Tennis Hatfield’s rise and fall is a story to remember

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By Dwight Williamson

Photo of Dwight Williamson, authorThere have been countless stories and several books written in regard to Devil Anse Hatfield and the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys. However, perhaps the most interesting character of this entire bunch is the youngest child of the famous Hatfield leader, his 13th-born offspring, Tennis Samuel Hatfield.

It was Tennis, in all likelihood for mostly political reasons, who helped organize the first Hatfield reunion that was held on Main Island Creek near the graveyard and the Hatfield home place. By the year 1929 when the third annual Hatfield reunion was conducted, an unimaginable 10,000 people were reported to have attended. Tennis had served a term as Logan County sheriff and his brother, Joe, succeeded him, and was then the county sheriff elected in 1928. Tennis today holds the claim to being the first ever Republican elected sheriff in Logan County.

While Devil Anse has been described as one of the most “colorful and charismatic” men of American folklore, a long study of his son, Tennis, sheds a totally different light on the infamous Hatfield name. The entire life of former sheriff T.S. Hatfield will be revealed in a future publication, but for today’s purposes, a portion of the shadowy side of Tennis Hatfield must be revealed because it is a part of our local history that cannot, like Tennis himself, remain entombed at the family cemetery.

There are many “twists and turns” to the history of Logan County, but during the 1920s and 1930’s, the name of Don Chafin played a prominent role in just about every historical aspect. Indeed, Chafin was a key player in the life of the diabolical Tennis Hatfield. It would be Hatfield who would succeed his cousin, Don Chafin, as sheriff of Logan County — but not until Hatfield’s testimony placed the “King of Logan County” in an Atlanta, Georgia, prison. And it would be Chafin who would in 1924 keep his former partner in crime from gaining the sheriff’s office for 16 months, pending an appeal of the election results by Hatfield to the state Supreme Court.

Chafin and Hatfield had been partners in the “Blue Goose” bar at Barnabus even while Chafin was sheriff and before Prohibition came into being in 1920. Deed records show Hatfield owned eight lots at the mouth of the Cow Creek location, which also included a boarding house. It was at this boarding house that many union organizers who came to Logan County on behalf of the UMWA would take advantage of the illegal liquor provided at the Blue Goose, although many would never live to tell about it.

Political and financial arguments are said to have led to the notorious Chafin seeing to it that Hatfield was imprisoned for the making and selling of illegal liquor at the Blue Goose location. Hatfield served his time but later testified against Chafin, who was convicted and sentenced to three years prison. It was during Chafin’s appeal process in 1924 and while Hatfield sought the office of sheriff that the one-time hero of the Battle of Blair Mountain went to all lengths to keep Hatfield from gaining power. Chafin would enter prison in 1925 after losing his appeal and after Republican President Calvin Coolidge refused to grant Chafin a pardon. After just 10 months, however, the Georgia governor granted a pardon to the renowned former sheriff, who still owned much of Logan County.

Ironically, while Chafin was headed to prison, Hatfield became sheriff after appealing the results of his 1924 election loss to the State Supreme Court, which found that illegal actions by Don Chafin at both Mud Fork and Striker precincts caused Emmett Scaggs to narrowly defeat Hatfield. When those two precincts were thrown out, Hatfield was declared the winner.

The Supreme Court said that on Election Day Chafin, along with seven of his former deputies, intimidated voters with their guns and that they had even voted for people. Testimony showed that after one voter challenged Chafin at Mud Fork, the former sheriff struck the man in the face and announced that he was now “running the place.” In the wake of Mud Fork and Striker results being discarded, Hatfield would win by a margin of 128 votes: 7,120 to Scaggs’ 6,992.

Though Chafin, who had gotten away with cold-blooded murder in 1917, had made a fortune from coal operators by keeping the union out of Logan, Hatfield decided that gambling, prostitution and illegal liquor sales would be the route he would take. When his brother, Joe, was elected in 1928, Tennis continued to run the show, according to most reports of the time.

