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Family Feud · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Manke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. Imagine,
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  Speaker 1: if you will, two households, both alike in dignity. Now
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  Speaker 1: imagine those two families locked in a cycle of blood
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  Speaker 1: soaked revenge that lasts decades and leaves more than a
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  Speaker 1: dozen people dead. It sounds downright Shakespearean, right. But this
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  Speaker 1: raging feud took place deep in Appalachia, where Kentucky and
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  Speaker 1: West Virginia meets along the Big Sandy River, whispered about
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  Speaker 1: in saloons, and made the evening papers coast to coast.
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  Speaker 1: It was a feud so famous that you have already
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  Speaker 1: guessed the names of the families that fought well over
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  Speaker 1: one hundred years later, the Hatfields and the McCoys. The
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  Speaker 1: origins of the troubles are a little murky, although there
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  Speaker 1: are a few things that we do know for sure.
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  Speaker 1: It was August of eighteen sixty three the height of
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  Speaker 1: the Civil War, patriarchs William Anderson devil Ants Hatfield and
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  Speaker 1: Randolph Old Ranall McCoy lived on either bank and stood
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  Speaker 1: on opposite sides of the Great Conflict. As soldiers returned
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  Speaker 1: home from the conflict, they carried with them all of
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  Speaker 1: the injuries, psychological or physical that came with fighting. And
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  Speaker 1: then in eighteen sixty five, Old Randall's brother was murdered.
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  Speaker 1: His name was Asa Harmon, and he had been away
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  Speaker 1: fighting for the Union Army. He was returning home after
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  Speaker 1: the war had ended when he ran a foul of
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  Speaker 1: a local group of former Confederates who called themselves the
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  Speaker 1: Logan Wildcats. Devil Ants had Hatfield was reported to have
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  Speaker 1: been among their ranks. In eighteen seventy eight, more trouble
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  Speaker 1: when Floyd Hatfield, cousin to devil Ants, was arrested for
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  Speaker 1: stealing a pig off the McCoy farm, but was released
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  Speaker 1: when the judge himself also just so happened to be
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  Speaker 1: a Hatfield. There were, at the same time a number
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  Speaker 1: of land disputes between the two families, which would regularly
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  Speaker 1: make it into court. Tensions continued to build, and at
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  Speaker 1: an election party in eighteen eighty, Ellison Hatfield, the younger
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  Speaker 1: brother to devil Ants, got into a violent brawl with
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  Speaker 1: three McCoy's, which ended in the stabbing of one of them.
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  Speaker 1: Around the same time in eighteen eighty devil Antce's son
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  Speaker 1: John C. Hatfield, a mere seventeen years old, met Rosanna,
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  Speaker 1: daughter of Randolph McCoy, at a town gathering, and the
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  Speaker 1: two were immediately smitten with one another and began a
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  Speaker 1: secret courtship that lasted months, which was only discovered when
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  Speaker 1: Rosanna became pregnant. Her father forbade her from ever seeing
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  Speaker 1: Johncey Hatfield ever again. The girl, heartbroken, died not long after,
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  Speaker 1: fueling further resentment. Things finally came to a bloody head
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  Speaker 1: on the night of January first of eighteen eighty eight,
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  Speaker 1: in the New Year's Night raid. Late that evening, a
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  Speaker 1: group of Hatfields crossed the river and quietly made their
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  Speaker 1: way onto the McCoy farm, and once there they shot
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  Speaker 1: and killed several of the McCoy men and set fire
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  Speaker 1: to the house. For their crimes, nine Hatfield men went
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  Speaker 1: to trial in Kentucky facing charges for murder and arson.
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  Speaker 1: Seven received life sentences and one was executed. Their appeal
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  Speaker 1: wound up at the US Supreme Court itself, one of
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  Speaker 1: the few times that a high court would touch this
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  Speaker 1: muddy hillside affair, and these convictions were a cold comfort
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  Speaker 1: to the remaining McCoys. In all, fifteen people had lost
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  Speaker 1: their lives and another generation grew up with the same
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  Speaker 1: seething resentment in their hearts. By eighteen ninety one, the
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  Speaker 1: momentum of the feud was all spent, although that bitterness
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  Speaker 1: remained there for years after, fueled by the hard scrabble
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  Speaker 1: life that continued for both families, each decimated by the
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  Speaker 1: loss of their loved ones to murder or prison, and
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  Speaker 1: these sorrows were compounded by the reality of the world
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  Speaker 1: they were living in. The rapid industrialization and new techniques
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  Speaker 1: had changed the face of the nation over the years,
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  Speaker 1: and frequently the needs of the common farmer were overlooked
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  Speaker 1: as the nation rebuilt after a long and bloody war.
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  Speaker 1: And look, I get it, it's easy to write narratives
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  Speaker 1: where good fights against evil. But whatever really started this
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  Speaker 1: feud still remains a hot topic of debates in Pike County,
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  Speaker 1: where even today you can walk the very hills that
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  Speaker 1: the hatfields and McCoy's lived and died upon and can
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  Speaker 1: see from the trails the gravestones of those same people,
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  Speaker 1: lives guided by war, poverty, and pride toward bitter resentment
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  Speaker 1: and violence. The Hatfield and McCoy descendants still make homes
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  Speaker 1: at Big Sandy River, passing down legends of the great
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  Speaker 1: Bloody feud that shaped a valley and left two large
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  Speaker 1: families in tatters, although these days that resentment is quiet
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  Speaker 1: and hidden, just another ghost haunting the hollows and the deep,
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  Speaker 1: shadowy places that make up Appalachia. There are few foods
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  Speaker 1: as universal and as fraught as cheese. We use mold
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  Speaker 1: to make it, after all, and that opens the door
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  Speaker 1: to food risks that make everyone a little nervous. In
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  Speaker 1: order for a cheese to be made properly, it has
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  Speaker 1: to strike a careful balance between utilizing the natural processes
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  Speaker 1: and protecting the health of the people who eat the cheese.
