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Hatfield, Elias w rifle FB

20230801GHLn-
Hatfield and McCoy Feud/FB
January 6, 2021 ·
ELIAS HATFIELD KILLS DOC ELLIS; THE CLAN IS BACK ON THE RUN
GILBERT, W.Va. - It seemed obvious at the time to the Logan County Hatfields that Humphrey “Doc” Ellis was the mastermind behind a June 1898 raid that led to the brutal capture of Johnse Hatfield, firstborn son of Anderson “Devil Anse” and Levicy Hatfield.
While walking home from a long day at work with his best friend, Ock Damron, Johnse was ambushed by an armed posse on horseback along the Norfolk and Western railroad tracks in the Leatherwood Shoals region of Mingo County. The band-wearing dark-colored suits and carrying Winchester lever-actions-emerged from a heavy cut, a place where rock from a mountain had been excavated and leveled, making way for the railroad tracks.
They seized Johnse, who was unarmed, and he was beaten, hogtied, gagged, and heaved across the back of a pony like a heavy sack of grain. The men guided Johnse’s mount across the Tug River, galloping toward Pike County, Kentucky, to face old feud charges relating to his involvement in the 1888 New Year’s Night Massacre at Randall McCoy’s cabin, which resulted in the killing of his children, Alifair and Calvin McCoy, and the beating of Randall’s wife, Sally. After being humiliated and slugged repeatedly by the posse members, they released Ock Damron.
* * *
Devil Anse and his sons had known trouble was brewing between Johnse and Doc over the last few months. Doc, a successful entrepreneur in Mingo County who also had political aspirations, had been involved in logging, marketing, and transporting prime timber that grew along the Guyandot River. This was in the same general territory of Johnse’s current timber operation, which he founded shortly after returning from a couple years on the run - avoiding bounty hunters and road detectives-in the American Northwest and British Columbia. On more than one occasion it was also rumored that Doc even assigned certain work crews to log on Johnse’s land, which technically belonged to his in-laws, the Brownings. Johnse was married to Roxie Browning by this time, and was overseeing the prosperous lumber camp near Gilbert.
Doc was a headstrong business rival and, wanting Johnse out of the picture altogether, had strong motives for having him kidnapped at the Norfolk and Western cutaway and hauled into the Bluegrass State. Johnse later recalled after his arrest that he saw Doc Ellis hiding along the tree line near the tracks when he was bushwhacked, so he was sure who initiated the snare.
To make matters even worse, the Hatfields claimed Doc later boasted around the various logging camps that he’d ensnared Johnse, and was happily “putting him away for good.” Therefore, the entire Hatfield clan was infuriated, and at least one of Devil Anse’s sons was ready to take action against Doc Ellis.
* * *
Johnse’s younger brother, Elias M. Hatfield, was too young to be involved in most of the major feud events or to even remember them. By 1898, he was 21 years old and had grown into a tall, fine-looking man with wavy black hair and steely blue eyes. Intelligent, he had a head for business like his father, Devil Anse, and was well liked among citizens along Main Island Creek and throughout Logan and Mingo counties.
Elias and his brother, Troy, had also just returned to the Mountain State from spending several seasons in Oklahoma Territory, avoiding the law for various infractions, around the same time Johnse was in Washington State and Canada’s west coast. Elias, like Johnse, was also just getting reestablished in local business, taking on a job as a barkeep at Skinner’s Saloon, a popular tavern located across the Tug River in Pike County.
Elias, the fifth son of Devil Anse and Levicy, was considered a good-humored, personable young man. Yet those who knew him best knew all too well that he also had a hair-trigger temper that occasionally showed itself when he was vexed, and especially when he perceived family was being victimized.
At the time Johnse was shanghaied by Doc Ellis’s hired goons, Elias was busy working at Skinner’s. Upon hearing what had transpired with his big brother, he pledged vengeance if the opportunity arose.
