The Covert Hillbilly Romance
As tensions exploded between the families, Roseanna McCoy and Devil Anse’s son Johnse Hatfield struck up a romance. Roseanna left her McCoy family home to live with the Hatfields. But the whirlwind romance didn’t have a happy ending. When Roseanna became pregnant, Johnse would not marry her, even after being kidnapped and held by the McCoys. The McCoys wouldn’t take her back because not only did she have a baby out of wedlock, but the baby was also a Hatfield, so Roseanna lived with a sympathetic aunt. The baby died of the measles. As if that weren’t enough of a blow, Johnse married Roseanna’s cousin Nancy McCoy in 1881. An inter-family romance wasn’t unusual; Hatfields and McCoys intermarried each other with regularity. But Roseanna leaving her family to take up with the Hatfields without being married was a step too far for the McCoys.