David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [84]
The captain gave Crockett a skiff to get back to his starting point, and a young crewman named Flavius Harris, weary of the water, hired on to work at the new homestead.19 The two of them paddled downstream and returned to John Wesley and Abram Henry at the cabin. Crockett and his three helpers cleared a field and planted corn, but since there was no livestock on the land they did not take time to cut rails and build a proper fence. The cabin was stout enough and had a stone fireplace and even a porch. It would do until the next autumn when Crockett returned with the whole family in time to harvest the corn. Flavius Harris agreed to stay on with Abram Henry. They would look after the place. Crockett took to the woods and killed ten bears, and a great abundance of deer to dry and store away and also keep his two hired men fed and content.
Then Crockett and his boy saddled their horses and rode away. He hated to leave the land of the shakes, but Betsy, or Bet, as he often called Elizabeth, was waiting with their children.20 The problem was, others were waiting for him as well. They were lawyers and bill collectors and Crockett had no names of endearment for them. All the way home, he practiced what he would tell them and hoped his words would be enough.
TWENTY-FOUR
IN THE EYE OF A “HARRICANE”
WITH MISSOURI’S ENTRY into the union in 1821, the United States continued stretching farther west under the leadership of second-term president James Monroe. That same year not only did the Santa Fe Trail open to merchants bound for the ancient city, but large parties of fur trappers and traders departed St. Louis bound for the West, while Stephen F. Austin began moving immigrant Americans into the Mexican state of Texas.
Crockett, content for the moment to remain in Tennessee, also was on the move. He and his son John Wesley arrived back in Lawrenceburg in late April 1822. They had been gone far longer than anticipated and, among other things, had missed another Christmas with the family, all still residing with various relatives since the Shoal Creek flood. Crockett mustered his children and Elizabeth and told them all about the new land waiting for them in the Northwest. He also spoke of the adventures with the boatmen, the land scarred by earthquakes, and of the plentiful game in “the land of the shakes.”
When there was a lull in the telling of tales, Elizabeth interrupted and gave her husband an update of all that had transpired on the home front while he was off scouting her father’s old land grant. Not surprisingly, none of the news was good. In his absence a number of lawsuits had been brought against Crockett, mostly for debts that had accumulated since the loss of the mill. Some of the claims had been challenged, but for the most part the court sided with the creditors.1
On April 5, just a few weeks before he returned home, Crockett’s power of attorney was awarded to Mansil Crisp, a respected citizen who had also served as justice of the peace.2 Crisp was given the authorization to satisfy any remaining creditors as best as he could. Crockett, who had once owned hundreds of acres in Lawrence County, was by July 1822 left with nothing but the goodwill of others. He must have been relieved when Governor Carroll issued a proclamation calling the Fourteenth General Assembly back into special session, as he could draw his legislature