January 16, 2021 • 43 mins
It was America's most famous family feud, but the history of the Hatfields vs the McCoys is fraught with bias and inaccuracies. Dig into a disagreement in 19th-century Appalachia that became a very big deal around the world, in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode
on the classic feud between the classic families, the hat
Fields and the McCoy's. It's one of the more interesting
stories of American history and it's way more nuts than
you even thought. And I don't know about you, though,
(00:21):
I just want to put a little bug in your ear.
Every time I hear the name Jim Vance in this episode,
I always want to follow it in my mind with
Vance refrigeration. See if that happens to you. Now that
I've said that, I hope you enjoy this one. It's
a classic, as I said, so enjoy away. Welcome to
(00:43):
Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. Charles W. Took. Brian is staring at me
right now. It's making me a toun uncomfortable. Jerry's over there.
I can feel her eyes burning into the side of
my head. So is the Stuff You Should Know? Where
(01:05):
would you like me to look? Uh uh in my ear?
Oh that's always so weird to someone's like looking, Are
you doing it right? Now like right at your hair
or really? Yeah, interesting, try my other ear. Oh yeah,
that's that's the stuff the right. Sorry, that's your left.
That's my left ear. All right, I'll remember that. Look
(01:25):
watch this, chuck, after seven years, can you see that
I can wiggle ears independently? Drives me crazy? So you
sit around and do it? Probably try not like a
good husband. Um, chuck. Yes, we have a bit of
an announcement here. Yeah, what we just heard? Yes, yeah,
(01:46):
we're in the room with either a hat Field or McCoy.
Jerry doesn't know which family she's related to. She just
knows that she's related to one of them. Yeah, like literally,
right before we press the courts, she's like, oh, by
the way, I'm related to one of these families. I'm
just not sure which. And a family member told her,
but she cousin Tyler was that? Who was? I don't know.
(02:08):
I think that's what she said, cousin. I get the
impression from Jerry's story though, that she's sort of like
glazed over and that's why she doesn't know. But she
does carry a six shooter on her hip, and that
explains that this is McCoy on the barrel, So maybe right,
but does that mean that it's a bullet from the
McCoys or for the McCoy's good monstry remains, you know,
(02:28):
good point. So we are talking about the hat Fields
in the McCoy's. For those of you who don't live
in the United States, you probably have heard of the
hat Fields in the McCoy's. It's a pretty legendary feud. Yeah, right,
we've heard of some of your history UK Australia, Matthew Flinders,
there's a name drop for you. Yeah, so hopefully you've
(02:49):
heard of the hat Fields in the McCoy's. Yeah, I
mean there was, if nothing else, there was a big
mini series a few years ago on television, Yeah, with
Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, and apparently it was really dramatized. Yeah,
like asn't fictionalized. Yeah, cinematized and yeah, a little not
(03:10):
quite fully accurate, but at least at least they brought
attention to the feud because it needs agreed. So, the
hat Fields in McCoy's um is a family feud, so
much so that in nine the hat Fields and the
McCoy's were on the TV show Family Feud, apparently for
(03:31):
a full week from what I saw, and I read
that legend has it that it didn't actually inspired the
TV show, but I didn't get good verification on that.
Now and there there have been other family feuds, right,
but none are as famous as the hat Fields in
the McCoys, although at the time there were more famous
family feuds. But the hat Fields in McCoys just took
(03:53):
it to another level because all of the murder. Yeah,
there there was a lot of murder. It was mountain
folk versus mountain folks, families that had been intermarried and
worked for one another, and um had lived together for decades,
if not longer, alongside in this little area along the
(04:13):
Sandy River, I believe, the Big Sandy River, in something
that's called the Tug River Valley, and on one side
mostly the hat Fields lived on the West Virginia side
in Logan County, and right across the river on the
other side in Kentucky. The McCoy has lived in Pike County.
And that's how it was for days gone by. Yeah,
(04:36):
and they they were not new to the United States,
So I guess it wasn't the United States then, was it. Yeah,
we're talking about the fifties seventies. I was way off then,
but they came to America many many years before that. Um.
Apparently the hat Fields were some of the very first
to come to uh, the New World from northern Land,
(05:00):
and the McCoy's are obviously from Germany. Well, the hat
Fields were originally the heath Fields in England. That sounds
way more British. Yeah, but you know how you do.
You come over to America and you you dumb it
down a little. I know Heath Ledger changed his name
to hat Ledger when he got here, didn't he all right?
P uh. And the McCoy's come from Scotland, of course
(05:23):
you could probably figure that out, moved to Ireland before
they came to the New World. And the first known
McCoy was John McCoy in America. When was that, uh,
seventeen thirty two from Belfast, Ireland. So did they move
directly to the Tug River area? Is that where they settled? Now?
The McCoy's first settled in Maryland, where he was a
(05:44):
prominent landowner, and I think the Hatfield's first moved to
Tug Valley in eighteen twenty and the McCoy's uh in
eighteen o two with their twelve kids. So they've been like, really,
these families had grown up living in in working with
each other. Was not just these two families in the area,
there are plenty of other families, but like they were neighbors,
(06:07):
co workers, bosson employee, they were, they were husbands and wives,
they intermarried, you know, I mean like they were they
were living together for decades. Yeah. I think the two
um that originally settled at tug Fork were the actual
parents of the two main protagonists or antagonists. I guess
(06:28):
they were both. Yeah, they were both pro and and
and so they the the story. Our story really kind
of begins around about the Civil War. UM, this area
of the Tug River Valley was mostly Confederate, and both
the Hatfield and the McCoy's were Confederate sympathizers, if not
(06:48):
outright Confederate soldiers. UM. The antagonist or protagonist the patriarch
of the Hatfield family when the story begins. His name
was devil Ants Hatfield, right, Yeah, that was his nickname.
His real name was William Anderson Hatfield. Yeah, but devil
Ace what a cool name. Yeah. And I saw a
couple of different explanations for where his nickname came from.
(07:09):
But my favorite one was that his mother said he
was so mean, the devil himself was scared of him. Yeah.
I saw one that said he was six ft of
devil in a hundred and eighty pounds of hell. They
had stupid sayings back then. Yeah, that was It didn't
quite add up, especially in the backwoods of Kentucky and
West Virginia. You know, they just said stuff. They just
made up names as as we'll see throughout this whole episode.
(07:33):
But um, devil ants himself was a he was from
what I saw. He was described as somebody who took
life by the horns, right. He was very much a
self made man. Um. He got he became a pretty
wealthy timber merchant over the years. But he was, um,
he was a violent man. Uh. And he was a well,
(07:55):
he had some violent tendencies for sure. Yeah. And um,
you know, if you want to trace back the reason
for the Hatfield McCoy feud, there isn't I think from
everything I read, there isn't like one single thing. It's
often blamed on the pig deal, which we'll hear about
coming up. That seems to be the one that historians
point to the most these days though, Yeah, but as
(08:16):
sort of a convenient way of telling the story, because like,
what what better way to kick off a feud than
like with the stolen pig? Right it? Definitely there were
other problems or issues between these families before then, right yeah.
But the point is there are a lot of different
things going on, and one of them was, like you said,
was Um devil Ants made a lot more money than
(08:36):
McCoy as as a timber guy. So on the other
side of the river, in the Kentucky side Pike County, Kentucky,
there were the McCoy's, and at the time that devil
Ants was the patriarch of the Hatfield clan, a man
named Randall McCoy Old Randal h was the head of
the McCoy clan across the river in Kentucky, Right, Yeah.
(08:58):
I just get the sense that he had his sort
of smaller business and was always a little bit envious
of the larger timber business across very much. So he
was um. The way that I saw him described was um.
If devil Ants as a man who took life by
the horns, Old Randal was somebody who got hooked by
life's horns and he was very bitter about his lot
(09:22):
in life. His father, Um I saw, was described as
didn't much care for work. Um didn't leave, didn't leave
his kids anything. So his son had to be a
self made man. But he was a self made man
who never really made himself. He married a woman named Sarah,
and Sarah's father died and left them some land and
(09:45):
he was able to homestead on that. So that's how
he was able to establish himself was through his wife's
inheritance of her father's land. Um, but it was enough
to set him up. They were fine. They weren't prosperous,
but they weren't like just completely poverty stricken like Randall
had grown up. But just across the river and and
this other family that he had to deal with and
(10:07):
work with, um and and just kind of see and
interact with, was a man who he you know, had
made himself. And and definitely Randall was bitter about that
idea and the comparison between himself and devil ance. Yeah,
and I think um, some of the McCoys even worked
for some of the hat Fields, which is always gonna
be a little tense when you feel like maybe that
(10:28):
feeling of superiority comes over one family because you're working
for me, you know. Yeah, So there's definitely like you're saying, tention, right,
and and you can point to maybe these guys coming
into their own as the heads of the family when
the tension really started. For many years historians pointed to
a specific incident as the source of the family feud um,
(10:52):
but that's since been abandoned. So, like we said, the
Civil War is about the time when this story really starts.
