Devil Anse Hatfield led his family through a violent, decades-long feud with the McCoy
family in nearby Pike County, KY.
Although popular culture stereotyped Hatfield as a bumbling "hillbilly," he was actually
a prosperous timber merchant who owned thousands of acres of land in Logan and
Mingo Counties, WV.
Image courtesy of the West Virginia State Museum.
The Hatfield and McCoy families lived along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River separating West Virginia and Kentucky. Violence between the two families began during the American Civil War and led to a bitter, decades-long rivalry that cost many family members and friends their lives. Although the feud informally ended in the 1890s, the families did not agree to a formal truce until 2003. Despite the passage of more than 150 years, the violent Hatfield and McCoy Feud remains one of the most legendary disagreements in American history.
When the American Civil War began in 1861, family patriarchs William "Devil Anse" Hatfield of West Virginia and Randolph McCoy of Kentucky sided with the Confederates and participated in a number of raids in the two border states between the Union North and Confederate South. Between 1863 and 1865, several Hatfield and McCoy family members and friends were killed or wounded during "war-related" actions that were rumored to have been tit-for-tat revenge attacks between the two families. By 1878, animosity between the Hatfields and McCoys had been simmering for more than a decade when Randolph McCoy accused Devil Anse Hatfield's cousin Floyd of stealing a hog. McCoy sought a legal resolution to the hog's ownership. Justice of the Peace Anderson Hatfield gathered a jury of six Hatfield and six McCoy family members to hear Randolph's case. After listening to evidence that included testimony from Bill Staton—a relative of both families—seven jury members (six from the Hatfield family and one from the McCoy family) sided with Floyd Hatfield. Randolph and the McCoy clan were furious. In June 1880, Randolph's brothers Paris and Sam McCoy killed Bill Staton claiming "self-defense."
Much to the chagrin of the McCoy family, Devil Anse Hatfield's son Johnson began courting Roseanna McCoy in the years after the hog trial. When the McCoys arrested Johnson for bootlegging in an attempt to end the relationship, a posse of Hatfields rode into Kentucky, surrounded the McCoy home, and demanded Johnson's release. Johnson left the pregnant Roseanna McCoy and later wed her cousin Nancy in 1881. The next year, Roseanna's brothers Tolbert, Pharmer, and Randolph "Bud" McCoy attacked Devil Anse's brother Ellison Hatfield, leaving him gravely wounded. The McCoy's were arrested, but intercepted by a Hatfield posse as law enforcement transported the trio to Pikeville, WV, for trial. When Ellison Hatfield died from his stab and gunshot wounds, the Hatfields tied the McCoy brothers to a paw paw tree and riddled them with bullets. Many in the region considered the murder of the McCoys a justifiable case of vigilante justice.
The feud grew increasingly violent following the "Paw Paw Tree Incident". When Jeff McCoy killed a mailman in 1886, constable Cap Hatfield and friend Tom Wallace gave chase, eventually shooting and killing McCoy. The following spring, Wallace was murdered. On January 1, 1888, Cap and Vance Hatfield led a group of family and friends into Kentucky and set Randolph McCoy's cabin afire. Waiting in ambush outside the home, Randolph McCoy escaped the melee but his wife Sarah was nearly beaten to death and two of their children were killed. Following the attack, Pike County, KY, Sheriff Frank Phillips organized a posse (that included Bud and Jim McCoy) to hunt down the Hatfields. After that posse killed Vance Hatfield and captured or killed several Hatfield allies, they cornered the remaining Hatfield massacre participants at Grapevine Creek on January 19, 1888. Following a brief standoff, eight men were arrested and indicted for the murder of one of Randolph McCoy's daughters during the New Year's Day violence, including Cap, Johnson, Robert, and Eliot Hatfield, Ellison Mounts, French Ellis, Charles Gillespie, and Thomas Chambers.
The Hatfields fought their supposed "illegal extradition" to Kentucky all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. On May 14, 1888, the court ruled in (Mahon v. Justice 127 U.S. 700 (1888)) that even though the Hatfields and their co-conspirators may have been forcibly returned from their asylum state (West Virginia) without the benefit of a lawful extradition procedure, no federal laws prevented them from being tried. Thereafter, between 1888 and 1901, all eight men were found guilty of the murder with seven receiving prison sentences. Ellison Mounts was executed on February 18, 1890.
The families announced a truce in 1891, but distrust between the Hatfields and McCoys continued for decades. The families sealed their truce with a handshake in 1976, but the two families were once again at odds in a property dispute in 2000. After a 3-year court battle, a judge decided the case so each family could claim a partial victory and hopefully avoid rekindling the feud. During a televised ceremony on June 14, 2003, the Hatfield and McCoy families signed a formal truce proclaiming that the families, "do hereby and formally declare an official end to all hostilities, implied, inferred and real, between the families, now and forevermore." Today, the Hatfields, McCoys, residents of the Tug Fork Valley, and curious tourists celebrate Appalachian culture and the newfound friendship between the formerly feuding families at the annual Hatfield McCoy Heritage Days and Moonshine Festival in Pikeville, KY.
You can learn more about the Hatfields, McCoys, and the region they called home using data and records collected by the U.S. Census Bureau's censuses and surveys. For example.
The Hatfield and McCoy families of Kentucky and West Virginia were embroiled in a decades-long feud that killed or injured dozens of
the families' men, women, and young children. When the Hatfields posed for this family photo in 1899, eight family members and friends
had recently been convicted or were awaiting trial for the death of Randolph McCoy's young daughter in a January 1, 1888, attack that
left two children dead and their mother severely beaten.
A verbal truce announced in 1891 was affirmed with a handshake in 1976. In 2003, the families formally signed an agreement to end
hostilities. Today, Hatfields, McCoys, friends, neighbors, and tourists celebrate the families' history and Appalachian culture at the
annual Hatfield McCoy Heritage Days and Moonshine Festival in Pikeville, KY.
Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.
A January 10, 1921, fire at the U.S. Department of Commerce building in Washington, DC, destroyed most of the population schedules from the 1890 Census.
An investigation was inconclusive, but potential causes of the fire included careless disposal of a cigarette or match, faulty wiring, and the spontaneous combustion of sawdust in the building's workshop.
For centuries, the Hatfield and McCoy families have lived in Logan and Mingo County, WV, and Pike County, KY, in a region of the United States known as Appalachia. Located along the Appalachian Mountains and stretching from New York to Alabama, the cultural center of Appalachia lies among the Blue Ridge and Great Smoky Mountains of Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
Although the region's forestry-, hardscrabble farming-, and mining-dominated economy has ebbed and flowed over the decades, the Appalachian population has remained one of the poorest in the nation. According to 2019 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimate (SAIPE) data, 12.3 percent of the total population of the United States lives in poverty, but 16.2 percent of West Virginia's population lives in poverty, while 16 percent of Kentucky's population lives in poverty.
Hardest hit counties in the Hatfield's home state of West Virginia include: McDowell County (33.8 percent); Mingo County (27.3 percent); and Gilmer County (25.5 percent). The percentage of Logan County, WV, residents living in poverty in 2019 was 21.9 percent.
In the McCoy's home state of Kentucky, 35.5 percent of Owsley County lived in poverty, followed by Lee County (34.9 percent), McCreary County (34.5 percent), and Martin County (34.4 percent. An estimated 24 percent of the population of Pike County, KY, lived in poverty.
Photo courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey.