Tag: Randolph McCoy

October 30, 1825: Feudist Randolph McCoy Born in Logan County

Feudist Randolph McCoy was born in Logan County on October 30, 1825. He married his cousin, whose father gave the couple a small farm in neighboring Pike County, Kentucky. There, they raised 13 children.

Some date McCoy’s hatred of “Devil Anse” Hatfield to the Civil War. The beginning of the Hatfield-McCoy feud, though, is generally considered 1878, when McCoy accused Devil Anse’s cousin Floyd Hatfield of stealing a hog. McCoy lost the case after his own relative testified against him. From then on, McCoy’s anger mounted—so much so that he rejected his own daughter, Rose Anna, when she fell in love with Devil Anse’s son, Johnse Hatfield.

In 1882, three of McCoy’s sons killed Devil Anse’s brother Ellison in a drunken election day brawl. The Hatfields took revenge by executing the three McCoy boys. On New Year’s Day 1888, the Hatfields attacked and burned the McCoy home, killing two more of McCoy’s children and bludgeoning his wife.

Defeated, McCoy lost interest in the feud, moved to Pikeville, and became an embittered man. 

Randolph McCoy died tragically in 1914 at age 88 while tending a cook fire.

Three McCoys Killed by Hatfields In Kentucky: August 8, 1882

One of the pivotal events in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud occurred on August 8, 1882. Tensions between the two families had started rising a few days earlier, when Ellison Hatfield—the brother of Hatfield patriarch “Devil Anse”—was mortally wounded by three of Randolph McCoy’s sons in a drunken election-day brawl. Apparently, the fight occurred over a small debt owed on a fiddle.

After learning of the incident, “Devil Anse” Hatfield gathered up his wounded brother. His sons and other family members captured Tolbert, Pharmer, and Randolph McCoy Jr.

When Ellison died of his wounds, the Hatfields escorted the McCoys back into Kentucky—just across the Tug River from present-day Matewan—tied them to pawpaw bushes, lined up as a firing squad, and executed all three.

The two families had been at odds for years, but the election-day murder and subsequent execution took the feud to another level. The next few years were marked by sporadic revenge murders and legal battles in the courtrooms of West Virginia and Kentucky. The feud climaxed with the Hatfields’ deadly attack on Randolph McCoy’s cabin on New Year’s Day 1888.

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