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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.”

 

 

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

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

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

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.

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.

In the politically correct 21^st 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 19^th 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.

West Virginia Historian Laureate, Otis Rice tells his readers in his preface that he had a grant from his employer, West Virginia Institute of Technology, and two student assistants to facilitate his research for his book, “The Hatfields & the McCoys.”

What did the taxpayers of West Virginia get for their money? Well, they got more than one hundred fifty citations of newspaper and magazine writers, and almost nothing from the actual historical records. After more than three decades, academia still has the wagons circled about Professor Rice’s yarn, insisting that it is actually “history.”

I have published dozens of public records which were never seen before; yet not one academic anywhere has uttered a peep about these discoveries. Many of those records greatly expand our knowledge of the history, but academia has never even acknowledged their existence. They cannot even admit the existence of the records, simply because many of them turn Otis Rice’s tale upon its head and they will never admit that Otis Rice’s “history” is a scam.

The three blind mice actually found very little in their purportedly exhaustive search of the records. They certainly found nothing that changed the original feud story which came from the people who organized and led the illegal invasions of West Virginia in December, 1887 and January, 1888, by way of the newspaper reporters John Spears and Charles Howell.

Records which escaped the eyes of the three blind mice include marriages, civil suits, land deeds, criminal indictments, court orders, and, even the Census.

The marriage of the son of Asa Harmon McCoy and the daughter of Jim Vance shows that the relations between those families was NOT that of feuding enemies. The deed where Asa Harmon’s daughter sold Jim Vance a thousand acres and took Vance’s note for a third of the price is additional proof. Perry Cline having Jim Vance sign his sheriff’s bond and appointing Vance a deputy sheriff clinches it.

The many civil suits featuring Perry Cline and/or the children of Asa Harmon McCoy against either Devil Anse Hatfield or Jim Vance cannot be mentioned without relegating the farcical and entirely fictional “pig trial” to the garbage bin. If lawsuits involving the value of hundreds—even thousands—of pigs aroused no feuding enmity, then what is to be done with an argument over a ten dollar pig?

Rice does not mention the indictment of some two dozen of the Frank Phillips gang in their home county of Pike for illegally forming the gang. To do so would destroy the claim that the violence along the border during December, 1887 and January, 1888 involved “Kentucky officers and the Hatfield gang.”

The dozens of documents which I have photographed and included in my books do not exist in the academic universe, simply because they were either not found by the three blind mice, or, if found, were ignored in order to perpetuate the feud yarn.

While not the most significant historically, the documents relating to the second Marriage of Ran’l McCoy are the most shocking discoveries to date.  Not one academic has even said that this document is “a cool document.” None have publicly admitted its existence.

(Click on photos to expand.)

Likewise, the three divorce cases which accompanied the bitter break-up of the May-December marriage between the seventy-three-year-old Ran’l and his eighteen-year-old bride were either not found by the blind mice, or they were found and ignored. The daughter of that marriage, Ellen McCoy, has not even been acknowledged to exist.

Does anyone think that a professor and two graduate assistants researched the “Hatfield and McCoy feud,” without even looking at the index of cases in the Pike Circuit Court? Does anyone believe that they saw this index and did not have enough curiosity to look at the three cases styled “Hattie McCoy v Randolph McCoy?

Will academia eventually be forced to admit that Otis Rice and his assistants either deliberately falsified their “history,” or they were, indeed, nothing more than “Three Blind Mice?”
Time will tell.

Until the modern era, most boys in the hills were named for an older relative. The generations were differentiated by calling the elder “Big” and the younger “Little.” It almost always had nothing to do with size. Writers of feud books like to supersize everything in their stories; therefore, they take advantage of this custom to supersize the characters in their yarns.  Ellison Hatfield is called “Big Ellison” in recent feud yarns. This appellation allows Dean King to write that Ellison, measured at five feet ten inches by the army, was “six feet six in his stocking feet.”

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

While the Pike County Tourism folks are expending great efforts to make a hero out of a Ol’ Ran’l McCoy, and the Virginia and West Virginia Tourism folks are doing very little of anything, a vast opportunity awaits them. The effort to supersize the “feud” is a bust.

Many Western Towns, from Tombstone Arizona to Bannack, Montana are capitalizing on their bad men from the late nineteenth century. Almost all of Western tourism is built around men killing other men. It works, because people—especially Americans—are drawn to “Bad men.” Only in America would John Dillinger be more famous than Thomas Edison, but that’s the way it is.

There is no way that Ran’l McCoy can ever draw more tourists than he already draws, for one simple reason: Ran’l McCoy never killed anyone.

