Family Feud

Two curious topics we've all heard about before, unpacked for easy consumption.

Order the official Cabinet of Curiosities book by clicking here today, and get ready to enjoy some curious reading!

Join our Patreon for ad-free episodes!: https://www.patreon.com/grimandmild

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Imagine,

(00:36):
if you will, two households, both alike in dignity. Now
imagine those two families locked in a cycle of blood
soaked revenge that lasts decades and leaves more than a
dozen people dead. It sounds downright Shakespearean, right. But this
raging feud took place deep in Appalachia, where Kentucky and
West Virginia meets along the Big Sandy River, whispered about

(01:00):
in saloons, and made the evening papers coast to coast.
It was a feud so famous that you have already
guessed the names of the families that fought well over
one hundred years later, the Hatfields and the McCoys. The
origins of the troubles are a little murky, although there
are a few things that we do know for sure.
It was August of eighteen sixty three the height of

(01:23):
the Civil War, patriarchs William Anderson devil Ants Hatfield and
Randolph Old Ranall McCoy lived on either bank and stood
on opposite sides of the Great Conflict. As soldiers returned
home from the conflict, they carried with them all of
the injuries, psychological or physical that came with fighting. And
then in eighteen sixty five, Old Randall's brother was murdered.

(01:47):
His name was Asa Harmon, and he had been away
fighting for the Union Army. He was returning home after
the war had ended when he ran a foul of
a local group of former Confederates who called themselves the
Logan Wildcats. Devil Ants had Hatfield was reported to have
been among their ranks. In eighteen seventy eight, more trouble
when Floyd Hatfield, cousin to devil Ants, was arrested for

(02:09):
stealing a pig off the McCoy farm, but was released
when the judge himself also just so happened to be
a Hatfield. There were, at the same time a number
of land disputes between the two families, which would regularly
make it into court. Tensions continued to build, and at
an election party in eighteen eighty, Ellison Hatfield, the younger
brother to devil Ants, got into a violent brawl with

(02:31):
three McCoy's, which ended in the stabbing of one of them.
Around the same time in eighteen eighty devil Antce's son
John C. Hatfield, a mere seventeen years old, met Rosanna,
daughter of Randolph McCoy, at a town gathering, and the
two were immediately smitten with one another and began a
secret courtship that lasted months, which was only discovered when

(02:52):
Rosanna became pregnant. Her father forbade her from ever seeing
Johncey Hatfield ever again. The girl, heartbroken, died not long after,
fueling further resentment. Things finally came to a bloody head
on the night of January first of eighteen eighty eight,
in the New Year's Night raid. Late that evening, a
group of Hatfields crossed the river and quietly made their

(03:13):
way onto the McCoy farm, and once there they shot
and killed several of the McCoy men and set fire
to the house. For their crimes, nine Hatfield men went
to trial in Kentucky facing charges for murder and arson.
Seven received life sentences and one was executed. Their appeal
wound up at the US Supreme Court itself, one of

(03:34):
the few times that a high court would touch this
muddy hillside affair, and these convictions were a cold comfort
to the remaining McCoys. In all, fifteen people had lost
their lives and another generation grew up with the same
seething resentment in their hearts. By eighteen ninety one, the
momentum of the feud was all spent, although that bitterness
remained there for years after, fueled by the hard scrabble

(03:56):
life that continued for both families, each decimated by the
loss of their loved ones to murder or prison, and
these sorrows were compounded by the reality of the world
they were living in. The rapid industrialization and new techniques
had changed the face of the nation over the years,
and frequently the needs of the common farmer were overlooked

(04:16):
as the nation rebuilt after a long and bloody war.
And look, I get it, it's easy to write narratives
where good fights against evil. But whatever really started this
feud still remains a hot topic of debates in Pike County,
where even today you can walk the very hills that
the hatfields and McCoy's lived and died upon and can
see from the trails the gravestones of those same people,

