On January 6, 1921 Anderson Hatfield, better known as Devil Anse, died at his home on Island Creek in Logan County, West Virginia, of pneumonia.
He was the head of the Hatfield part of the Hatfield/McCoy feud that got the nation’s attention in the 1880s through newspapers and magazines across the country, which told lurid stories of the conflict between the two families that cemented America’s vision of Appalachia as a violent and backward part of the country.
Devil Anse had been living the last decade and a half of his life quietly on his farm, raising hogs and getting saved. He had been baptized in Island Creek on September 23rd, 1911, by William Dyke Garrett, known as “Uncle Dyke.” After his baptism he founded a congregation of the Church of Christ in West Virginia.
He is buried in the Hatfield Family Cemetery in southern Logan County in a grave topped by a life-sized statue of himself made out of imported Italian marble.
(Photo of Devil Anse Hatfield’s grave by Brian M. Powell, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9374203)