In earnest and most of the Tug River Valley was Confederate.
Devil Lance and possibly Randall McCoy were part of what
we're called the Logan Wildcats, which was a militia, but
during the Civil War they were an actual like army
(11:13):
unit of the Confederate Army. Yeah, and that's all where
Devil Lance was even the leader in one place. But
I didn't get that verified a bunch either, So so
very least was in the brigade, right, And I got
the impression that if he wasn't a leader, he was
a de facto leader, because that was just this type
of personality Devil Lance. Don't answer to nobody, right, you
answer to him, That's right. That was a great devil
(11:36):
Lance by the way. So I think the leader of
the Logan Wildcats is another character who will come up later.
And his name is Um Jim Vance, So Jim Vance. Um.
He was not a very great guy from what I
can understand. But I'll let him paint his own picture. Okay, Oh,
was he coming in? He will in a little bit. Instead,
(11:57):
we're gonna focus on a guy named Asa Harmon McCoy.
And this guy I don't have a beat on. He
decided in in just complete contrast of the place where
he grew up. Um, he was going to join the
Yankee Union Army. Yeah, and he did, Yeah, but he
broke his leg and and uh left the service after
(12:18):
I think a year back. While he was in service,
his um commanding officer in the Union Army ordered him
to fight devil ants because there was rumors that he
was a Confederate spy. So Harmon fights devil nts, loses
the fight. And I didn't get a sense on what
kind of fight it was, whether it was like a
gun battle or whether he literally just like spit on
(12:41):
his boot and like took a swing. I'm not sure.
I don't know that if the if that was even
in the mini series. Um so they getting a fight,
he loses, and then uh the can the Union troops
went after devil Ance at that point, which is really
what cost a lot of the early issues. Uh. And
then later on Harmon shot a friend of devil Ance
(13:04):
while stealing his horse, so in turn he killed Harmon's
commanding officer in the Union army. Okay, there's a lot
of bad blood. The guy was like literally, General Bill
France was peeing off his porch like I do, and
Devils shot him in cold blood. I hope, I hope
that does not happen to you. I really hope so too.
It would be a bad way to go. Gives you pause,
(13:26):
you know. Yeah. So, um the after the war, after
um Asa, Harmon McCoy uh came back home. I did
not realize the attentions were already that high. I had
the impression that was just because he fought for the Union.
I didn't know he had been made to directly target
devil Ants right well, devil Lands and the Logan Wildcats
(13:47):
basically sent as a message saying watch yourself, because we're
coming for you. And he very wisely went off and
lived in a cave for a while he hit out,
And so with this guy, you're like, why did he
go fire for the Union? Was abolitionists? No, he had
a slave, and the slave kept him alive by bringing
him food and stuff while he was in the cave.
So I have no idea why he went and fought
(14:08):
for the Union. It's weird. The fact that he did, though,
meant that his own relatives, his own McCoy is, including Randall,
his brother. Um, really, we're just kind of like, yeah,
the Logan Wildcats are out to get you, and you
brought the sign yourself, so we don't really feel for you.
And they didn't apparently make much of a problem or
(14:29):
much they didn't take issue with it. When the Logan
Wildcats tracked him down to the cave and killed him, well,
he was actually coming home when they killed him. I
think he finally thought like, surely, after all this time,
they've forgotten about this troglobe bite troglodyte. Yeah, so he
was walking home to see his family that he hadn't
seen in years and Jim Vance shot him. That's how
(14:51):
long he was in the cave. Well, that might have
been part of the war, but it said a few
years man alive so well at fulle Man Debt. Asa
Harmon Uh McCoy is killed by the Logan Wildcats, and
apparently at first everybody thought it was Devil Answer did it,
but he turned out to have been bedridden at the time,
so we had an alibi, and they think instead that
(15:12):
it was Jim Vance who led it and probably killed
Asa doing his Devil's uncle okay um and strong ally
Jim Vance was so uh, Asa Harmon is dead. The
first shot has been fired in the family feud, so
thought the historians for years, and then I guess after
interviewing actual hat Fields and McCoy's they realized that no,
(15:33):
actually the McCoy's were like, he brought it on himself.
That's that's we made peace with this, and no charges
were even brought in the murder of Asa McCoy. Yeah.
I saw one article that described it as a murder agreement,
which apparently used to have that like blood in, blood out,
and everyone's like, all right, even Stephen, okay, so done
(15:55):
and the first death has occurred in the Hatfield McCoy feud,
but it has nothing to do with a hat Film
McCoy feud. Technically, yes, that seems like a pretty good
time to take a break, don't you agreed, sir, So Chuck,
(16:26):
we're back and asa harm Instead. Things are whatever between
the hat Fields and mccois. Nothing, nothing big has gone on,
even if there were any sort of skirmishes or little
fights or run ins or that kind of thing. I
get the impression that the families when they saw each other,
there was like a a slight percentage that the sides
(16:48):
were going to get in at least a fist fight,
did not take like pot shots, and right now they're
with their guns. I just think they probably just didn't
like each other very much from the beginning, so there's
possible those things went on. Nothing big happened though, until
the pig the pig incident, and apparently it wasn't just
one pig, that's what it's been boiled down to, but
it was several. Yeah, and it was a big deal
(17:10):
if you think about a pig. Stealing a pig is
not a big deal at the time. There's a book
called The Feud by Din King. Din King Dean King
thinking said it's so weird, Dean King, And he said, uh,
where was their next meal going to come from? And
how could they feed the children in the winter. They
(17:32):
were lucky enough to have one pig or razorback for
cell or trade. The proceeds were used to acquire flour, sugar, coffee,
sometimes shoes or boots for their families. It was a
mainstay for the family. So these days you hear a
pig or even a couple of pigs, you think, what's
a big deal. But in the region at the time,
these these pigs were very valuable, so it was a
(17:53):
big deal. Right. I saw a and in the front
I saw a dude on well, yeah, and that was
another thing. Again, we're talking out backwoods Appalachian folk in
the nineteenth century. There was a lot to the idea
that you had stolen their property, which as it should be.
But even that aside. I saw this historian on Um
a CBS Sunday Morning clip from a few years ago,
(18:16):
and he explained, like, you can feed a sizeable family
for a month with a single pig, And this guy
stole several pigs. So the guy who was accused of
stealing the pig was um Who was it, Chuck who?
Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield. Okay, right, so um Old
Randall himself said Floyd Hatfield, cousin of devl Ance, I
(18:40):
know that you stole those pigs, and I'm taking you
to court. Well, they went to court. The problem is
the local magistrate was a hat Field. But in this
guy's favor, his name was a preacher. It was his
first name, I believe, and he was basically the what
amounted to the local judge in the tug River Valley.
He he tried to make it a fair trial. Is
(19:04):
he the one that placed it in McCoy land because
the trial took place in McCoy territory, Yes, anxided by
a Hatfield though, right, And he made sure that the
jury had six hat Fields and six McCoy's on it.
He did and nobody else, no joke. Yes, so weird,
but he was trying to make it as fair as possible,
right um. And so they had a trial where Floyd
(19:25):
Hatfield was tried for hog theft. Have you ever had
something stolen from you, like, you know, not hugely valuable,
but yeah, it's It's one of the things that irks
me most. It's very irritating. There's something about like just
someone taking something that you worked to buy that just
(19:47):
really boils my blood. Now, imagine if they took that
thing that you worked to buy, and they were directly
taking food out of your child's mouth at the same time,
it makes you mad. I'd pull a hat Field. That
we thing is is that the McCoy's and the halfl
Is at this point are saying, we will let the
we will leave it to the courts. Right. So they
did go to court. They did try to have a
(20:08):
fair trial. Um, or at least the preacher did. Preacher
halt Field, preacher judge right. Um. It's confusing, and the
the jury was split except for one who was a
McCoy who sided with the hat Fields. His name was
Selkirk McCoy another made up name and Selkirk Um. He
(20:30):
voted that because of a guy named Bill Staton, who
had testified that Floyd had not stolen the pigs. Um.
He said, you know what, I'm not going to contradict
Bill Staton. I know him to be truthful or whatever.
Plus I work for Devil Anson his logging operation. So
I'm gonna vote pro hat Field and exonerate Floyd. And
(20:50):
Floyd got off and Old Randall went nuts. Yes, Staton
was the main witness and he was a relative of
the McCoy's, but he was married to a hat Field right.
So um, and while they did intermarry, I saw that
there was way more marrying within the family to avoid intermarrying.
