"Yes," she answered, with pride in every line of her sweet though
wrinkled face, "I am proud of all of them--all of my eight boys!"
II
A "Long Hunter" Comes to the Valley
The "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" is more than a fertile space
between two mountain ranges. It is a rectangular basin of verdure and
beauty in the glow of a Southern sun, around which seven mountains have
grown to their maturity. Generously, for uncounted years, this family of
the hills has given to the valley the surplus products of their timbered
slopes, and the Wolf River has gone through the valley distributing the
wealth the mountains brought in, brightening and adding touches of
beauty here and there, ever singing as she came down to her daily task.
The mountains and the river have worked unceasingly together to make the
spot a place of comfort and beauty.
On the bare rock-shoulder of one of these mountains, in the closing
years of the eighteenth century, stood one of the last of the "Long
Hunters," that race of stout-hearted, sturdy-legged men who when the
Atlantic Coast was dotted with sparsely settled British colonies climbed
the mountains and went down the western slopes on the long hunts in the
unknown land that lay below. They were the pioneers of the pioneers, who
in their wanderings found a spot rich in game, in nuts and soil--such a
home as they had wished--and they beckoned back for their families and
their friends.
The figure upon the rock-ledge rested upon a long, muzzle-loading,
flint-lock rifle as he looked out over the valley. His legs were wrapped
in crudely tanned hides made from game he had killed. His cap was of
coon-skin. His search for adventure and game had carried him across the
crest of the Cumberlands and along many weary, lonely miles of the
western wooded slopes of those mountains. Years afterward he is known to
have said that the view from the crag that day was the most appealing in
its calmness and its beauty that he had seen upon his hunts.
Below him stretched a grove of trees. Their waving tops told of their
size and to his trained woodsman's eye the quivering oval leaves were
the leaves of the walnut. It was assurance that the soil was rich. And
through the length of the valley, twisted irregularly, lay a wide ribbon
of saffron cane, from which at times the silver surface of a stream
showed--a further evidence of the soil's fertility. Over the western
edge of this tableland of green and yellow and silver the mountains cast
a shadow of purple and the sun filtered slanting rays through the forest
slopes on the north and east.
Down the mountainside he came, and into the valley; never to leave it,
except when in bartering with the Indians he went to their
camping-places for furs, or in the years of prosperity that followed he
was upon a trading mission.
He first made his way through "Walnut Grove" in search of the caned
banks of the river. As he pushed through the reeds that swayed above him
he came suddenly upon a well-beaten path. In its dust were the prints of
deer-hoofs, and he followed them. The path threaded the length of the
valley beside the river's winding course, but he knew from the crests of
the mountains above him the direction he was taking.
It led him to the base of one of these mountains, to a spring which
flowed clear and cool, a brook in size, from a low rock-ribbed cave.
By the spring he cooked his meal. His bread was baked upon a hot stone
and he drank water from a terrapin shell. As he ate his meal there came
the sound of breaking cane, a familiar welcomed vibration to a hunter. A
stone, that is still by the spring side, was used as a shelter and a
resting-place for the rifle, and a deer fell as it stopped, astonished
at the curling smoke that rose from its watering-place.
This was the first meal of the white man at the York spring or in the
"Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf," and for more than fifty years
the hunter lived within a hundred yards of where he camped that day. He
was Conrad Pile--or "Old Coonrod," as he is known, the descriptive
adjectives and byname ever coupled as though one word. He was the
great-great-grandfather of Sergeant Alvin Cullom York, and the earliest
ancestor of which he has account.
Above the spring in the rock-facing of the cliff is a large cave. Here
Coonrod Pile spread a bed of leaves and made his home. The camp-fire was
kept burning and its smoke was seen by other hunters, and Pearson
Miller, Arthur Frogge, John Riley and Moses Poor came to Coonrod in the
valley, and they too made their homes there, and Pall Mall was founded
and descendants of these men are today eighty per cent of the residents
in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf."
