Tale of the Devil: Preparing for 4th Printing

LOGAN, W.Va - Late Appalachian historian and accomplished author Dr. Coleman C. Hatfield, of Logan County, was raised on raucous and spine-tingling stories of Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield and the Hatfield and McCoy feud. From the time he was three or four years old, he heard vivid stories about his famous great-grandpa, Anse, wrestling bears and successfully tracking whitetails, panthers and ‘coons through primitive mountain country by horseback.

“When a young ’un didn’t want to go to bed he could ask the adults to tell him a story and he’d get to stay up a little longer,” he once told Charleston Gazette reporter Rusty Marks. As he explained, the colorful and action-packed stories were never disappointing.

So, how many of those late-night narratives were true; more importantly, what about the printed stories about the feud in newspapers, magazines or books through the decades? Over time it’s been said that exaggeration of the feud sprouted like ramps.

Several books have been written—some as sensational as the most embellished National Enquirer exposes—about the Hatfield-McCoy feud, but no author has attempted a biography of Devil Anse Hatfield, leader of the Logan County feuding clan.

Now a popular biography exists that takes a scholarly look at the patriarch and his family. The volume, entitled, The Tale of the Devil: The Biography of Devil Anse Hatfield, will soon be in its forth major printing (Woodland Press, LLC and Quarrier Press). Coleman C. Hatfield and journalist Robert Spence actually penned the book in 2003, when Coleman was in his late-70s. Yet the book, with its later revisions and added archival photographs, continues to set the record straight and offer a high degree of critical and journalistic investigation, without being dry or tedious. It includes the thorough research of both Dr. Hatfield and his late-father Coleman Alderson Hatfield (born in 1889, the son of Cap Hatfield, perhaps the most brutal of the feud participants). As a matter of fact, much of the material in Tale of the Devil is culled from hand-written manuscripts by his father, a distinguished historian in his own right. C.A. Hatfield first started recording family history around 1909 and was painstaking in his research and insisted on corroborating the stories he obtained.

“Dad was very careful to prove his information to his own satisfactions, as he would to prove any law case. This was the biggest case of his life, in a sense,” Dr. Hatfield said in a 2003 interview. “Tale of the Devil was developed from decades worth of historical research—partly from written manuscripts, historic exploration and recorded interviews from my father and me—and gleans the solid truth from the many Hatfield-McCoy fables.”

Co-author Robert Spence also added his own research to the mix and included his journalistic expertise to an already extraordinary project. The result, Tale of the Devil, has received rave reviews and continues to be top-selling historical title.

Dr. Hatfield was named 2004 Tamarack Author of the Year in recognition of his achievements related to the biography, and was long considered the principal authority on the life and times of Anderson “Devil Anse” Hatfield (his great-grandfather), Cap Hatfield (his grandfather), the Hatfield family and the feud and post-feud eras.

He unexpectedly passed away in 2007, and the Mountain State lost one of its most respected and prolific historians.

The Tale of the Devil is currently available at: www.woodlandpress.com/book/local-history/sale-tale-devil-biography-devil...

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Photo information: This photo from 2006 is of the late Dr. Coleman C. Hatfield, taken at his home in Stollings, Logan County, WV. He is shown with a 1895 Winchester rifle that belonged to his grandfather Cap Hatfield, son of Devil Anse. Cap has been described as the most violent of the feud participants. Historian, author and lecturer, Dr. Hatfield was considered an authority on the life of Devil Anse Hatfield, Cap Hatfield and the Hatfield-McCoy Feud. — Photo by Keith Davis