PEACE AGREEMENT SIGNED BETWEEN HATFIELDS-MC COYS - Truce Officially Ends Famous Feud

(06/15/2003)

A pen and a document has officially sealed the end of Appalachia's most infamous bloody feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. No more shotgun and bullets. Descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families have met in Pikeville, Kentucky to sign the truce, ending the feud that claimed at least a dozen lives. More than 60 descendants signed the paper during the fourth Hatfield-McCoy Festival. The governors of both states proclaimed June 14 as Hatfield-McCoy Reconciliation Day. The McCoys of Kentucky and Hatfields of West Virginia launched the feud over a pig, but the origin may have been over timber rights. By 1888, as many as a dozen people from both families had died violently. The feud was made famous by big city reporters, including Harper's magazine, but other family feuds in Kentucky took a much greater toll, including the Clay County Kentucky feuds, which included several ancestors of Roane and Calhoun families. See famous photographs of the feud families and other feud tales: Hatfield-McCoy Feud Photo Gallery McCoys Online

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