David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [73]
Almost a century after Crockett and Coonrod hunted the river bottoms and hollows, another famous Tennessee marksman emerged from the Pall Mall Valley—Alvin C. York.14 York became the most famous American solider in World War I after he won the Medal of Honor for leading an attack on a German position, killing 28 German soldiers and capturing 132 others. Best known as Sergeant York, this farm boy from the Valley of the Three Forks was Conrad Pile’s great-great-grandson. He grew up hearing tales of both his illustrious ancestor and David Crockett. “I think we had just about the best shots that ever squinted down a barrel,” York wrote in his war diary. “Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett used to shoot at these matches long ago. And Andrew Jackson used to recruit his Tennessee sharpshooters from among our mountain shooters.”15
As would be revealed many years later, Crockett’s brief stay at Boatland had a far-reaching impact on other impressionable young men. Yet in early spring of 1817, Crockett’s focus returned to the new lands that waited to the west. He bid good-bye to family and friends on the Wolf River and at Boatland and made the long ride home to begin preparing his family for another move.
Before leaving Franklin County, Crockett went to the hillside not far from Kentuck for one more visit at Polly’s grave, marked by the cairn of rocks. He pulled some weeds, doffed his hunter’s hat, and mumbled a few words. Then he and his family—on horseback and piled into wagons—went to Shoal Creek.
Many years later, James Burns Gowen, a hunting companion and neighbor when David, Polly, and their babies made their first move west, described Crockett as “an itchy footed sort of fellow who went bear hunting with a knife, bagged a covey of wild turkey with a single shot, went Indian hunting with Andrew Jackson and finally got himself elected to Congress.”16
By 1817 Crockett had hunted Indians with Jackson, but he probably had not yet killed a bear with a knife, and he never did bag a bunch of turkeys with just one shot. Crockett would go to Congress some years away. However, Gowen’s finest description of Crockett was as “itchy footed,” as true as anything that had ever been said about the man.
TWENTY-ONE
“NATURAL BORN SENSE”
DAVID CROCKETT GOT OFF to a good start on his 160 acres of newly opened Choctaw Purchase land at the head of Shoal Creek, in what was soon to become Lawrence County, Tennessee. But he was not the first white man to settle there. For several years prior to the Choctaws’ ceding their land, mostly Scots-Irish squatters from North Carolina had illegally moved into the area.1 By 1815, the first settlement appeared on Big Buffalo River; a gristmill and distillery followed, and then some Primitive Baptists arrived and built a church. The soil was fertile and yielded fine crops of corn, wheat, cotton, and tobacco, with much game to be found in the hardwood forests and along the many spring-fed streams.
During the less than five years he lived in these parts, Crockett launched his public career. This was where he developed his own style of rhetoric and sharpened his oratory skills. It was here that he first entered mainstream politics. And it was in Lawrence County that history began to take notice of him.
Nearing his thirty-first birthday, Crockett and his boys quickly built a cabin along Shoal Creek, the first of three homes the family would have while living in this region. They had sold a large portion of their land back in Franklin County and leased out the rest of what had been the Patton farm. This income, along with Elizabeth’s family money, bought them a little time to adjust to their new surroundings and get to know their neighbors.
Even before the family had completely