David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [42]
The Finleys may have been there before any of the others. Around 1786, when Thomas Rankin, of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, arrived at the upper end of Dumplin Creek, he found Billy Finley was already there, living in a comfortable log house in Finley’s Gap at Bays Mountain.5
The first domicile that David Crockett and his eighteen-year-old bride called home was not nearly as comfortable as Billy Finley’s two-story log house on a rock foundation. Situated in the hollow near the Finley house, the simple dwelling that the young Crocketts rented from a neighbor was described as “not much more than a shanty.”6 It was constructed of pine logs that were not hewn or even stripped of bark. The cracks between the logs were daubed with mud and the chimney made from mud and sticks, a common technique in 1806. The cabin was topped with a clapboard roof, probably of heart pine or white oak. There were two small rooms, two outside doors, and a door through the middle partition wall. There were no windows.7 A nearby spring gurgled up plenty of water cold enough to make teeth hurt, and the woods provided fresh meat. The Crocketts would live here for six years, and this is where their first two children would be born.
Some aspects of the couple’s early married years seemed pleasant enough. There is no evidence of further disagreements between David and his mother-in-law, even though it would not have taken too long for Jean Finley to realize that her early assessment of Crockett’s lack of financial stability was proving painfully correct. It is unclear just how Polly faired during those first few years, other than David’s descriptions of her domestic life, which left little time for anything but work. “My wife had a good wheel, and knowed exactly how to use it,” observed Crockett. “She was also a good weaver, as most of the Irish are, whether men or women; and being very industrious with her wheel, she had, in little or no time, a fine web of cloth, ready to make up; and she was good at that too, and almost any thing else that a woman could do.”8
Meanwhile, Crockett proved that he was good at proverbially everything a man could do too, or, at least a free white man living in the foothills of Tennessee in the early nineteenth century. Crockett frequently showed up at competitive shooting matches and other events and activities, and hunted for game in the surrounding forests and hills. He frequently paid calls on friends such as James Blackburn, a Virginia native who lived two miles from Finley’s Gap on the waters of Long Creek and the headwaters of Carson’s Branch. Crockett enjoyed Blackburn’s company and stayed in touch with him for the rest of his life. Crockett also spent time on Long Creek with James McCuistion, a longtime neighbor of the Finleys, who had purchased Crockett’s prized first .48-caliber flintlock rifle from the Canaday son shortly after the Quaker schoolteacher took it in barter from David in exchange for a horse. The weapon was still in McCuistion’s possession when he died in 1836 and has remained in his family ever since.9 Today, it is owned by Joseph Swann, the Crockett historian and a McCuistion descendant, and is on public display at the Museum of East Tennessee History in Knoxville.
Crockett would have been pleased that his first Kentucky rifle—a symbol of his most passionate pursuit—remains for all to see. When he lived at Finley’s Gap, long before he had achieved any acclaim, Crockett looked for ways to leave some sort of sign so he would be remembered after he was gone. Stories circulate about a certain tree at Colliers Crossroads, not far from the Crockett home. In the early 1900s it was said people still came there to see the beech tree that Crockett topped and the unknown words he cut with his hunting blade in the tree’s thick hide. Another local story is told of one of