What Was the Deal With the Hatfields and McCoys?

more dates coming. Yeah, keep your ears out and in the meantime, if you want to get tickets, you can go to s y s K live dot com powered by squares space and we'll see you guys on the road. See how in Portland you're selling out fast, Get on it. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh Clark, Charles W Chuck. Brian is staring at me right now.

It's making me a town uncomfortable. Jerry's over there. I can feel her eyes burning into the side of my head. So was the Stuff you Should Know? Who would you like me to look, but uh in my ear. Oh that's always so weird. Try someone's like, looking, are you doing it right now? Like right at your hair? Really? Yeah? Interesting? Try my other ear. Oh yeah, that's that's the stuff the right. Sorry that your left. That's my left, all right? I remember that. Look watch this, Chuck, after seven years,

can you see that I can wiggle ears independently? Try to give me crazy? So you said, 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, 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 records, 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. 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 monistry remains, you know, 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 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 really it was really dramatized. Yeah, like it isn't fictionalized. Yea cinematized and yeah, a little not 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 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 it to another level because all of the murder. Yeah, there there

was a lot of murder. It was mountain foe 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 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's lived in Pike County. And that's how it was for days gone by. Yeah, and they they were not new to the United States, so I guess it wasn't the United States then, was it? Yeah, we were 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. Uh from northern England, 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 they all? Right? P uh? And the McCoy has come from Scotland, of course you can 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 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 and working with each other. It was not just these two families in

the area. There are plenty of other families. But like they were neighbors, co workers, Boston employee, they were, they were husbands and wives, they intermarried, you know, I mean like they were they were living together for decades. I think the two um that originally settled at Tug Fork were the actual parents of the two main protagonists or antagonists. I guess they were both. Yeah, they were both pro and and so they the the story. Our story really

kind of begins round 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 outright Confederate soldiers. UM the antagonist or protagonists 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. But devil as what a cool name. Yeah, and I saw a couple

of different explanations for where his nickname came from. 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 that 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.

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, 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 it's 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 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 Uh was the head of the McCoy clan across the river in Kentucky, Right Yeah.

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 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 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 pletely poverty stricken like Randall

had grown up. But just across the river and and this other family that he had to deal with and 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 Lance. Yeah, and I think um some of the McCoy's even worked for some of the hat Fields, which is always gonna be a little tense when you feel like maybe that 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, but that's since been abandoned. So, like we said, the Civil War is about the time when this story really starts and earn 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 unit of the Confederate Army. Yeah, and that's all where Devil Rance 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 dance, 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, I was he coming in? He will in a little bit. Instead, 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 h left the service after I think a year. 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 ants, 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 his boot and like took a swing.

I'm not sure. I don't know that if if that was even in the mini series. Um So they getting a fight, he loses, and then uh, then the Union troops went after devil Ants 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 Rance 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. That really hopes it would be a bad way to go. Gives you pause, you know. So, um the after the war, after um Asa Harmon McCoy uh came back home. I did not realize the tensions 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 Lance right well, Devil Rants and the Logan Wildcats 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 far for the Union? Was he an abolitionist? 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 for the Union. It's 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 much they didn't take issue with it. When the Logan

Wildcats attract him down to the cave and killed him. Well, he was actually coming home when they killed him, wasn't I think he finally thought like, surely, after all this time, they've forgotten about this trogolobe bite trocolodyte. 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 long he was in the cave. Well, that might have

been part of the war a few years. Man alive so well, actually 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 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, 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 and the the first death has occurred in the hat Field McCoy feud, but it had has nothing to do with the hat Field McCoy feud. Technically, yes, that seems like a pretty good time to take a break, don't you agreed, sir, So Chuck, 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 were going to get in at least a fist fight, not take like pot shots or another with their guns. I just think they probably just didn't like each other very much from the beginning,

so it'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 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 Dinking 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 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, and you think, what's a big deal. But in the region at the time, these these pigs were very valuable, so it was a

big deal, right. I saw am and in the front I saw a dude on well, yeah, and that was another thing. In we're talking about 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, 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 Randolph McCoy accused Floyd Hatfield. Okay, right, So um Old Randall himself said, Floyd Hatfield, cousin of devil Ance, I 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 he the one that placed it in McCoy land because the trial took place in McCoy territory asided by a hat Field 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, Wed, But he was trying to make it as fair as possible, right, um. And so they had a trial where Floyd 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 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. The weird thing is is that the McCoy's and the half 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 fair trial. Um, or at least the preacher did. Preacher Hatfield, preacher judge right. UM'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 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 Floyd got off and Old Randall went nuts. Staton was the main witness and he was a relative of the McCoy's, but

he was married to a hat Field. 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 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 that nine. So yeah, there was a lot of like inter 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. That guy kissed any woman who would stand still long enough. What a flirt? Well,