Oh yeah, there was a lot of first cousins that
(21:11):
were When you watch that Family Feud clip, you can
go find it on I'm sure on YouTube. But there
was a mental flass article that we found that had
it embedded at the bottom. That's where I first heard
about it. The that when they're introducing the families, they
keep introducing one another is like kissing cousins. This is
a kissing cousin, Diane, and like the families are saying
(21:32):
that nine. So yeah, there was a lot of like
inner marriage within the family itself. Well, they were probably
just joking, right, No, No, on Family Feud, you don't
think the guy didn't sound like he was joking. Did
he kiss his cousin on TV? No? But Richard Dawson
kissed her. He kissed everything. Guy kissed any woman who
(21:53):
had stand still long enough. What a flirt, Richard Dawson.
So yeah, r I P. Yeah, he didn't change his
name even though he was British. Uh, well, you don't
know that that's true. It could have been Richard Dimpsum
or Chumley Dawson. That's a great name. So so uh,
(22:18):
Old Randall has just lost this court case. And even worse,
he was made to pay the hat Fields court costs
for taking him to court. And remember we characterized Old
Randall as a kind of a bitter man. Anytime life
handed him lemons, he just squeezed him into his eyes,
go to anger, right um. And he went on for
(22:39):
this for basically years, about how this is a miscarriage
of justice, how Floyd had stolen his hogs. And so
now any time hat Fields and McCoy's um went, depending
on their allegiance to the clan or clans um, anytime
they saw each other, they were shooting at one another.
They were getting into fights, they were throwing rocks. One
(23:00):
of Um, one of devil Ant's sons, was standing there
when Old Randall rode up once and Old Randall started
railing on him about how Floyd had stolen a hog,
and the McCoys or the Hatfield Sun grabbed rock and
just threw it at Old Randall's mouth, just crushed his
mouth of the rock because that's what you did back then. Yeah,
that was sort of like you killed my brother Harmon,
(23:23):
but you stole my hog. You know, I'm cool with
the brother killing Harmon, had it coming, right, But that
hog never hurt anybody. Yeah, we were gonna eat it.
Uh So did we cover the fact that Staton two
years later was killed. This is inaccurate? Is that not true?
Bill Staton Jr. Was Kilton, Bill Sr. Was not killed
(23:44):
in this skirmish. This is another big retribution though, Okay
for his pause. Yeah, because after the hog incident in
the Hog Verdict, the the halt Fields and McCoy's did
not fight it out right then at the at the
um magistrate office, at Judge Preacher's place, Um. But at
any time the clan saw one another, they would shoot
(24:06):
at each other. They would getting fights, they would take
rocks to the faces, and then it culminated finally in
this really truly violent incident between Bill State and Jr.
And h Paris and Sam McCoy Right. Okay, so Bill
State and Junior is out hunting, sees these McCoy's sons
(24:27):
and says, oh, I'm in a world of trouble. I
better take a shot at one of them and shoots
Paris McCoy and the hip and Sam McCoy was like,
you shot my brother, You're going down. And he shoots
Bill and wounds him and then goes over and executes
him point blank in the head. And this is Bill Junior,
Bill Jr. See, I got another article that said it
(24:49):
was Bill, but it also said he's Bill Stanton. So
I'm starting to doubt all kinds of accuracy. There's a
lot of inaccurate stuff. So I got, um, I think
the description of that. And so it from a really
great book by a guy named John ed Pierce. It's
Days of Darkness Colon. So you know it's legitimate, the
feuds of Eastern Kentucky. Yeah, so there's been like serious
(25:12):
blood shed here. Now one of the this and this
is direct retribution for the hog stealing verdict. A man
has been executed point blank in the head, and the
two McCoy boys just tried to get away with it. Yeah,
so blood is spilling. Uh. Fast forward a bit to
eighty two and h three of Randall's sons are attacked,
(25:35):
stabbed twenty six times and shot Ellison Hatfield, who was
Devil's younger brother to death Right, and that was on
election day, and election days were like drunken affairs. Do
you remember when I think in the Bars episode we
talked about like, what was it, um, you get people
drunk in Yeah, bumbo planting, the applying the plants with
(26:00):
bumbling the voters with bumbo. Yeah. Man. But it was
election day, so everybody would get super drunk. And when
you get two clans that don't like each other super
drunk in the same place, they get in fights and
people get stay up twenty six times and then shot
in the back. Yeah. So those three sons of Randall
were actually arrested and we're presumably going to go to trial,
(26:22):
but vigilanteism took hold and they were kidnapped on the
way to the trial by the hat Fields and they said,
we're gonna take care of this our way. Yeah, and
they like, I don't know if they let them get
away with it, but they got away with it. No,
they did not let them get away with it. This
was a huge turning point, right um when the hat
Field or the McCoy boys were intercepted by the hat
(26:45):
Fields and taken across the river to West Virginia, which
is basically like taking them to Fortress hat Field. Yeah,
country justice was gonna happen. Yeah, but Devalance vowed that
if Ellison made it and didn't die, he would not
kill these hat Field are these McCoy boys. Um, But
Ellison succumbed to his wounds and did die, And so
they took these McCoy boys out and tied them to
(27:08):
trees and shot him I think more than fifty times
or something like that. And so you were saying, like
they got away with it not for lack of trying, right.
It basically set off this huge, huge issue like this
was even for the Tug River Valley. Chuck, this was
pretty flagrant frontier justice. You're not supposed to do this.
(27:31):
There's a magistrate named Preacher who's supposed to settle this
kind of stuff. Right, So a guy named Perry what
was Perry's name, Perry Klein? You know what this is?
This is too big. We need to take a break,
all right and get to the story of Perry Klein. Okay,
(27:58):
so we're back, chucking. We have a new guest. Name
is Perry Klein. Come on in, Perry, you're an attorney. Uh.
He was married to Martha McCoy. And here's the deal.
Years before there was a situation where Perry Klein was
cheated out of I think five thousand acres of land.
(28:19):
Was he cheated? I didn't know if he if it
was actual like justice, because he had supposedly been cutting
timber from uh, Devlance's timberland. Well, here's the deal. Everything
you read will say it depends on who you sympathize with,
is how you think Perry Klein and really all of
them were viewed. So I read articles that said that
(28:42):
he was cheated, in articles that said he wasn't cheated. Uh.
And I think the family is still today like while
there is a piece which we'll get to. Um, they
still disagree over Perry Clein's role. Okay, So, but Perry
Klein was married to a McCoy. Actually he's a Harmon
McCoy's widow, right Martha, And so, um, he had lost
(29:03):
five thousand acres. Really, that's how much he was forced
by the court to seed to Devilands for allegedly cutting
his timberland. Yeah, so he was. He had he had
a retribution in mind as an attorney. Right. So when
the hat Fields executed the McCoy, the three McCoy boys.
Um Perry Klein used it as a chance, depending on
(29:26):
how you look at it, either used it as a
chance for retribution or his family allegiance was stirred up,
and he, being an attorney, had contacts with the governor,
Governor Bunker I believe, of Kentucky and said, Governor, there's
some horrible stuff going on down here that's being perpetrated
by some West Virginians against some law abiding Kentuckians, and
(29:47):
you guys need to do something about it. And it worked, Actually, yeah,
they reinstated the charges and Um basically put out awards
on the head, bounties on the head, arrest bounties, that
is of the hat fields including uh six ft of
devil and pounds of hell. Yeah, himself, his sons, some
of the Um family allies like his uncle Jim Vance.
(30:10):
I think there were there was twenty twenty men who
had indictments against them, and since they had indictments against
them and they were hanging out in West Virginia, they
had bounties on their head. And one of the bounty hunters,
the main bounty hunter who came around it was it
was a problem that they had bounties on their head
because any crackpot who wanted to could come and take
(30:31):
shots at those guys. And and it was happening quite
a bit. Yeah, they wanted to collect some dough, right.
But there's one guy in particular who was a real
thorn in their side. His name was Mad Frank Phillips.
And Frank Phillips was a bounty hunter extraordinaire. He was
about as legally gray as you can get and still
(30:51):
not be uh, just on the darker side of the spectrum.
And he made it basically his personal war to get
as many hat Fields across the river into Kentucky as
he could. So he would carry out raids on the
hat Field stronghold in West Virginia, UM and basically just
abduct hat Fields and bring him to Kentucky so that
(31:15):
they could be put in the Pike County jail. And
while he did this, he was also executing people left
and right, like Jim Vance. He shot and wounded, saw
that he just wounded him, walked around from behind and um,
while Vance was begging for his life, shot him in
the head and like this is Frank Phillips. M Oh,
he would execute you just as soon as he would
capture you. Yeah, and this was this was becoming a
(31:37):
big deal in the press at this point, uh newspaper
started carrying the stories and became uh by all accounts
like national news, uh and legend like it was. Everyone
knew about the hat Fields and McCoys by this point, right,
and the press apparently very much sided with the McCoy's.
They painted the hat Fields to seem like Backwood's murderous
(31:59):
redneck who just caused trouble everywhere they went, and painted
the McCoy's is innocent, law abiding victims of of this um,
this whole feud um and the whole legend, like you're saying,
like this is all it all begins about right here,
When when there was what amounts to almost a war
between Kentucky and West Virginia because Frank Phillips kept going
(32:21):
and getting people and bringing them back to Pike County
and West Virginia got involved, and the two governors were
basically standing toe to toe, almost about to go invade,
sending National Guard troops in across the border. Um, but
instead they left in the courts and actually this court
case about whether it was legal or not for Frank
(32:44):
Phillips to have abducted the Hatfields and taken them to
the Kentucky jail. Um reached the Supreme Court actually, which
is pretty amazing. It is in the Supreme Court said,
you know what, Uh, it probably is illegal what happened,
but Kentucky's a sovereign state and there's really nothing West
Virginia can do about it, so go ahead and try him.
(33:05):
But before the trial, actually, and while the um these
abductions were going on, these raids carried out by Frank Phillips,
the hat Fields, like I said, like it was a
big deal in them that they were bounty hunters out
to get them, and they came up with a plan
to just end the whole thing. Yeah, in a murderous
killing spree is what they came up with. Uh. In January,
(33:26):
a group of hat Fields said, we're gonna attack Randolph
McCoy and his entire family, uh cap little Cappy double ants,
his son uh and an ally to Jim Vance kind
of led the way and they ambushed them at their
home on New Year's Day. Randolph actually escaped, which is uh,
they were kind of coming after him and he's the
only one who escaped. Well, they were coming after the
(33:48):
whole family. Yeah, like their whole intention was to just
murder this whole family of the problem. Yeah, and Randolph
was the key guy. He actually got away. His son
Calvin daughter Ala Fair were killed, uh and what they
called crossfire, but they were you know, let's get real.
And his wife, Sarah was suffered to crush skulls. She
was beaten so badly. Yeah, so Alice, they set the
(34:10):
house on fire. Ali Fair opened the door to put
the fire out and she was shot and killed. And
then um, her mom, Sarah wanted to come and like
comfort or dying daughter, and when she came out, they
beat her head in with the butt of a pistol
I think Cap Hatfield did. And then um, Calvin provided
(34:31):
cover for his dad and ran to attract their gunfire
so his dad could get away, and it worked, but
Calvin died as a result. And then two other daughters
have McCoy daughters survived, So Randall and two daughters survived
this attack on his family. And this was when it
was like if the press wasn't paying attention before and
(34:51):
now they really were. And um, basically everybody was outraged
at this and it's like this legend, Chuck is a
hundred something years old, right, and it's easy to kind
of see these people as caricatures or um, you know,
just historic. But when you think about what the hat
Fields planned to do and tried to do to the
(35:12):
McCoy's in that case on New Year's nineteen, eighteen eighty eight, Yeah,
the New Year's massacres, what was known as that's like
objectively despicable no matter when you when you when it happened,
going after an entire family to kill them, Yeah, to
wipe out a legal entailment, you know it is and
it really kind of um brings home like the actual
(35:33):
humanity of all of this, you know. Yeah. So it
went all the way to the Supreme Court and they decided,
you know what, these hat Fields should be tried. Uh,
And in eighteen eighty nine they were tried, and eight
of the hat Fields uh and their supporters were since
to life in prison, and one Ellison Mounts, who uh
people think is the son of Ellison Hatfield and his
(35:54):
first cousin, Yeah, it was actually sentenced to death. And uh.
The one issue here was a lot of people now
think he was a kind of a scapegoat because he
was mentally challenged, and uh, maybe an early false confession
happened right exactly, and he actually, um, really his was
if he didn't do it, or even if he did,
he really got screwed over by the prosecution. They said that, um,
(36:18):
if he confessed and and and cooperated, that he would
get a lighter sentence, when really he was the only
one who confessed and he was the only one who
was hanged. So um and his dying words, I think
we're the hat Fields made me do it and then
they hung him. Yeah, and there were no public executions
at the time, but that did not stop hundreds of people,
(36:39):
thousands even from coming out and watching anyway. Right, so
it was a public execution. And with the what's odd though,
is the uh so ten ten men had been captured
by Frank Phillips and had been added and tried, and
nine of them got life in prison. Ellison Mounts was
was hung and this was apparently enough to um, I guess,
(37:00):
mollify Randall McCoy. At first, I think he tried to
like rail against the verdict, but ultimately it was enough
to just calm him down and he went and lived
a quiet life, quiet haunted life as a ferry operator
I think, and lived to like yeah, and about a
year later. Uh, it was when the family has both
(37:22):
said enough is enough, let's call a truce. And uh.
From I think it was an eleven year period, almost
twenty four people were killed in both families, like close
to two dozen folks over eleven year period. That's legit. Yeah,
that's a that's a family feud right there. That's a
big feud. And devl Ance lived to a ripe old
age two. He lived to uh, I think eighty three
(37:44):
or something like that. That's not that old. Well, he
was born again at seventy three. I think he lived
into his eighties. And but he he was paranoid for
the rest of his life because I think there was
still bounties on his head. So he moved to an
island and carried a rifle with him at all time
for the rest of his life. Well, they if you
look at pictures of the families, they all had their guns.
(38:07):
I mean, that's what you did back then. But it's
it's funny to see a picture of like twenty people
in you know, twelve of them are brandishing weapons, you know,
in the in the one photo that will ever be
taken of them. They've got their gun out too. Uh
So since then they've been all over the place in
pop culture. We mentioned family Feud. There was an Abbott
(38:27):
and Costello movie in nifty two. Buster Keaton did a
movie too. Oh really, I feel McCoy. Uh he was
on not Looney Tunes, excuse me, Mary Melodies, big distinction,
but still bugs bunny um. Nowadays, there are even some
medical professionals who think that there was a condition that
the McCoy's had that led them to be violent. What
(38:49):
it's called von Hippe Lindau disease. And these geneticists study
dozens of McCoy descendants and said they have a really
high rate of this disease. It's inherited, it's rare, produces
tumors in the eyes, ears, and pancreas. Uh and a
notable side effect is high blood pressure, racing heartbeat, and
(39:09):
increased um aggressive behavior, increase fight or flight hormones. And
it was the McCoy's that may have had that, because
from everything I've read, it seemed like the hat Fields
would have been the one to have that. Wow, maybe
I'm a victim of contemporary press bias. Media bias. Else.
I got nothing else. Those other stuff. There's plenty of
(39:32):
stuff that I'm sure we didn't hit. And you should
go read some of the cool books written about this stuff.
I got one more thing, actually, here comes World War two.
Life magazine used the families as a way to unite
America's war effort by featuring them in a big photo spread.
The hat Fields of McCoy's like working together in factories
for World War two. Yeah, and they I think they
(39:56):
even met recently in like they're they're still out there
and there's still meeting and talking about this and uh
disagreeing friendly disagreements on people like Perry Klein and uh
he was the other guy, Mad Mad Month, Mad Frank Phillips,
Mad Frank Phillips, who remember I said he was legally gray.
He married uh a McCoy who ended up who had
(40:18):
had a baby with John C. Hatfield. Um, they ran
off together and got married Frank Phillips and Nancy McCoy
and ended up being prosperous bootleggers in the region. Well,
and there was also a spurned romance too that led detentions.
I forgot about that. Yeah, Roseanna Rosanna McCoy and John C. Hatfield. Yeah,
they had a little tryst and a child together, but
(40:41):
the child died I think aged eight months from measles.
But he kicked her to the curb before that and
then went and married her cousin Nancy, although there were
no curbs back then. He kicked her to the river bank,
to the creek side. Yeah. Again, we could probably keep
doing this for another forty five minutes, but we're not.
If you want to know more about hat fills and
McCoy's is ghost searching in your favorite search engine? And
(41:04):
since I said search engine, it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this just a nice little email of thanks.
I'm a nice person. Okay, Hi, Justin Chuck and Jerry.
I'm a young thirty something who lives in Berwin, Illinois.
I just recently started listening to podcasts and came across
(41:24):
How Stuff Works and you, guys, I'm a nerd at heart.
In your podcast feeds my inner beast. I listened to
you on my way to work on a train at
uh it sounds like Dr seuss Um at work again,
and then on my way home from work. I'm so
addicted to learning new things. Scrolling through the feed is
exhilarating because I'm dying to listen to them all. Jennifer,
there's I'm not sure if you know this. If you
(41:47):
follow us on iTunes, you might think they're only three hundred,
but there are more than eight hundred and fifties right,
And that's for all of you out there, and you
can find those at our website. Back to Jenner, I've
told all my friends about the podcast. I even make
my husband listen while we're cooking. I can't get enough
of all the cool topics you talk about. And since
(42:08):
I listen to every day, I thought, you know what,
I'm gonna send an email and hopes that it is
read on the air, and if not, at least you
know you have another dedicated listener. Thanks for spreading knowledge,
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(42:28):
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(42:49):
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M Hey everybody, it's me Josh and for this week's
s Y s K Selects, I've chosen our classic episode
on the classic feud between the classic families, the hat
Fields and the McCoy's. It's one of the more interesting
stories of American history and it's way more nuts than
you even thought. And I don't know about you, though,
(00:21):
I just want to put a little bug in your ear.
Every time I hear the name Jim Vance in this episode,
I always want to follow it in my mind with
Vance refrigeration. See if that happens to you. Now that
I've said that, I hope you enjoy this one. It's
a classic, as I said, so enjoy away. Welcome to
(00:43):
Stuff You Should Know, a production of My Heart Radios
How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Josh Clark. Charles W. Took. Brian is staring at me
right now. It's making me a toun uncomfortable. Jerry's over there.
I can feel her eyes burning into the side of
my head. So is the Stuff You Should Know? Where
(01:05):
would you like me to look? Uh uh in my ear?
Oh that's always so weird to someone's like looking, Are
you doing it right? Now like right at your hair
or really? Yeah, interesting, try my other ear. Oh yeah,
that's that's the stuff the right. Sorry, that's your left.
That's my left ear. All right, I'll remember that. Look
(01:25):
watch this, chuck, after seven years, can you see that
I can wiggle ears independently? Drives me crazy? So you
sit around and do it? Probably try not like a
good husband. Um, chuck. Yes, we have a bit of
an announcement here. Yeah, what we just heard? Yes, yeah,
(01:46):
we're in the room with either a hat Field or McCoy.
Jerry doesn't know which family she's related to. She just
knows that she's related to one of them. Yeah, like literally,
right before we press the courts, she's like, oh, by
the way, I'm related to one of these families. I'm
just not sure which. And a family member told her,
but she cousin Tyler was that? Who was? I don't know.
(02:08):
I think that's what she said, cousin. I get the
impression from Jerry's story though, that she's sort of like
glazed over and that's why she doesn't know. But she
does carry a six shooter on her hip, and that
explains that this is McCoy on the barrel, So maybe right,
but does that mean that it's a bullet from the
McCoys or for the McCoy's good monstry remains, you know,
(02:28):
good point. So we are talking about the hat Fields
in the McCoy's. For those of you who don't live
in the United States, you probably have heard of the
hat Fields in the McCoy's. It's a pretty legendary feud. Yeah, right,
we've heard of some of your history UK Australia, Matthew Flinders,
there's a name drop for you. Yeah, so hopefully you've
(02:49):
heard of the hat Fields in the McCoy's. Yeah, I
mean there was, if nothing else, there was a big
mini series a few years ago on television, Yeah, with
Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton, and apparently it was really dramatized. Yeah,
like asn't fictionalized. Yeah, cinematized and yeah, a little not
(03:10):
quite fully accurate, but at least at least they brought
attention to the feud because it needs agreed. So, the
hat Fields in McCoy's um is a family feud, so
much so that in nine the hat Fields and the
McCoy's were on the TV show Family Feud, apparently for
(03:31):
a full week from what I saw, and I read
that legend has it that it didn't actually inspired the
TV show, but I didn't get good verification on that.
Now and there there have been other family feuds, right,
but none are as famous as the hat Fields in
the McCoys, although at the time there were more famous
family feuds. But the hat Fields in McCoys just took
(03:53):
it to another level because all of the murder. Yeah,
there there was a lot of murder. It was mountain
folk versus mountain folks, families that had been intermarried and
worked for one another, and um had lived together for decades,
if not longer, alongside in this little area along the
(04:13):
Sandy River, I believe, the Big Sandy River, in something
that's called the Tug River Valley, and on one side
mostly the hat Fields lived on the West Virginia side
in Logan County, and right across the river on the
other side in Kentucky. The McCoy has lived in Pike County.
And that's how it was for days gone by. Yeah,
(04:36):
and they they were not new to the United States,
So I guess it wasn't the United States then, was it. Yeah,
we're talking about the fifties seventies. I was way off then,
but they came to America many many years before that. Um.
Apparently the hat Fields were some of the very first
to come to uh, the New World from northern Land,
(05:00):
and the McCoy's are obviously from Germany. Well, the hat
Fields were originally the heath Fields in England. That sounds
way more British. Yeah, but you know how you do.
You come over to America and you you dumb it
down a little. I know Heath Ledger changed his name
to hat Ledger when he got here, didn't he all right?
P uh. And the McCoy's come from Scotland, of course
(05:23):
you could probably figure that out, moved to Ireland before
they came to the New World. And the first known
McCoy was John McCoy in America. When was that, uh,
seventeen thirty two from Belfast, Ireland. So did they move
directly to the Tug River area? Is that where they settled? Now?
The McCoy's first settled in Maryland, where he was a
(05:44):
prominent landowner, and I think the Hatfield's first moved to
Tug Valley in eighteen twenty and the McCoy's uh in
eighteen o two with their twelve kids. So they've been like, really,
these families had grown up living in in working with
each other. Was not just these two families in the area,
there are plenty of other families, but like they were neighbors,
(06:07):
co workers, bosson employee, they were, they were husbands and wives,
they intermarried, you know, I mean like they were they
were living together for decades. Yeah. I think the two
um that originally settled at tug Fork were the actual
parents of the two main protagonists or antagonists. I guess
(06:28):
they were both. Yeah, they were both pro and and
and so they the the story. Our story really kind
of begins around about the Civil War. UM, this area
of the Tug River Valley was mostly Confederate, and both
the Hatfield and the McCoy's were Confederate sympathizers, if not
(06:48):
outright Confederate soldiers. UM. The antagonist or protagonist the patriarch
of the Hatfield family when the story begins. His name
was devil Ants Hatfield, right, Yeah, that was his nickname.
His real name was William Anderson Hatfield. Yeah, but devil
Ace what a cool name. Yeah. And I saw a
couple of different explanations for where his nickname came from.
(07:09):
But my favorite one was that his mother said he
was so mean, the devil himself was scared of him. Yeah.
I saw one that said he was six ft of
devil in a hundred and eighty pounds of hell. They
had stupid sayings back then. Yeah, that was It didn't
quite add up, especially in the backwoods of Kentucky and
West Virginia. You know, they just said stuff. They just
made up names as as we'll see throughout this whole episode.
(07:33):
But um, devil ants himself was a he was from
what I saw. He was described as somebody who took
life by the horns, right. He was very much a
self made man. Um. He got he became a pretty
wealthy timber merchant over the years. But he was, um,
he was a violent man. Uh. And he was a well,
(07:55):
he had some violent tendencies for sure. Yeah. And um,
you know, if you want to trace back the reason
for the Hatfield McCoy feud, there isn't I think from
everything I read, there isn't like one single thing. It's
often blamed on the pig deal, which we'll hear about
coming up. That seems to be the one that historians
point to the most these days though, Yeah, but as
(08:16):
sort of a convenient way of telling the story, because like,
what what better way to kick off a feud than
like with the stolen pig? Right it? Definitely there were
other problems or issues between these families before then, right yeah.
But the point is there are a lot of different
things going on, and one of them was, like you said,
was Um devil Ants made a lot more money than
(08:36):
McCoy as as a timber guy. So on the other
side of the river, in the Kentucky side Pike County, Kentucky,
there were the McCoy's, and at the time that devil
Ants was the patriarch of the Hatfield clan, a man
named Randall McCoy Old Randal h was the head of
the McCoy clan across the river in Kentucky, Right, Yeah.
(08:58):
I just get the sense that he had his sort
of smaller business and was always a little bit envious
of the larger timber business across very much. So he
was um. The way that I saw him described was um.
If devil Ants as a man who took life by
the horns, Old Randal was somebody who got hooked by
life's horns and he was very bitter about his lot
(09:22):
in life. His father, Um I saw, was described as
didn't much care for work. Um didn't leave, didn't leave
his kids anything. So his son had to be a
self made man. But he was a self made man
who never really made himself. He married a woman named Sarah,
and Sarah's father died and left them some land and
(09:45):
he was able to homestead on that. So that's how
he was able to establish himself was through his wife's
inheritance of her father's land. Um, but it was enough
to set him up. They were fine. They weren't prosperous,
but they weren't like just completely poverty stricken like Randall
had grown up. But just across the river and and
this other family that he had to deal with and
(10:07):
work with, um and and just kind of see and
interact with, was a man who he you know, had
made himself. And and definitely Randall was bitter about that
idea and the comparison between himself and devil ance. Yeah,
and I think um, some of the McCoys even worked
for some of the hat Fields, which is always gonna
be a little tense when you feel like maybe that
(10:28):
feeling of superiority comes over one family because you're working
for me, you know. Yeah, So there's definitely like you're saying, tention, right,
and and you can point to maybe these guys coming
into their own as the heads of the family when
the tension really started. For many years historians pointed to
a specific incident as the source of the family feud um,
(10:52):
but that's since been abandoned. So, like we said, the
Civil War is about the time when this story really starts.