On July 4, 1898, an Independence Day celebration was organized in Williamson, with a full day of social activities, brass bands, and marching military troops planned on the streets. Doc Ellis was scheduled to speak publicly during the day’s events. That morning he boarded a locomotive, which was draped with American flags and Independence Day decorations, at the town of Iaeger, with the intention of heading toward Williamson for the festive occasion. Along the trek, the train made a scheduled whistle stop at Gray Yards, approximately 20 miles east of Williamson, across the river from Skinner’s.
At the same time the train, belching clouds of steam, slowed to a stop at Gray Yards, Elias just happened to be crossing the river, headed to pick up mail at the post office.
Coleman A. Hatfield, historian and the grandson of Devil Anse Hatfield, later documented the events in his own writings, stating that Doc Ellis, the consummate politician, intended to step off the locomotive and shake hands with passengers who were preparing to board.
As Doc stepped down onto the rough wooden slats between two passenger coaches, he just so happened to come face-to-face with Elias Hatfield, who was already standing on the boardwalk talking to travelers.
“Hello, Elias,” Doc muttered as he tried to sidestep the short-tempered Hatfield.
“Hello, Doc,” Elias replied with a wide grin. He firmly placed his hand on Doc’s shoulder, stopping him in mid-stride. “So, Doc, you thinks you can take me ‘cross to Kentucky as easy as you did my brother?”
After a few tense seconds, Elias got ahold of himself, deciding this was not the time or place to get revenge. He turned away, mumbling, “You son of a -” … and he started speaking with another traveler and friend, I.J. Perrill, when all hell broke loose.
Doc Ellis shouted, “I’ll show you who’s an s.o.b.!” as he lunged for the doorway of the passenger car and grabbed his rifle, leveling it at Elias.
Seeing what was about to take place, Perrill threw his arm forward, pushing Elias backwards just as Doc squeezed the trigger and the Winchester exploded in gunfire. Travelers on the boardwalk dove for cover, scattering as gunsmoke billowed. The shot just missed Elias’s head, as he instinctively pivoted while jerking his Colt single action from his belt and returning fire. The sound was deafening as his round hit a metal cufflink on Doc’s wrist; the .45 bullet ricocheted upward breaking Doc Ellis’s neck. Blood spurted from the entrance wound and Doc fell forward. Dead.
Elias hurriedly fled the scene, mounting his horse and racing back across the river to Skinner’s Saloon and the safety of Kentucky.
* * *
Several individuals, including well-known attorney George Wesley Atkinson, later traveled to Pike County and convinced Elias to surrender to law enforcement, and maybe he’d find leniency.
On July 12th, Elias walked into Williamson courthouse and with raised hands, handed over his pistol. He was arrested and jailed, as he waited to be tried in Mingo County Court on murder charges relating to the death of Humphrey “Doc” Ellis. He pleaded self-defense.
Before Elias’s court case came to a conclusion, Cap Hatfield, second son of Devil Anse, interceded and decided he must help his baby brother break out of the jailhouse to escape a life sentence in prison, or the hangman’s noose. Cap was convinced a Hatfield could never get a fair shake in such a circumstance, especially since Doc Ellis was so popular and politically powerful.
In the middle of the night on August 18th, while Elias waited in his small cell, Cap slipped through the backstreets of Williamson on horseback, leading a large buckskin pony behind him. According to family history, Cap carried heavy riggings with him and, once he arrived at the jail, he secured one end of a rope-cable to his saddle horn and tied the other to the iron bars covering a jailhouse window.
Elias watched Cap spur his horse, and the force yanked the iron bars free along with chunks of masonry from around the window casing. After Elias writhed and shimmied through the opening, he straddled the pony and the two bolted out of Williamson.
They fled the Mountain State that night, heading back to Oklahoma Territory. On the way, the two eventually separated, and Elias moved up through southern Ohio, to Indiana, Missouri, and eventually on to Cimmiron River country of Lincoln, Payne, and eventually into Pottawommie County, Oklahoma.
