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Hatfield, Johnse__Roseanna_McCoy myamericanodyssey

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from Bad Blood: Tracing the Family Blood Lines Through the Hatfields & McCoys
by Malcolm Logan March 15, 2014

A Hillbilly Lothario
Johnse Hatfield and Roseanna McCoy, a real life Romeo and Juliet? Uh, not so much.

Johnse and Roseanna met at a picnic in 1880 two years after the hog trial when feelings between the two families were still running high. It was love at first site. They couldn’t resist each other. In an act that would raise eyebrows even today, Roseanna left the picnic and returned home with Johnse and moved in with him. Needless to say, her father, Randolph McCoy, he of the stolen pig, was not pleased.

Randolph arranged to have Johnse arrested and hauled off to jail in Kentucky but Roseanna, in a stunning act of family disloyalty, reported the arrest to Devil Anse Hatfield, Johnse’s father, who rode over from West Virginia, intercepted the arresting party and freed Johnse under threat of violence. From that day on, Johnse kept his distance from Roseanna.

Roseanna McCoy gravesite in Pikeville, KY.
The grave of Roseanna McCoy in Pikeville. It was said she died of heartbreak, but her Romeo was a heel.

Roseanne was heartbroken. To make matters worse, she was pregnant with Johnse’s child and disowned by her family. Still, it wasn’t enough to make him go back to her. He was calling it quits and moving on. Romeo he was not. And then in an of act monumental insensitivity he turned around and married her cousin, Nancy McCoy, less than a year later, a union that apparently came off without fireworks, in spite of Johnse’s poor grasp of politics. Roseanna, for her part, died of heartbreak at age 29, or so the story goes.

Johnse, it’s worth noting, married three more times after that, a hillbilly Lothario if there ever was one, and yet another contributor to the tangled blood lines I was trying to sort out.

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