Hatfields escape WV jail, head west

Estimated reading time: 14 minutes

Photo above: 1882 view of Gunnison, CO as seen from roof of the Lewis Hotel.

continues from here…

While Cap and Joe hid out at Dan Christian’s home for several days, a posse from Matewan, roughly twenty-five mountain men on horseback led by Reece Chambers and Bill Bevins, rode throughout the area looking for the two.

Posse members raided Cap’s nearby cabin and Reece Chambers demanded to know if he was hiding inside. Nan, Cap’s wife, met the posse members from her porch and said she knew nothing of the trouble or of Cap’s whereabouts. 

The party then searched the home, outbuildings, and grounds. When they exhausted their search, they travelled over the mountain to Main Island Creek, where they questioned Devil Anse Hatfield, as well.

Unable to find or track Cap or Joe, the posse eventually returned to Matewan empty handed by nightfall.

The next night, Dan Christian hid Cap and Joe beneath a heavy canvas tarp in the back of his buckboard and hauled them up the mouth of Thacker Creek, where they traveled to the railroad tracks at a water stop. The N&W locomotive came to its routine stop there around midnight; while the train took on water, Cap and Joe climbed aboard and hid in a baggage car.

After the train pulled out, it gathered steam and passed through Matewan at a high rate of speed. It never stopped again until it arrived at the depot in the City of Huntington, nearly a hundred miles away. 

Cap and Joe surrendered to the county sheriff, who set them up to stay at the Arlington Hotel with the understanding they would turn themselves in the next day in Mingo County.

The following morning, Jim Clark, an investigator and trusted friend of Cap’s, arrived in Huntington accompanied by Dan Christian. Clark, agreeing with the sheriff, explained to Cap that he would have to stand for trial, which would be heard by the judge of the Mingo Circuit Court some months later. He then escorted Cap and Joe back to Mingo County.

Later Hatfield family reports indicate that when Cap stood trial, eleven of the jury members were in favor of acquitting him because he had been attacked and fired upon first during the Election Day incident. They believed Cap had protected himself as the aggressors began the fight. But there was one elderly man on the jury who argued that so many men had been killed that day he thought the verdict ought to be manslaughter anyway. 

The other jurors, who didn’t want to have to report that they were a “hung jury,” ultimately brought in the verdict of involuntary manslaughter, which carried a light jail term.

Joe Glenn was sent to the reform school at Pruntytown, a correctional center for boys, and Cap was incarcerated at the jailhouse in Williamson, the county seat of Mingo County.

Shortly before the end of that month, Nancy Hatfield came to the jailhouse to visit her husband. On this occasion Cap told her to sell a certain plot of their property around the mouth of Mate Creek.

Earlier, from his jail cell, Cap had overheard others say that in some fashion he was still going to be handed over to the state of Kentucky on feud charges after he had fulfilled his jail sentence, which they knew meant that he would likely be invited to an upcoming “necktie party” in Pikeville, the county seat of Pike County, Kentucky.

He decided his only option was to plan a daring escape from the Williamson jailhouse. He told Nancy about his scheme, and during her next visit she slipped him a hand drill from her purse to assist in his flight.

Although their property at Mate Creek was worth a small fortune, Nancy sold the acreage quickly for just $500 to Red Jacket Coal Company in order to finance a getaway. Nancy put the money in the bottom of a cane basket along with a change of clothes, a .44 caliber pistol, and a box of metallic cartridges.

She waited for Cap along the road leading out from Williamson on the designated night he was to escape.

In the meantime, Cap quietly drilled hole after hole through the wall of his lockup on July 30^th, 1897. 

After several hours, he was able to kick out a hole large enough to squeeze himself through. Exiting the cell, he found the night was pitch black and ran through the streets of Williamson and on out of town without being detected. 

Eventually, he met his wife at the rendezvous point along the dirt road, and after he changed his clothes, they said their goodbyes and he climbed up the side of the mountain and fled into the thick woods. He pushed himself deeper and deeper into the foliage and to freedom.

Cap stayed the following night at a cousin’s house, where he borrowed a mount the next morning and made his way to nearby Rich Creek.

