My Great Uncle Cecil tells me that the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys was really caused by a Martin. More specifically, his Granddad Martin. So before the Hatfields and the McCoys came the feud between the Martins and the McCoys.
He holds my gaze with his own hazy eyes that have been under the knife at least twice in the past couple years. He crinkles his face a little, but I can tell that he is not joking about this. His wrinkled parchment spotted hands sketch out the details in a graceful movement that belies the brittleness of the white hairs lying on them.
"The McCoys were a part of the home guard in the battle between the north and south, and squatted on Martin land (he starts, his faded blue eyes sparkling).
You see, (Great Uncle Cecil presses his thumb and forefinger together and jabs the air as he switches to a new tangent) my granddad was a ornery cuss and he settled in West Virginia on 150 acres of land. He had six children at the time but there was no schoolhouse. So he deeded an acre or two of the land to building a schoolhouse and got everything okayed with the school board and then paid the schoolmistress’s wages for two months-until the board caught up on payments. But when the war broke out between the North and South - the Martins didn’t want anything to do with it.
You gotta understand, it really didn’t matter what side you wanted to be on- if you were caught by the northern army, you were conscripted by them. If you were caught by the southern army, you worked for them. So my Uncle hid out in a cave until the coast was clear. Although he did almost get caught once. You see he was hiding out in a cave with his little dog, and he had taught it not to bark; it was a smart little thing. But growl it did and those army boys were right on top of my old uncle. But he ran and came to the river where he figured on jumping onto a large rock he saw in the moonlight and jumping across the stream. Well, leap onto the rock he did - but it wasn’t a rock-just the reflection of the moon. So he fell in with a big splash and if he weren't such a fast swimmer there’d be a lot more McCoys around today.
My Aunt was an ornery woman too (he pauses and gazes across the table at my boyfriend, meeting the family for the first time. "You better listen to this if you’re going to continue with my girl like this. You otta beware what ornery women we have in this family and she's Martin through and through."). When a Union soldier came visiting, wanting to steal meat and perhaps more, she hid upstairs in the loft. That soldier knew there was a young girl up there and walked below to try to peak up and see her. Well she grabs some scalding water and pours it right down on him. To this day there are still bullet holes in the beams where that soldier tried to retaliate.
So, the home guard, including the McCoys stayed on my grandfather’s land all through the years of the war. Well, the war ended but they’d gotten married to local girls and had families by that time and felt they had the right to stay on the Martin land. There were two families, the Dunfies and the McCoys and several black families. Grandfather took it to court, but the West Virginia supreme court dragged it out. You see they didn’t want to tell the Union guys, the heroes, to get off. Until just recently that was the longest court case in West Virginia’s history. Finally the judge ruled rightly and told them all to get off. But they had no way to enforce it. There were no marshals or policemen back then. The Dunfies left and Grandfather deeded some land to the blacks so they stayed - but the McCoys wouldn’t leave. There were several families of them at this point.
(Uncle Cecil gets a sly smile on his wrinkled face and smoothes his thin white hair. He hunches forward confidentially) Now I don’t like to think about it, and I hate to think he’d do such things - but I think my Uncle set beartraps for those McCoys. I asked my aunt and she says he absolutely did and I asked my uncle and all he’d say was 'You can’t believe everything you hear,' but he never denied it. (His tone is ebullient,his fingers punctuating the air) He never admitted to it,but he never denied it either. From what I heard he caught pretty many of those McCoys. And since those blacks were happy with my grandfather, they accounted for even more of the McCoys.
Now the McCoys figured that too many of themselves were getting killed so they decided to move on to a place they knew across the mountains. Granddad learned of this and sent a messenger clear across the mountains to Devil Hatfield, whom the Martins knew through marriage to some second cousin or so. So when the McCoys came-the Hatfields were ready for trouble. Now, people say the Hatfields, they were nice, pleasant folks - but you don't get a name like Devil without being a bit of a firecracker.
(Great Uncle Cecil squints his eyes and smiles slightly, wisely.) Now all accounts read that the trouble all began when a McCoy let his sow loose to eat the Hatfields’s corn-but that wasn’t what really started it all-no sir, you can bet on that. It was the Martins that started the feud and the Hatfields just took it over to give the McCoys tarnation."
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
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