David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [151]
14 Crockett, Narrative, 15–16.
15 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 4–5.
16 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
17 Crockett, Narrative, 16.
18 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 101.
19 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
20 James Collins, Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, edited by John M. Roberts (Clinton, LA: Feliciana Democrat, 1859; reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1979), 22.
FIVE • ON THE NOLICHUCKY
1 Fred Brown, Marking Time: East Tennessee Historical Markers and the Stories Behind Them (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 112. Rev. Samuel Doak, a Presbyterian minister and a major influence on the Tennessee frontier, came up with the cry for liberty in 1780 after delivering a sermon to the Overmountain Men preparing for the King’s Mountain battle. Doak urged them to fight with “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” and the Scots-Irish Presbyterians before him responded as one: “The sword of the Lord and of our Gideons.”
2 Wayne C. Moore, “Paths of Migration,” 39.
3 Ibid.
4 Harriette Simpson Arnow, Seedtime on the Cumberland (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1983), 195. As the author points out, women listening from behind fort walls often mistook the battle whoops of their own returning menfolk, bearing fresh scalps, for those of Indians.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 14–15. Except for the Roster of Soldiers from North Carolina in the American Revolution listing John Crockett as a member of the Lincoln County militia, no detailed record of his service record has been found. There is, however, a record provided for John’s brother Robert, who filed for a pension in 1833 based on his service during the Revolution. It shows Robert serving in various militia posts for several weeks or months at a time from June 1776 until 1781, when he was discharged. Since Robert and John were from the same family and were close in age, their military service records might be similar.
6 Court Records of Washington County, Virginia—Minutes, vol. 1, 39, August 1778.
7 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 6–7.
8 Court Records of Washington, County, Virginia, 54.
9 Ibid.
10 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 5.
11 Austin P. Foster, Counties of Tennessee, A Reference of Historical and Statistical Facts for Each of Tennessee’s Counties (Nashville: Department of Education, State of Tennessee, 1923. Reprinted by The Overmountain Press, 1998), 14. The county was named in honor of General Nathanael Greene, the Rhode Islander who played a key role in the American victories against the British in the South.
12 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 121. The Crockett cabin was located near the confluence of the Big Limestone and the Nolichucky within a large plot of land known as Brown’s Purchase, after Jacob Brown, an itinerant merchant from South Carolina, who had purchased it from the Cherokees with a load of trade goods.
13 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 5.
14 Ibid., 6.
15 Ibid., 33, 34, 431, n. 17, n. 19.
16 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
17 Arnow, Seedtime, 194. Known as “Little John” by the Indians he fought, Sevier, of French Huguenot descent, also was called “the handsomest man in Tennessee.”
18 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 386–87.
19 Ibid. Greene County became a bastion of support for the State of Franklin—one of the great political experiments on the eighteenth-century frontier—and the capital was established at Greeneville, founded in the early 1780s. John Crockett took an active part in meetings and signed various documents and petitions pertaining to the State of Franklin.
20 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
21 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 517–18.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 659.
24 Crockett, Narrative, 18–20.
25 Stanley J. Folmsbee, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee by David Crockett, A Facsimile Edition with an Introduction and Annotations