From the Logan Banner of Logan, WV,  comes this bit of history for the Hatfield family, printed on May 11, 1937:

History Of Hatfield Clan Recorded In Banner Files

Ephraim Hatfield Was One of The Quietest Men In The County—Yet He Was Father Of Those Engaged In Famous Feud

Henry Clay Ragland, editor of The Logan Banner in 1896, was, among other things, a genealogist for Logan county.

He lived at a time when most of the children and grandchildren of Logan county’s first settlers were still alive and he had access to a wealth of first-hand information that has served as the basis for family histories in Logan county up to the present.

An account of the entrance of the Hatfield family into this section of the country is clipped verbatim from a Logan County Banner dated Wednesday, April 29, 1896.

“At what is still known as the Hatfield place on Horsepen, Valentine Hatfield, of Washington county, Va., settled at quite an early day. He was the father of nine sons and three daughters, and from them have sprung many of the Hatfields of the Guyandotte and Sandy Valleys.

“Valentine Hatfield married a Miss Weddington, and he was a half brother of Thomas Smith. His sons were Ali, who married a daughter of Ferrell Evans; Joe, who also married a daughter of Ferrell Evans; Ephraim, who married Bettie Vance; (This Ephraim was one of the quietest men in the county, and was for a long time a justice of the peace, yet he was the father and grandfather of the Hatfields who were engaged in the Hatfield-McCoy feud) Andrew, who married a daughter of Humphrey Trent, and whose descendants live in Wyoming county; Thomas, who married a daughter of Frank Evans; John, who married a daughter of Abner Vance; James, who married a daughter of John Toler; (Squire M.A. Hatfield and James Hatfield are the sons of this marriage) Jacob, who married a daughter of Peter Cline; and Valentine, who was never married.

“Of his three daughters, Phoebe married Alexander Varney; Celia married James Justice, who was at one time sheriff of Logan county, and who was the father of John Justice, a prominent merchant in Logan Court House (the name of the city at that time), B.H. Justice, a merchant and timber dealer of Cabell county, and William E. Justice, a merchant at North Spring and at one time a member of the West Virginia legislature.

“Joseph Hatfield, a brother of Valentine Hatfield, settled about the same time at Matewan.”