This is but one of the many valley settlements made by "Long Hunters" in
the Appalachian Mountains. Adventurous families in the last days of the
Colonies and in the years that came after the Revolution, followed the
hunters, and log cabins and "cleared spaces" appeared in the valleys and
on the mountainsides. And from them sprang another race of long hunters
who went out from the mountains down into the valleys of the Ohio and
the Mississippi, returning to tell of the land and the game they had
found. Not far from Pall Mall, as the crow would rise and journey, is a
carving upon a tree that is believed, to historically mark the path of
the most noted of the "Long Hunters," and it says:
"D Boon CillED a BAR On Tree in ThE yEAR 1760."
Emigrants of those days settled as Coonrod Pile and his companions took
up their "squatter's rights" in the Valley o' the Wolf. As
canvas-covered mountain-schooners carrying families of the settlers
moved westward they followed the trails of the hunters and stopped where
it appealed to them. Wagon-tracks grew into roads as the travel
increased. And the roads unvaryingly led to the passes and the gaps in
the mountains that offered the least resistance to progress. So
scattered throughout the ranges of the Appalachians are many homes and
settlements off from the old, beaten, wagon-trails, far distant from the
railroads of to-day, reached only over rocky, rarely-worked roadways.
Those who dwell there are the direct descendants of pioneers. Here they
had lived for generations unmolested by the rush and hurry for homes to
the more fertile West. Often in those days a mountain neighbor was forty
miles away, and they were long rugged miles. To-day a traveler distant
on the mountainside can be recognized by the mountaineers while the
man's features are still untraceable, by the droop of a hat or a
peculiar walk, or amble of the mule he rides. In the case of any
traveler along those remote roads the odds are long that the man, his
father, his grandfather--as far back as anyone can remember--all were
born and raised in the neighborhood, and the neighborhood is the valleys
and the cleared spaces on the sides of all the mountains near around.
So the mountaineer of to-day is the transplanted colonist of the
eighteenth century; he is the backwoodsman of the days of Andrew
Jackson; his life has the hospitality, the genuineness and simplicity of
the pioneer. It has been said of the residents of the Cumberland
Mountains that they are the purest Anglo-Saxons to be found to-day and
not even England can produce so clear a strain.
The mountain families have intermarried and because of the
inaccessibility of their homes have remained marooned in their mountain
fastnesses. They are Anglo-Saxon in their blood and their customs. They
are Colonial-Americans in their speech and credences.
They have a love for daring that comes from the wildness and freedom of
their surroundings. They have a directness of mind that is the result of
unconscious training. They must be sure of the firmness of each footstep
they take, and it is through and past obstructions that they locate
their game. They are keen of observation, for the movement of a shadow
or the swaying of a weed may mean the presence of a fox, or a dropping
hickory-nut indicate the flight of a squirrel. They are physically
brave, for it is the inheritance of all who live in mountains. Their
word is accepted, for they wish the good will of the few among whom they
must spend their lives; and to them lying is a form of cowardice.
They are sensitive because they are observant and realize they have been
criticized and misunderstood--misclassed as a rare race of "moonshiners"
and "feudists."
Quickly and clearly they see through any veneer of democracy the
stranger may assume, to conceal an assumption of superiority. Yet for
the stranger on the roadside, in answer to the halloo at their gate, the
mountaineers are willing to go out of their way to do a favor, and they
will cheerfully share such food and comforts as they may have, with any
man. But they give their confidence only in proportion to demonstrations
of manhood and genuineness, and as humanists they are not in a hurry. If
there is an aura of caste, the distinctions must be created by those who
have come as strangers into the mountains and not by the mountaineer.
They know they are not ignorant, except as everyone is ignorant who
lacks contact with new customs and changes in world progress. They are
fully cognizant of their lack of that knowledge which "comes only out of
a book." But whatever their educational shortcomings, no one has ever
laid at their door the charge of stupidity.
Raised in nature's school they are masters of its non-elective course.
