Thursday, January 1, 1897
A case of litigation between J. J. McLaughlin and H. W. Bowling, of Summers County, promises to be historic. It has been before the justices six times, and just renewed for the seventh suit. Sixteen dollars is the amount in question; the costs, so far, two hundred dollars.
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A girl’s taste differs according to her age, says a cynic. At sixteen she wants a dude with toothpick shoes and a microscopic mustache; at twenty, a chief justice and a pile of tin; at twenty-five they’ll be satisfied with a member of congress; at thirty, a country doctor or a preacher will do; and at thirty-five, anything in the male line, from an editor down.
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The following is an extract from an oration by Robert G. Ingersoll:
“It is no advantage to live in a city where poverty degrades and failure brings despair. The fields are lovelier than paved streets and the great forests of oak and elms are more poetic than steeples and chimneys. In the country is the idea of home. There you see the rising and setting sun, you become acquainted with the stars and the clouds. The constellations are your friends. You hear the rain on the roof and the rhythmic sighing of the winds. You are thrilled by the resurrection called spring, touched and saddened by autumn – the grace and poetry of death. Every field is a picture, a landscape; every landscape a poem; every flower a tender thought; and every forest a fairy land. In the country you preserve your identity – your personality. There you are an aggregation of atoms, but in the city you are only an atom of aggregation.”
MARRIAGES
Mr. Samuel Dean and Miss Minnie Hays, daughter of Mr. Abraham Hays, at Lobelia.
Mr. Kenny Wade and Miss Aggie Nottingham, of the Levels.
Mr. Frank Wilfong and Miss Ida Woodell, of Academy, daughter of Clark Woodell, Esq.
DEATHS
Mrs. Ella Dysard, wife of L. J. R. Dysard, near Traveler’s Repose died very suddenly of neuralgia of the heart Sunday night, December 20. She was aged 30 years. She was a daughter of the late David MacLaughlin, near Driftwood, and was a very estimable lady…
Mrs. J. Luther McNeel, of Laurel Run, died December 18, aged about twenty-five years. She was a step-daughter of Mr. George White, a well known citizen of that neighborhood. Mrs. McNeel was a kind neighbor and an industrious housekeeper, and these young people had good prospects before them. She leaves mother, husband and little children to mourn her long absence.
Died Monday, December 21, near Green Bank, of diabetic troubles, Miss Quaide Beard, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Josiah Beard, aged about twenty-one years. She was a very interesting person. Miss Quaide and her twin sister, Bertie, were teachers in our schools…
MARRIED – In Mingo County, W. Va, Aaron Hatfield, Nephew of ‘Cap’ Hatfield, to Mary McCoy, Daughter of Rudolph McCoy.
A simple enough wedding notice that – but behind it, and in it, as romantic a tale of love and courtship as was ever penned – a tale of a mountain maid’s wooing; she a McCoy; her lover, one of the famous Hatfields, and the two families, for years avowed enemies sworn to kill at sight, to hunt each other like wild animals; defying the law and the law’s officers, and for forty years waging the bloodiest feud in the history of the South.
For forty years, the Hatfield-McCoy vendetta has waged, and in those forty years, forty coffins, marked by headstones in the neighboring graveyards, tell of forty lives snuffed out by bullet and knife. Its origin was trivial. Way back in ’56, when West Virginia was new country, many parts of it unexplored and unsettled, two razorback hogs strayed from the farm of Anse Hatfield. Where they went was the bone of the contention. Hatfield claimed that they had wandered to the premises of Rudolph McCoy and were being kept there. This, McCoy denied, and the matter finally came up in the shape of a suit for the recovery in the justice court. The case was decided for Hatfield.
During the trial, hot words were passed and open hostilities were narrowly averted on several occasions. The relatives and friends of the two litigants crowded the rude courtroom, all armed and ready to take an active part if the impending battle broke out. But it was avoided, and nothing more than threats from the leaders of the McCoy faction occurred to give alarm. Thus the feud started and, for forty years, it kept the countryside in a state of excitement.
The McCoys made good their threats. One morning, the body of Bill Stayton, a grandson of the plaintiff in the hog case, was found lying dead with a bullet hole in his head. Two of the numerous McCoy boys were arrested for the murder, but were acquitted at the trial. At this juncture, the outbreak of the Civil War played a part. The deadly enemies, who had sworn to kill members of the opposing faction on sight, united in their country’s defense, and for the four years the war lasted a truce was declared.
With the surrender of the Confederate forces came the renewal of the feudal hostilities. Old “Cap” Hatfield, the patriarch of the family, assumed the leadership. Jonce Hatfield, soon after, abducted Rosana McCoy, and refused to right by marriage the wrong he had done her. For this he was arrested, but a daring rescue by the Hatfields prevented his trial for the charge. From this on to 1882, matters went along rather smoothly. Whenever members of the factions would meet, there was sure to be an exchange of shots, but, strange to say, no one was killed outright, though two of the McCoys died afterwards from wounds received in one of their battles.
But election day 1882 marked the beginning of a series of fights, each of which claimed one or more victims…
To be continued…