Located in the Pikeville City Park where Col. Garfield was commissioned Brigadier General in the Union Army. The man who later became President was sworn in as General by Squire Charles of Pike County, January 1862.
The Hatfield-McCoy saga begins with Devil Anse Hatfield and Randall McCoy. Close friends and comrades until near the end of the Civil War, they return to their neighboring homes—Hatfield in West Virginia, McCoy just across the Tug River border in Kentucky—to increasing tensions, misunderstandings and resentments that soon explode into all-out warfare between their families. As hostilities grow, friends, neighbors and outside forces join the fight, bringing the two states to the brink of another civil war.
Although tensions existed prior to the Civil War, the first recorded outbreak of violence between the two families occurred in January of 1865, when returning Union soldier Asa Harmon McCoy was murdered.
Members of each family had been active participants in the Civil War, but Asa Harmon McCoy opted to fight for Union forces.
Devil Anse, on the other hand, was a strong Southern sympathizer, even leading a band of local guerrilla fighters known as the “Logan Wildcats.” When Harmon returned home from the war due to a broken leg, he received numerous threats from the Wildcats.
Heeding the warnings, he sought refugee in a nearby cave; despite receiving daily food and aid from his former slave, he was eventually discovered and murdered. Devil Anse, infirm at the time of the murder, was never charged.
Previous caches at this location - GCXG9F "Pikeville 'Park' & Grab" which was generously archived by Blue&Gray for inclusion of the park in the Hatfield McCoy GeoTrail.
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