American Folk Figure. Born in what is today Logan County, West Virginia, he grew up in the hill country along the Tug Fork River and developed a formidable reputation as a marksman and horseman. He and his wife, Levicy, produced nine boys and four girls. He owned considerable property and ran a successful lumbering operation. A Confederate sympathizer after the start of the Civil War, he formed the "Logan Wildcats" guerrilla band after West Virginia became a state and was admitted to the Union in 1863. Some historians believe the famous Hatfield-McCoy feud found its beginning in 1865 when Asa McCoy, brother of the McCoy family patriarch, Randolph McCoy's brother and Union Army veteran, was found shot to death. Others point to an 1878 complaint filed by McCoy against Floyd Hatfield, Anse Hatfield's cousin, for stealing his hogs. Popular perception, however, favors the ill-starred romance between Anse's son, Johnse Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy. William Hatfield refused permission for them to marry, the end result was Rosanna being pregnant and abandoned by her lover and her family. Two years later, Anse Hatfield's brother Ellison was killed by McCoys, with his response being the killing his brother's murderers, for which an indictment was issued but no further action taken. Tension between the two families remained high through the decade. On New Year's Day 1888, Hatfield supporters burned the McCoy's homestead, killing two adult children, Alifair and Calvin, and seriously injuring matriarch, Sarah. A reprisal raid netted nine Hatfield supporters but Anse Hatfield escaped. The sides were drawn into a pitched battle two weeks later, during which a deputy was killed. In September 1889, the captured Hatfields were tried for the death of Alifair McCoy, eight went to prison, a ninth hanged. The trials effectively ended the active feuding. Anse Hatfield spent the last years of his life quietly on his farm. He was once asked to go on the vaudeville stage, but it came to nothing in the end. He converted to Evangelical Christianity in 1911. He was never wounded, despite his violent life, and succumbed to pneumonia a decade later. His funeral was, at that time, the largest ever held in Logan County.