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In my first book I stated:
“The Hatfield and McCoy feud, as perceived by the general public, is a story that has become an industry.  The participants in the industry, like their counterparts in other industries, seek growth.  The growth needed to expand the revenue of the industry comes faster if the story itself grows.  This growth is possible — and is occurring as I write — only because the feud is a story and not history.”

A recent example of the story’s growth is a post on the largest “Feud” Facebook site from a few days ago. The post begins with:

LOGAN, W.Va. — One historian stated in his writings that John Wesley Workman, shown here in a worn photograph, was a “loyal friend and strong supporter of the Hatfields” during the most violent period of the feud era, and may have rode with the Hatfields during several of their exploits.

 Easy, isn’t it? One can find a name—any name– in the Logan County Census and say that he “may have rode (sic) with the Hatfields during several of their exploits,” and have as much real substantiation for the claim as this writer has for the quoted paragraph.

There is absolutely NO mention of a person named John Wesley Workman as an active participant in any event connected with “the feud” in any public record in any courthouse or state archive. Of course the writer knows this, and that is why he cites no documentary evidence, opting instead to cite an anonymous “historian.”

To the feud industry, a “historian” is anyone who has ever written a book or article that contains fictitious Hatfield and McCoy feud characters and events. Newspaper reporters, novelists and even barbers qualify for the title of “historian” in the feud industry.

The post has nearly one hundred Facebook “likes,” so the number of people who are gullible enough to believe that a man named John Wesley Workman was a major character in the Hatfield and McCoy feud is apparently very large, indeed. That population is definitely large enough to accommodate the continuing growth of the feud yarn for the foreseeable future.

As of this date, no one has attacked the substance of what I wrote in my book, “The Hatfield & McCoy Feud after Kevin Costner: Rescuing History.”

At age 77, I might have trouble finding my glasses, but I remember the 1950’s very clearly. For what it is worth, I am the last person who will write a book on the Hafields and McCoys, having talked to people who actually remembered the events.

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

“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.”

This quote is almost universally attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas, but Aquinas never said it. Aquinas wrote several passages which mean virtually the same thing, but the quote as presented here, and as it is usually presented elsewhere, is a 20th century invention. It might have originated from the Catholic theologian, John La Farge in the 1930’s, or it might be the brainchild of the Jewish writer, Franz Werfel. It appears following the screen credits in the movie, “The Song of Bernadette,” which was written by Werfel.

Try convincing someone who believes the quote is from Aquinas that the Saint never wrote it and you will quickly see the point I am trying to make.

Aquinas did, in fact, write: “Clearly the person who accepts the Church as an infallible guide will believe whatever the Church teaches.” (Summa Theologica, second part of the second part, question 5, article 3)

Both of the Aquinas quotes, the real and the ersatz, apply to those folks who are devoted to the fable of the Hafield and McCoy feud. I call them “The Ran’l McCoy cult.”

Where our Tug Valley history is concerned, those who have drunk the Kool-Aid originally concocted in 1888, by the New York Sun reporter, John Spears, will accept as gospel anything emitted by a writer who has the stamp of approval from the feud industry. They will never let the facts interfere with the story.

Once Dean King’s book received the approval of the feud industry, it was easy for a cultist to believe King when he wrote that a bounty hunter “read his rights” to Devil Anse in the wilds of Logan County in the 1890’s (p. 307).

You can show a cultist the Kentucky law which restricted a jury in a justice of the peace trial to a maximum of six members (Section 2252, Kentucky Statutes), and he will still say that there were twelve men on the jury which decided the ownership of a ten-dollar pig on Blackberry Creek.  One of the “historical markers” erected by the State of Kentucky to commemorate the legendary trial gives the date as 1873, while the other has it in 1878. The cultist readily accepts BOTH!

     

The cultist can be shown the Logan County Court record that gives the name of the justice of the peace in the proceedings against Sam McCoy as A.W. Ferrell, and he will still believe the claims of the feud fabulists–and the concrete sign shown above–that the presiding justice was Wall Hatfield.
(Click to expand graphic)

If you click to expand the above graphic, you can probably see that five of the names of witnesses AGAINST Sam McCoy were named “McCoy.” The complete list of prosecution witnesses includes eight McCoys. Neither the appearance of eight McCoys as witnesses against Sam, nor the fact that there were only sixty McCoys of arms-bearing age in the Valley in the 1880 Census prevents King from claiming that over a hundred armed McCoys invaded Logan that year in support of Sam McCoy (p.85). Of course the cultists believe King.