Richard Dawson, So yeah, alright, Pete. Yeah, he didn't change his name even though he was British. Uh, well, you don't know that that's true. Could have been Richard Dimpsum or Chumley Dawson. That's a great name. So so uh, Old Randall has just lost this court case, and even worse, he was made to pay the hat Fields court costs for taking him the 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

to anger, right um. And he went on for 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 h McCoy's um, 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 thrown in rocks. Like one 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, but you

stole my hog. You know, I'm cool with the brother killing the 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 in this skirmish. This is another big retribution though. Okay

for his pause. Yeah, because remember after the hog incident in the hog verdict, the the half fields in McCoys did not fight it out right then at the at the magistrates office, at Judge Peacher's place. Um, but at any time the clan saw one another, they would shoot 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 Junr

and uh Paris and Sam McCoy. Right. Okay, so Bill State and Junior is out hunting, sees these McCoy's sons and says, well, 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 Junior. See, I got another article that said it

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 to that incident 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 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 two and h three of Randall's sons are attacked, 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 how like what was

it um get people drunk? Yeah, bumbo planting, the buying the plants with bumby, the voters with bumbo. Yeah, man, But it was election day, so everybody would get super drunk. And when you get two claims that don't like each other super drunk in the same place, they get in fights and people get stabbed 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, 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 Fields and taken across the river to West Virginia, which is basically like taking them to Fortress hat Field Country, justice was gonna happen. Yeah, but Devlance vowed that if Ellison made it and didn't die, he would not kill these Hatfield or these McCoy boys. Um, but Allison succumbed

to his wounds and did die. And so they took these McCoy boys out and tied them to 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 is pretty flagrant frontier justice. You're not supposed to do this. There's a magistrate named Preacher who's supposed to settle this kind

of stuff. Right, So a guy named, uh, 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 Kline. Okay, so we're back, chucking. We have a new guest. His name is Perry Klein. Come on in, Perry, you're an attorney. Uh. He was married to Martha McCoy And here's the deal. Uh, years before there was a situation where Perry Klein was cheated out of I think five thousand acres of land.

Was he cheated? I didn't know if he if it was actual like justice, because he had supposedly been cutting timber from uh, Devilance's timber land. 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 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 Klin's role. Okay, So, but Perry Klin was married to a McCoy. Actually he's a harmon McCoy's widow, right Martha, and so, um, he had lost 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 a 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 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 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. Himself, his sons, some of the Um family allies, like his uncle Jim Vance. 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 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 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 bring him to Kentucky so that 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 uh, this was becoming a 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 MCA was by this point right and the press apparently very much sided with the McCoy's.

They painted the hat Fields to seem like backwoods, murderous rednecks 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 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 Phillips to have abducted the hat Fields and taken them to the Kentucky jail. Um reached the Preme 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 them. 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 of them that they were bounty hunters out to get them, and they came up with a plan

to just end the whole thing. Yea, in a murderous killing spree is what they came up with. Uh. In January, group of hat Fields said we're gonna attack Randolph McCoy and his entire family, uh cap little Cappy devil 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

whole family. Like there the 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 crutch skull. She was beating so badly. Yeah, so Alice, they set the house on fire. Alafair 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 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 had 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 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 McCoy's in that case on New Year's nineteen eighty, 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, um it is and it really kind of um brings home like the

actual 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. In in eighteen eighty nine, they were tried, and eight of the hat Fields, uh and their supporters were since the life in prison and one Ellison Mounts, who uh people think is the son of Ellison Hatfield and his

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, 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 were 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,

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 a dieted and tried, and nine of them got life in prison. Ellison Mounts was was hung and this was apparently enough to um,

I guess, 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 a yeah, and about a year later. Uh, it was when the families both 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 or something like that. That's old. Well, he was born again at seventy three. I think he lived into his a real 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 times for

the rest of his life. Well, if you look at pictures of the families, they all had their guns. 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. That's right, 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 abbot

in Costello movie. In two Buster Keaton did a movie too. Oh really, I feel McCoy 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 it's called duh von Hippel 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 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.

Anything else? I got nothing else? There's other stuff. There's plenty of 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 even met recently in like they're they're still out there and they're 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 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 to tentions. I forgot about that. Yeah, Roseanna, Rosanna McCoy and John C. Hatfield. Yeah, they had a little trist and a child together, but 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 curb spec and he kicked her to the river bank to the creekside. 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 ghost, searching in your favorite search engine. Since I said search engine, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this just a nice little email of things.

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