In earnest and most of the Tug River Valley was Confederate.
Devil Lance and possibly Randall McCoy were part of what
we're called the Logan Wildcats, which was a militia, but
during the Civil War they were an actual like army
(11:13):
unit of the Confederate Army. Yeah, and that's all where
Devil Lance was even the leader in one place. But
I didn't get that verified a bunch either, So so
very least was in the brigade, right, And I got
the impression that if he wasn't a leader, he was
a de facto leader, because that was just this type
of personality Devil Lance. Don't answer to nobody, right, you
answer to him, That's right. That was a great devil
(11:36):
Lance by the way. So I think the leader of
the Logan Wildcats is another character who will come up later.
And his name is Um Jim Vance, So Jim Vance. Um.
He was not a very great guy from what I
can understand. But I'll let him paint his own picture. Okay, Oh,
was he coming in? He will in a little bit. Instead,
(11:57):
we're gonna focus on a guy named Asa Harmon McCoy.
And this guy I don't have a beat on. He
decided in in just complete contrast of the place where
he grew up. Um, he was going to join the
Yankee Union Army. Yeah, and he did, Yeah, but he
broke his leg and and uh left the service after
(12:18):
I think a year back. While he was in service,
his um commanding officer in the Union Army ordered him
to fight devil ants because there was rumors that he
was a Confederate spy. So Harmon fights devil nts, loses
the fight. And I didn't get a sense on what
kind of fight it was, whether it was like a
gun battle or whether he literally just like spit on
(12:41):
his boot and like took a swing. I'm not sure.
I don't know that if the if that was even
in the mini series. Um so they getting a fight,
he loses, and then uh the can the Union troops
went after devil Ance at that point, which is really
what cost a lot of the early issues. Uh. And
then later on Harmon shot a friend of devil Ance
(13:04):
while stealing his horse, so in turn he killed Harmon's
commanding officer in the Union army. Okay, there's a lot
of bad blood. The guy was like literally, General Bill
France was peeing off his porch like I do, and
Devils shot him in cold blood. I hope, I hope
that does not happen to you. I really hope so too.
It would be a bad way to go. Gives you pause,
(13:26):
you know. Yeah. So, um the after the war, after
um Asa, Harmon McCoy uh came back home. I did
not realize the attentions were already that high. I had
the impression that was just because he fought for the Union.
I didn't know he had been made to directly target
devil Ants right well, devil Lands and the Logan Wildcats
(13:47):
basically sent as a message saying watch yourself, because we're
coming for you. And he very wisely went off and
lived in a cave for a while he hit out,
And so with this guy, you're like, why did he
go fire for the Union? Was abolitionists? No, he had
a slave, and the slave kept him alive by bringing
him food and stuff while he was in the cave.
So I have no idea why he went and fought
(14:08):
for the Union. It's weird. The fact that he did, though,
meant that his own relatives, his own McCoy is, including Randall,
his brother. Um, really, we're just kind of like, yeah,
the Logan Wildcats are out to get you, and you
brought the sign yourself, so we don't really feel for you.
And they didn't apparently make much of a problem or
(14:29):
much they didn't take issue with it. When the Logan
Wildcats tracked him down to the cave and killed him, well,
he was actually coming home when they killed him. I
think he finally thought like, surely, after all this time,
they've forgotten about this troglobe bite troglodyte. Yeah, so he
was walking home to see his family that he hadn't
seen in years and Jim Vance shot him. That's how
(14:51):
long he was in the cave. Well, that might have
been part of the war, but it said a few
years man alive so well at fulle Man Debt. Asa
Harmon Uh McCoy is killed by the Logan Wildcats, and
apparently at first everybody thought it was Devil Answer did it,
but he turned out to have been bedridden at the time,
so we had an alibi, and they think instead that
(15:12):
it was Jim Vance who led it and probably killed
Asa doing his Devil's uncle okay um and strong ally
Jim Vance was so uh, Asa Harmon is dead. The
first shot has been fired in the family feud, so
thought the historians for years, and then I guess after
interviewing actual hat Fields and McCoy's they realized that no,
(15:33):
actually the McCoy's were like, he brought it on himself.
That's that's we made peace with this, and no charges
were even brought in the murder of Asa McCoy. Yeah.
I saw one article that described it as a murder agreement,
which apparently used to have that like blood in, blood out,
and everyone's like, all right, even Stephen, okay, so done
(15:55):
and the first death has occurred in the Hatfield McCoy feud,
but it has nothing to do with a hat Film
McCoy feud. Technically, yes, that seems like a pretty good
time to take a break, don't you agreed, sir, So Chuck,
(16:26):
we're back and asa harm Instead. Things are whatever between
the hat Fields and mccois. Nothing, nothing big has gone on,
even if there were any sort of skirmishes or little
fights or run ins or that kind of thing. I
get the impression that the families when they saw each other,
there was like a a slight percentage that the sides
(16:48):
were going to get in at least a fist fight,
did not take like pot shots, and right now they're
with their guns. I just think they probably just didn't
like each other very much from the beginning, so there's
possible those things went on. Nothing big happened though, until
the pig the pig incident, and apparently it wasn't just
one pig, that's what it's been boiled down to, but
it was several. Yeah, and it was a big deal
(17:10):
if you think about a pig. Stealing a pig is
not a big deal at the time. There's a book
called The Feud by Din King. Din King Dean King
thinking said it's so weird, Dean King, And he said, uh,
where was their next meal going to come from? And
how could they feed the children in the winter. They
(17:32):
were lucky enough to have one pig or razorback for
cell or trade. The proceeds were used to acquire flour, sugar, coffee,
sometimes shoes or boots for their families. It was a
mainstay for the family. So these days you hear a
pig or even a couple of pigs, you think, what's
a big deal. But in the region at the time,
these these pigs were very valuable, so it was a
(17:53):
big deal. Right. I saw a and in the front
I saw a dude on well, yeah, and that was
another thing. Again, we're talking out backwoods Appalachian folk in
the nineteenth century. There was a lot to the idea
that you had stolen their property, which as it should be.
But even that aside. I saw this historian on Um
a CBS Sunday Morning clip from a few years ago,
(18:16):
and he explained, like, you can feed a sizeable family
for a month with a single pig, And this guy
stole several pigs. So the guy who was accused of
stealing the pig was um Who was it, Chuck who?
Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield. Okay, right, so um Old
Randall himself said Floyd Hatfield, cousin of devl Ance, I
(18:40):
know that you stole those pigs, and I'm taking you
to court. Well, they went to court. The problem is
the local magistrate was a hat Field. But in this
guy's favor, his name was a preacher. It was his
first name, I believe, and he was basically the what
amounted to the local judge in the tug River Valley.
He he tried to make it a fair trial. Is
(19:04):
he the one that placed it in McCoy land because
the trial took place in McCoy territory, Yes, anxided by
a Hatfield though, right, And he made sure that the
jury had six hat Fields and six McCoy's on it.
He did and nobody else, no joke. Yes, so weird,
but he was trying to make it as fair as possible,
right um. And so they had a trial where Floyd
(19:25):
Hatfield was tried for hog theft. Have you ever had
something stolen from you, like, you know, not hugely valuable,
but yeah, it's It's one of the things that irks
me most. It's very irritating. There's something about like just
someone taking something that you worked to buy that just
(19:47):
really boils my blood. Now, imagine if they took that
thing that you worked to buy, and they were directly
taking food out of your child's mouth at the same time,
it makes you mad. I'd pull a hat Field. That
we thing is is that the McCoy's and the halfl
Is at this point are saying, we will let the
we will leave it to the courts. Right. So they
did go to court. They did try to have a
(20:08):
fair trial. Um, or at least the preacher did. Preacher
halt Field, preacher judge right. Um. It's confusing, and the
the jury was split except for one who was a
McCoy who sided with the hat Fields. His name was
Selkirk McCoy another made up name and Selkirk Um. He
(20:30):
voted that because of a guy named Bill Staton, who
had testified that Floyd had not stolen the pigs. Um.
He said, you know what, I'm not going to contradict
Bill Staton. I know him to be truthful or whatever.
Plus I work for Devil Anson his logging operation. So
I'm gonna vote pro hat Field and exonerate Floyd. And
(20:50):
Floyd got off and Old Randall went nuts. Yes, Staton
was the main witness and he was a relative of
the McCoy's, but he was married to a hat Field right.
So um, and while they did intermarry, I saw that
there was way more marrying within the family to avoid intermarrying.
