Tags
Appalachia, Bill Staton, civil war, Confederate Army, Dr. Leonard W. Roberts, Harmon McCoy, history, Kentucky, Lexington, Paris McCoy, Randolph McCoy, Squirrel Huntin' Sam McCoy, Truda McCoy, Union Army
Truda Williams McCoy’s The McCoys: Their Story (1976) is a classic book about the Hatfield-McCoy Feud. Truda, a McCoy descendant born in 1902 who married a grandson of Ran’l McCoy, collected her stories directly from feud participants and close family members prior to and during the 1930s. Truda was unable to publish her manuscript, but after her death in 1974 Dr. Leonard W. Roberts located and edited the manuscript, then published it through Preservation Council Press. In this 1982 interview, Dr. Roberts recollects the story of Squirrel Huntin’ Sam McCoy and contemplates bigger questions about the feud:
Did Squirrel Huntin’ Sam McCoy ever kill anyone?
He doesn’t say that he did in his manuscript. He says that he protected people. Now outside of the manuscript, he tells a story to his grandson who was visiting that “Yes, I did kill a man. It’s not in my manuscript. I just skipped it. I didn’t like to have it in there.” Or something like that. But when he and his brother Paris were out hunting they ran into one of the Ellison [Bill Staton] boys—I can’t think of the name right quick—ran into one of the boys that was on the other side most of the time. And this boy began to shoot and pretty soon he and Paris had been shot through and had fallen to the ground and—what was his name—Ellison [Bill Staton] was on top and was trying to twist this fellow’s head off or something like that and Squirrel Huntin’ Sam said, “I saw then I just had to shoot.” And he got up and shot and killed him. But then in telling this story, he said, “The reason I don’t tell this story much, I dread that it happened.” And you ask him why and he’d say, “Well, when we went up there to him, my enemy’s gun was already empty.”
Why did this feud get such nationwide attention?
Well, about three or four things there that maybe I can’t think of… One at a time. Let’s start out with the, let’s say problems with the Civil War. It’s a long story, but one of Randolph McCoy’s brothers had gone into the army on the Union side in the State of Kentucky. Went and fought in Kentucky down around Lexington and central Kentucky. Got discharged. Come back home. By that time the rebels had been organizing posses and groups to patrol the whole situation. So they’d heard that Harmon—this was the person’s name—had come back home. Been out fighting for the Union. Now he’s come back home. So they traced him down. And it seems that he stayed with his family only one night after two years in the war until he was shot at. Nobody could go out and get wood or water. Why, they’d be shot at. So he slipped out after midnight and went to the little cave back on the hillside. Well, by then, by the time he escaped it had been snowing a bit. So this posse who had come after him traced him in the snow and found him back in that cave, dragged him out, and killed him. The war was going on then. And everybody was away from home fighting on one side the other. And that sort of didn’t take hold, didn’t cause any hard feelings, until they all came back. And then it was understood that Harmon’s—he had four sons and two daughters—the four sons seem to have sworn that they would avenge their father’s murder now or sometime else. So they started to look for the enemy and continued looking for almost twenty years almost before it broke out into fighting.
How does this feud compare to the other feuds?
When you read about… Now we’re beginning to study Appalachia really in some depth and we find out that there were probably two hundred small or large blood feuds that happened before the war, you know, fighting over which ones are going and why you’re going, during the war when the posses and the bushwhackers began to come in, and then as soon as it settled down and the South was whipped, we might say, or worsted, and they came back, those soldiers came back and began to try and establish their names, the first thing they’d try to do is run for office and then they would hear sharp criticism about what they did and how they fought for the enemy and how they were beaten and so forth. And so the feuds began to erupt soon after the Civil War all up and down the Mississippi, Ohio, and up and down the mountains and rivers and so forth of the middle area. See, we’re talking about the buffer area here. When the Civil War was going on was between Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, those are buffer states that goes between North and South.