If ever this is read by any one save myself, he, she, they, or it will think it time I should say something of myself, and my own career in life, and thinking the same thing myself, the remainder of this introduction will contain little of any thing else, risking of censures for egotism. Autobiography, however, is nothing but egotism-egotism sometimes highly interesting, but which I have no hope will prove so in the present instance, except to my children, or grandchildren, or such partial friends in whom I repose confidence for every measure of indulgence, as may happen to see these pages.

I was born, as is perhaps before stated, in the County of Washington, Virginia, at the residence of my grandfather Duncan, on the banks of the Holston River, on the 1st day of May, 1793. Before my father's removal to Kentucky, although I was the first born and exceedingly weak and feeble in infancy, my excellent mother had taught me my alphabet. To keep me out of mischief, I was also permitted to accompany Elias Lankin, a bound boy of my grandfather Laughlin, to school, where perhaps I learned my a b abs, etc. My father then lived in a cabin, near a spring, on a branch, about a quarter of a mile from my grandfather Laughlin's. The first teacher I thus went to scool to, although too young to learn anything very useful, was Robert L. Ferrell, whose school house was near David King's, near the state line between Virginia and Tennessee. At that school I formed an attachment for Jonathan King, David's son, a grandson of old John Sharpe, who now lives at the mouth of Spring Creek, Washington Co. Va. which has lasted through life. Many of his excellent letters enrich my collections. The next teacher at the same place, to whom I was sent to school, was Geor. W. Craig, afterwards Col. Craig of Knox Co. Kentucky, son-in-law of old grand-uncle John Sharpe, whose death is mentioned in a former page.

Col. Ferrell, then plain Robert L. Ferrell, married a Duff in Washington, Va. and removed to Cumberland Co. Ky. before my father removed to Knox. He became a respectable citizen, and commanded a company in King's Brigade of Ky. Volunteers, at the Battle of the River Raison. He saw the body of Tecumseh after the battle, and from all he learned on the spot, does not think Col. Richard M. Johnson killed him. From what he saw of Gen. Harrison in that campaign, and his being a mile in the rear with the reserve when the battle was won, he does not think that the General was a man of any but very moderate military capacity, and that his over-caution, and tardy, doubting habits, rendered him unfit to command an army. Col. F. after the war, removed to Overton Co., Tennessee, where he now lives on the West fork of Obid's River-a good old, intelligent, pious man-universally beloved. He rose to the rank of Col. of Militia soon after the war. Geo. W. Craig became the first, or one of the first land surveyors in Knox Co., Kentucky, and died on Yellow Creek, where he had built a fine house, about 1829 or 1830, from intemperance. He was much esteemed, and never had but the one bad habit, which overtook him in his latter days. His brother, Andrew, married my cousin Sophia, a daughter of Uncle Thomas Laughlin. She is long since dead and he married again. Isaac King, who married her sister, Jane, yet lives on Watts Creek. At these schools, I learned nothing that I remember distinctly, as I only went as company for Lankin.

After my father removed to Kentucky, and lived on Indian Creek, I went to school to one Joe Ball, a lame man, whose school house was near the mouth of the creek, between Logan's at the mouth, and David Dunces. Here I learned to read-or rather improved in reading in the spelling book (Dilworth's) and in the Testament, for my mother had taught me to read in both at home previously. In fact I cannot remember when I did not know my letters, and easy spelling, as well as beginning to read under this kind tuition. At this school also, I began to make pothooks, and try to write. Under my mother's instructions, I had learned before, how to make rude letters with a pen on paper, and with a pencil or on a slate. Ball was but a poor scholar, but a rigid disciplinarian, and had a taste for making pictures with a pen on paper. Thinking this a great accomplishment, many is the hard-begged sheet of paper I procured from my mother to scratch up into staring pictures of men, beasts and birds-and to make them more showy, I learned to add the use of the juice of racoon root and pokeberries to the blotchings and rough discolorings of ink. All was done with a pen, no idea of a brush for painting ever entered my head. About this time, my father procurred from some neighbor, a copy of Frazer's or somebodies travels in South America, illustrated with fine engravings of scenery about Lima, and of gentlemen and ladies of that city in full dress, inserted as descriptions of the customs and manners of the Dons and Donnas of Lima. To imitate these in my "pictures", as my rough paintings were called, afforded me great pleasure and improved my capacity for using the pen and reducing my figures to something like human shape. This exercise enabled me to improve my early hand writing. In the meantime, the curious things related in the book itself gave me a thirst for reading. I had read the Bible and Testament both nearly through, but with an imperfect understanding of either. About this time I read, and listened to my mother while she read Robinson Crusoe. This was a wonderful book. My father and mother read alternately, and to each other, and to me, the book of travels just mentioned also. Afterwards, I worked my slow way through both myself, as best I could, running to my father or mother every minute to explain names, and teach me the pronunciation of hard words. In this way, with these books and others, before I was eight years old, I spent days and weeks within doors, when almost any other boy would have been out and at play. To this reading followed a mutilated copy of Salmon's old geography with maps, the general purpose and outline of which I learned to understand. It was the abridged portions of history, of men, kings, princes, seiges and battles by sea and land, as far as I could understand them, that attracted my greatest attention and interest. An old life of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and a history of the Scotch Rebellion of 1745, in favor of the Pretender, which I borrowed from my Uncle Thomas Laughlin, were in like manner imperfectly gone through, on their reading by one or the other of my parents, listened to with the most inquisitive attention. I began to hear something of the Revolutionary War, and of Washington and his army. Not having access to any printed history of these events, I have for hours and hours together sat, and begged and inquired of my father and mother or any person who could relate any of the events of the war, or of Washington's life, listened to relating of such parts of these events as they were able to relate to me orally. Many and many a time I have gone to bed after thus hearing history traditionally diluted, and dreamed all night about Washington and Hessians, and British, and Tories, and Indians, and battles. I was thus enabled to dream of Washington and his character, just as I do now, that he was one of the greatest and best men-greatest and best in and of himself-and the greatest benefactor of mankind that ever lived, or that may, perhaps, ever live on earth.

