Echoes of Appalachia

The trouble started over a hog. That’s what they’ll tell you, and that’s what’s written down in most places. But what started before the hog was land, pride, and the kind of family loyalty that don’t bend even when it ought to. The Hatfields were from West Virginia, over on the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. The McCoys were on the Kentucky side. Back then, being from one side or the other meant something. It meant everything.

Randolph McCoy, they called him “Ole Ran’l,” had himself a hog, and he swore it had been taken by Floyd Hatfield. Floyd said it was his hog, had the notches in the ear to prove it. So, they went to court—justice of the peace, local kind of court. The man who ruled in favor of the Hatfields was a Hatfield himself by blood, which didn’t help the McCoys feel any better about losing. It didn’t help that a McCoy who testified for the Hatfields was later found shot dead in the woods. Some say the hog didn’t matter at all. But it was enough to let things roll downhill.

Devil Anse Hatfield was the head of his clan. Tall, hard, smart. He made money off timber and knew how to use a rifle. He wasn’t the devil they made him out to be, but he wasn’t the kind of man to take a slight. Not from a McCoy. Randolph had his pride too. A Bible man, he’d pray with the same hands he’d use to pull a trigger. When one of his boys was found courting a Hatfield girl, there was no soft music. There was hate.

In 1882, it broke open. Ellison Hatfield, Devil Anse’s brother, was stabbed and shot during an Election Day fight with three of Randolph’s sons. Ellison lingered for a few days before dying. Then the Hatfields took justice into their own hands. They tied the McCoy boys to pawpaw bushes and shot them dead by the river. It wasn’t law—it was revenge. And the law, when it did come, came like a storm.

For years, the feud dragged on. The families burned each other’s homes. Shot each other in the dark. Children died. Women too. In 1888, Frank Phillips rode in with a posse, hunting Hatfields. Some were hanged, others imprisoned. The courts got involved across state lines, and that just made things worse. Governors argued. The country started watching.

When it was done, the war had claimed more than a dozen lives. Maybe more, depending on who you ask. Devil Anse had a statue made of himself before he died. He found the Lord in his last years, got baptized in a creek he used to fish. Randolph lived quiet and broken. His wife lost her mind after two of her kids were murdered in their sleep. You don’t come back from that.

People like to laugh about the Hatfields and the McCoys now, like it was some cartoon hillbilly thing. But it was blood. It was grief that didn’t leave. It was boys killed before they could be men. It was mothers burying sons with no peace to be found. And it was a lesson, if anybody was looking for one: family can lift you, but it can also drown you if you don’t know when to let go.

They had a truce in 2003, the descendants of both families. Signed it up formal. Smiles and handshakes. But the real peace came long before that, when the fighting stopped because there was nothing left to burn.

-Tim Carmichael