They know by the arc the baying hounds make the size of the circle the
fox will take and where to intercept him. They can tell by the distance
up the mountain's side where the dogs are running whether the fox is red
or gray. They know by the sound a rock makes as it is dropped into the
stream the depth of the ford. They have even a classical finish to their
woodland schooling and they find a pleasure in noting that the bullfrog
sits with his back to the water as the moon rises and faces it as the
moon sets.
They know the signs of changing weather that will affect their crops.
The tints of the clouds that float above them convey a meaning. There
are cause and effect in the wind that continues in one direction. They
watch the actions of wild animals and fowls, and they are wise enough to
attribute to beast and bird an intuitive protective sense superior to
their own. They note when the moss has grown heavier on the north side
of the tree.
The steadiness of their poise and their silence in the presence of
strangers is not due to moroseness or the absence of active thought.
They have learned in the woods, if they are to be successful in their
hunts, to be personally as unobtrusive as possible, often to remain
motionless, and all the while to watch and listen alertly. Whenever they
can be of real assistance, no one can more quickly or more generously
respond.
They have their own standard of values in personal intercourse, and they
can wait patiently and in impressive silence. They are always willing
for someone else to hold the spotlight on their rural stage.
About themselves they are naturally taciturn, and public and unfriendly
criticism has been proved to be a hazardous diversion. If the thought
and comment of the stranger upon the mountaineer could be compared with
the keen and often humorous analysis of the stranger the score would be
found in surprizing frequency on the side of the calm and silent
mountaineer.
They give but little heed to the clothes a man wears but look clear-eyed
at the man within the clothes. They have no criticism for the way a man
says his say, so he has something to say. A noted college professor,
himself a mountain boy, maintains:
"I would rather hear a boy say 'I seed' when he had really seen
something, than to hear a boy say 'I saw' when he had not seen it."
Old Coonrod Pile lived in the valley until his life spanned from the
days when it was a hunting-ground of the Indians to the time when he can
be remembered by some of the men and women now living in Pall Mall, who
knew him as the most influential man of his time in the section, the
owner of the river-bottom farm land, vast acres of hardwood timber, a
general store and a flour mill worked by his slaves--a man grown to such
enormous size and weight that in his last days he went about his farm
and to oversee his workers in a two-wheeled cart pulled by oxen.
Those of the valley who now remember him were children when he died, for
he was born on March 16, 1766, and his death occurred on October 14,
1849.
He saw his valley home changed from a part of the State of Franklin to a
part of the State of Kentucky, then to Tennessee, and the abstracts to
the deeds for land he owned show that Pall Mall was first in Granger
county, later in Overton and finally in Fentress county as the State of
Tennessee developed. Pall Mall is but seven miles from the Kentucky
line, and for many years Coonrod thought he had taken up his residence
within the Kentucky border.
Settlers of those days in leaving the Carolinas and Virginia traveled
usually due west in search for a new home. It was this belief that he
had settled in Kentucky that has led many to the opinion that Coonrod's
former home was in Virginia. Others, without more definite knowledge for
foundation, maintain that as he settled in Tennessee he had lived in
North Carolina. The written word was rarely used and the stories of the
earlier days in the "Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf" are
tradition.
In a newly settled territory a man's birthplace and antecedents are
facts immaterial to the community's welfare and many incidents
historical in nature concerning Old Coonrod have been lost in the
waste-basket of forgetfulness and no one now at Pall Mall has "heard
tell of jes' where he come from." Yet some readily say that he came from
"over yonder," and they point back across the mountains toward North
Carolina.
In the first map of Tennessee, made by Daniel Smith, there is a dip in
the northern boundary of the state line where Fentress county is
located. But this was found to be an error of survey and later
corrected. The surveyors of those days were men of courtesy and
accommodation, for in the establishment of the Tennessee-Virginia line
they surveyed around the southern boundary of the farm of a hospitable
host and left his lands in Virginia because the old fellow maintained he
had never had any health except in the mountains of Virginia.
That Coonrod was of English descent there seems scarcely room for doubt,
and "Pile," or "Pyle" and "Pall Mall" stand as mute testimony. And
"York" too is a component part of old England.