Oh yeah, there was a lot of first cousins that
(21:11):
were When you watch that Family Feud clip, you can
go find it on I'm sure on YouTube. But there
was a mental flass article that we found that had
it embedded at the bottom. That's where I first heard
about it. The that when they're introducing the families, they
keep introducing one another is like kissing cousins. This is
a kissing cousin, Diane, and like the families are saying
(21:32):
that nine. So yeah, there was a lot of like
inner marriage within the family itself. Well, they were probably
just joking, right, No, No, on Family Feud, you don't
think the guy didn't sound like he was joking. Did
he kiss his cousin on TV? No? But Richard Dawson
kissed her. He kissed everything. Guy kissed any woman who
(21:53):
had stand still long enough. What a flirt, Richard Dawson.
So yeah, r I P. Yeah, he didn't change his
name even though he was British. Uh, well, you don't
know that that's true. It could have been Richard Dimpsum
or Chumley Dawson. That's a great name. So so uh,
(22:18):
Old Randall has just lost this court case. And even worse,
he was made to pay the hat Fields court costs
for taking him to court. And remember we characterized Old
Randall as a kind of a bitter man. Anytime life
handed him lemons, he just squeezed him into his eyes,
go to anger, right um. And he went on for
(22:39):
this for basically years, about how this is a miscarriage
of justice, how Floyd had stolen his hogs. And so
now any time hat Fields and McCoy's um went, depending
on their allegiance to the clan or clans um, anytime
they saw each other, they were shooting at one another.
They were getting into fights, they were throwing rocks. One
(23:00):
of Um, one of devil Ant's sons, was standing there
when Old Randall rode up once and Old Randall started
railing on him about how Floyd had stolen a hog,
and the McCoys or the Hatfield Sun grabbed rock and
just threw it at Old Randall's mouth, just crushed his
mouth of the rock because that's what you did back then. Yeah,
that was sort of like you killed my brother Harmon,
(23:23):
but you stole my hog. You know, I'm cool with
the brother killing Harmon, had it coming, right, But that
hog never hurt anybody. Yeah, we were gonna eat it.
Uh So did we cover the fact that Staton two
years later was killed. This is inaccurate? Is that not true?
Bill Staton Jr. Was Kilton, Bill Sr. Was not killed
(23:44):
in this skirmish. This is another big retribution though, Okay
for his pause. Yeah, because after the hog incident in
the Hog Verdict, the the halt Fields and McCoy's did
not fight it out right then at the at the
um magistrate office, at Judge Preacher's place, Um. But at
any time the clan saw one another, they would shoot
(24:06):
at each other. They would getting fights, they would take
rocks to the faces, and then it culminated finally in
this really truly violent incident between Bill State and Jr.
And h Paris and Sam McCoy Right. Okay, so Bill
State and Junior is out hunting, sees these McCoy's sons
(24:27):
and says, oh, I'm in a world of trouble. I
better take a shot at one of them and shoots
Paris McCoy and the hip and Sam McCoy was like,
you shot my brother, You're going down. And he shoots
Bill and wounds him and then goes over and executes
him point blank in the head. And this is Bill Junior,
Bill Jr. See, I got another article that said it
(24:49):
was Bill, but it also said he's Bill Stanton. So
I'm starting to doubt all kinds of accuracy. There's a
lot of inaccurate stuff. So I got, um, I think
the description of that. And so it from a really
great book by a guy named John ed Pierce. It's
Days of Darkness Colon. So you know it's legitimate, the
feuds of Eastern Kentucky. Yeah, so there's been like serious
(25:12):
blood shed here. Now one of the this and this
is direct retribution for the hog stealing verdict. A man
has been executed point blank in the head, and the
two McCoy boys just tried to get away with it. Yeah,
so blood is spilling. Uh. Fast forward a bit to
eighty two and h three of Randall's sons are attacked,
(25:35):
stabbed twenty six times and shot Ellison Hatfield, who was
Devil's younger brother to death Right, and that was on
election day, and election days were like drunken affairs. Do
you remember when I think in the Bars episode we
talked about like, what was it, um, you get people
drunk in Yeah, bumbo planting, the applying the plants with
(26:00):
bumbling the voters with bumbo. Yeah. Man. But it was
election day, so everybody would get super drunk. And when
you get two clans that don't like each other super
drunk in the same place, they get in fights and
people get stay up twenty six times and then shot
in the back. Yeah. So those three sons of Randall
were actually arrested and we're presumably going to go to trial,
(26:22):
but vigilanteism took hold and they were kidnapped on the
way to the trial by the hat Fields and they said,
we're gonna take care of this our way. Yeah, and
they like, I don't know if they let them get
away with it, but they got away with it. No,
they did not let them get away with it. This
was a huge turning point, right um when the hat
Field or the McCoy boys were intercepted by the hat
(26:45):
Fields and taken across the river to West Virginia, which
is basically like taking them to Fortress hat Field. Yeah,
country justice was gonna happen. Yeah, but Devalance vowed that
if Ellison made it and didn't die, he would not
kill these hat Field are these McCoy boys. Um, But
Ellison succumbed to his wounds and did die, And so
they took these McCoy boys out and tied them to
(27:08):
trees and shot him I think more than fifty times
or something like that. And so you were saying, like
they got away with it not for lack of trying, right.
It basically set off this huge, huge issue like this
was even for the Tug River Valley. Chuck, this was
pretty flagrant frontier justice. You're not supposed to do this.
(27:31):
There's a magistrate named Preacher who's supposed to settle this
kind of stuff. Right, So a guy named Perry what
was Perry's name, Perry Klein? You know what this is?
This is too big. We need to take a break,
all right and get to the story of Perry Klein. Okay,
(27:58):
so we're back, chucking. We have a new guest. Name
is Perry Klein. Come on in, Perry, you're an attorney. Uh.
He was married to Martha McCoy. And here's the deal.
Years before there was a situation where Perry Klein was
cheated out of I think five thousand acres of land.
(28:19):
Was he cheated? I didn't know if he if it
was actual like justice, because he had supposedly been cutting
timber from uh, Devlance's timberland. Well, here's the deal. Everything
you read will say it depends on who you sympathize with,
is how you think Perry Klein and really all of
them were viewed. So I read articles that said that
(28:42):
he was cheated, in articles that said he wasn't cheated. Uh.
And I think the family is still today like while
there is a piece which we'll get to. Um, they
still disagree over Perry Clein's role. Okay, So, but Perry
Klein was married to a McCoy. Actually he's a Harmon
McCoy's widow, right Martha, And so, um, he had lost
(29:03):
five thousand acres. Really, that's how much he was forced
by the court to seed to Devilands for allegedly cutting
his timberland. Yeah, so he was. He had he had
a retribution in mind as an attorney. Right. So when
the hat Fields executed the McCoy, the three McCoy boys.
Um Perry Klein used it as a chance, depending on
(29:26):
how you look at it, either used it as a
chance for retribution or his family allegiance was stirred up,
and he, being an attorney, had contacts with the governor,
Governor Bunker I believe, of Kentucky and said, Governor, there's
some horrible stuff going on down here that's being perpetrated
by some West Virginians against some law abiding Kentuckians, and
(29:47):
you guys need to do something about it. And it worked, Actually, yeah,
they reinstated the charges and Um basically put out awards
on the head, bounties on the head, arrest bounties, that
is of the hat fields including uh six ft of
devil and pounds of hell. Yeah, himself, his sons, some
of the Um family allies like his uncle Jim Vance.
(30:10):
I think there were there was twenty twenty men who
had indictments against them, and since they had indictments against
them and they were hanging out in West Virginia, they
had bounties on their head. And one of the bounty hunters,
the main bounty hunter who came around it was it
was a problem that they had bounties on their head
because any crackpot who wanted to could come and take
(30:31):
shots at those guys. And and it was happening quite
a bit. Yeah, they wanted to collect some dough, right.
But there's one guy in particular who was a real
thorn in their side. His name was Mad Frank Phillips.
And Frank Phillips was a bounty hunter extraordinaire. He was
about as legally gray as you can get and still
(30:51):
not be uh, just on the darker side of the spectrum.
And he made it basically his personal war to get
as many hat Fields across the river into Kentucky as
he could. So he would carry out raids on the
hat Field stronghold in West Virginia, UM and basically just
abduct hat Fields and bring him to Kentucky so that
(31:15):
they could be put in the Pike County jail. And
while he did this, he was also executing people left
and right, like Jim Vance. He shot and wounded, saw
that he just wounded him, walked around from behind and um,
while Vance was begging for his life, shot him in
the head and like this is Frank Phillips. M Oh,
he would execute you just as soon as he would
capture you. Yeah, and this was this was becoming a
(31:37):
big deal in the press at this point, uh newspaper
started carrying the stories and became uh by all accounts
like national news, uh and legend like it was. Everyone
knew about the hat Fields and McCoys by this point, right,
and the press apparently very much sided with the McCoy's.
