The Hatfields and the McCoys (18 page)

William A. MacCorkle, the last of the Bourbon governors of West Virginia, saw the mountain feuds in a different light. Instead of bewailing their adverse effects in discouraging new industry, MacCorkle believed that the advent of industry, improved communications, and an influx of population would stifle the feuds and turn the attention of the people to other matters. He contended that the “discord [in the mountains] … was never-ending, because no new life or new blood was brought in to dispel it. A railroad,” he declared, “destroys a feud, a manufactory absolutely wipes out neighborhood animosity, and public improvements bring in new conditions.” MacCorkle, who had gained an intimate acquaintance with mountain folk while riding the circuit as a lawyer, was convinced that when “any of the civilizing influences of the day came in, the feuds were largely over.”
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The sequence which he envisioned proved substantially correct.

14

THE HABIT OF VIOLENCE

T
HE DESIRE OF THE Hatfields and the McCoys for peace could not entirely overcome their habit of resorting to violence in the settlement of disputes. Three incidents are illustrative of the persistence of the tendency to turn to arms. They included the murder of John and Elliott Rutherford and Henderson Chambers by Cap Hatfield and his stepson, Joe Glenn; the slaying of Humphrey E., or Doc, Ellis by Elias Hatfield, the son of Devil Anse; and the killing of Detroit, or Troy, and Elias Hatfield at Boomer, West Virginia. Only the second of the incidents had any relation to the Hatfield-McCoy feud.

The murder of the Rutherfords and Chambers occurred at another of those ill-fated mountain elections, this time in the town of Matewan in November 1896. Cap Hatfield and his fourteen-year-old stepson, Joe Glenn, arrived in town for the occasion, but as an earnest of his peaceful intentions Cap checked his Winchester rifle and other arms with Dr. Jim Rutherford, the mayor of the town. Although Rutherford's daughter Mary had married Floyd McCoy, the son of Randolph, any reopening of the feud seemed unlikely. There remained, however, an old grudge between Cap and the doctors son John, which had flared up at the election of the previous year.

Throughout the day Cap and John Rutherford kept away from each other, and when Cap and Joe Glenn stopped at the polling place at H. S. White's store on their way home, trouble seemed to have been averted. While they were there, a crowd of men gathered outside. John Rutherford, already far gone with drink, was among them. When Cap and Rutherford saw each other, they almost instinctively opened fire, with no one sure who shot first. Within seconds Rutherford fell, as did his brother-in-law, Henderson Chambers, who had rushed from the store to see what was happening. Cap, seeing Elliott Rutherford, John's nephew, with a revolver in each hand and realizing that his own gun was empty, took cover behind a support for a railroad bridge. Young Glenn, who was concealed behind a large tree, sensed that Rutherford would try to kill Cap. He fired at Rutherford, who also fell to the ground dead.
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Almost immediately Sheriff N. J., or Doc, Keadle of Mingo County, which had been formed from the western part of Logan County in 1895, assembled a large posse and began to search for Cap and Glenn. He placed guards along the routes that they might use to escape to Kentucky and had outbound trains searched. A few nights later Detectives J. H. Clark and Dan Christian, who were watching a natural rock fort on Grapevine Creek, which the Hatfields had once used in the feud with the McCoys, spotted their quarry asleep in a crevice. They seized the pair and set off with them at once for the Huntington jail.

One account maintains that when Devil Anse heard of Cap's arrest he gathered about twenty men and started for Mingo County. At the border, however, Keadle and a large posse stopped him and convinced him that any attempt to advance into that county would be futile. Devil Anse recognized then that the force of law rather than the power of the clan would thenceforth rule supreme and bade his men return home.
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In April 1897 Cap and Joe Glenn were tried for murder at a special session of the Mingo Circuit Court in Williamson. Although the press resurrected accounts of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, Sheriff Keadle emphasized that the charges on which they were tried were in no way related to the vendetta. The court convicted Cap of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced him to one year in jail. It sentenced young Glenn, who pleaded guilty to the same offense, to one year in the West Virginia Reform School at Pruntytown.

