“A temporary government of our own…”

Did you know that, before the city of Lawrenceburg even existed, there was once an independent and unauthorized government in operation in the area that would become Lawrence County?

As can be seen in this clipping from the ‘Nashville Whig,’ published on July 14, 1817, the region west of Giles County and south of Maury and Hickman Counties was controlled in the spring and summer of 1817 by an entity known as the Shoal Creek Corporation.

This organization was an ad hoc local government.

The purpose of the ‘Whig’ ad was to let people know that the Shoal Creek Corporation was planning to seek recognition by the state as a new county. The Corporation was represented by three commissioners: Henson Day, Daniel Beeler, and David Crockett.

Beeler, for whom the Beeler Fork of Shoal Creek is named today, was a longtime resident of the area. He appears on a list of “Intruders on Shoal Creek” made by the U.S. Army in 1809 when soldiers were sent to force out whites squatting illegally on what was then Chickasaw land.

Crockett, however, was a newcomer. He came to the area not long after the U.S. government purchased what is today Lawrence County in the fall of 1816 for around two cents an acre. In fact, Crockett had probably been at Shoal Creek just a few months when the creation of the Shoal Creek Corporation changed his life forever.

Crockett explains the origins of this renegade government in his 1834 autobiography:

“And so I moved and settled myself down on the head of Shoal Creek. We remained here some two or three years, without any law at all; and so many bad characters began to flock in upon us, that we found it necessary to set up a sort of temporary government of our own…we met and made what we called a corporation…and appointed magistrates and constables to keep order. We didn’t fix any laws for [the magistrates and constables], tho’, for we supposed they would know law enough, whoever they might be; and so we left it to themselves to fix the laws. I was appointed one of the magistrates…”

Crockett’s memory failed him on one account. He had not been on Shoal Creek for “two or three years” when the Corporation was created. Indeed, he had probably only been there for a couple of months when he became one of the officials of the Shoal Creek Corporation.

From Crockett’s description, the Shoal Creek Corporation seems to have been a form of backwoods oligarchy, where magistrates and constables relied on their own innate sense of right and wrong to mete out justice.

Lawrence County was officially organized by the state government on October 21, 1817. According to Crockett, the state made most of the commissioners of the Shoal Creek Corporation official magistrates in the new county. This was the beginning of Crockett’s political career.

If his autobiography is to be believed, this was also the moment when Crockett was forced to perfect his own personal literacy. The Shoal Creek Corporation had no written warrants, but the State of Tennessee required its magistrates to keep written records of all their activities, a task which Crockett, who could barely write his own name, described as “at least a huckleberry over my persimmon.”

Assisted by his constable, Crockett quickly learned how to read and write much more than his name, and he soon found that he had a natural gift for politics, claiming that none of his judgments as magistrate were ever appealed.

The Shoal Creek Corporation existed very briefly–probably for a little less than a year–but it accomplished two important things: it helped settle the lawless territory that would become Lawrence County, and it launched the political career of David Crockett, a career which would eventually lead him to seek a fresh start in Texas and bring him to the Alamo.