In what has to be regarded as a “monumental” time in Logan history in 1930, while Joe Hatfield was sheriff, Enoch Scaggs, the brother of Emmett Scaggs, who had been defeated in 1924 by Tennis, walked into the Smokehouse restaurant in Logan and put five bullets into Logan Police Chief Roy Knotts’ body on Knotts’ first day on the job. The former state policeman had taken the position when the former chief quit following the announcement by the city’s manager (mayor) that all gambling machines in Logan would be confiscated and that an end to prostitution and illegal liquor sales was to be sought.

It was rumored that Tennis Hatfield had hired the former deputy, who a few years earlier had already gotten away with murder during a poker game at Chapmanville, to assassinate Chief Knotts. The plan was for Scaggs to be found not guilty on the grounds of self-defense.

Logan Circuit Judge Naaman Jackson, said to be a highly principled individual, met with Gov. William Conley and Attorney General Howard B. Lee in Charleston, and he explained that Scaggs would not be convicted in Logan and that crime and corruption had taken over Logan County. A special jury from Monroe County was brought to Logan, and Scaggs was ultimately convicted. Joe Hatfield, who had been told by the governor and Lee that he was facing prison himself, became a changed man, according to all accounts. This also meant the beginning of the end for his brother, Tennis.

Tennis, who would father nine children through three marriages, also had several illegitimate children, some of which never took the Hatfield name.

During an unpleasant divorce in 1930 between Tennis and Sadie Hatfield, the shocking announcement in a petition filed by Sadie Hatfield was that several years prior at the insistence of Joe and Tennis Hatfield, and after she was threatened by death or great bodily harm by her husband, she was made to practice writing Don Chafin’s signature and then later forged papers that helped convict Chafin in federal court.

Mrs. Hatfield added that Tennis had recently threatened to kill her and that “the incumbency of Joe Hatfield has been marked by a reign of terror originating when Tennis was sheriff but growing worse; that the laws have completely broken down.” The petition further stated that Tennis since retiring from office had had an “equal voice with Joe in the administration of affairs” and that “he controls the operation of slot machines and other gambling devices.”

Tennis had lost his clout and was drinking heavier than usual while being sued by different businesses and individuals. With Democrats clearly in political power and lawsuits pending, the Blue Goose bar and boarding house both would burn, as would Devil Anse’s home place where Tennis happened to be residing.

Few people know it, but the site of the Blue Goose bar, which was referred to as the Blue Goose Pub site at Barnabus, was once the site of several tourist attractions. Visitors many years ago traveled by bus and saw the following Logan County locations: Jack Dempsey’s childhood home at Holden; the old mine portal at Rossmore; Indian Serpent Mound at Pine Creek; the Cap Hatfield Cemetery; the Cut Stone House at Stirrat; Cap Hatfield’s home; the Hatfield Cemetery; Hatfield Fort site; and the Devil Anse Hatfield home site. Only the cemeteries and the stone cut home remain today; although an empty bottom is where the Hatfield home place existed. Cap Hatfield’s house set empty without any repairs for years before it finally collapsed.

The current location of the former Blue Goose and the boarding house is now owned by Richard DeHart. His father, Glaston DeHart, purchased the property in 1970 from Noah Browning. Browning obtained the eight-lot location in 1935 when Hatfield lost a lawsuit in Logan Circuit Court to W.E. Duncan Plumbing Co. of Delbarton in which the decree forced the sale. Browning paid $334.34 for the real estate that once probably earned Tennis Hatfield that much money in a day or two.

Hatfield, who died in 1953 at the age of 62 from a brain hemorrhage, would later — following the repeal of Prohibition — open another bar where he could look out a window and see the graveyard statue of his father. The beer joint was named the Silver Moon Tavern. In an interview in 1940, Tennis Hatfield, once the mighty sheriff of Logan County, and the youngest son of Devil Anse, would ask, “I wonder what Pa would-a thought of my place.”

Tennis Hatfield’s rise and fall in life is really a story within itself.

I will now officially go on record and say that I may write that particular narrative, but only — and I do mean only — if WVOW’s radio guys, Aaron Stone and Brandon Conley, ask me to do so.

Dwight Williamson is a former writer for the Logan Banner and a retired magistrate for Logan County.

*Published with the author’s permission.
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