Between 1860 and 1891 the feud claimed more than a dozen members of these families.
In the popular imagination, the Hatfields-McCoy feud became a sort of curiosity, proverb, joke. In Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain's description of a feud between the "Grangerford" and "Shepherdson" families fits this pattern.
On Mon, Jun 16, 2003 descendants of the Hatfield and McCoy families signed a truce in Pikeville, Kentucky; this was more of a publicity event than anything else, as, in reality, the feud had ended more than a century earlier.