The Missing McCoys

The feud yarns make all the Hatfields and McCoys either stupid, bloodthirsty or cowardly. Sometimes it is all three. The majority of the McCoys in the yarns are cowards, who huddled for years, trembling at the thought of the terrible Hatfields. This never sat right with me, from my first reading of a feud book at age twelve until today. I could not accept it, simply because I knew too many McCoys, with not a coward among the lot. My mother was a McCoy, the daughter of Phillip McCoy. Mom had nine siblings, three brothers and six sisters, with nary a coward among them. My Grandpa Phillip McCoy feared no man, and his three sons, Asa, Lucas and Bobby were cut from the same cloth. My mother and her sisters would, as the old folks said, “fight a circle saw.” My aunt Grace is still living in her nineties, and if the ghost of Devil Anse invaded her home tonight, she would fight him tooth and nail to protect her family. The strangest thing about the cowardly McCoy story is that it is supported by a very active and noisy minority of present-day McCoys. This little group, which I call “The Ran’l McCoy cult,” will laud any writer who makes the Hatfields total villains and the McCoys helpless victims—AND makes Ran’l McCoy the head of the McCoy clan. This book will answer the question which plagued me as a youngster, and which I know still plagues readers of feud books, which is: “Why did Randolph McCoy receive no support, either from his relatives outside his immediate family, or from the community at large, in his troubles with Devil Anse Hatfield?” The cult will hate this book. This book will answer the question which plagued me as a youngster, and which I know still plagues readers of feud books, which is: “Why did Randolph McCoy receive no support, either from his relatives outside his immediate family, or from the community at large, in his troubles with Devil Anse Hatfield?”