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
