The Hatfields and McCoysThe Original Family Feud

Grangerfords and Shepherdsons

“All of a sudden, bang! bang! bang! go three or four guns.... The boys jumped for the river - both of them hurt - and as they swum down the current the men run along the bank shooting at them and signing out, ‘Kill them, kill them!’ It made me sick.... I wished I hadn’t come ashore that night to see such things.”

- The Adventures of Huckleberry FinnChapter XIX

Family Feud

• Long before the television game show, real families were involved in bloody family feuds.

• Aside from the Shephersons and Grangerfords, other fictional feuding families include the Capulets and the Montagues.

The Hatfields and the McCoys

• From 1878 to 1896, two Appalachian families, the Hatfields and the McCoys, were embroiled in the most famous historical family feud.

• More than a dozen lives were lost.

• Was this feud the inspiration for the Shepherson-Grangerford feud? Possibly… YOU be the judge.

Why did it happen?

• The Civil War• The stolen pig• Romeo and Juliet of

the Appalachians

Devil Anse Hatfield

The Civil War

• In the Civil War, the two families were on opposite sides of the war. The Hatfields fought for the Confederacy, while the McCoys fought for the Union.

• During the war, Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield supposedly killed Harmon McCoy in battle.

• Devil Anse came home a Confederate captain.

Harmon McCoyBrother of Ran’l McCoy

The Stolen Pig

• In 1878, there was a dispute over ownership of a razor-backed hog in a Hatfield pigsty.

• The judge in the court dispute, a Hatfield, sided with his kin.

• After the court decision, a group of McCoys ambushed Hatfields while hunting.

Floyd Hatfield – Accused Pig Thief

Romeo and Juliet of the Appalachians

• In 1880, Johnse Hatfield, son of Devil Anse, ran off with Roseanna McCoy at an Election Day picnic

• This outraged Randolph “Ran’l” McCoy, Roseanna’s father.

• The feud escalated.

1881

• In 1881 Roseanna and Johnse split up after she lived, unwed, with Johnse and the Hatfields for several months. She was pregnant. She caught measles while pregnant and the baby died.

• Roseanna rode all the way back to Devil Anse’s home to warn Johnse of an ambush set up by her brothers.

• Johnse married Roseanna’s cousin Nancy later that year.

1882

• On August 9, Bud, Tolbert, and Pharmer McCoy killed Ellison Hatfield.

• The three McCoys were tied to bushes and executed by the Hatfields.

• Jeff McCoy was later killed on the banks of the Tug Fork River.

1888

• Alifair and Calvin McCoy are brutally murdered in a Hatfield raid on the McCoy cabin.

• The McCoy cabin is burned to the ground.

• Roseanna McCoy died later that year.

Map of the Feud

Lessons Learned

• When the dust settled, the two families eventually put the feud behind them.

• The families intermarried.

• Today, they hold an annual reunion, and the only feuding they do is on the baseball field.

Learn More

• Read The Coffin Quilt by Ann Rinaldi• Visit

http://www.libby-genealogy.com/hatfield-mccoy.htm

• Visit http://www.blueridgecountry.com/hatmac/hatmac.html

• Visit http://userwww.service.emory.edu/~dmcco01/McCoy/diversion.html