This is just a couple of miles from me.

This image is of a Kentucky landmark, the original home of Uriah and Aunt Betty McCoy, located at Lower Stringtown, Burnwell, Kentucky.

According to a 2021 submission on the Hatfield-McCoy History page by Courtney McCoy Deprospero, owner of McCoy Station in downtown Logan, West Virginia, it was in the 1990s that this historic dwelling could have been bulldozed and forgotten altogether, if not for the determination of Jim Bradley McCoy.

“The Army Corp of Engineers was going to destroy one of the last original properties of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud, simply because it was within a flood plain,” Courtney wrote in her post. “So, Jim bought the home that had been in his family for generations, and moved it to another location on the McCoy property.”

Lynn Bates, a friend of the Hatfield and McCoy Feud page, added that the house “move was no more than a football field from the old location across the road to Lower Stringtown Road.”

Historians remain grateful for Jim’s concern for historic preservation, and for his persistence and swift action in protecting the structure.

It was back in 1881 that this house secured its rightful place in the Hatfield-McCoy Feud story. It was here that young Roseanna McCoy found refuge and compassion from her aunt after her romantic affair soured with Johnse Hatfield, first son of “Devil Anse” and Levicy Hatfield.

Through a complicated set of circumstances, Johnse jilted Roseanna, and since her father Ran’l McCoy had already rejected her due to her ongoing relationship with a Hatfield, she sought shelter from her dear Aunt Betty. Also, according to family lore, Roseanna soon gave birth to Hatfield’s daughter at Betty’s home.

To add insult to injury, Roseanna’s former boyfriend moved on quickly and and married her cousin, Nancy McCoy, the daughter of Asa Harmon McCoy.

Further legend has it that Roseanna’s child, named Sarah Elizabeth, contracted measles and passed at ten months of age, and was buried on the McCoy property.

It wasn’t long afterwards that the grieving mother also died — most say from a broken heart due to the loss of her daughter, (combined with being spurned by her former lover, Johnse, and because she was disowned by her father, Ol’ Ran’l McCoy).