Daughters of Devil Anse

oil on board/ 24 by 26

My dear grandmother (Georgia Marie) was born in Ft. Gay, West Virginia in 1916. She was a member of the Hatfield clan. She grew into a beautiful young woman, slender and six feet tall. The son of the family that employed her as a maid, caused her to become pregnant. As an eighteen-year-old, she was not able to take care of my mother, her only child. My mother was dropped on the steps of an orphanage in Portsmouth, Ohio. Grandma later worked as a laundress, taking care of the clothing of the wealthy. It was hot and grueling work. She drank her beer from a vegetable can every evening as she bent from her waist and leaned on her long legs. She loved Jesus but she was beaten by life.

Aunt Emma was angry and known to have beaten up a man with her high-heeled shoes. She moved north to Ohio and was employed in a factory. By working hard she was able to acquire a house and a Lincoln Continental. She was fierce and mean. We would now call her a sociopath. She was also six feet and two inches tall.

Great grandmother, Victoria often told stories of her youth in the mountains where she remembered the feds coming to their home, tying up her Daddy, and "peeing in his mouth"! That really made an impression on her as a child.She claimed that Devil Anse Hatfield was her grandfather by a connection with the Buskirk family of Logan, West Virginia. She had eleven other children but I have never met any of them, nor have I ever "laid eyes on" a man that was my biological relative.

I can never feel a part of the society that shunned my family and dishonored the women by calling them "Hillbillies" and white trash. I can never fail to see the hypocrisies of "Polite" society!