He travelled onward to his father Anse’s home along Main Island Creek and gathered supplies for the next leg of his trip. 

He and his two brothers, Troy and Elias, left for Williams River in Webster County. Cap stayed in the Yew Pine Mountains there, where in some places it was fifty miles from one house to another. They hid along the Williams River, a tributary of the Gauley River.

Troy and Elias, then fifteen and seventeen years old, eventually returned home to Logan County, where Cap’s wife and children were now living nearer Devil Anse and the rest of the family. Not long after their return, Troy and Elias got into trouble during a dispute with Dave Kenney, a neighbor with whom they worked on a timbering job. 

Several witnessed seeing the two Hatfield teens, along with a third man who some claimed was Cap, fist fighting with Kenney at a Hatfield timber site. Through a mysterious turn of events, Kenney’s body, riddled with bullets, was found the next morning near where the brawl took place, though the teens denied they had any part in Kenney’s demise. 

Cap, who was already running from the law due to jail escape charges, was accused and indicted on charges of killing Kenney, but on October 28, 1898, the Logan County Grand Jury dropped the charges due to lack of evidence.

Murder charges were later filed against Troy and Elias, who thought it best to escape from the law and go west to Oklahoma rather than face arrest and an eventual trial. 

Cap, feeling somewhat responsible for his brothers and also needing to flee from his own troubles, agreed to guide the two westward. Besides Mingo County law officers seeking Cap’s arrest, bounty hunters from Kentucky were still scouring the hills looking to capture him. 

Back at Devil Anse’s homeplace, they loaded down a pack mule with supplies and prepared their horses for the long trek from southern West Virginia westward.

A New Identity in Gunnison

Cap walked down the Gunnison street slowly. He wondered how his brothers, Troy and Elias, were coping in the grasslands of Oklahoma Territory and how his stepson was managing with life at the correction facility. 

Most importantly, how were his wife and family faring back home? The pain of missing Nan was nearly unbearable, and he kept telling himself this move was only temporary, only until things settled down back home.

As he looked over the town of Gunnison, he was mindful that it was the heyday of the gold-mining years in the region and the town was full of rovers and prospectors seeking their fortune.

Cap’s reason for stopping at Gunnison City had nothing to do with gold fever or a personal desire for wealth. Instead, according to the writings of Coleman A. Hatfield, he was aware there was an elderly woman living in town with a close family connection with Nan, his wife. Her name was Magdalene Smith. He looked her up and paid her a visit.

Magdalene answered Cap’s knock at her door and said, “What can I do for you, stranger?” Cap grinned and explained that his name was Leland Smith from West Virginia, giving an alias due to his growing concern that wanted posters with his real name and image were being circulated throughout Colorado.

Magdalene told Cap that she was a widow and was living with her daughter and son-in-law, Joe Heiner, publisher of the Gunnison City Cricket, the community’s only newspaper at the time.

Cap knew details about this lady’s life only because his wife had told him stories about her aunt, which enabled him to give the widow a misleading account of his life and times: “My father, Press, was a brother to your late husband, David Smith, the first clerk of Wayne County, West Virginia.” 

He spent the next moments talking about various family members, spouting specific facts and names he knew she would quickly recognize. Cap even described details relating to her own husband and how they first ended up in Gunnison.

The two spent the afternoon in conversation, during which Cap claimed that Leland Smith had only two sisters, with one being Nancy (who was actually Cap’s wife), who he described as the one who married “that rascal Cap Hatfield, who was messed up in the war with the McCoy family.” Aunt Magdalene found Cap convincing and accepted his tale.

In this way, Cap was accepted into the Smith home in Gunnison City for a short period. Joe Heiner told Cap much about the community, the state, and the potentials in mining. 

Yet, strangely, Cap was not tempted by the possibility of riches. Instead, he soon became a farm hand for a childless elderly couple who owned a substantial farm just outside town. In the identity of Leland Smith, he eventually moved in with the folks whose name, unfortunately, has been lost to time. Cap proved himself a hard worker and avoided trouble during his stay.