The authorities at the Mingo County jail allowed Cap considerable freedom, and his friends occasionally brought him whiskey. After one especially noisy party in July 1897, Cap made his escape through a large hole cut in the wall with a hatchet. Mingo County authorities, faced with a variety of wild rumors, summoned Devil Anse to Williamson, but he denied any knowledge of his sons escape. Cap soon returned home, and Mingo officials, eager to be rid of a prisoner who had burdened them with the expense of extra guards, left him there.
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The following year Humphrey E. Ellis seized Johnse, whom he accused of threatening to kill him, and turned him over to Kentucky authorities. A jury at Prestonsburg found Johnse guilty of several charges, including participation in the murder of the McCoy brothers in 1882 and the attack upon the McCoy family in 1888. Johnse's capture and imprisonment angered the Hatfields, and in July 1899 Elias, the eighteen-year-old son of Devil Anse, sought to even the score. He spotted Ellis, a very popular man, on the rear platform of a train that had just pulled into Gray, in Mingo County. Ellis saw Hatfield and stepped into the coach for his revolver. Anticipating his return, Elias fired at the instant Ellis reappeared and killed him with the first shot. Elias received a jail sentence much too light to satisfy many of the friends of Ellis.
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Meanwhile, Governor J. C. W. Beckham of Kentucky repeatedly turned down requests of clemency for Johnse. During one of Beckham's absences, however, Lieutenant Governor William Pryor Thorne granted Johnse a pardon. Sometime earlier, when a burly black had attacked Thorne with a knife during an inspection tour of the prison, Johnse had leaped upon the assailant and saved the lieutenant governor's life. Both the warden of the penitentiary and Thorne considered Johnse worthy of pardon.
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Cap, meanwhile, had taken up the study of law during his time in jail and continued its pursuit for about six months at a law school in Tennessee. Later he passed the West Virginia bar examination and hung out his shingle in Logan. He took little interest in the practice and in later years left the business to his son Coleman and his daughter Aileen, the first woman attorney in Logan County, with whom he formed a partnership. Cap also served as deputy sheriff of Logan County under his brothers, Joseph and Tennis.
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Profound changes also began to take place in Devil Anse. More and more frequent became his conversations with William Dyke Garrett, a well-known minister of Logan County, who had fought with the Logan Wildcats before taking up the ministry. At a revival meeting held by “Uncle Dyke” in September 1911, Devil Anse yielded himself to the Lord, and on Saturday, September 23, he was baptized in the waters of Island Creek. Hatfield's profession of faith was the occasion of a “great religious demonstration,” but “Uncle Dyke” credited it as much to “the praying and singing Christian people as to me and in the end all the glory is God's.”
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His conversion, which, according to his neighbors, had left him “much changed,” undoubtedly enabled Devil Anse to bear the death of his sons Troy and Elias only three weeks later. Troy and Elias had served as special agents for the Virginian and the Chesapeake and Ohio railroads and had earned reputations for boldness and accuracy with their revolvers. Later they entered the saloon business at Boomer, West Virginia, in partnership with M. J. Simms, a member of the Fayette County Court. Competition from a saloon operated by Carl Hanson at the nearby town of Cannelton cut into their profits. The owners of the saloons agreed to a division of territory, but an Italian, Octavo Gerome, who acted as agent for Hanson, continued to peddle beer and whiskey in the section belonging to the Hatfields. After warning Gerome to stay out, the Hatfields, on October 17, 1911, went to the Italian's house at Harewood, between Boomer and Cannelton. Elias went to the front door and Troy to the back entrance. Observing their approach and fearing serious trouble, Gerome shot Elias and turned upon Troy, killing both. Elias died instantly, but the mortally wounded Troy pumped three bullets into Gerome, any one of which would have proved fatal.
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In a spirit of contrition, Devil Anse sought to have the records at Pikeville cleared of the indictments against him and his sons. He sent Joe Glenn, by then a young attorney, to confer with Jim McCoy, the son of Randolph. Glenn offered McCoy ten thousand dollars if he would have the indictments nol-prossed. McCoy assured Glenn that he harbored no hard feelings toward the Hatfields and wished to let the old animosities remain buried, but he declared that he could not consider their offer even if it were for two hundred thousand dollars.
