David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [48]
Crockett’s own considerable storytelling skill was sharpened in Franklin County as he became acquainted with the old-timers and wisdom keepers who dwelled there. Some of the more memorable storytellers—including William Russell and Jesse Bean, two figures of note from prominent Tennessee families, who were touted as the first white men to settle the land that became Franklin County—had been long acquainted with the Crocketts. The Russell and Bean families had intermarried and spread their kin all across the frontier. Russell’s sister, Lydia, was the wife of Bean’s father, the intrepid William Bean, a rugged adventurer who had hunted with Daniel Boone. In 1769, the elder Bean, after leaving Virginia, became the first permanent white settler in what eventually became Tennessee.16
The Russells also provided plenty of story fodder. William Russell, a native North Carolinian and another early arrival in Tennessee, had fought in several engagements during the Revolutionary War, including the Battle of King’s Mountain. Russell’s house on Boiling Fork became the place for holding court, musters, and other legal proceedings in Franklin County until the town of Winchester was laid out in 1810, and a proper courthouse was built.17 One of Crockett’s good friends was old Major Russell’s son, George, the namesake of his uncle Captain George Russell, who followed his brother-in-law, William Bean, to Tennessee in 1770 and was promptly killed by Indians while on a hunting trip near his home at German Creek.
Jesse Bean, one of old William’s sons, was born in Virginia and came to Tennessee with the rest of his family. That is where his younger brother, Russell, was born in 1769, making him the first white child born to a permanent settler in Tennessee. Jesse had become a highly sought-after gunsmith well before he established a home and business in Franklin County. Russell was also an expert gun maker and often the subject of some of the wildest stories told on the Tennessee frontier. Crockett feasted on tales about the colorful Bean family, especially an infamous one based on an incident in 1802, when Russell returned to his Jonesboro, Tennessee, home after a long absence.
The story, as Crockett heard it, was that Bean had delivered a cargo of his handcrafted guns to buyers in New Orleans, where he then remained for two years, engaging in cock fighting, horse racing, foot races, and other pleasures.18 When he got back to Jonesboro and walked into his cabin, Bean was shocked to find his wife, Rosamond, nursing an infant. Outraged at this blatant act of infidelity, the swaggering Bean swigged down some fresh whiskey and decided to mark the baby so he could then distinguish it from the eight children that he had fathered. Bean yanked out his hunting knife and sliced off the baby’s ears. For such a horrific deed, Bean was fined, imprisoned, and branded on the palm of his hand, as was the custom. To show his distain for such treatment, Bean bit out the brand from his hand and spit the flesh on the floor.19
Though divorce was an infrequent occurrence in those days, the stricken Rosamond soon divorced Bean, who managed to escape prison and, because the authorities feared him, remained at large. While free, Bean let it be known that he would get revenge on the seducer responsible for getting his wife pregnant. He assaulted the man’s brother and beat him unmercifully, but was still free when the matter came to the attention of a young judge who demanded that the sheriff serve the arrest warrant and bring the culprit to him. The sheriff tried and failed, even attempting to assemble a posse to help apprehend Bean, but he could not enlist any volunteers.
A drunken and menacing Bean bellowed that he would shoot “the