After some months working on the farm, he got news that his brother Johnse Hatfield, who had plenty of worries of his own and a sizable price on his head due to the feud atrocities, had also traveled west and might be living and working as a timberman in the Great Northwest—possibly in Oregon or as far as Washington, along the Snoqualmie and Snohomish Rivers in Snohomish County.

Like Cap, Johnse’s decision to go west was based upon nagging fears of being arrested by detectives and dragged to Kentucky to face feud charges across the Tug—the constant fear of all Hatfield men.

Leaving Gunnison City

Meanwhile, on the farm near Gunnison City, the couple who hired Cap called him into the main house one evening and invited him to stay for dinner. During the meal, the man and wife asked him to remain calm as they confessed: “Mr. Hatfield, we want to let you know that we know who you are. The tales of the feud in West Virginia have been reported in newspapers here, too, but you are not in any danger.”

Apparently, since the couple appreciated how hard he had worked and how kind he was to them, they made him a surprising offer. They explained they had no one to leave their farm to, but that if he would agree to stay on to care for them in their old age, they would leave him the entire farmstead. 

And when Cap decided it was safe, they added, they would send word back to West Virginia so his wife and family could join him. They promised Cap he and his family could own the farm and live in relative safety for the rest of their lives in Colorado.

Cap’s son Coleman wrote that he never knew why his father didn’t accept the generous offer, but instead Cap reluctantly chose to return to the Appalachian Mountains. According to family legend, the Colorado couple was very sad when he left, and Cap, in later years, thought he might have made a huge mistake leaving the west.

Cap left Gunnison City in 1898, but chose to hunt for Johnse before returning to Island Creek and his family. He first traveled to Oregon and then to Washington, asking locals about any West Virginia or Kentucky men living in the area. He was finally told about one timber worker in British Columbia who fit the description. 

Enduring an endless variety of dangerous and challenging circumstances—as constant rumors persisted of bounty hunters lurking in the forests in the region—Cap finally trailed and located his older brother. Johnse had been working as a lumberjack in British Columbia.

After significant persuasion from Cap, Johnse finally agreed to return to Logan County, too. However, they also agreed it made more sense for each to take a different route back home.

After returning to West Virginia, Johnse eventually settled down, married several times, and was employed by the family timber business. He later worked as a land agent for U.S. Steel and Coke Company.

Likewise, Troy and Elias journeyed back to their homeland some time later and miraculously avoided jail time relating to the Dave Kenney killing. 

Yet troubles seemed to plague the two younger Hatfields. In 1910, Troy and Elias, then partners in a saloon business, become entangled in a fatal gun battle with Octavio Jerome, an Italian whiskey distributor, over a liquor dispute in the town of Boomer, in Fayette County, West Virginia. 

All three died in the bloody shootout.

As for Cap, tensions seemed to have eased in southern West Virginia—especially as related to his troubles with the law—perhaps due to the growing political power of his father in the region. Also, his family said he never forgot his experiences or travels across the American frontier; and most importantly, he never forgot the time spent in Gunnison City, Colorado.

Perhaps it was this period in the Old West that helped expand Cap’s overall thinking, realizing, maybe for the first time, the endless possibilities that could be found outside the Tug borderlands and away from feud memories. 

Within a few years, as he evolved from being only a brutal feudist and shootist, Cap learned to read (and then did so tenaciously), studied law, and eventually became a respected law enforcement officer and a successful Logan County attorney, with his stepson Joe Glenn following in his footsteps and joining his law practice.

As the 1890s ended, the region slowly modernized and the violent memories of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud faded for many. Bounty hunters and detectives eventually gave up and no longer traveled across the border seeking Hatfields. 

The remaining feudists, like Cap, Johnse, and Devil Anse Hatfield, were able to find a certain amount of peace in their later years.

More articles on Hatfields/McCoys:

Dean King’s Feud Fable(Opens in a new browser tab)

America’s very own Montagues and Capulets(Opens in a new browser tab)

Dean King’s “Feud” — fresh eyes on America’s most famous quarrel(Opens in a new browser tab)

New Historical Marker Marks Graves of 2 in Hatfield-McCoy Feud(Opens in a new browser tab)