Hatfields & McCoys History Channel Lots of smoke

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Absolutely everything scripted for a movie is rife with errors. From the way folks talked and looked to the clothes and all kinds of other things. If I sat down and tried to pick through every show I saw looking for errors, there would be no enjoyment. I don't like blatant error, like showing a trapdoor at the siege of Boonesboro. (Actually an early Dan'l Boone talkie)

Chuck Dixon has a sign on the wall in his shop that says something to the effect that: Josey Wales is the only man that never had a cap and ball revolver misfire. Movies take license with all kinds of things whether intentionally or not.

Personally, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'd give it a 7. I expected a little more fleshing out of why they felt the way they did about each other. I don't see one side portrayed as evil or good, so much as they were from opposite sides of the tracks/ river.
 
Well in the movie it is clear that Randall McCoy's dislike for Anse Hatfield is a direct result of Hatfield's desertion from the Confederate army. In McCoy's eyes, Hatfield has no honor.
 
Well, at least there are no aliens for sale in a pawn shop... It's pretty rare to see factual historical content on the History Channel these days, and this show is closer to that mark than anything else they've done lately.

I concur with 7/10
 
I don't watch TV, but didn't one side fight for the Union and the other side for the Confederacy?

I thought the feud was over the Hatfield treatment of some McCoy women. It caused a stabbing for which three McCoys were lynched.
 
Well in the movie it is clear that Randall McCoy's dislike for Anse Hatfield is a direct result of Hatfield's desertion from the Confederate army. In McCoy's eyes, Hatfield has no honor.
Click to expand...


Neither were regular CSA The logan wildcats were a local guirilla group who harrassed yankees. There is no evidence Hatfield deserted, or McCoy was a POW.
 
I never let the language or the casting that hollywood shoves down our throats, stop me from watching the parts that interest me. Being politically correct is not one of my virtues.
 
Totally agree with statements regarding the movie "Matewan". Exellent movie.

Great scene where Baldwin Felts agents are attempting to evict minors from company owned homes and are "faced down" by "gen-u-ine hill-folk" (as stated by a charactor).....coming out from the woods angry that their hunting had been disrupted by all the ruckus:

Agent to hillbilly: "where'd ya git THAT gun......revolutionary war?"

Hillbilly : (shakes head in negative....raises muzzle) "War 'tween th' states".

Without a doubt one of the most brutal and realistic gun battles ever put on film, although I've often wondered if Sid Hatfield actually did "duel-wield" a pair of revolvers during the battle as depicted in the movie.
 
He did.. there are numerous pics of him sporting a two-gun rig.

http://blairmountainreenactment.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/dscf0077.jpg



As for the mini series.. I'm watching and while there is indeed some fast and loose 'premise' stuff from the civil war.. it is very likely Jim Vance killed a McCoy who had been a union soldier. The FEUD however has always been described as starting over the pig.. years later.


The McCoy 'lawyer' isn't someone I recognize from folk history, seems more like a conglomorate character. (I could be wrong).

The logging rights attempted swindle is a story I HAVE heard told many times. Granted I am from the Hatfield side of the Tug Fork, so what I grew up hearing might be a skosh different.. though my grandfather on my dad's side was born in Pikeville KY.. most of the 'lore' I've heard was from the WV side in Matewan and Taylorville.
 
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A musing ...

I find myself wondering if this mainsteam History Channel series will result in a significant increase in tourism of West Virginia/Kentucky, or perhaps an interest in black powder shooting.
 
For the most part, I find the show entertaining. I think some of the characters are a little over the top. I'm disappointed that the show was filmed in Romania. There are plenty of places they could have filmed the movie right here in the Appalachians that would have made the film more authentic. Having lived in the Apps. most of my life, its clear that the scenery is not a correct match. But still an entertaining show.
 
For those who are following it, the series is historically more accurate than any tinseltown effort to date. I had kinfolks in and around Eastern Kentucky from Pike to Harlan counties who were on hand to see some of that drama and knew a few members of the extended families. Those people were completely serious about a blood feud, and many carried it to their graves.

My grandfather's brother lived in the Tug Fork area on the Kentucky side of the river within a day's walk of the Hatfield and McCoy properties. Don't scoff. In those hills, a day's walk was about 10 statute miles. It took a while.

Reports from people who were there say that the feud actually continued well into the 30s...but mostly fistfights and the occasional non-lethal knifing...and you could get a fight started by simply voicing an opinion on who was in the right/wrong, depending on which side you took and who happened to overhear it.

For those who are interested in Appalachian history, there was another smaller, lesser-known feud that began in the 1890s and culminated in the Hillsville Courthouse tragedy in Carroll County Virginia, near the North Carolina border. You can get into a fight to this day in Carroll County by taking the wrong side...again, depending on which side you take and who's listening. I'm acquainted with a few members of the descendants of the Allen clan, and some of them still harbor ill will a hundred years after the incident. "Carrying a grudge" is redefined in Appalachia.
 