Show a cultist the Pike County Court records proving that Jim Vance signed the bond for Perry Cline when Cline entered the office of Sheriff, and that Cline later appointed Vance a deputy sheriff, and they will still say that Cline believed that Vance murdered his brother-n-law, Harmon McCoy, and that Cline hated Vance because of the “murder.”

In discussing the cult, I like to consider also a quote from a notorious unbeliever, Mark Twain. In “Following the Equator,” Twain wrote: “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities…” Physical impossibility is no deterrent to belief on the part of a cultist.

If a writer of fiction said that 1200 people normally attended Preacher Anse’s church (which had 28 members), he would be dismissed out of hand.  Dean King can write the same thing in a book he claims is the “True Story,” and be acclaimed by the cult as a historian whose research is exhaustive, and whose integrity is impeccable.

Show a cultist the work of Grace Dotson (Appalachian Quarterly, September, 2003, p. 40) and Barbara Cherep,  http://tgv7.tripod.com/index-12.html  proving beyond any doubt—from the record—that Abner Vance spent the entire time from his crime to his hanging in jail, and they will still believe the West Virginia Encyclopedia, which says that Vance absconded to the wilds of Tug Valley and founded a family there.  http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/279

The defining “truth” of the cult is the claim that Ran’l McCoy was a blameless victim.  Any writer who sticks to that tenet can write absolutely anything he wants to write—no matter how outrageously false—and still have the cult’s approval.

For example: Dean King wrote that Ellison Hatfield started the Election Day fight by drawing a knife on Tolbert McCoy. That lie morphs the highly-respected  Ellison Hatfield into  a would-be murderer who got only what was coming to him. It makes his brother, Anse,  a cold-blooded murderer, who killed three innocent men for no reason other than that he was a pathological killer. It also makes Preacher Anse Hatfeild a willing accessory to the murders of three innocent men. If the King lie is accepted as true, then Preacher Anse ordered the arrest of three men whom he knew–he was an eyewitness–to be innocent.

Of course it also makes Ran’l McCoy the only surviving innocent victim, and that wins the approval of the cult for anything else in the book, no matter how obviously false it is.

We see cultists who are descendants of all three—Ellison, and the two Andersons—lending their words and photos to the selling of King’s libel of their ancestors.

Because their faith is independent of the evidence, arguing with a cultist is utterly useless.  They will never state anything as a fact, thereby submitting it to examination by the record. If their opponent states a fact, they will either totally ignore it, or they will twist it into something that they can attack.

For example, I frequently make the claim that the troubles in Tug Valley during the 1880’s do not fit the dictionary definition of a “feud.” This is invariably distorted by the cultists, who say that I deny that Devil Anse killed three McCoys at the paw paw grove.

Arguing with a member of the cult is the equivalent of trying to convince a Muslim that Muhammad was not a prophet, and there is no profit to be gained in either endeavor. I frequently resolve to stop responding to them. I hope someday to be able to abide by that resolution.

 

The photo seen here is purported to be of Randolph McCoy. In the biggest feud book of all, the 430-page monster by Dean King, there is not one line saying that Ol Ran’l ever killed anyone. There is not a word about him ever physically assaulting anyone–not even a slap in the face with his open hand. Yet the writer of that big book says that Ol Ran’l probably had a genetic disease that causes its victims to want to go out and kill someone.

King says: “…the family (the McCoys) suffers from a rare hereditary condition now known as von Hippel-Lindau disease (or VHL). Those afflicted with it often have tumors on their adrenal glands that cause the excessive production of adrenaline and catecholamines, substances that trigger warrior, or fight-or-flight, reactions.  Friends and adversaries alike are subjected to a hair-trigger temper…Other symptons include a racing heart, splitting headaches, and hand tremors.”[i]

According to King, we ALL have it, because he says “the family suffers from (it).”  None of my Grandfather McCoy’s sixty-five grandchildren nor their scores of descendants have ever been so diagnosed, but that doesn’t stop Mr. King.

