What's In A Name?

In any feud-related book, the writer will at some point ask the question, “How did Devil Anse get his name?” There are a few standard answers that have been added over the years, none of which, however, have any documentation to support them. The stories all have that quality of fables created to explain an otherwise unknown thing - you know, why is the fox’s tail so bushy? All of them point to Devil Anse’s inborn ferocity and general fearlessness. The name makes Anse a larger-than-life creature, and who doesn’t enjoy writing about larger than life people, whether they are hero or anti-hero?

Here’s the thing, though. I’m pretty sure that all of those tales are fake. Anse didn’t get that name from his mother Nancy for his rambunctious ways as a child, and he didn’t get it for his Civil War exploits. You can search the records in vain for ANY mention of a fellow called Devil Anse Hatfield in the Tug Valley prior to 1889, when “Devil” Anse Hatfield suddenly springs into existence in the national press.

After the raid on the McCoy home on January of 1888, there were dozens and dozens of newspaper stories written about the feud all throughout that year, and not a one of them refers to a man named “Devil” Anse. In the writing of John Spears, who took his stories directly from Ran’l McCoy and Perry Cline in the summer of 1888, he is called simply “Bad” Anse. Most other newspaper stories refer to him as Anse. The first appearance of “Devil” Anse comes after T.C. Crawford, a writer for John A. Cockerill’s New York World newspaper makes his way to the Tug Valley in October of 1888. He claims to have interviewed Anse Hatfield, and in his discussions of that interview he refers to Anse as “Devil” Anse. While the book based on Crawford’s writings does not appear until 1889, his articles begin to appear in newspapers in December of 1888. It is at this point that “Devil” Anse begins to exist, and in the flurry of newspaper articles that are written in 1889, during the trials of the various Hatfields and Hatfield supporters this becomes the only way to refer to Anse Hatfield.

So, until someone can produce any evidence to the contrary, I am quite comfortable in saying that “Devil” Anse Hatfield was born in October of 1888, from the pen of New York newspaperman T.C.Crawford.

But that isn’t the name that I came to examine. I’m more interested in how Anse came by the name of “Anderson.” His full name was “William Anderson Hatfield.” Why Anderson? Well, in those days, people tended to name their children after family members. In fact, in the later part of the 1700s and into the 1800s, there was an actual naming convention that people often used, naming children after the father’s parents, the father’s brothers and sisters, the mother’s parents, and so forth. Anse’s father, Ephraim Hatfield, was named after HIS grandfather, the man generally referred to as “Eph of All.” Eph of All, who had brothers named Joseph, Valentine, Jeremiah, and George, named his four sons after his brothers. Anse’s grandfather, Valentine Hatfield, was named after his uncle Valentine.

Eph of All had two wives. His first wife, who died around 1800, was Mary Smith. Mary would have been Anse’s great grandmother. Mary’s family, on both sides, were Swedish, and had moved into southwestern Virginia from Wilmington, Delaware. Mary’s mother was Bridgette “Brigita” Anderson. Mary’s father was Ericus Smith, also of Swedish descent. His mother, Maria Stalcop, was the granddaughter of Johann Andersson Stalcop, who came to the newly formed Swedish colony in America, in present day Wilmington, Delaware, aboard the ship Charitas in 1641.

William Anderson “Anse” Hatfield was thus a direct descendant of one of the earliest Swedish settlers in America. The name “Anderson” preserved a tiny memory of that Swedish ancestry.

Swedish names run all through the Hatfield family into Anse’s generation and beyond. Smith remained a common first name for Hatfield boys until nearly the 20th century. Anderson, as we have seen, stuck around for generations. Aly, Mary Smith’s brother, was named after a mythical Swedish king, and that name in one of its forms (Ali, Ale, Aly) spread throughout the area to families other than the Hatfields themselves. Bridgette, or Biddie, was a frequent name for girls. I suspect, but can’t prove, that Anse’s uncle Patterson is a remembrance of the Swedish family name Petersson, and it’s likely that Anse’s own son, Johnson, typically called Johnse, was also derived from a Swedish family name. By the mid-1800s, life on the frontier of southwestern Virginia and, later, the Tug Valley, seems to have worn away any Swedish cultural traditions, as it smoothed over the German heritage of the Clines, the French Huguenot ancestry of the Runyon family (originally Roignion), and all of the other cultural backgrounds that the families of the Tug Valley region brought with them. The names, though, held fast, and offer us a glimpse into an otherwise forgotten cultural heritage.

