fueding was a way of life here in ky and west virginia in that Period, of which the hatfield/mccoy got the most press,
you have to remember that these states where border states ( west Virginia was created due to this issue, because the appalacian people did not identify with the plantation/planter portion of the rest of Virginia) and families as dissplayed in the series often had siblings that fought on different sides resulting in long standing feelings of betrayal, much more so than some of the other states
my family had members who fought on both sides of the war, and that where involved in a fued known as the Lile/Wallace fued here on the green river, resulting in several deaths and cuttings.
wiskey was a way of life and commerce for the majority of folks of that period here in ky
and hard feelings, Guns and wiskey made for some heated difficulties during that period. where almost every man had both the gun and the liquor
issues where usually solved without aide of the law,
i lived on the farm where the first ky union casualty of that war was killed when the union army sent a platoon of soldiers here to get a local southern leaning neighbor, when they got here they found that his neighbors had came to his defence resulting in the first union soldier fatality in ky of the war, and the routeing of the union force that night
we are not that far removed from the period, with good oral and printed historys of the period
the picture below is a family photo and the old man in the white beard was a veteran of the csa army, a participant of the Lile /Wallace fued, a neighbor and friend to the Confederate General Simon Boliver Buckner,( the ky Governor) mentioned in the series, and the great grandad of the boy on the top row with the suspenders, who"s family he resided with in his old age, the boy was my grandad who i had the pleasure of knowing for the first 40 years of my life,
my 63 sharps carbine was a gun captured by the old man in the battle of stone river in murfreesboro tenn, he was wounded later in the same battle and brought the gun 80 miles north to his ky home to recuperate from his wounds, and it was told that it was used in the Lile/Wallace fued as well.
these Ky/west virginia hills were a place of swift and decisive action and some might even say they are today, people still end up dead after slights and the killers go unfound for decades, many being confessed on their deathbeds
http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj55/kywonder/WindowsLivePhotoGalleryWallpaper.jpg http://i269.photobucket.com/albums/jj55/kywonder/oldguns2.jpg?t=1305300666