They painted the hat Fields to seem like Backwood's murderous
(31:59):
redneck who just caused trouble everywhere they went, and painted
the McCoy's is innocent, law abiding victims of of this um,
this whole feud um and the whole legend, like you're saying,
like this is all it all begins about right here,
When when there was what amounts to almost a war
between Kentucky and West Virginia because Frank Phillips kept going
(32:21):
and getting people and bringing them back to Pike County
and West Virginia got involved, and the two governors were
basically standing toe to toe, almost about to go invade,
sending National Guard troops in across the border. Um, but
instead they left in the courts and actually this court
case about whether it was legal or not for Frank
(32:44):
Phillips to have abducted the Hatfields and taken them to
the Kentucky jail. Um reached the Supreme Court actually, which
is pretty amazing. It is in the Supreme Court said,
you know what, Uh, it probably is illegal what happened,
but Kentucky's a sovereign state and there's really nothing West
Virginia can do about it, so go ahead and try him.
(33:05):
But before the trial, actually, and while the um these
abductions were going on, these raids carried out by Frank Phillips,
the hat Fields, like I said, like it was a
big deal in them that they were bounty hunters out
to get them, and they came up with a plan
to just end the whole thing. Yeah, in a murderous
killing spree is what they came up with. Uh. In January,
(33:26):
a group of hat Fields said, we're gonna attack Randolph
McCoy and his entire family, uh cap little Cappy double ants,
his son uh and an ally to Jim Vance kind
of led the way and they ambushed them at their
home on New Year's Day. Randolph actually escaped, which is uh,
they were kind of coming after him and he's the
only one who escaped. Well, they were coming after the
(33:48):
whole family. Yeah, like their whole intention was to just
murder this whole family of the problem. Yeah, and Randolph
was the key guy. He actually got away. His son
Calvin daughter Ala Fair were killed, uh and what they
called crossfire, but they were you know, let's get real.
And his wife, Sarah was suffered to crush skulls. She
was beaten so badly. Yeah, so Alice, they set the
(34:10):
house on fire. Ali Fair opened the door to put
the fire out and she was shot and killed. And
then um, her mom, Sarah wanted to come and like
comfort or dying daughter, and when she came out, they
beat her head in with the butt of a pistol
I think Cap Hatfield did. And then um, Calvin provided
(34:31):
cover for his dad and ran to attract their gunfire
so his dad could get away, and it worked, but
Calvin died as a result. And then two other daughters
have McCoy daughters survived, So Randall and two daughters survived
this attack on his family. And this was when it
was like if the press wasn't paying attention before and
(34:51):
now they really were. And um, basically everybody was outraged
at this and it's like this legend, Chuck is a
hundred something years old, right, and it's easy to kind
of see these people as caricatures or um, you know,
just historic. But when you think about what the hat
Fields planned to do and tried to do to the
(35:12):
McCoy's in that case on New Year's nineteen, eighteen eighty eight, Yeah,
the New Year's massacres, what was known as that's like
objectively despicable no matter when you when you when it happened,
going after an entire family to kill them, Yeah, to
wipe out a legal entailment, you know it is and
it really kind of um brings home like the actual
(35:33):
humanity of all of this, you know. Yeah. So it
went all the way to the Supreme Court and they decided,
you know what, these hat Fields should be tried. Uh,
And in eighteen eighty nine they were tried, and eight
of the hat Fields uh and their supporters were since
to life in prison, and one Ellison Mounts, who uh
people think is the son of Ellison Hatfield and his
(35:54):
first cousin, Yeah, it was actually sentenced to death. And uh.
The one issue here was a lot of people now
think he was a kind of a scapegoat because he
was mentally challenged, and uh, maybe an early false confession
happened right exactly, and he actually, um, really his was
if he didn't do it, or even if he did,
he really got screwed over by the prosecution. They said that, um,
(36:18):
if he confessed and and and cooperated, that he would
get a lighter sentence, when really he was the only
one who confessed and he was the only one who
was hanged. So um and his dying words, I think
we're the hat Fields made me do it and then
they hung him. Yeah, and there were no public executions
at the time, but that did not stop hundreds of people,
(36:39):
thousands even from coming out and watching anyway. Right, so
it was a public execution. And with the what's odd though,
is the uh so ten ten men had been captured
by Frank Phillips and had been added and tried, and
nine of them got life in prison. Ellison Mounts was
was hung and this was apparently enough to um, I guess,
(37:00):
mollify Randall McCoy. At first, I think he tried to
like rail against the verdict, but ultimately it was enough
to just calm him down and he went and lived
a quiet life, quiet haunted life as a ferry operator
I think, and lived to like yeah, and about a
year later. Uh, it was when the family has both
(37:22):
said enough is enough, let's call a truce. And uh.
From I think it was an eleven year period, almost
twenty four people were killed in both families, like close
to two dozen folks over eleven year period. That's legit. Yeah,
that's a that's a family feud right there. That's a
big feud. And devl Ance lived to a ripe old
age two. He lived to uh, I think eighty three
(37:44):
or something like that. That's not that old. Well, he
was born again at seventy three. I think he lived
into his eighties. And but he he was paranoid for
the rest of his life because I think there was
still bounties on his head. So he moved to an
island and carried a rifle with him at all time
for the rest of his life. Well, they if you
look at pictures of the families, they all had their guns.
(38:07):
I mean, that's what you did back then. But it's
it's funny to see a picture of like twenty people
in you know, twelve of them are brandishing weapons, you know,
in the in the one photo that will ever be
taken of them. They've got their gun out too. Uh
So since then they've been all over the place in
pop culture. We mentioned family Feud. There was an Abbott
(38:27):
and Costello movie in nifty two. Buster Keaton did a
movie too. Oh really, I feel McCoy. Uh he was
on not Looney Tunes, excuse me, Mary Melodies, big distinction,
but still bugs bunny um. Nowadays, there are even some
medical professionals who think that there was a condition that
the McCoy's had that led them to be violent. What
(38:49):
it's called von Hippe Lindau disease. And these geneticists study
dozens of McCoy descendants and said they have a really
high rate of this disease. It's inherited, it's rare, produces
tumors in the eyes, ears, and pancreas. Uh and a
notable side effect is high blood pressure, racing heartbeat, and
(39:09):
increased um aggressive behavior, increase fight or flight hormones. And
it was the McCoy's that may have had that, because
from everything I've read, it seemed like the hat Fields
would have been the one to have that. Wow, maybe
I'm a victim of contemporary press bias. Media bias. Else.
I got nothing else. Those other stuff. There's plenty of
(39:32):
stuff that I'm sure we didn't hit. And you should
go read some of the cool books written about this stuff.
I got one more thing, actually, here comes World War two.
Life magazine used the families as a way to unite
America's war effort by featuring them in a big photo spread.
The hat Fields of McCoy's like working together in factories
for World War two. Yeah, and they I think they
(39:56):
even met recently in like they're they're still out there
and there's still meeting and talking about this and uh
disagreeing friendly disagreements on people like Perry Klein and uh
he was the other guy, Mad Mad Month, Mad Frank Phillips,
Mad Frank Phillips, who remember I said he was legally gray.
He married uh a McCoy who ended up who had
(40:18):
had a baby with John C. Hatfield. Um, they ran
off together and got married Frank Phillips and Nancy McCoy
and ended up being prosperous bootleggers in the region. Well,
and there was also a spurned romance too that led detentions.
I forgot about that. Yeah, Roseanna Rosanna McCoy and John C. Hatfield. Yeah,
they had a little tryst and a child together, but
(40:41):
the child died I think aged eight months from measles.
But he kicked her to the curb before that and
then went and married her cousin Nancy, although there were
no curbs back then. He kicked her to the river bank,
to the creek side. Yeah. Again, we could probably keep
doing this for another forty five minutes, but we're not.
If you want to know more about hat fills and
McCoy's is ghost searching in your favorite search engine? And
(41:04):
since I said search engine, it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna call this just a nice little email of thanks.
I'm a nice person. Okay, Hi, Justin Chuck and Jerry.
I'm a young thirty something who lives in Berwin, Illinois.
I just recently started listening to podcasts and came across
(41:24):
How Stuff Works and you, guys, I'm a nerd at heart.
In your podcast feeds my inner beast. I listened to
you on my way to work on a train at
uh it sounds like Dr seuss Um at work again,
and then on my way home from work. I'm so
addicted to learning new things. Scrolling through the feed is
exhilarating because I'm dying to listen to them all. Jennifer,
there's I'm not sure if you know this. If you
(41:47):
follow us on iTunes, you might think they're only three hundred,
but there are more than eight hundred and fifties right,
And that's for all of you out there, and you
can find those at our website. Back to Jenner, I've
told all my friends about the podcast. I even make
my husband listen while we're cooking. I can't get enough
of all the cool topics you talk about. And since
(42:08):
I listen to every day, I thought, you know what,
I'm gonna send an email and hopes that it is
read on the air, and if not, at least you
know you have another dedicated listener. Thanks for spreading knowledge,
and that is Jennifer Hardy and Jennifer. Sometimes when I
get there to read things on the air, I do.
It works every time and not every time. Flattery will
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(42:28):
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