David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [33]
Wasting no time, David immediately went to Panther Springs to meet with Wilson. The arrangement between them called for six months of labor; in exchange, John Crockett’s note would be fully forgiven. David would be working at a range of tasks for approximately six dollars a month, which broke down to twenty cents a day in wages, or the cost for a full pint of tavern wine. The thought of being free of his father’s strict parental control was a powerful incentive.
“I set in, and worked with all my might, not losing a single day in six months,” Crockett reported in his autobiography. “When my time was out, I got my father’s note, and then declined working with the man [Abraham Wilson] any longer, though he wanted to hire me badly. The reason was, it was a place where a heap of bad company met to drink and gamble, and I wanted to get away from them, for I know’d very well if I staid there, I should get a bad name, as nobody could be respectable that would live there.”4
When his son delivered the paid-off note, John Crockett was genuinely pleased. As David later reflected, “Though he was poor, he was an honest man, and always tried mighty hard to pay off his debts.” What he failed to mention, however, was that often John had his own children do the heavy lifting for him.
As soon as his work for Abraham Wilson ended, David found employment with John Canaday, a man who would come to have a major impact on Crockett but who for 150 years went unnamed in all published works, or was inaccurately identified as John Kennedy.5 The problem with the Canaday surname mostly stemmed from Crockett’s own Narrative, in which he phonetically spelled the name Kennedy, based on the pronunciation: accented on the first syllable, with the second a silent. It was likely that David’s Ulster ear caused him to hear the name as Kennedy, a common variation of Canaday. Of interest, but puzzling, are Tennessee land records that posted the name as John Kennedy, while tax lists used the correct spelling. The Canaday clan—having spelled their name in a variety of ways, including Canady, Cannaday, and Kennedy—answered to any of them.6
The Canadays were a Quaker family, all members in good standing of the Society of Friends. John Canaday, born in Prince George County, Maryland, in 1741, and his wife, Margaret Thornbrough Canaday, born in 1744 and a native of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, met and married in 1764 in Rowan County, North Carolina, where both their families had settled.7 In 1796, the Canadays migrated to the new state of Tennessee accompanied by three of their grown sons, joined later by their daughter and three other sons. All of them settled in Jefferson County and affiliated with the recently formed Lost Creek Monthly Meeting, only the second Friends meetinghouse in Tennessee.8 Lost Creek became a thriving center of Quaker life and worship and had a profound influence in East Tennessee history and culture during the antebellum years. Quakers recognized the evils of slave ownership and by the late 1780s had freed their slaves. If a Quaker farmer needed work done he relied on his family or else employed laborers.
After hearing that the many Quakers residing in the area “were remarkable for their kindness,” the notion of working on the tidy Canaday farm appealed to Crockett.9 At their first meeting Canaday hired the strapping lad for two shillings a day, provided that after a week’s trial the young man’s work proved satisfactory. At week’s end, Canaday, or the “honest old Quaker,” as Crockett referred to him, announced that he was pleased with Crockett’s work ethic. Then the shrewd