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  Speaker 1: As a result, cheese making is home to some of
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  Speaker 1: the most creative food innovations humanity has ever seen, which
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  Speaker 1: brings us to the story of Neuchatel cheese. And if
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  Speaker 1: you haven't guessed from the name, Neuchatel is a cheese
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  Speaker 1: that originates in France sometime around a thousand years ago.
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  Speaker 1: It is one of the old known cheeses still in
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  Speaker 1: production today, and he might not know it by that name,
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  Speaker 1: but new Chtel looks very similar to Brie or Camember.
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  Speaker 1: It's a soft white cheese with an edible rind that
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  Speaker 1: makes it moldable into any kind of shape. It was
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  Speaker 1: only after the Second World War that its popularity seemed
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  Speaker 1: to give way to things like Brie and Cammber. Before then, though,
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  Speaker 1: New Chattel was extremely popular all over the world, but
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  Speaker 1: especially in Europe, there were whole companies dedicated to the
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  Speaker 1: production of this specific type of cheese. Now in the
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  Speaker 1: early eighteen seventies, a dairy farmer named William A. Lawrence
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  Speaker 1: had recently acquired a new Chatel factory in Chester, New York,
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  Speaker 1: and was working hard to get a foothold in the
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  Speaker 1: cheese business. He was approached by a representative of the
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  Speaker 1: grocery store Park and Tilford, who had a specific request.
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  Speaker 1: They wanted a bespoke, richer spreadable cheese that could be
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  Speaker 1: sold to their customers at an increased price. Lawrence went
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  Speaker 1: to work filling this request with the supplies at hand.
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  Speaker 1: He ultimately wound up combining new Chatel with a healthy
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  Speaker 1: portion of cream to make the cheese smoother and easier
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  Speaker 1: to spread, and the result was the first mass produced
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  Speaker 1: cream cheese. Cream cheeses themselves had existed before home recipes
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  Speaker 1: date back as early as seventeen sixty nine, but Lawrence
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  Speaker 1: was the first dairyman to market and sell it as
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  Speaker 1: a pre made product, and the results spoke for themselves.
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  Speaker 1: Sold at an exorbitant thirty cents a pound, it was
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  Speaker 1: still remarkably successful, allowing Lawrence to expand his business dramatically.
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  Speaker 1: As a result, he created the Phoenix Cheese Company, buying
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  Speaker 1: up other dairies to meet the demand and to outcompete
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  Speaker 1: his rapidly swelling competition. Like with any untapped market, there
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  Speaker 1: was a gold rush for cream cheese in the eighteen eighties,
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  Speaker 1: leading to the market as it stands today. How Laurence
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  Speaker 1: succeeded isn't really a mystery. He executed a simple idea
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  Speaker 1: that people responded to, but the unique chemistry of his
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  Speaker 1: creation is something that could have only happened in that
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  Speaker 1: time and place, and I do mean that literally. Since
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  Speaker 1: the invention of cream cheese, food chemists to put a
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  Speaker 1: lot of effort into reverse engineering the concoction on a
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  Speaker 1: molecular level, since Lawrence himself was not a scientist, and
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  Speaker 1: like many cheese varieties, it is uniquely vulnerable to bacteria
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  Speaker 1: in ways that create new challenges for food scientists, even
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  Speaker 1: while the central appeal of the project remains the same
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  Speaker 1: over a century later. Now, if you've ever been to
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  Speaker 1: New York City, you know that the opinions about the
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  Speaker 1: best kind of cream cheese are as varied as the
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  Speaker 1: opinions about the best bagel. Whether one prefers rich, light, fluffy, substantial, flavored,
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  Speaker 1: or plain. All of these varieties exist because of a
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  Speaker 1: specialty product that was requested from a cheesemaker back in
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  Speaker 1: the eighteen seventies. Oh and one more thing. Lawrence would
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  Speaker 1: eventually sell his company to Craft in nineteen twenty, but
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  Speaker 1: long before that, he renamed it from Phoenix to a
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  Speaker 1: name that would evoke quality in the minds of his customers.
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  Speaker 1: He named it after the city in America with the
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  Speaker 1: best dairy products in the country, not the one where
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  Speaker 1: he actually invented the cream cheese. He called it Philadelphia.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed today's guided tour through the cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. This show was created by me Aaron Mankey
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  Speaker 1: in partnership with iHeart Podcasts, researched and written by the
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  Speaker 1: Grim and Mild team, and produced by Jesse Funk. Learn
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  Speaker 1: more about the show and the people who make it
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  Speaker 1: over at Grimandmild dot com slash Curiosities. You'll also find
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  Speaker 1: a link to the official cabinet of Curiosity's hardcover book,
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  Speaker 1: available in bookstores and online, as well as ebook and audiobook.
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  Speaker 1: And if you're looking for an ad free option, consider
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  Speaker 1: joining our Patreon. It's all the same stories, but without
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  Speaker 1: the interruption for a small monthly fee. Learn more and
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  Speaker 1: sign up over at patreon dot com slash Grimandmild, and
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  Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious. Eve