David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [44]
Such a “crime against nature” was considered to be as detestable as any offense, and in many places if judged guilty the resulting punishment could mean execution. Respect for law and order demanded harsh consequences. As early as 1792, the first criminal indictment was recorded in Jefferson County, when a man named Reuben Roach was found guilty of stealing three yards of linen and three yards of royal ribbon. He received ten lashes on his bare back at the public whipping post.20 A few years later, Jesse Jeffrey was convicted of horse theft, a crime that often ended on a gallows. Instead, the sentence handed down ruled that the man “should stand in the pillory one hour, receive thirty-nine lashes upon his bareback well laid on, have his ears nailed to the pillory and cut off, and that he should be branded upon one cheek with the letter H and on the other with the letter T, in a plain and visible manner.”21 Some citizens thought that hanging would have been a more humane punishment. If stealing a horse could get a person strung up, or whipped and mutilated, the Finley family shuddered to think what the punishment would be for “buggery of a horse.”
Adam Peck was hired to defend John Finley against the charges of bestiality. A respected lawyer and veteran of the Revolutionary War, Peck also was an early pioneer of the Mossy Creek settlement and one of the county’s first state representatives. Peck and his client went on the offensive and in 1811 filed a case of slander against Finley’s three accusers—David Givens, Richard Grace, and William Bradshaw, owner of the horse allegedly made “victim” by Finley. Legal proceedings continued for quite sometime as both sides made their case before Judge James Trimble.22
Several persons were called to give testimony. Crockett was among those summoned by the sheriff to appear in court to speak on behalf of Finley, his brother-in-law and the plaintiff in the slander suit filed against the three men. Several other neighbors and friends of the Finley family were called to give their support, including James McCuistion. According to court records, Crockett had to be served his court summons in distant Franklin County, well to the west in south-central Tennessee.23 Crockett, it seems, was in Franklin County scouting for a new home for his family and did not make it back in time to testify.
The sordid Finley proceedings finally concluded with Judge Trimble finding for the plaintiff. John Finley never received what he considered his just due after the trial. He died in 1814, and it was not until the following year that two hundred bushels of corn were paid as retribution to his heirs, William and James Finley.24 By then David Crockett was long gone from the mountains of east Tennessee. For in the autumn of 1811, after making further inquiries and scouting a few more sites, Crockett determined the time had come to pack up his household and take his leave.
The frontier was moving on and David, at age twenty-five, wanted to move right along with it. As was always his way, he had a desire to know what waited for him on the other side of every river and mountain he encountered. His curiosity and restlessness never wavered. And so the Crocketts loaded up their few possessions on packhorses and, accompanied by his father-in-law, Billy Finley, they set out to start afresh. They left behind the rickety cabin on rented land and their friends and loved ones. They crossed over the mountains and headed west.
Almanac cover, 1837. (Photograph by Dorothy Sloan, Dorothy Sloan Rare Books)
PART II
THIRTEEN
KENTUCK
ALTHOUGH BY EARLY OCTOBER of 1811 Crockett had left his original