Every year since, Hatfield, who’s become something of a celebrity in that part of the country, has joined his fellow Hatfields for the event in Blackberry, Kentucky.

The reunion, which returns this September, typically draws more than 200 Hatfield and McCoy relatives and is celebrated locally with an accompanying festival.

‘Mountain justice’

Billy Hatfield was born in Detroit, where his father moved the family in search of work.

But several times a year, they’d go back to their ancestral home in the mountains of Appalachia.

It was there — from his grandma Sadie — that Hatfield first heard the stories about the feud. “She was such a character,” he said of his grandmother, who’d married into the family at age 13. “They said she could shoot just as good, even better than the boys.”

Along with his grandmother’s stories, he devoured every book he could on the subject. Over the years, he became an authority.

One myth Hatfield was able to quickly dispel involved how the blood feud began.