The pattern, though, seems sadly familiar. In this story, a fake name “Devil” Anse, is created by outside writers and then fake stories are created to explain its origin. Meanwhile, a rich and fascinating, and provable, history is forgotten or ignored.

But now you can tell anyone who is interested that “Devil” Anse Hatfield was born, or rather created, in October of 1888, and William Anderson Hatfield was a direct descendant of one of the first Swedish settlers in America.

For more information on the Stalcop family, look here.

For information on the Holy Trinity Church (Old Swedes Church) in Wilmington Delaware, where Anse Hatfield’s great great great great grandparents, Hans Jurgen Schmidt and Maria Stalcop, are buried, read here.

Maria Stalcop’s Journey to Sweden and Return
By Edward Smith*
July 2010

Maria Stalcop, the youngest daughter of Pietter Stalcop and Catherine Peterson and the granddaughter of Johan Anderson Stalcop was married to Johan Van de Veer on the 14th of January 1714. Johan, whose name soon evolved to “John Vandever“, was from a large, prominent Dutch family that lived on the north side of Brandywine Creek, across from the holdings of the Stalcop family. John was about 25 years old and Maria was 17 years old when they married. Maria’s sister, Christina, who was eleven years older than Maria, had married Erik Björk, the Pastor of Holy Trinity Church in 1702 and had already borne him 6 children.

Maria’s brother-in-law, Pastor Erik Björk, was promoted within the Church in 1712 and directed to return to Sweden. Christina was apparently somewhat distraught with this turn of events since she had been born and raised in Delaware and was reluctant to make the long journey with her young children. She expressed her concern and later a family friend wrote that she felt it “strange and difficult” that she must leave “her place of birth and fatherland” and be so separated from her relatives and friends “---without hope of ever seeing them again in this life, especially since she was the first woman to make such a long and difficult journey”. However, women were generally subservient to the wishes of their husbands in those days and Christina soon accepted the situation for what it was so preparations were made for the departure.

It was determined that the party of travelers would consist of Erik, Christina and their three daughters, Magdalena, Christina and Catherine and their son, Tobias. Their son Peter and daughter Maria had died. Also accompanying the travelers would be Maria and Christina’s cousin, Anna Stidham, the daughter of Luloff Stidham and Christina Stalcop, the widow of Anders Stalcop who had married Luloff after Anders death. Anna had lived with the Björks as their foster child after the death of her parents. The return journey to Sweden also included a man named Henrik Brunjahn whose function had been to map and describe the area for the Swedish authorities and last but not least, Maria Stalcop and her new husband of less than 6 months, John Vandever. There is no factual clue available to help in determining the reasoning behind Maria’s accompaniment of her sister on such a difficult journey, but it could have been as simple as to give companionship and “peace and pleasure” to her sister.

After their protracted goodbyes in New Sweden, Erik Björk and his party traveled overland to take care of the business of the church in Philadelphia and then took a carriage to Maryland where they sailed from America on 29 Jun 1714 aboard the sailing vessel Amity. The Amity was a ship of 798 tons burden carrying four canons and had been used as one of the first three ships carrying the Quakers of William Penn to the area. At was a very sturdy ship. The exact point of departure in Maryland has not been determined.

After stops in England, and an unscheduled stop at Marstrand, Sweden caused by bad weather, the ship reached their destination, Gothenburg, Sweden, on 2 Oct 1714. The Björk family stayed in Gothenburg a month to rest up from the rigors of the journey and then continued by horse and carriage for about 80 miles to Jesper Svedberg’s home in Brunnsbo, the Episcopal residence, just outside the city of Skara, Vastergotland, the religious center of Sweden since ancient times. Jesper Svedberg had been Björk’s professor and mentor in college and was now very highly placed in Swedish government, religious and social circles.

Some of the Björk children were still sick from the sea journey, so Björk continued alone on to the city of Falun, a distance of some 200 miles, and sent for them a little later. Erik was given a parish consisting of three congregations plus an additional congregation made up of miners working in the huge copper mine located there. The family soon moved into the former Governors residence on main street, as befit their rank in society. An educated guess leads one to believe that Maria and John Vandever were with them all this time and lived in the same residence, which was a compound consisting of more than one building.

The activities and whereabouts of Maria and John are not known for some period of time but they did produce a child, Catherine, who was christened in Falun on 6 Nov 1715.

