They’ve buried the hatchet
HARDY, Ky. — Descendants of the feuding Hatfields and McCoys — including two who were alive at the time of the battles — gathered Saturday at a tangled, vine-covered cemetery beside Blackberry Creek and officially closed one of the bloodiest chapters in the nation’s history.
About 300 persons stood in a steady downpour as a granite monument was dedicated at the McCoy family cemetery. Two ministers, one a Hatfield, the other a McCoy, called for “peace in the valley” as the two famous families formally buried the hatchet.
An inscription on the monument read: “Six of the 16 children of Randolph and Sarah McCoy lie buried here, having suffered untimely death. Three died bound to paw paw trees at the mouth of Blackberry Creek in August 1882.”
The three, Tolbert, Pharmer and Randolph Jr., were killed by William Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield and several of his relatives in retaliation for the earlier murder of a Hatfield. Before the feud was finished, more than 100 men, women, and children had been killed or wounded, and the states of West Virginia and Kentucky were on the verge of open warfare.
The cause of the feud between the two clans was never clear. Some said it was over the theft of a McCoy hog by the Hatfields. Others said it stemmed from a grudge left by an incident during the Civil War, when the Hatfields fought for the South and the McCoys for the North.
A buffet luncheon followed the dedication. Two men who remember the feud cut the cake.
Willis Hatfield, 88, of nearby Logan, W. Va., said he had long since given up any ill feelings. “Some of those McCoys are pretty good fellows,” said the last living son of Devil Anse.
Hatfield, who was only a youngster during most of the fighting, was standing beside “Grandpaw” Jim McCoy, 92, of Hardy. McCoy still lives near the old homeplace and says he well remembers the night in 1888 that the Hatfields burned down his family’s log cabin home and killed two of his cousins.
“My daddy pulled me out of the cabin.” he said. “All we were able to save were our nightclothes.”
Like Hatfield, McCoy said he also bore no grudge. He said he soon forgave the Hatfields and even drank moonshine with Devil Anse a few years after the cabin burning.
“The Hatfields are my good friends,” he added. “Just the other day a Hatfield boy brought me over three squirrels he had killed. Imagine that — a Hatfield doing that for a McCoy.”
This story was published in the May 2, 1976, edition of the Lewiston Tribune.
