The American South is generally known for its hot climates, its cotton and tobacco fields and its slave-holding history. However, for the region of Southern Appalachia, it is a different story. Life in the mountains was quite different from our picture of the South. The people lived on small farms, miles away from each other and owned only little land on which they worked with their whole family and some helpers but normally without slaves.
Since the mountaineers lived so isolated they developed their own traditions and sets of values and became distinct from the ordinary Southerner. Of course that constructed stereotypes. The Appalachian mountaineer, or “hillbilly” is seen as illiterate, dumb, naïve, slow, ugly, dirty, lazy, drunken, violent and all in all “weird”. Also, the role of the family is important: mountaineers are said to have dozens of children and a whole community of hundreds of people may bear only three different surnames. Thus, kin is important in the mountains and family loyalty may be essential.
On grounds of these and other stereotypes and several incidents, happening mainly at the end of the 19th century, a myth about mountain feuding emerged. According to the media of those times and countless stories and legends developing from them, mountaineers start to quarrel about some non-important things and this produces a conflict between their families, which lasts over decades. As Mark Twain, one of the best known writers on mountain feuding lets Buck Grangerford, a character in his novel The adventures of Huckleberry Finn, say:
“[…] a feud is this way. A man has a quarrel with another man, and kills him; then that other man´s brother kills him; then the other brothers, on both sides, goes for one another; then the cousins chip in – and by-and-by everybody´s killed off, and there ain´t no more feud. But it´s kind of slow, and takes a long time.”
Table of Contents
I. Feuding – a popular pastime among mountaineers?
II. The Hatfield-McCoy feud in American culture
III. The historical facts
1. The Tug Valley Community
2. The feud leaders
2.1. “Devil Anse” Hatfield
2.2. “Old Ranel” McCoy
2.3. Perry Cline
3. The first phase 1878-1882
4. Interim
5. The second phase 1888-1889
IV. Relevance of the Hatfield-McCoy myth
Objectives and Topics
This paper investigates the historical accuracy of the Hatfield-McCoy feud by contrasting prevailing American myths and folklore with verified historical facts. The primary research goal is to demonstrate how media portrayals, stereotypes, and fiction have distorted the perception of this event, ultimately obscuring its nature as a localized conflict rooted in the socio-economic conditions of 19th-century Southern Appalachia.
- Historical analysis of the Tug Valley community and its social structures.
- Comparative examination of the feud's leadership and central figures.
- Chronological reconstruction of the conflict's phases and legal developments.
- Deconstruction of media-driven myths and stereotypes surrounding Appalachian life.
- Evaluation of how the feud's representation reflects broader cultural bias.
Excerpt from the Book
1. The Tug Valley Community
The Tug Valley, the scene of the feud, has got its name from the Tug River (a fork of the Big Sandy River), which is the border between Kentucky and West Virginia. The Tug Valley is “one of the most rugged and forbidding sections of the Appalachian highlands”10, it consists of deep and narrow valleys between sandstone and limestone rocks. The Tug River constructs both, a geographical unity and a political boundary.
Settlement in the Tug Valley started at the beginning of the 19th century. Most settlers where of Scottish, English or German origin. Two of them were the ancestors of the later feudists: Ephraim Hatfield and William McCoy. Both families settled on either side of the river. They lived – as did their neighbours – in log houses. The land was cheap, but almost useless for farming, because it consisted of near-vertical mountain slopes. This became a problem for the settlers, because traditionally fathers provided their sons with land, when these were coming of age. Since most families had between ten and fifteen children, the areas the farmers owned became smaller and smaller. Beside the traditional activities of farming and hunting, others became important to nourish the families: the timber business and the production of liquor.
Also, since the families were so big there was a lot of intermarriage in the neighbourhood and people were related to almost every household in the valley in some way or the other. Family loyalty was very important for the Tug Valley Community. But “family” meant something else in the Appalachia of the 19th century than what we understand by it today:
“’family’ was a socially constructed institution only partially based on blood and conjugal ties. Families represent groups of people bound together economically, geographically, and socially”.11
Summary of Chapters
I. Feuding – a popular pastime among mountaineers?: This chapter establishes the stereotypical image of Appalachian mountaineers and examines how media-fuelled myths about blood feuds emerged during the late 19th century.
II. The Hatfield-McCoy feud in American culture: This chapter analyzes how the feud became an entrenched part of American folklore, contrasting popular fictionalized accounts with the actual historical event.
III. The historical facts: This section provides a detailed historical investigation of the Tug Valley community, the leaders involved, and the chronological phases of the conflict from 1878 to 1889.
IV. Relevance of the Hatfield-McCoy myth: This concluding chapter synthesizes the findings to emphasize that historical reality was significantly less sensational than the enduring public myth.
Keywords
Hatfield-McCoy, Southern Appalachia, Tug Valley, Feud, Folklore, Stereotypes, Devil Anse Hatfield, Old Ranel McCoy, History, Mythology, 19th Century, Mountain Culture, Justice, Conflict, Media Representation
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the central focus of this research paper?
The paper primarily focuses on distinguishing between the romanticized, fictionalized myths surrounding the Hatfield-McCoy feud and the grounded historical facts derived from primary records.
Which specific themes are covered in the work?
Key themes include the social structure of the 19th-century Tug Valley, the influence of family loyalty, the role of stereotypes in shaping public perception of Appalachia, and the transition of the conflict from a local disagreement to a state-wide legal crisis.
What is the primary research question?
The research asks how much the historical reality of the Hatfield-McCoy feud differs from the pervasive myths, and why the legend has remained so persistent in American culture.
Which scientific methodology is applied?
The author utilizes a historiographical approach, analyzing historical records such as court documents and census data from the late 19th century to verify or disprove existing folklore.
What is analyzed in the main body of the text?
The main body examines the geographical and social background of the Tug Valley, the lives of key figures like Devil Anse Hatfield and Old Ranel McCoy, and a chronological breakdown of the violent and legal phases of the feud.
Which keywords define this work?
The work is defined by terms such as Hatfield-McCoy, Appalachia, Myth, Stereotype, Feud, History, and Tug Valley.
How did the perception of justice differ in the Tug Valley compared to modern standards?
In the 19th-century Tug Valley, formal law was often secondary to a community-based code of conduct; thus, actions like the execution of the McCoy sons were locally perceived as a form of justice rather than purely criminal acts.
Was the feud actually a multi-generational bloodbath?
No, the historical evidence shows the conflict was relatively short, lasting about 12 years with a total of 12 fatalities, which contradicts the "mountain bloodbath" narrative propagated by the media.
- Quote paper
- Susanne Opel (Author), 2003, Feuding and Southern Appalachia: Case Study Hatfield-McCoy Feud, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/42609
