Hatfield–McCoy feud
feud involving two families of the West Virginia–Kentucky area
The Hatfield–McCoy feud involved two American families of the West Virginia–Kentucky area along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River from August 30, 1863, to May 7, 1891. The Hatfields of West Virginia were led by William Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield, while the McCoys of Kentucky were led by Randolph "Randall" or "Ole Randall" McCoy. The feud gained national attention through tabloid coverage and has entered American culture as a metonym for any bitterly feuding rival parties.
The McCoy family lived primarily on the Kentucky side of the Tug Fork; the Hatfields lived mostly on the West Virginia side. The majority of the Hatfields, although living in Mingo County (then part of Logan County), fought for the Confederacy in the American Civil War; most McCoys also fought for the Confederates, except for Asa Harmon McCoy, who fought for the Union. The first real violence in the feud was the death of Asa as he returned from the war, murdered by a group of Confederate Home Guards called the Logan Wildcats. Devil Anse Hatfield was a suspect at first, but was later confirmed to have been sick at home with tuberculosis at the time of the murder. It was widely believed that his uncle, Jim Vance, a member of the Wildcats, committed the murder.
The Hatfields were more affluent and had many more political connections than the McCoys. Devil Anse's timbering operation was a source of wealth for his family, while the McCoys were more of a lower-middle-class family.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q636569. The Library of Congress control number is sh85059277. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1863 and 1891.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hatfield–McCoy feud” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.