The infamous murderous feud between the Hatfields and McCoys families has taken a petty new twist as real-life descendants wage a war of bitter words 150 years on.
What started as a late 19th century war tinged with violence, marriage and betrayal in the foothills of the Appalachians, has culminated in bar shout-downs and claims of harassment and stalking on a new series of their Fox Nation show.
McCoy descendant Courtney McCoy DeProspero and her husband, Derek, are fixtures on the series and made an appearance on Fox & Friends on Tuesday to promote the second season of ‘The Real Hatfields & McCoys: Forever Feuding’.
While the feud has taken a contemporary turn – with guns and arson ditched in favor of sarcastic quips and business one-upmanship – Courtney and Derek insisted that the rivalry is ‘real’.
‘We can’t seem to get away from them,’ Courtney exclaimed.
Derek DeProspero, left, and Courtney McCoy DeProspero, right, appeared on Fox & Friends to promote the second season of ‘The Real Hatfields & McCoys: Forever Feuding’
Pictured: The Hatfields who star on the reality show. From left to right (Chad Bishop, married couple Chris Hatfield and Casandra née McCoy, and Amber Hatfield Bishop, who is married to Chad)
The bloody history of the decades-long dispute, which has also been memorialized in a miniseries starring Kevin Costner, dates back to the Civil War.
The dividing line between the families was the Tug River Valley, with most of the Hatfields living on the West Virginia side and the majority of the McCoys settled further west in Kentucky.
Most male members of each family fought for the Confederacy, with the exception being Asa Harmon McCoy, who was aligned with Union troops.
The Logan Wildcats, a Confederate militia led by family patriarch William Anderson ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield, reportedly gunned down Asa while he was returning from war on January 7, 1865.
Despite no one ever being prosecuted for the murder, the feud didn’t really kick off until years later when a Hatfield was accused of stealing a hog from Randall McCoy, who would become Devil Anse’s arch nemesis.
This would kick off decades of revenge killings that claimed many lives, with historians offering a range of casualties as low as a dozen or as high as 60.
Kevin Costner (center) as ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield in the 2012 series ‘Hatfields & McCoys’
A group photo of the Hatfields circa 1899 in front of their West Virginia home
This map roughly shows where the skirmishes between the Hatfields and the McCoys occurred. The Hatfields primarily lived east of the Tug Fork river, while the McCoys mostly lived west of it
In one of the most horrific clashes, the Hatfields burned down a McCoy cabin in an attempt to drive them out into the open. Two of Randall McCoy’s children were shot to death as they tried to escape the flames, while his wife, Sarah, was bludgeoned and left with a crushed skull.
Nowadays, the problems between the families are decidedly less violent and more focused on outdoing each other in business, whether it be crashing their respective restaurant grand openings or racing to build up lodging alongside the popular Hatfield-McCoy off-roading trails.
‘You are going to see our issues with the Hatfields, what they’ve been putting us through, how they tried to impede us from our growth, hinder us from moving around,’ Courtney said, adding, ‘They don’t even want us in the region.’
The overarching premise of the show is that the Hatfields have their territory in West Virginia and the McCoys have theirs. Throughout the show, each family tries to encroach and gain advantages however they can to expand their regional empires.
This inevitably leads to confrontations between the dueling clans.
Derek, who in between seasons married Courtney and had a daughter with her, claimed members of the Hatfield family stalked him around a Sam’s Club.
‘It was wild. I mean, just kind of like harassment a little bit, but at the same time, I keep it moving,’ he said.
In a snippet from an forthcoming episode, Courtney kicks out the Hatfields from the bar she runs called McCoy Station
This is how Amber Hatfield Bishop, the third great granddaughter of Devil Anse, reacted to being asked to leave for being too loud
A climactic moment of the new season comes when the Hatfields disrupt a Veteran’s Day event at McCoy Station, a bar in Logan, West Virginia.
Courtney, who runs the bar, walks up to a group of Hatfields and says to them: ‘I’m sorry, this is a place of business. I have asked you to chill out. I think you gotta go.’
The camera then pans to Amber Hatfield Bishop, the third great granddaughter of Devil Anse, whose mouth is hanging open in shock.
The show also attempts to draw from bits of the family rivalry that have become American folk legend.
For instance, Casandra McCoy and Chris Hatfield – both seventh generation descendants – get married in the first season, which was the focal point of much of the drama.
In true Romeo and Juliet fashion, Devil Anse’s son Johnse Hatfield and Randall’s daughter Roseanna McCoy started up a passionate love affair in 1880 that resulted in them having a daughter together.
Johnse Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy’s relationship ended in tragedy, much like the story of Romeo and Juliet
Screenwriters saw the similarities between this real-life romance and Romeo and Juliet. In 1949, Hollywood put out a movie simply titled Roseanna McCoy, which heavily focused on the forbidden relationship between Johnse and Roseanna
Roseanna fled the McCoys and lived with the Hatfields for months, but Devil Anse reportedly refused to give his blessing to allow a marriage between his son and the mother of his child.
Roseanna eventually returned to her family when it became clear getting married wouldn’t ever happen.
Like Romeo and Juliet, further tragedy would befall Roseanna.
Their daughter Sally died of measles and pneumonia just a few months after being born. Roseanna later died at the young age of 28.
A group of Hatfield gunmen are pictured above in the late 19th Century holding up men, possibly McCoys, on the roadside
The feud between the Hatfields (pictured) and the McCoys informally ended in the 1890s, but the families didn’t make official peace until 2003, according to the US Census Bureau
Johnse emerged from the love affair relatively unscathed, remarrying and reaching age 60 before he died in 1922.
The feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys informally ended in the 1890s, but the families didn’t make official peace until 2003, according to the US Census Bureau.
On the show, Casandra and Chris successfully merge the Hatfields and the McCoys with no bloodshed, but certainly not without incident.
The second season is expected to run for 10 episodes, each of which are about 22 minutes long.
The first four episodes are available to stream on Fox Nation, and the fifth episode airs on Monday, September 23.
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