King gives a footnote which says that Randall McCoy might have had the disease,^[ii] and continues:  “This perhaps partly accounts for Randall’s coldheartedness to Roseanna, his inability to forget a slight, and his grating habit of harping on any perceived wrong.”

The next paragraph says: “Randall, who turned sixty in the fall of 1885, had plenty of real grief and concerns to keep him crotchety.”

This a prime example of a technique used frequently by feud writers. The plant an idea in the minds of readers, but they include words like “perhaps” or “partly” to give them an out if called. A look at the customer reviews on King’s book at Amazon shows that he got the point across. Multiple reviewers are convinced that all sixty-five of my Grandpa McCoy’s grandchildren have a congenital disorder which makes them want to kill people; in fact, none of them has ever been so diagnosed.

In recent days, the Associated Press article from nearly a decade ago has been resurrected in several places around the internet as an “explanation” for the Hatfield and McCoy feud.

Readers interested in real science, as opposed to feud lies, should consult the National Institutes of Health or the VHL Alliance for real scientific information. They are much better sources than the Associated Press, which, after all, is in the business of selling newspapers.

Those who take the time to consult these real sources will see that there is not one word about the disease causing victims to stab or shoot their neighbors—or anyone else.  http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/von-hippel-lindau-syndrome

In the real world, VHL is not a condition that causes people to be crotchety, mistreat their daughters or stab people on Election Day. It is a horrible disease, which, on average, kills victims before age fifty. With the state of medical science during the feud era, I am sure that victims of the terrible malady would have normally died much earlier than age fifty. The most common tumor is in the brain (47%) with kidney cancer second. Pheochromocytomas—the ones King is talking about which affect the adrenals—appear in less than fifteen percent of the patients.

The national Institutes of Health says of pheochromocytomas:  “Pheochromocytomas are usually noncancerous. They may cause no symptoms, but in some cases they are associated with headaches, panic attacks, excess sweating, or dangerously high blood pressure that may not respond to medication. Pheochromocytomas are particularly dangerous if they develop during pregnancy.”^[iii] That is ALL they say about the adrenal growths.  Does anyone doubt that if this condition was likely to cause someone to kill a neighbor next Election Day, the government would have warned us about it?

The VHL Alliance has, on the front page of its website: “VHL or von Hippel-Lindau is a genetic form of cancer. VHL patients battle a series of tumors throughout their lives. The VHL gene is involved in many other forms of cancer. Finding a cure for VHL will play a vital role in curing cancer!”   http://www.vhl.org/

In King’s description, the symptoms enumerated by the National Institutes of Health, are just afterthoughts, which he mentions only after telling us that it causes sufferers to stab folks at elections.

If Ran’l had the rare disease, he was indeed a lucky man. Whereas the average victim dies before age fifty, Ol’ Ran’l lived to eighty-nine, and might have made a hundred had he not caught his shirt-tail on fire while cooking over an open fire.

How low will the feud liars stoop? Well, their deliberate falsification of the nature of this horrible form of cancer is one indicator. I, personally, believe that there is no limit to their mendacity.

Postscript:  It is unfortunate that the Vanderbilt Magazine picked up the story, in its fall, 2007 issue, thereby giving it the gravitas of the Vanderbilt name. The story first appeared in the Associated Press several months earlier: MARILYNN MARCHIONE, Associated Press | April 6, 2007 http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Hatfield-McCoy-feud-fueled-by-genetic-disorder-1838496.php

[i] King, 140

[ii] King, 374, n2.

[iii] http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/von-hippel-lindau-syndrome

 

One of the biggest shocks of my young manhood came the first week I was in graduate school at Cornell. A fellow student, who hailed from Queens in New York City, asked me: “What kind of people kill a hundred of each other over a pig?”

He compounded my dismay by producing the New York Times report on the death of Cap Hatfield in August, 1930, which said that the feud lasted forty-eight years and cost more than one hundred lives. Of course the report said it all started over a pig.

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