Free Blood Feud: The Hatfields & The McCoys by Lisa Alther

that the Hog Trial had been fair and needed to be forgotten. 24
    A tall, strong, handsome Confederate war hero, Ellison Hatfield was rumored to have fought at Gettysburg. 25 A photograph shows him buttoned up in his Confederate uniform, fondling his pistol. 26 He displays the calm self-assurance of people who know they are attractive and have enjoyed many advantages because of it. In contrast to his glamorous younger brother, Devil Anse Hatfield resembled a worried troll.
    Ellison was “noted throughout the county as being a peacemaker.” 27 He was married to Bill Staton’s sister, and they had nine children. He and his family attended a Baptist church on the West Virginia side of the Tug Fork. Had he not been killed soon after this incident, he might have been able to avert some of the senseless violence that followed his death. Then again, had he not been killed, a motive for much of the senseless violence wouldn’t have existed in the first place.

    On June 18, 1880, 28 after enduring two years of insults and threats over his testimony in the Hog Trial, Bill Staton ambushed Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy and his brother Paris as they were hunting atop a mountain ridge. Staton shot Paris in the shoulder while aiming for his heart. Squirrel Hunting Sam grabbed Staton’s gun and tossed it aside. Staton and Sam grappled along the ridgetop, trampling small bushes underfoot. Finally Staton got a death grip on Sam’s throat. He struggled to push Sam’s head far enough backward to break his neck. Before blacking out, Squirrel Hunting Sam managed to pull his pistol from his holster and shoot Bill Staton dead.
    Or at least this is Truda McCoy’s version of Bill Staton’s murder. 29 Coleman A. Hatfield, in contrast, tells a different story. He maintains that Staton was riding down a road in West Virginia, minding his own business—though possibly looking for trouble. Paris and Squirrel Hunting Sam McCoy, working as farm laborers, were hoeing corn in a nearby field. They spotted Bill Staton. Throwing down their hoes, they raced across the field. Sam grabbed the horse’s bridle, and Paris wrenched Staton from his saddle. Then Sam shot Staton point-blank. 30
    Another version of this story maintains that Bill Staton was fighting Paris McCoy when he sank his teeth into Paris’s jugular vein. Squirrel Hunting Sam then shot Staton to save Paris’s life. This same macabre account claims that rigor mortis set in, and Staton’s jaws had to be pried from Paris’s throat after his death. 31

    Almost every incident in this feud has several conflicting versions that blame different participants, depending upon whether its source supported the Hatfields or the McCoys. But which conveys what really happened? No one can possibly know except the participants themselves, and they are all long dead, the truth buried with them.
    Valentine “Wall” Hatfield, Devil Anse’s older brother, was a justice of the peace for the Magnolia District of West Virginia, in which the murder occurred. He issued warrants for the arrests of Squirrel Hunting Sam and Paris McCoy. Paris was apprehended a month later, Sam two years after that. Several McCoy relatives testified against the McCoy brothers in their trials, as did Ellison Hatfield, whose wife was Bill Staton’s sister. But both Sam and Paris were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. 32 Ranel McCoy was furious that they had been brought to trial in the first place and was equally furious with Ellison Hatfield for testifying against them.
    Oral tradition assigns Devil Anse Hatfield the role of peacemaker in arranging the acquittals of Sam and Paris. It’s said that he hoped this reprieve would calm the tensions mounting between the two families. 33 He was also preoccupied with problems of his own concerning his new timber enterprise on Perry Cline’s former land.
    But an episode had taken place by the time of Paris McCoy’s trial in the fall of 1880 that had already escalated those tensions.

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