The Book of Obadiah and the Pig
In 1878 Floyd Hatfield had a pig. Somehow this pig got a tiny bit of its ear bitten off or otherwise severed, or so Hatfield claimed. You see, on the other side of Tug Fork river in West Virginia lived a family called the McCoys. The McCoys notched their pigs’ ears in order to identify them. When Randolph McCoy saw the notched hog in a Hatfield sty, he accused Floyd Hatfield of swine theft. The matter soon escalated into a bitter lawsuit. Randolph McCoy took Floyd Hatfield to court over the issue, but the conflict was exacerbated because the local justice of the peace happened to be the honourable Judge Anderson Hatfield. He found no evidence that Floyd Hatfield had stolen the pig and ruled in favour of his kinsman. He wisely made his ruling based on the testimony of one Bill Staton, a relative of both families, and thus was seen to be impartial. The case was closed. Or was it? Two years later, Bill Staton was killed, supposedly in self-defence, by two McCoy brothers. Around that time