Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1908-04-09
FEUo AN CID ONE.
The Warning Hatfield and Mccoy Fac.
tiOus-Trcubie Started 49 Years
Ago Over a Pig.

Ago Over Pig.
The death of Tom Hatfield, the IA
nous mountain feudist, at Louisa. XIV.
makes about the sixtieth victim of the
Hatfield-McCoy feud that began forty
eight years ago as the result of one the
Mccoy razorback pigs swimming Tug
from the Mccoy place on the Kentucky
side to the ancestral home of the Hat
fields in West Virginia Tom Hatfield a
defendant of Devil Anse" Hatfield.
was one member of that murderous
family who had been supposed to have
a charmed life. He always escaped with
out scratch in the scores of murderous
battles between the Hatfield and
Mccoy clans.
As they tell it on Tug river, the war
between the Hatfelds and McCoys be-
gan just before the outbreak of the
Civil War, and it all started over the
ownership of Kentucky razorback hog
The McCoys at the time were loading
boat with razor-backs that were con-
sigred to a Cincinnati pork packer,
when one of the pigs jumped over the
boat railing into Tug river and swan to
Hatfield territory. The Mccoy negroes
were sent over to capture the pig but
they soon returnd and told old Randolph
Mccoy, the head of the Mccoy clan,
that the Hatfield negroes had chased
the animal into a ravine and held it.
Old Rand" sent word to "Anse" Hat
field that he wanted his hog back.
eff you think you have boys enough, >"
old Anse sent back, "why don't you
come and get the old pig?"
It is said that the McCoys were lay
ing out plan of battle for the recap
ture of the pig, when the news that
the Civil War was on reached the West
Virginia-Kentucky mountains. All the
McCoys shouldered their guns and en-
listed for the South, as did most of the
Hatfelds. Some of the Hatfields, how
ever, it is said, fought for the Union.
When the war ended the Hatfields
that had not been killed in battle ana
the surviving McCoys came back to
their homes, the Hatfields to the West
Virginia side and the McCoys to the
Kentucky side of the Tug river, and
the incident of the pig as was rapid
ly proved, had not been forgotten.
Soon after the warning families re-
turned there was an election in West
Virginia, and the McCoys went across
the river to help one of the candi-
dates. In the course of the day three
of the Mccoy boys, the youngest only
ten, and the eldest about twenty years,
met some of the Hatfelds, one of
whom was bad Anse." There was a
fight, and when it was over, Anse
was dead from thirty one stab wounds.
Later, the Hatfields captured the three
McCoys, took them to a secluded spot.
tied them to trees, and shot them dead.
The McCoys being Kentuckians, the
Governor of that State demanded that
their murderers be returned to Ken.
lucky for trial. Thereupon the Hat.
fields got up q petition and made al
the neighbors sign it. When some re-
fused to do so, the Hatfelds made
them to do so, at the muzzle of Winches-
ter rifles. The Governor of West Vir.
ginia read this petition and decided
that the McCoys had treated the Hat
fields very shabbily, and they stayed
In West Virginia. A few weeks later
John Logan and Sam Bird, followers
of the feudists, were found dead on
the banks of the Tug river, each with
bullet hole in his head.
So the war went on, and every now
and then the news that Hatfield OF
Mccoy had been killed reached the
outside world. In 1887 came the blood
lest battle in the history of the feud.
In that year the McCoys, led by
Frank Phillips, raided the Hatfield
stronghold. The fighting lasted a
week, and when it was over there
were several dead on both sides. A
few weeks later the Hatfields return