PHOTO | West Virginia University : West Virginia & Regional History Center
A museum to preserve the story of the infamous Hatfield family of the nineteenth century is planned for the former home place of Devil Anse Hatfield on Main Island Creek.
Jackie Hatfield is the great-great-great grandson of William Anderson Hatfield, or more widely know as Devil Anse.
Jackie is also the president and managing director of the Hatfield and McCoy Foundation.
According to the mission statement on the foundation's website, the purpose of the museum is to educate and preserve the Hatfield-McCoy family history of the famous blood feud while promoting peace and showing the world it is possible to love beyond our differences.
Anse Hatfield lived near the Tug River in West Virginia throughout much of the fighting in the murderous family feud in the later half of the 1800s that sparked the imagination of a country recover from a bloody Civil War.
Randolph McCoy, better known as Randal, was Anse’s Kentucky nemesis.
The feud involved murderous retaliations for murderous vengeance, forbidden love between Anse's son Johnson and Randal's daughter Rosanna and even a stolen pig.
The hatred between the two families peaked New Years Day 1888 when the Hatfield clan crossed the Tug River and burned the McCoy Cabin. Two of Randal’s children killed and his wife Sarah was nearly beaten to death. Seven of Randal and Sarah’s seventeen children were killed during the feud.
The museum is planned to be established at the final home place of Devil Anse at Sarah Ann. The large house burned decades ago but the original bridge, retaining wall and bottom land are more or less as they were 100 years ago.
The home place is located just above the bridge to the family cemetery where a life size Italian marble statue of Devil Anse stands for his marker.
Hatfield was famously baptized in Island Creek by Preacher Dyke Garrett before Anse's death on January 6, 1921
More information on the forthcoming museum can be found here: http://hatfieldmccoyfoundation.org/
Listen to Jay Nunley's Inside the Feud: Hatfields and McCoy episode featuring the 1888 raid on McCoy cabin