by Sharon Hall | Apr 25, 2014 | Feudin' & Fightin' Friday
This Ozark Mountain feud was carried on much like the more famous Appalachian Hatfield-McCoy feud, encompassing the Missouri counties of Benton and Polk. Benton County was a newly organized county when two families, the Joneses and Turks, migrated from Kentucky and...
by Sharon Hall | Mar 28, 2014 | Feudin' & Fightin' Friday
A town’s designation as the county seat often determined whether it would thrive or fade away into history. Some county seat disputes turned into outright wars, bloodshed and all. Others, although politically charged and volatile, were more amicably (or sneakily)...
by Sharon Hall | Feb 7, 2014 | Feudin' & Fightin' Friday
A woman was at the center of this feud in early twentieth-century Texas, a love triangle in which two wealthy cattle ranchers fought over who would win her back – the husband or the lover. The feud might have started, innocently enough, years before when the two men,...
by Sharon Hall | Dec 20, 2013 | Feudin' & Fightin' Friday
The first use of barbed wire in Texas occurred in 1857 when immigrant John Grinninger ran homemade barbed wire along the top of fencing around his garden. The first United States Patent for barbed wire was issued in 1867. Barbed wire began to be mass-produced after...
by Sharon Hall | Dec 6, 2013 | Feudin' & Fightin' Friday
This range war conducted in the 1880s, sometimes called The Pleasant Valley War or Tonto Basin Feud, was anything but pleasant. It turned out to be one of the more bloody and vicious feuds in American history, certainly in Arizona history. So fierce and violent was...
by Sharon Hall | Nov 22, 2013 | Feudin' & Fightin' Friday
San Elizario in El Paso County, Texas was the location of this conflict over mineral rights. San Elizario was founded in 1789 south of the Rio Grande River. In 1831 a flood changed the course of the river and San Elizario became an “island” between the two channels...