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Although Devil Anse and his family adapted to new conditions brought about by the growth of industry, the construction of railroads and highways, and the influx of immigrants, the fighting spirit of the clan and kindred residents of the Tug and Guyandotte valleys continued to erupt occasionally. Beginning in 1919 and continuing into 1921 Logan and Mingo counties experienced severe labor troubles, which grew out of postwar economic readjustments and efforts to unionize the coal mines. During the course of the disturbances Logan County Sheriff Don Chafin, a Hatfield relative, proved one of the staunchest supporters of the coal mine operators. In Matewan, the chief of police, Sidney “Two-Gun Sid” Hatfield, an adopted son of one of the Hatfields, took just as strong a stand for the miners. He became the principal figure in the Matewan Massacre, a battle between miners and Baldwin-Felts mine guards employed by the coal companies, which left nine men dead in the streets of the little town. Hatfield and about twenty other men were charged with murder, but not one was convicted. Among those killed were Anderson C. Hatfield, the son of Deacon Anse and the owner of the hotel at Matewan, and Squire Staton. Later Sid faced new murder charges in McDowell County, West Virginia, this time for “shooting up” the town of Mohawk. Before he was brought to trial, he was “assassinated” on the steps of the courthouse at Welch.
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Most of the Hatfields, as well as the McCoys, however, wanted to take advantage of the new ways of living and the opportunities brought with them. Both families produced a respectable number of teachers, businessmen, political figures, and professional men and women. The Hatfields took special pride in Henry Drury Hatfield, the son of Elias and the nephew of Devil Anse, who earned his medical degree at the University of Louisville, served as a surgeon for the Norfolk and Western Railway, and won election to the West Virginia Senate in 1908. He was elected president of the Senate in 1911, and in 1913 he became governor of West Virginia. A progressive Republican, he gave the state an administration marked by significant social legislation and vigorous action, particularly in the settlement of the bloody Paint Creek coal strike of 1912-1913. Devil Anse's own son, Elliott Rutherford, also became a prominent physician in southern West Virginia.
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The principal feudists ended their lives in relative quiet. Randolph McCoy spent his last years as the operator of a ferry at Pikeville. His losses at the hands of the Hatfields continued to engross his thoughts, but as the feud receded into history, his tales of woe struck his acquaintances as somewhat boring. He died on March 28, 1914, at the age of eighty-eight, of burns suffered when he fell into an open fire at the home of a nephew with whom he was living. His wife, Sarah, survived him for several years.
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Randolph McCoy's death attracted relatively little attention, but that of Devil Anse Hatfield on January 6, 1921, of pneumonia, received wide newspaper coverage, including a notice in the
New York Times.
During his last years he appeared very much the prosperous farmer, who supplemented his income with timbering activities and royalties from mineral properties. His house on Island Creek underwent improvements, including weatherboarding and a front porch, but he never failed in his well-known hospitality. During his last years he refused to dwell on the feud or to talk about it. His funeral, held on the Sunday following his death, was the largest ever held in Logan County and drew several thousand people, some arriving from Logan by special train. Mourners, some of whom bore the name of McCoy, entered the house through a back door and filed through a hallway to the front porch, where Devil Anse lay in a golden oak casket. There was no funeral sermon, but the Reverend Green McNeely, the “scriptural son” of Uncle Dyke Garrett, read commitment rites, and Garrett led in prayers, after which the mourners made their way through a chilling rain to the cemetery. Later the family erected a life-size marble statue made in Carrara, Italy, over the grave.
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The following year Johnse died of a heart attack while riding a horse. Cap died in 1930, reportedly of a brain tumor, but an autopsy is said to have indicated that his death resulted from complications from an old bullet wound. Levicy Hatfield, the wife of Devil Anse, followed her husband in 1929. Jim McCoy, the son of Randolph, died in 1929 in his eightieth year of a lingering illness. Serving in his later years as sheriff of Pike County and as a policeman in Pikeville, he was widely respected and regarded as “a good neighbor.”
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In 1928, forty years after the New Year's attack upon the McCoy family, Tennis Hatfield, the youngest son of Devil Anse, was sitting on the porch of a friend in Pikeville, when he saw an elderly man walking down the street. Tennis asked who the man was. Joseph Stanley, the Pike County jailer, replied that the old gentleman was “Uncle Jim” McCoy. Tennis, then sheriff of Logan County, went over to McCoy, declaring, “I'm Tennis Hatfield, Uncle Jim.” He extended his hand, which McCoy grasped with warmth and appreciation. Afterward, the two men, along with three friends, had their picture taken together. By then the Hatfield-McCoy feud lingered on only as a tragedy best forgotten and as the most famous vendetta of the southern mountains.