Happy Valentine’s Day!

What was the only force powerful enough to cause David Crockett to sell his gun? The answer, of course, is love!

While we may not think of the rough-and-ready frontiersman and Lawrence County founding father as a natural romantic, his autobiography tells a different story. Many years before he set foot in Lawrence County, Crockett fell in love with Polly Finley. In his autobiography, Crockett recalls, “I was plaguy well pleased with her from the word go. She had a good countenance, and was very pretty…I thought she looked sweeter than sugar.”

After deciding that he would marry Polly, he made an agreement with a local Quaker to work six months for a “low-priced horse” so that he could begin farming, and also so that his new wife wouldn’t have to walk to their wedding. Crockett says that he paid for the horse with his labor and “by putting in my gun with my work.”

He was married to Polly for almost nine years before her untimely death. Shortly afterward, he married Elizabeth Patton, a widow who lived nearby. Although there are hints that Crockett may have been motivated to marry Elizabeth for her wealth, his autobiography tells us that he did, indeed, love her dearly. He was married to Elizabeth when he came to the untamed country that would become Lawrence County.

After a flood destroyed his mills and distillery on Shoal Creek in 1821, Crockett says that the disaster “just made a complete mash of me,” but he was consoled because, “best of all, I had an honest wife” who told him that the disaster would not hold them back. She assured him that they would “scuffle for more” together. The support of his honest wife put the King of the Wild Frontier’s mind greatly at ease, and he was able to settle his debts and leave Lawrence County with “a good conscience.”