13. Holding a Grudge Was in the McCoys’ Blood
Things got bad not just for the Hatfields and McCoys, but for outsiders, who felt the feud’s ripple effects. At times, the grudge between the two families threatened to turn into a war between the states of West Virginia nd Kentucky. By 1890 the Hatfields, who had seriously gone overboard with the violence, were reduced to homeless hunted fugitives. Finally, four of them, plus their accomplices, were arrested and indicted for one particularly heinous atrocity. The fighting finally ended in February, 1890, when Ellison “Cottontop” Mounts, a Hatfield, was hanged in Pikesville.
The feud was remarkable for its intensity and longevity. The ability to keep a grudge going for a long time might have been due – at least on the McCoys’ part – to genetics. In 2007, an eleven-year-old McCoy girl prone to fits of rage underwent medical tests. It was discovered that she, and many other McCoys, had tumors on their adrenal glands. Such tumors can release massive amounts of mood-altering chemicals, such as adrenalin. That explains a lot. As the McCoy girl’s doctor put it, her family’s genetic defect: “does produce hypertension, headache and sweating intermittently depending on when the surge of these compounds occurs in the bloodstream. I suppose these compounds could possibly make somebody very angry and upset for no good reason“. Feuding was literally in the McCoys’ blood.
