Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton in “Hatfields and McCoys.”



What do you think of the “Hatfields & McCoys” so far? Were there any scenes that stood out to you?

On the whole, I think the miniseries is doing a great job of conveying the complexities that fueled the feud and the contradictions of the personalities involved.

How accurate is the miniseries in depicting the Hatfield-McCoy feud?

Several scenes stood out for me because of their historical inaccuracies.  Some characters are murdered in the miniseries who weren’t murdered in reality, or by people other than their actual murderers.  Also, the Tug Fork Valley at that time was a remote rural area, so the existence there of a classy Wild West saloon and brothel startled me.  The depiction of Perry Cline was especially surprising to me because he lived in Pikeville, 25 miles away from the feud area, with his wife and five children and wasn’t actually roaming the Tug Fork trying to persuade Roseanna to marry him or manipulating the McCoy sons into attacking the Hatfields.  He wasn’t even a lawyer until the final years of the feud.  But this is how historical fiction works, and the miniseries is a fiction, not a documentary.  And of course many of the feudists weren’t as physically attractive as the Hollywood actors who are portraying them.

What is your blood relationship to the McCoys? What kinds of things did you hear growing up?

My father’s first cousin married a McCoy whose grandfather was a brother of Sarah McCoy, Randolph’s wife.  So her children are my second cousins.  The only thing I ever heard about the feud growing up was that it concerned a wandering hog claimed by both families.  And there were lots of jokes about feuding hillbillies, as well as many related cartoons in the newspapers and sitcoms on TV.

What’s the most surprising thing you found in your research?

During my research I was most surprised to discover the devastating long-term impact this feud has had on Appalachian people.  Almost single-handedly it shaped the unfortunate stereotype of the ignorant, drunken, violent, lazy hillbilly, which was used by industrialists after the feud ended to justify their invasion of the southern Appalachians to extract the timber and coal, keeping most of the profits for themselves and leaving behind poverty, diseased and maimed workers, and environmental destruction, including 500 mountains that have been destroyed so far.

What kind of relationship do the Hatfields and McCoys have today?

I encountered no lingering rancor between the latter-day Hatfields and McCoys. Many have friends in the other family.  In 2000 a joint reunion was held in Kentucky that drew 5000 Hatfields and McCoys from all over the country.  This reunion has been held every summer since and always closes with a tug-of-war between members of the two families across the Tug Fork, very near the site where the Hatfield posse shot the three McCoy sons dead for murdering Ellison Hatfield.

For more information on “Hatfields and McCoys,” family feuds, and that sort of thing, follow @cjfarley.