Pastor Björk had convinced the Mining Company to donate some gifts to Holy Trinity Church in America consisting of a still existing chalice with a paten and a host box of gilded silver. John Vandever was selected to carry the gifts to America but he suddenly died before this could happen. cThis fact suggests that John and Maria had made plans to return to America before his death. After John’s death Maria married Hans Jürgen Smidt, a hatmaker, on 3 Mar 1720 in Falun, Sweden. Hans and Marie may have already made plans to go to America before the marriage since Hans had written a will which he signed on 15 Mar 1720 and gave to his sister Magdalena for proper disposition. In this will he basically directs that everything he might inherit from his father’s will, who had already died (but no settlement had been made), and also any inheritance from his mothers will, if she should die in his absence, to his sister, but with the provision that he could make claim if he returned from America.

On 16 Mar 1720, the very next day after Hans had given his will to his sister, Maria’s sister Christina suddenly died from complications of her eleventh pregnancy! Given the state of pre-natal care and obstetrics in those times, it was probably a complete surprise when Christina died. This event surely disrupted the plans of Maria and Hans to make their return trip!

Christina was buried in front of the alter in Christine Church, in Falun. Erik Björk may have named the church in her honor and he would be buried beside her when he died. She had been highly revered by the people of Falun and was given an elaborate funeral on the 12th of April 1720. The funeral was conducted in Christine Church by Anders Sandal who 18 years earlier had officiated at her marriage in the Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church in Christina, New Sweden. Göta Rudbeck, a relative of Erik Björk, gave a speech at the funeral and said among other things:

“There is said to be a land some hundreds of miles from here, situated westwards, about which I have heard much said, which is called America. It should be especially loved because of its fertility, for if what I have heard is true, then there is an abundance of everything to find so that nothing is missing of that, which is needed for peace and satisfaction of the mind and to feed the body and satisfy its temporal needs. In this land she was born, who now enters this chamber of death to rest her bones.”

Maria was surely in attendance at her sister’s funeral so she and her new husband, and her daughter, Catherine Vandever, could not have sailed from Sweden before that date. That she and Hans returned to Delaware is first shown by the birth record of her first son, Peter, who was born 12 Oct, 1720 and christened on the 14th of the same month in Holy Trinity Church, Wilmington, Delaware the event being duly recorded in the church records. Maria and Hans continued to produce children on a regular basis having 6 more sons and a daughter The last born child was named Maria who was born 25 Sep 1740 when her mother was 44 years old.

There are very few records mentioning Maria, who came to be recorded as “Mary” in later life, but Hans Jürgen (George) Smidt left a plethora of records during his time in Delaware as a hatter and a prominent citizen.

The daughter of Maria and John Vandever, Catherine, returned to America with her mother and step-father. She married Simon Johnson from Cecil County, Maryland on 4 Nov 1738. I have not traced her further.

Maria and Hans Jürgen (George) Smidt’s children:
1. Peter Smith b: 12 OCT 1720 m. Elizabeth Van de Ver
2. John Smith b: 28 DEC 1722 m. Anna Springer
3. Tobias Smith b: 16 MAR 1723/24 m. Mary McDonald
4. FredErik Smith b: 19 SEP 1727 m. Margaret Paulson
5. Andreas Smith b: 14 JAN 1730/31 m. Sarah Gregg
6. Erik Smith b: 31 MAY 1734 m. Brigita Anderson (great great grandparents of Anse Hatfield)
7. Jonas Smith b: 21 NOV 1737 m. Died young
8. Maria Smith b: 25 SEP 1740 m. Died as an infant.

* Edward Smith is a direct descendant of Maria and Hans Jürgen (George) Smidt.

References:
Burial Records 1713-65, Holy Trinity (Old Swedes) Church; translated & edited by Courtland B. & Ruth L.
Springer; p. 199

"Burials in the Year 1753 (Third Book, p. 913) Dec 27 Hans Smidt, born in Sweden, in Fahlun(sic) Town. Came here to this land in the year 1720. Was the first ancestor of the Swedish family of Smidt on the Christiana. Hatmaker. Died of consumption."

In the book "History of the Original Settlements on the Delaware" by Ferris is a list of some of the oldest stones in the church yard. Among them is the following:

"In memory of Mary Smidt. She was born ye 15th of March, 1697. She went to Sweden in 1714, and returned in 1721. She departed this life ye 19th of Nov'r, 1750."

Communicant Records, Third Book, pg. 913 has the notation that Maria accompanied her brother-in-law, Provost Björk to Sweden in 1714, was married at Falun to Hatmaker Hans Smidt, and came back here with him in 1722. Communicant Records, Second Book, pg 113 show that Hans Smith and his wife, Maria, were here as early as Oct 1720, and that she was buried Nov. 19, 1750 as Hans Smidt's wife aged 54 years 10 months.