Thursday

Well the morning started out a little cooler than the past few morning with temps down in the middle 50's but eventually it warmed up to the middle 70's. After my quiet time and a couple poached eggs with some grits for breakfast I headed out to check the gardens. I now have a couple hills of sweet corn poking through the ground as well as a couple squash plants and I can see some color in the beet rows as well. That lite shower of rain on Tuesday really helped.

I headed out to the back woods yard and threw down a couple oak trees and then sawed them up in wood stove lengths for my neighbors up on the mountain. I'm trying to get a little more sun on the grass in that area of the yard and I spent a couple hours working that project before we had a bite of lunch. We finished up the last 2 burgers from Monday along with some corn chips and an iced sweet tea. We sat on the front porch and ate soaking in the wonderful breeze. After lunch I worked on the stump of an earlier oak I sawed down a couple years ago and it's finally starting to rot. We decided to take Joe up on his offer to share his collection of private papers and pictures of the Hatfield Family so we headed up the mountain on the golf cart to visit with Joe and Jetta Browning.

I mentioned in yesterday's blog about learning that Joe is the great grandson of William Anderson Hatfield better know as Devil Anse who was the patriarch of the Hatfield Family in the Logan, W.Va. area. Elizabeth was the 7th child of Devil Anse and was Joe's grandmother who pretty much raised him when he was a youngster. The feud between the Hatfield's and McCoy's is probably the most celebrated feud ever recorded and publicized and it extended since the end of the Civil War to 2003 when a formal declaration was signed ending the feud. Joe was the first signer to witness the declaration. The feud it's self was the most bloody for about 12 years or so according to Joe which left about 20 people dead all total over the century. Joe goes back to the Logan area every Memorial Day and has done so for the past 39 years to put flowers on the graves of his three brothers who are buried in the same cemetery that Devil Anse and several members of the immediate Hatfield Family are interred.

We had a great visit perusing several books of letters, photographs and newspaper reports of this family and of course what brought this interest to me was the History Channel special on the feud the past three nights. It was uncanny how the cast of characters in the special resembled the actual family members from the photos Joe had of his family members. This was studying real history and it was just great to read correspondence that was hand written in the 1880's between the family members. I noticed several documents where Devil Anse and his wife made their x's on the documents as neither of them could read or write. Joe's grandmother Elizabeth  and his mother Osa Caldwell read and wrote letters for the Hatfield patriarch. Many thanks to Joe and Jetta for sharing their family history and memorabilia with Nancy and myself. I will enclose some photos of photos of Joe's that he has acquired from his grandmother Elizabeth's personal belongings.

After getting back from Joe's I transplanted some Zinnias seedling I started last week just before it started to rain. We had a nice lite rain shower for about 30 minutes which dropped the temps quickly into the 60's. After a lite supper of boiled buttered red potato's  and a garden salad with Greek dressing we headed out to the mailbox on foot. We missed our hike for the day so this nearly mile walk made up for the hike to the top. We stopped off and visited with Russ and Linda from Ohio. They along with a friend and Shirley from just down the hill were hanging wall paper at Russ and Linda's cabin. Well it was a good walk or hike when you consider the steepness of the hills on our road and we got back a little after 8 PM, LATER

A little update on the photos; the first pic is of the total family with his 13 kids plus some grandchildren, Devil Anse is on the second row on the left with the full beard and his wife is next to him; second is of our neighbors Joe and Jetta; third shows his grandmother Elizabeth top right with her family the Caldwells; fourth shows Elizabeth  with Joe's mother, Osa who later married a Browning thus Joe's last name and her brother; fifth is of William Anderson(Devil Anse) Hatfield. He received his nickname when he was promoted to captain during the Civil War and received the commission at a place called Devil Knob; sixth is the life size marble statue of Devil Anse shipped from Italy at a price of $3500 at his place of internment in Sarah Ann, W.Va.; seventh is Joe's grandmothers key chain(blurry)