and was hanged there, but not before establishing a family line on Tug Fork.” http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/279

The paragraph is much better than most of the Encyclopedia’s feud information; the first half is actually true! The statement: “And in 1817, preacher Abner Vance fled a Russell County murder charge, finding refuge in Tug Valley. Vance later returned to Virginia and was hanged there, but not before establishing a family line on Tug Fork,” is correct ONLY in that Abner Vance was hanged. The rest of the statement is false in every detail, and the record proves it beyond any doubt.

The Encyclopedia repeats the offense in its article on Jim Vance, referring to Abner Vance as a “Tug Valley pioneer.” http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/856

Abner Vance killed Lewis Horton in September, 1817. He was arrested soon afterwards, and spent every day until his hanging in jail. He never set foot in the Tug Valley. The Abner Vance story is reported in detail by Barbara Vance Cherep, the premier Vance researcher, in her article “Abner Vance: Two Sides to Every Story.” http://tgv7.tripod.com/index-12.html

Randy Marcum, a historian with the West Virginia Culture and History Department, gave a talk in July, 2012 wherein he used the research of Ms. Cherep to totally debunk the Abner Vance yarn presented in the West Virginia Encyclopedia.  http://youtu.be/C4fHENo67kM

In January, 2014, Ms. Cherep wrote Mr. Ken Sullivan, the editor of the Encyclopedia, challenging the treatment of Abner Vance, and offering to come to Charleston and show the editors the records on Abner Vance. Mr. Sullivan’s response is a glaring example of how the feud story is perpetuated by those who would normally be expected to adhere to the historical record; they absolutely refuse to even look at the record, and cling tenaciously to fables told by “feud writers,” with no actual foundation whatsoever. Mr. Sullivan wrote Ms. Cherep as follows:

“As for Abner Vance, that story has interested me for a long
time. The story as commonly presented is that about 1815 Vance killed
Horton while Horton was fording the Clinch River or in some versions
the Holston River. Vance then fled to Tug Valley where he sired the
line of Vances in that region. He returned to present Southwest
Virginia, however, was tried at Abingdon and hanged. Abingdon is the
county seat of Washington County, through which both forks of the
Holston River flow.  I believe Vance may have been tried and cleared in
Russell County, in the  Clinch River Valley, then later convicted and
hanged in neighboring Washington County. The story is probably best
known for the song that Abner wrote while awaiting execution. The Abner
Vance story interests us because it helps to root the Vances and
Hatfields in the early history of the region.”

The record shows this to be false in almost every detail. Vance killed Horton in 1817. Vance was arrested shortly thereafter, and spent every day until his hanging in jail. He never set foot in Tug Valley.

He was tried first in Russell County, as Mr. Sullivan says, but he was convicted and sentenced to hang. He appealed the verdict on the basis that the trial court erred in not allowing him to claim insanity as his defense. The appeals court set the verdict aside and ordered Vance tried again, allowing the insanity plea.

Unable to seat another jury in Russell County, due to the lack of available jurors whose minds were not already made up, the trial was moved to Washington County. Vance’s insanity plea was unsuccessful, and he was again convicted and sentenced to hang. The sentence was carried out in July, 1819.

Mr. Sullivan tells Ms. Cherep why he will not even look at her documentary evidence, and will continue to misinform the world about this history:

“The Abner Vance story interests us because it helps to root the Vances and Hatfields in the early history of the region.”

So, because the spurious Abner Vance yarn “helps to root the Vances…in the early history of the region,” Mr. Sullivan will continue to propagate the lie that Abner Vance absconded to the Tug Valley and founded a family there in his encyclopedia.

And he has the audacity to refer to it as “history.”

 

Categories
Dean King Hokum Hatfield-McCoy Feud Hokum

Library of Virginia’s “People’s Choice Award” Won by a Fraudster

The Library of Virginia’s 2014 People’s Choice Award for non-fiction has gone to a book that is probably the biggest literary hoax since Clifford Irving’s bogus “Autobiography of Howard Hughes” more than forty years ago.

This is the first in a series of posts I will make which will prove conclusively—by the record—that Dean King’s “The Feud: The Hatfields and McCoys, The True Story” is one of the biggest collections of falsehood ever sold as non-fiction.

If I covered all of King’s distortions of the record and outright lies, this series would be longer than King’s four hundred thirty page book; therefore, I will cover only a dozen or so of the most egregious examples of the perfidy of this “historian.”

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