![diarie letters from hatfield and mccoy diarie letters from hatfield and mccoy](https://i.pinimg.com/236x/b9/73/59/b973599afbc225f9bdf913086fb218c6--a-letter-wwi.jpg)
It seems far more likely, to me, that Vance was involved in some sort of legal squabble with the Hortons over land ownership. An interesting document from 1813 (transcribed here: ) shows that local people considered Daniel Horton to be a man who used every legal means possible to get his hands on the land of his neighbors. He was involved in a Chancery suit with the Hortons, which Barbara Vance Cherep says often involved land title disputes and other non-criminal offenses, but there is no clear indication that this lead to the shooting of Horton. Tantalizing pieces of information suggest legal suits over land. There is no mention in the records of his singing a song.Īs for his reasons for shooting Lewis Horton in 1817, there is no mention in the records. It is apparently true, according to newspaper accounts at the time, that he addressed the crowd for over and hour and a half and exhibited a total contempt for death. On Friday, July 16th, 1819, he was executed by hanging. A judge granted Vance a second trial, and after some wrangling over where it would take place and whether or not the potential jury was prejudiced against him, he was tried again in May of 1819, found guilty again, and sentenced to death a second time. One of his daughters (not Betty) was willing to testify that he was insane in the weeks leading up to the shooting, but since she had not seen him for several days before the shooting, she could not testify that he was insane at that moment. He was tried and found guilty on Apbut appealed the case, claiming that he had not been able to argue insanity at his trial. He did not flee to the Tug Valley but went to jail, where he remained for the entire two years until his execution. He managed to write his will before his death. Lewis did not drown, as Lisa Alther suggested was possible, but was taken home where he lingered for several days and finally died on September 27th. On SeptemAbner Vance did in fact shoot Lewis Horton in the back as he crossed the Clinch River. Remember that five second Google search I mentioned in my previous post? If you go to Google and type in "Abner Vance Story", the top link that comes up is a link to some of Barbara's work, titled “ Abner Vance: Two Sides To Every Story.” So it actually takes more work these days to find the untrue Abner Vance legend than the true Abner Vance story. All of what follows derives from Barbara's work, which was freely available and easily accessible years before either Dean King or Lisa Alther started work on their books. This information comes from the actual documents - court records, letters, newspaper accounts - uncovered by Barbara Vance Cherep, an intrepid researcher who never lets a good story get in the way of finding (and promoting) the truth, and whose insistence on finding documentation before making claims puts her way up at the top of my list of favorite feud researchers. That being said, let me tell you the true story (or at least as true as we can get at this point) of Abner Vance. Their mantra seems to be “never let the truth get in the way of telling a good story.” So they ignore the evidence where they can and build better and better forgeries, souped-up feud tales that have a sophisticated surface of “research” and a massive advertising budget, but which are designed to deceive. Many of these writers seem to feel, rightly or wrongly, that the truth is a kind of fool's gold, shiny enough but worthless, and only the manufactured feud tales can muscle their way into the marketplace and onto the top of the bestseller lists. The tales themselves have become a kind of raw material, like timber or coal, that outside interests can mine for profit. When it comes to feud tales, created over the years and polished into a glossy perfection, big-screen-ready, the task of deflating them, of correcting the record and restoring actual historical detail is definitely an uphill battle. Tall tales sometimes have a tenacity that defies the work of the historian. Next By Guest Contributor Ryan Hardesty, Creator of “The Real Hatfield, Real McCoy, Real Feud, Real Matewan Facebook Group”ĮDITOR'S NOTE: THIS IS PART 2 OF A 3-PART POST