I was never able to learn why the village was given its unique name and
there is no tradition that associates it with the noted street in
London, though even to-day Pall Mall in Fentress county is but a single
road. I asked a white-haired mountaineer how long the place had been
known as Pall Mall. With a memory-reviving shake of his head that ended
in a convinced nod, his answer was, "quite a-whit."
And that is the nearest I ever came to accuracy.
But seeing his reply did not contain the information wanted he looked at
me thoughtfully and said:
"Hit's jes' like 'Old Crow!' Every morning for eighty-two years I ha'
looked up at the rocks o' that mountain 'en they h'aint changed a-bit."
The government records show that Pall Mall was made a post-office on
April 3, 1832.
Old Coonrod was a man of Big Business for his time; one of force of
character who dominated his community and who "sized his man" by
standards that were peculiarly his own.
A man would come to him to buy a "poke" of corn or flour, or for a
favor. To the surprize of the stranger the favor might be over-granted
or the corn given without cost; or, upon the other hand, he would be
bruskly dismissed without the least effort at explanation. Unknown to
the stranger the condition of his "britches" had probably given him his
credit rating with Old Coonrod, for he held that patches upon the front
of trousers, if the seat were whole, were decorations of honor, showing
the man had torn them doing something, going forward. But, if the front
of the trousers were good and the seat of them patched, no dealings of
any nature were to be had with the dictator of the valley, for to Old
Coonrod it meant the man "was like a rabbit; he could not stop without
sitting down."
But the residents of the valley, many of them Methodists, claim this
estimate works a hardship upon members of their faith for a good
Methodist could wear the knees out at prayer and the seat out in
"backsliding."
Old Coonrod's trading with the Indians was a series of successes. He is
known to have had their confidence and friendship, and he was arbitrator
between them and his neighbors whenever disputes arose.
Fentress county lying on the western slope of the Cumberlands was part
of the great hunting-grounds of the Shawnees, Cherokees, Creeks,
Chickamaugas, Chickasaws, and even the Iroquois of New York. The basin
of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, that part now Tennessee and
Kentucky, was claimed by each of these tribes as its own, not as home
but as a hunting-ground, and when bands of hunters of rival tribes met
in the territory each fought the other as an invader, and their battles
gave to Kentucky its Indian name, meaning in the Indian tongue the "Dark
and Bloody Ground."
But Old Coonrod kept pace with all of them and prospered from their
friendship, and an Indian trail turned and led close to where he lived.
The last of the Indians passed through the valley in 1842.
As Old Coonrod prospered he bought land and slaves, and was a large
owner of both in his day. He was a cautious and judicious purchaser of
realty. The court records show that at some time or other he was the
owner of the most desirable parts of Fentress county. He held title to
the land upon which Jamestown, the county seat, now stands, which is the
"Obedstown" of Mark Twain's "Gilded Age." He owned "Rock Castle," a
tract of hardwood timber that is enclosed by mountains and can be
reached by but one passageway, a place that became famous during the
Civil War. He bought and sold much of the county's best farming-land
along Yellow Creek.
Fentress was made a county of Tennessee in 1823 and the first four pages
of the new county's records of deeds show that within eighteen months
Conrad Pile had added, through a number of trades, over six hundred
acres to his already large holdings.
So cautious in land titles was he that at the time of his death he owned
three rights to his home-place including the farming-land along Wolf
River. The first was his squatter's rights, which he had homesteaded.
But against this, North Carolina in ceding the territory of Tennessee to
the United States Government reserved title to the land grants the state
had offered to her soldiers of the Revolutionary War, and "one Henry
Rowan" of North Carolina entered warrants given him on March 10, 1780.
The Revolutionary soldiers had twenty years to locate their grants, and
in 1797 Rowan appeared with surveyors, claiming by his entry of 1780 the
"Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf." He operated under two land
warrants of 320 acres each, and in his registry of one of them he
specified "a tract on the north side of Spring Creek (now Wolf River),
together with the improvements of Coonrod Pile."