Part of my family on my dad's side resides on Wheeling Island and around and about nearby in W. Virginia. When I was a kid in the '50's we'd drive down from Michigan to visit and then on to Pittsburgh where the rest of the family lived.

Anywhoo, I was always reminded by family in W. Virginia that we were not Hillbillies, we were Ridge Runners in W. Virginia. My gramma always said the cows in and around Wheeling had legs that were shorter on one side because of having to walk on the hillsides.:D

Never heard anything about feuds when I was a kid, but used to get stories about the Zane's and the Wetzel brothers and Col. McCollough from the settlement days in the area.

Sorry for the drift, but this thread kick started some fond memories. I am enjoying watching the show for the firearms being used. I don't have anything to offer other than I am struck by the sadness that watching stories such as this brings about.
 
The 1858 Remington was never made as a brass frame. Remington made a small .31 caliber, called an 1863 IIRC, which was made in four basic versions, two of which had brass frames, so yes Remington even being a Northern maker, did use brass.
But the larger .36 and .44 caliber revolvers were steel frame jobs.
What you saw was an artifact or anachronism; someone using what he thought was a Confederate-made gun that never really existed.
 
My mother's folks came from the area between Norton, Virginia, and Louisa, Kentucky. During the 1950s and up to 1965 or so we would travel by car from Kingsport to Louisa to stay with an aunt and uncle every Labor Day weekend, mom, dad, us kids and mamaw and papaw. It was a 212 mile trip and we heard lotsa tales of life in the coal towns, and about scrip and the company store.

I also remember my great-granma used what I learned later were pronunciations that dated back as far Alexander Pope at least, like she pronounced join "jyne" (rhymes with "line").

"...the show was filmed in Romania..." Cold Mountain set in Civil War era North Carolina mountains was filmed in Romania, also. Sort looks like Great Smoky Mountain area, but fewer TVA power towers, superhighways and jet contrails in the sky. :)

...lesser-known feud that began in the 1890s and culminated in the Hillsville Courthouse tragedy...
Click to expand...
Hillsville, Carrol County, Virginia, Floyd Allen family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Allen

Wife and I got all six hours in the DVR waiting for us tomorrow morning.
 
I enjoyed the show, You just need to take it for what it is entertainment, brass frame remmie and all. It was a very tragic story, so many lives ruined over foolishness.
 
Carl, once again I see that we've had similar paths. My mother was born and raised in Coeburn, and my cousins ran a law firm in Norton. I remember the Inn at Wise when it was an operating hotel...and stayed there once. A very elegant place as I remember. The last time I saw it, the building had fallen into disrepair. I imagine it's been torn down by now.

I remember the operating coke ovens over on the Pound. At night, the scene was positively Medeval.

My maternal grandparents lived on top of Wise Mountain, in the days before they had indoor plumbing. My grandfather never lived in a house with a flush toilet, central heating, or an electric range. Outhouses, "cookstoves" and wood and coal-fired pot belly stoves were all he knew. Modern conveniences made him nervous, although he did consent to electricity...Edison Lights... when he was about 80. I remember him saying that goin' to the head inside the house just didn't seem right to him. He didn't even use a slop jar except in the winter months. He was born 3 months before the Sioux and Cheyenne handed Custer his keister at the Little Bighorn.

I also remember him talking about the Hatfield-McCoy affair. He said they were a buncha hellions that didn't have no sense.

Hint: If ya don't know what a slop jar is, you'uns ain't from around here. :D
 
Carl N. Brown said:
My mother's folks came from the area between Norton, Virginia, and Louisa, Kentucky. During the 1950s and up to 1965 or so we would travel by car from Kingsport to Louisa to stay with an aunt and uncle every Labor Day weekend, mom, dad, us kids and mamaw and papaw. It was a 212 mile trip and we heard lotsa tales of life in the coal towns, and about scrip and the company store.

I also remember my great-granma used what I learned later were pronunciations that dated back as far Alexander Pope at least, like she pronounced join "jyne" (rhymes with "line").

"...the show was filmed in Romania..." Cold Mountain set in Civil War era North Carolina mountains was filmed in Romania, also. Sort looks like Great Smoky Mountain area, but fewer TVA power towers, superhighways and jet contrails in the sky. :)


Hillsville, Carrol County, Virginia, Floyd Allen family.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Allen

Wife and I got all six hours in the DVR waiting for us tomorrow morning.
Click to expand...
The movie "Winter People" which stared Kurt Russell and Kelly McGillis a depression era family fued in North Carolina between the Wrights and Campbells was acutually filmed in Avery County North Carolina and had great Cinematography. No power lines or jet contrails. And they even had some locals play parts in the movie. My cousin got to be in the bear hunting scenes which was pretty cool.
 
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