Some historians have stated that Elias and Cap eventually reunited, as Cap stayed on to help Elias get reestablished in the Wild West. Others suggest Elias was lost to history for more than a year, staying in another part of the territory altogether, never to reunite until later returning to the hills of Logan County.
The details remain fuzzy with Elias’s stay in Oklahoma, yet it’s known that Cap stopped off at a ranch owned by Tom and Ellen Harding. For a period of several months, he worked as a hired hand there, under an assumed name, before returning home.
When Elias eventually returned to the Mountain State, he was immediately arrested and later convicted for the murder of Doc Ellis. He was sent to the West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville, but was later paroled by George W. Atkinson-who as a lawyer had earlier trekked to Skinner’s Saloon and counseled Elias to surrender to authorities, but who was now governor of the state.
After parole, Elias became a successful entrepreneur and lived a rather peaceful existence-at least for a while. Elias and his brother, Troy, had partnered in a thriving saloon business in Harewood, near Boomer, in Fayette County, WV, and eventually became entangled in a fatal gun battle with Octavio Jerome, an Italian whiskey distributor, over a liquor dispute. All three died in a bloody shootout on Oct. 17, 1911. Elias and Troy were interred in a single grave, side by side, at the Hatfield Cemetery, at Sarah Ann.
Several years after being sentenced to life in prison in 1900, Johnse Hatfield won parole by saving the life of Kentucky’s lieutenant governor who was visiting the facility. A prisoner attacked him and Johnse blocked the politician from the knife attack. Johnse killed the inmate. Having paid his debt to society, Johnse resumed his career as a businessman, working in the timber trade and later for the railroad industry.
Cap Hatfield evolved from being a brutal feudist and shootist to learning to read (taught by his wife, Nan,) and then studying law, and eventually becoming a Logan County attorney and county deputy, with a successful law practice within the city limits.
Even the patriarch of the feuding Hatfields, Devil Anse Hatfield, adapted with the times and mellowed with age. On September 23, 1911, at 73 years of age, Devil Anse converted to Christianity, after being led to Christ by former Confederate chaplain, circuit riding preacher, and old friend, Uncle Dyke Garrett. Garrett baptized him at Main Island Creek and, according to family tradition, Cap was baptized on the occasion, too. Anse lived the last ten years of his life in peace.
With the coming years, the region of southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky slowly modernized, especially with the emergence of the coal industry and expansion of rail service. Feud guns silenced and the violent memories of the feuding Hatfields slowly faded.
* * *
PHOTO CUTLINE: Elias Hatfield, shown in this tattered image from the 1890s, was too young to be involved in most of the major Hatfield-McCoy feud events, or to even remember them. By 1898, he was 21 years-old and had grown into a fine-looking man. Like his father, Devil Anse Hatfield, he was especially capable with any type of firearm, and was never known to back down from a fight.
15 comments
Robert Staton
Interesting reading about my Hatfield roots back in West Virginia.
Reply
2y
Susan Logan
Love to read the history of these families. Thank you for sharing.
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2y
Linda Whitt
I love reading my family history. ????
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2y
Ken Pauley
Read it a number of times thru the years but it never gets old.
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2y
Carol Hatfield Thompson
Thanks for sharing about my relatives!!
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2y
Vicki Rockville
That’s was really interesting. Thanks for posting
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2y
Joe Schurter
I could read about the Hatfields and McCoys all day long
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2y
Judy Stirl Hatfield
Thanks for sharing our Hatfield Hertigage
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2y
Jess Ellis
Lauren Scarberry
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1y
Lauren Scarberry
Jess Ellis so cool! I love this stuff.
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1y

Jackie McCoy Grissom
Thanks
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2y
Candice Bishop
Jr J.R. Bishop long read but full of family history
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2y
Cathy Hurtt
Pam Baire, Diane Vaught, Leah Hatfield Marhoover, Clint Hatfield
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2y
Constance Newbrough Stemple
Thank you for sharing
Reply
2y

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