After some weeks of courting, Davy won the girl’s heart, but when he went to ask for his bride, the old lady ordered him out of the house. With the girl’s consent and the tacit permission of her father, the young man secured the services of a justice to marry him on the following Thursday, and made arrangements to have his wife received at the tavern kept by his own father. In Ellis’s story of Crockett’s life, he quotes the following from the records of Weakley County, Tennessee:
Davy Crockett, with Thomas Doggett, security, binds himself in a bond of twelve hundred and fifty dollars, to Gov. John Sevier, Aug. 1, 1806, to marry Polly Finlay.
No record of this kind really exists, as Weakley County was not organized until 1823.
We do not know what the wedding fee was in those days, but it was probably in the shape of worldly goods of small value. As all sorts of pelts were used for currency, we may imagine Davy paying the justice in coon-skins or muskrat hides.
To obtain a horse, Davy had agreed to work six months, board and lodging free. By giving up his rifle, he came into possession of the animal before the time was up, and when he went to the Finlay cabin, he was able to tell the young woman that he would come for her on the day set, with a horse, saddle, and bridle. When the day came—a Thursday—Davy went to the Finlays’, accompanied by two brothers and a sister, a brother’s wife, and some others, and found a number of neighbors there waiting for the wedding.
Mrs. Finlay was up in arms, but Davy rode up to the door, and asked the girl, if she was ready, to “light on the horse he was leading.” He was displaying his usual determination, which ended in winning the day. After the bride had taken her seat on the led horse, and the party was about to leave, a parley was brought about by the girl’s father; the old lady melted at the thought of her girl being married away from home, and the wedding took place without further opposition.
What ceremonies the outsiders observed, Davy never related. He says that they were treated as well as could be expected. They were not subjects for a charivari, but it is likely that the free use of gunpowder, liquor, and vocalized mountain air must have made the night one to be forever remembered by the two young people who were made man and wife.
The next day Davy and his bride went to the Crockett tavern for a visit. The young wife’s going-away dress was a dark blue homespun, and at her throat was a scarlet kerchief that had been brought from Baltimore by her mother. She is said to have been a very pretty girl, with warm gray eyes and a tender smile. The girl’s parents gave them their blessing, together with two cows and two calves, and when the kind old Quaker, John Kennedy, had arranged for a credit of fifteen dollars at the store, they were able to get what they most needed for the cabin they had rented in the vicinity of John Crockett’s inn. Polly was skilled in the use of the loom, and for some years they managed to make a living on the rented land. The homestead system was not then in practice, and the settler was called a squatter, and seldom had any other tenure than the pleasure of the land-owner.
About the time Davy and his wife were making their new home pleasant, Lewis and Clark were returning to Washington from their expedition to the Pacific coast; Napoleon was forming his Confederacy of the Rhine, and becoming the terror of all Europe; and the alleged conspiracy of Aaron Burr was discovered and frustrated, though Burr still had the support of Henry Clay, who claimed him to be innocent. Two months after Davy’s wedding, Napoleon made his triumphant entry into Berlin, and was at the summit of his career. The insolence of English naval officers in disregarding the rights of American seamen found fruit in the War of 1812. Yet the most dramatic events of modern times scarcely drew the attention of the people of the western slope of the mountains. Only when some painted prophet from the tribes of the north or those with whom the French or the Spanish intrigued, went through the border-lands, leaving a trail of unrest and superstitious passion behind him, did the pioneers think of war. The Creeks and the Chickasaws had been peaceful for many years, but among the former tribe and its confederates a faction of the dissatisfied was slowly gaining ground. So little fear of the Indians prevailed that Davy Crockett did not hesitate to move from Jefferson County, to the region about fifty miles west of Lookout Mountain, near the Elk River, where there were all kinds of game, though bears were not as numerous as in the northwestern part of Tennessee. When Davy moved to this new home in Lincoln County, in 1809, he had two boys, both under two years of age. His wife’s father, with his own horse, helped the family in moving.