The Hatfield & McCoy Feud after Kevin Costner: Rescuing History

The story of the Hatfield and McCoy feud is a combination of legends and lies, with a light sprinkling of historical fact. It originated in newspaper stories in 1888.
The original sources used by the reporters were prejudiced, because all of them were either under indictment for murder in Logan County, West Virginia, or stood in immediate danger of being charged with either murder or conspiracy to commit murder.
The story differed markedly from the much shorter story the author heard from eyewitnesses while growing up on Blackberry Creek, where most of the events transpired.
Within three months of the appearance of the 1888 articles in the big city papers, the land owned by the men indicted for the 1882 lynching of the three McCoys had been gobbled up by Eastern capitalists.
The land grab is the real story of the Hatfields and McCoys, as told by an author who grew up in the center of feud country and holds a Cornell MS in labor history.  It is what the actual historical records say, with a few chuckles along the way.