Old Coonrod traded with him, and Rowan took up his residence in what is
now Overton county. As late as 1817 there appeared "one Vincent Benham"
with title under a conflicting grant dated in 1793. Old Coonrod traded
with him and with "$10 in hand" Benham went his way.
But the deeds which Coonrod recorded were voluminous, with corners as
explicitly marked as any land title of to-day. Up on one of the
mountainsides upon a rock there is a crudely carved "X" which was made
by Coonrod to mark a corner which called for a "beech tree" that has
disappeared, and this mark and the forks of Wolf River, corners in
Coonrod's titles, stand to-day as survey points for the boundaries of
the farms now in the valley.
Coonrod built his home beside the spring, now known as "York Spring."
Its yard includes the spot where he made his first camp and where he
killed his first deer. Characteristic of him, he built well. The house
was hewn logs, large logs, some of them over fifty feet in length. And
the dwelling is now owned and occupied by one of his great
grandchildren, William Brooks, the only brother of the mother of
Sergeant York. The house is to-day one of the most substantial in the
valley. Just across the spring branch and up the mountainside is the
York home.
Old Coonrod built one of the rooms without windows and with only one
door. That door led into his own room and opened by his bedside. In this
windowless room he kept his valuables and it was both a safe and a bank
for him. Into a keg covered carelessly with hides he tossed any gold
coin that came to him in his trades. His rifle was kept there. He had
the prongs of a pitchfork straightened and sharpened. The latter was his
burglar insurance and he felt amply able to take care of his savings.
And in those days men frequently passed through the valley whose
occupations were unknown and whose countenances were often evil to look
upon.
Pall Mall is not without its legend of the hidden keg of gold. It is
known that Old Coonrod had his keg and kept in it his gold pieces. It is
not known just when and why this method of saving was abandoned by him.
But after his death no trace of the keg was found and it is said that
upon his deathbed he tried to give his sons a message which was never
completed, and it is believed he wished to reveal where his gold was
hidden.
There are some who say he was seen to go up a ravine with a mysterious
bundle and to return without it. The ravine is pointed out. It opens on
the roadway about halfway between the Rains' store and the old home of
Coonrod.
But there is no myth to the present-day side of the story. More than
squirrels and rabbits have been hunted up that ravine.
But the legend of the hidden keg of gold is popular in many of the
valleys of the Appalachians, and it will even be found to have leaped
the valley of the Mississippi and almost identical in form appear and
appeal to the impressionable imaginations of those who live in the Ozark
Mountains to the west of that river.
There was but one thing in which Old Coonrod stood really in fear,
something not made or controlled by man. It was lightning. Whenever a
heavy thunder-storm broke over the mountains Coonrod, even in the last
years of his life when he had grown so fat, ran with all the speed he
could command for the cave above the spring, Here he would stay,
muttering and unapproachable, until the storm abated. Then he would come
from the cave swearing in that deep voice that carried both power and
terror, and, as the story goes, "for hours 'niggers' would be hopping
all over the valley."
Coonrod had a genuine admiration for the man or beast willing to fight
for his rights. Once finding one of his jacks eating his growing corn,
he put his dog upon him. The jack was old and small and shaggy. He
turned upon the dog sent after him and seizing the aggressor by the hair
at his back lifted him from the ground and maintaining his dignity
trotted out of the corn-field carrying the squirming dog. That jack was
pensioned. He was given his full supply of corn in winter and granted
the freedom of the meadows and the mountainsides in summer. Old Coonrod
would never sell him.
John M. Clemens, Mark Twain's father, lived in Jamestown when his
"dwelling constituted one-fifteenth of Obedstown." He and Coonrod Pile
were close friends, Pile helping elect Clemens to be the first Circuit
Court Clerk of Fentress county. Both were firm believers in the future
value of the timber, coal, iron and copper to be found in the mountains.
In the 30's both acquired all the acreage their resources would permit.