(04:40):
lives guided by war, poverty, and pride toward bitter resentment
and violence. The Hatfield and McCoy descendants still make homes
at Big Sandy River, passing down legends of the great
Bloody feud that shaped a valley and left two large
families in tatters, although these days that resentment is quiet
and hidden, just another ghost haunting the hollows and the deep,

(05:03):
shadowy places that make up Appalachia. There are few foods
as universal and as fraught as cheese. We use mold

(05:25):
to make it, after all, and that opens the door
to food risks that make everyone a little nervous. In
order for a cheese to be made properly, it has
to strike a careful balance between utilizing the natural processes
and protecting the health of the people who eat the cheese.
As a result, cheese making is home to some of
the most creative food innovations humanity has ever seen, which

(05:49):
brings us to the story of Neuchatel cheese. And if
you haven't guessed from the name, Neuchatel is a cheese
that originates in France sometime around a thousand years ago.
It is one of the old known cheeses still in
production today, and he might not know it by that name,
but new Chtel looks very similar to Brie or Camember.
It's a soft white cheese with an edible rind that

(06:11):
makes it moldable into any kind of shape. It was
only after the Second World War that its popularity seemed
to give way to things like Brie and Cammber. Before then, though,
New Chattel was extremely popular all over the world, but
especially in Europe, there were whole companies dedicated to the
production of this specific type of cheese. Now in the
early eighteen seventies, a dairy farmer named William A. Lawrence

(06:34):
had recently acquired a new Chatel factory in Chester, New York,
and was working hard to get a foothold in the
cheese business. He was approached by a representative of the
grocery store Park and Tilford, who had a specific request.
They wanted a bespoke, richer spreadable cheese that could be
sold to their customers at an increased price. Lawrence went

(06:55):
to work filling this request with the supplies at hand.
He ultimately wound up combining new Chatel with a healthy
portion of cream to make the cheese smoother and easier
to spread, and the result was the first mass produced
cream cheese. Cream cheeses themselves had existed before home recipes
date back as early as seventeen sixty nine, but Lawrence

(07:17):
was the first dairyman to market and sell it as
a pre made product, and the results spoke for themselves.
Sold at an exorbitant thirty cents a pound, it was
still remarkably successful, allowing Lawrence to expand his business dramatically.
As a result, he created the Phoenix Cheese Company, buying
up other dairies to meet the demand and to outcompete

(07:39):
his rapidly swelling competition. Like with any untapped market, there
was a gold rush for cream cheese in the eighteen eighties,
leading to the market as it stands today. How Laurence
succeeded isn't really a mystery. He executed a simple idea
that people responded to, but the unique chemistry of his
creation is something that could have only happened in that

(08:00):
time and place, and I do mean that literally. Since
the invention of cream cheese, food chemists to put a
lot of effort into reverse engineering the concoction on a
molecular level, since Lawrence himself was not a scientist, and
like many cheese varieties, it is uniquely vulnerable to bacteria
in ways that create new challenges for food scientists, even

(08:22):
while the central appeal of the project remains the same
over a century later. Now, if you've ever been to
New York City, you know that the opinions about the
best kind of cream cheese are as varied as the
opinions about the best bagel. Whether one prefers rich, light, fluffy, substantial, flavored,
or plain. All of these varieties exist because of a

(08:44):
specialty product that was requested from a cheesemaker back in
the eighteen seventies. Oh and one more thing. Lawrence would
eventually sell his company to Craft in nineteen twenty, but
long before that, he renamed it from Phoenix to a
name that would evoke quality in the minds of his customers.
He named it after the city in America with the
best dairy products in the country, not the one where

(09:07):
he actually invented the cream cheese. He called it Philadelphia.
I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the cabinet
of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the
Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn

(09:29):
more about the show and the people who make it
over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find
a link to the official cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and

(09:52):
sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grimandmild, and
until next time, stay curious. Eve