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