LEGACY HUNTERS: Hatfield-McCoy descendants find home, heritage in Arkansas town By SUNNI THIBODEAU/Of the Gazette Staff HATFIELD, Ark.-There are no Hatfields here anymore, and there remains only one McCoy family. Although the name remains, no one seems to remember the origins. No one, that is, except Texarkana resident Jerry Hatfield. "My dad was born in 1889 and there were seven kids that came through Arkansas," he said. "His first cousins set up the sawmill and it became a sawmill town. That was in 1903 or 1905." Hatfield believes he has a family connection to the original feuding Hatfields of Hatfield and McCoy fame. The land around here looks much the same as it did a century ago, when the Hatfields first came to the area. Rich with timber, the land is part of the Ozark foothills just south of Mena. On a gray winter day, the hazy blue woodlands must have looked a lot like the Kentucky and West Virginia border the family called home in the 1800s. The legend of the Hatfields and McCoys has been passed down through generations. The feuding began in 1863 when Devil Anse Hatfield, a Confederate sympathizer, formed a guerrilla band, periodically raiding the Union-leaning McCoys. Bloody feuding between the families passed through the courts at the McCoy family's instigation, spawned a Romeo and Juliet romance and culminated in the deaths of 12 members of the two families. It escalated from a family feud into an all-out war and then became a state matter, with West Virginia and Kentucky battling over which state would try the Hatfields. And while Hollywood has capitalized on the mountain hillbilly aspect of feudin' families, in actuality, the Hatfield family was well off, and timber rights appear to have been at the heart of the matter. Devil Anse Hatfield was prone to bragging about his success in the timber industry, while Ole Ran'l McCoy met with disaster in his timber attempts. Jerry Hatfield's father was born in Pennsylvania the year the Hatfield clan went on trial for the McCoy murders. "We never knew where we stood when the feud was, from 1895 to 1900," he said. He does know his branch wound up in Pennsylvania, then on to Louisiana and then to Texas, where he grew up in Jefferson. "My father's brother is 92, and he is the only sibling left," Hatfield said. "I'm sorry I didn't ask questions sooner." He hoped to find some information about the family from the residents of Hatfield, but even that has proven fruitless. Hatfield resident Albert Gray has worked at nearly every sawmill in the area, starting at Vic Crane's mill in 1945. He doesn't know anything about the Hatfield sawmill. "I think Hatfield (the town) came in when the railroad came through here," he said. His own land is perhaps the oldest deeded land in the area, going back to the early 1800s. The closest business name in town would be the Hatfield Lumber Mill. It has been owned since 1970 by Buddy Bean and Mike Peek but has no ties to the Hatfield family. Even the remaining McCoys haven't been much help in researching the Hatfield history. Raymond McCoy is 90; his wife Irene is 88. Like many of the residents, Raymond McCoy has worked in the timber industry most of his life. He's lived in Hatfield for more than 70 years, coming up from Texas with his family in 1921 to farm the land. "We raised a crop and decided we hated Arkansas," he said. "We went back to Texas and raised a crop and decided Arkansas looked pretty good. So we came back." Irene McCoy is a Hatfield native, raised in a log house on land her father farmed and her grandfather homesteaded. She doesn't know about the Hatfield connection, but does have strong opinions about the town. "It's a good place to live," she said. This June, there will be a Hatfield-McCoy family reunion in Pikeville, Ky. Like the feud itself, it will be bigger than life, turning itself into an actual festival. Devil Anse Hatfield fathered 16 children, and the McCoy family numbers more than 100,000. It is not the first attempt to bring the two families together. In 1982, the Hatfields held a reunion and invited the McCoys. Irene McCoy remembers getting an invitation to that reunion. She doesn't plan to go to this one, so the town of Hatfield will not be represented. But Jerry Hatfield plans to make the trip from Texarkana to Kentucky. And although the town of Hatfield's lone cemetery, Six Mile Cemetery, bears no Hatfield tombstones and most of the residents are uncertain about the name's heritage, Hatfield hopes to return with more knowledge than he left with. "With a name like Hatfield, you have to research a bit," he said.