Capt. Anderson Hatfield
and below the names of his thirteen children:
| JOHNSON WM. A. ROBERT L. NANCY ELLIOTT R. MARY ELIZABETH ELIAS TROY JOSEPH D. ROSE WILLIS E. TENNIS |
You lift your eyes again to the marble statue. If you knew him in life, you’ll say, “This is a fine likeness—and a fine piece of marble.”
“His children had it done in Italy,” someone offers the information.
“So,” you say to yourself, “this is the grave of Devil Anse Hatfield.”
You’ve seen all there is to see. You’re ready to go, if you are like hundreds of others who visit the last resting place of the leader of the Hatfield-McCoy feud. But, if you chance to tarry—say, in the fall when fogs are heavy there in the Guyan Valley, through which Main Island Creek flows—you may see and hear things strangely unaccountable.
Close beside the captain’s grave is another. On the stone is carved the name—Levisa Chafin Hatfield. If you were among the many who attended her funeral you will remember how peaceful she looked in her black burying dress she’d kept so long for the occasion. Again you will see her as she lay in her coffin, hands primly folded on the black frock, the frill of lace on the black bonnet framing the careworn face. You look up suddenly to see a mountain woman in a somber calico frock and slat bonnet. She is putting new paper flowers, to take the place of the faded ones, in the glass-covered box between the grave of Devil Anse and the mother of his children.
“You best come home with me,” she invites with true hospitality, after an exchange of greetings. You learn that Molly claims kin to both sides, being the widow of a Hatfield and married to a McCoy, and at once you are disarmed.