Therefore, I recommend that most of the money being spent on building up Ol’ Ran’l as a tourist draw be diverted to much more fertile ground. While I think it is a good thing to rebuild the McCoy home place which was burned on January 1, 1888, all other expenditures would bring far greater returns if they were used to publicize our really BAD men.

If one drew a circle with a radius of fifty miles centered on the small circle with the light bulb inside on the following map, within that circle would be the location of more fatal gunfights in the 1880’s and 1890’s  than in any comparable circle drawn anywhere on the map of the United States.
(Click on map to enlarge)

Here is a list of the events associated with each number on the map. I will write about each of them in the future, as time permits.

The circle with the light bulb inside represents the point where the three states of Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia meet.

1. Skinner’s Saloon. This establishment was known as “Skinner’s Saloon,” but if one reads the transcript of the trial of Elias Hatfield for killing Doc Ellis, one would know that Elias Hatfield actually owned the saloon business. Although it is based on what a few very old men told me as a boy, and not on any actual record, I know that Elias Hatfield ran booze and gambling at Skinners, while Mrs. Skinner handled a stable of “girls of the night.”

This establishment should soon be much more famous than Skinner’s Saloon in Bannack, Montana, which was the headquarters of the crooked sheriff, Plummer, who robbed the wagons hauling gold from Bannack to Salt Lake City.

2. Gray, WV, where Elias Hatfield killed Doc Ellis, on July 3, 1899.

3. Cap Hatfield lived here—in old Virginia, around the time of the Gray shootout.

4. Bad Frank Phillips shot here in July, 1898.

5. Cap Hatfield and his stepson killed three men in Matewan in 1896. As an added attraction, it should be noted that a nephew of Devil Anse, Tom Chafin, scored a “daily double” here in 1911, when he killed both the mayor and the chief of police of Matewan in a gun battle. Chafin served one year in Moundsville for each of his victims.

6. Jim Vance and Deputy Bill Dempsey killed here in January 1888.

7. Ellison Hatfield killed here in August, 1882.

8. McCoy home burned here in January, 1888. Two McCoys killed.

9. Three men killed here, at Perryville (now English), WV., in a shootout between Bad Lewis Hall and the Steele family, in 1891.

10. The entire Ira Mullins family wiped out here by Doc. “The Red Fox” Taylor, 1892.

11. Bad Talt Hall and Doc Taylor both hanged here in 1892.

12. Bad Lewis Hall killed here, by a Pike County Constable named Johnson. Bad Lewis was resisting arrest on a liquor charge when he reached his belated expiration date at age 83, in 1912.

13. Norton, VA. (I have TWO 13’s) Bad Talt Hall killed the chief of police here in 1892.

13. Floyd County, Kentucky. Devil John Wright and Bad Talt Hall killed four men here in a gunfight in 1887.

15. Letcher County, Kentucky. Home base of Devil John Wright, who killed between sixteen and twenty-eight men, and fathered between twenty-eight and thirty-three children, depending on which source you credit.This is also the home of Devil John’s uncle, Martin Van Buren “Baby” Bates. Baby Bates and his wife toured many years with the Circus, including a command appearance before Queen Victoria. They are still listed in Guinness as history’s tallest married couple. Although there is no proof that Baby ever killed anyone, noting his place in history would add a little spice to a tour.
16. Number 16 is about fifty miles off the map to the northeast. Elias and Troy Hatfield, sons of Devil Anse, were killed in Boomer, WV, in 1911. The Italian bootlegger, who killed the two Hatfields in a fight over booze-selling territory, was killed by Troy Hatfield after Troy, himself had been fatally shot.

I recommend that the three states pool their resources in an effort to let the world know that if they wish to visit the haunts of some really bad men, Skinner’s Saloon is the epicenter. It would be far more profitable than trying to draw people to a man who never killed anyone in his life.

There is much, much more inside my “circle of death,” but these should be enough to get the three states started.

PS:  I could move the center of my map to Pikeville, and it would bring all the men killed in Perry and Breathitt Counties during the period, while still including the Tug Valley and Virginia events. The tourism folks should do that.

 

In the depositions for the Torpin case, which contested the validity of he sale of the Grapevine lands by Devil Anse, Joseph Simpkins, a local teacher and notary testified that Anse once put up Wall’s girlfriend for three or four years. He testified that after Anse moved from his Grapevine home to the Cline home place, Sally Christian occupied Anse’s old home for a time. Simpkins said that Sally was “a Miss of Wall Hatfield’s.”

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