While my father still lived on Indian Creek, and I may be in error as to the date when he removed to Laurel, my uncles Hignight and Jospeh Duncan paid us a visit from Powell's Valley. Uncle Hignight pressed my parents, as we had no school then in our neighborhood, to let me go home with him and go to school with his children to one Powers who was teaching near his residence, near Col. Charles Cox's old mills, and of whom he spoke highly. They consented and I went home with him, and remained five or six months, young as I was. At this school, I improved in reading and spelling, but in nothing else, for I was too young. My Aunt Polly Hignight, my mother's elder sister, was very kind to me. But while absent from home, I lay awake sometimes a greater portion of the night, thinking of home, and often wept sorely in private at my absence. Uncle Hignight, uncle Jos. Duncan, and Uncle Abram Locke all lived in sight of each other. I was much carressed in all the families. It was during a spring and summer I remained there. In the fall, or latter part of summer, one of my uncles going to Kentucky, I went home with him. I will remember that when I got home, I was so overjoyed at meeting my mother and my little brothers, John, Clinton, etc. that it was some time before I could speak. This was my first absence from home.

After we removed to Spence's Creek, as is before noted, we had no school in reach of us. While we resided there, myself, John, and even Henry Clinton, all helped to work in our little farm, both in the lighter work of clearing land and in making our crops of corn, potatoes, etc. When not so engaged, our sport was fishing for small fish in Spence Creek, and in shooting with bows and arrows. The first fall after we removed there, the Indians under Col. George, came on their annual hunting excursion, and his son, a year or two older than myself, who often came to our house, or met me at Uncle Wm. Martin's, in company with other Indian children and my brothers, taught us all how to shoot with the bow and arrow. He taught us how to straighten young canes or reeds, and fasten feathers on them for arrows. At camp, where we often visited, the Indians all shot bows and arrows for amusement. It is astonighing the distances and precision with which they could shoot. The bows were comparatively short, made of black hickory, and all made to bend towards the heart of the wood. This added greatly to their strength and elasticity. The feathers of wild turkeys, from the tail or wings were fastened in a peculiar manner with the sinues taken from the back of the common deer, just over the kidneys. The bowstrings were made of the guts of the bear, twisted into a cord, and dried like a hatters bowstring. In this sport we spent two fall and winter seasons with these young Indians.

After we removed to Watt's Creek, near Uncle Thomas' , a new school-master was engaged, who had come from Tennessee from about Bean's Station, or Cheeks Roads, with one Gid. Smith as he was called. His name was Jeremiah Aulgin, a native of New Haven, Connecticut. He was a graduate of Yale College. His father being a merchant, had entrusted him in his youth as a super cargo of some adventure to Jamaica, on some of the West India Islands. Jerry had spent the cargo, and afraid to go home, had gone to Charleston, S. Carolina, where he was found by Smith and brought to Tennessee. On coming to Tennessee, he had kept store and posted books for Col. Ore, who had a store above Bean's Station in Granger, and for Mr. Cheek (I think his name was) at the aforesaid crossroads. Becoming intemperate, he got out of these employments, and Smith on removing to Knox County, Ky. and settling on Cumberland River, brought him over as a school master. Being employed in our neighborhood, a school house was built for him in a central part of the county, near Capt. James Stotts. Here, I and my brothers, John R. and Henry Clinton, went to his school, with interruptions during the cropping season, in which we worked for nearly two years. He imparted to me nearly all the education I ever acquired at school. He made me proficient in correct reading, correct writing, and in the useful branches of arithmetic. He was a melancholy man, then prematurely getting gray, and occasionally drank hard, but seldom allowed it to interfere with his school hours. He wrote well, and had a taste for compositions in blank verse. He was about or upwards of thirty years of age. He often wrote to his family, and especially to a kinsman named Ives, Dr. Levi Ives, I think, at New Haven, but his family seemed to disown him. His father had died in the meantime. He left our neighborhood about the year 1809 or 1810, and went to Wayne, and then to Cumberland Co., Ky. He married there about the beginning of the last war. In the war he served among the Kentucky Volunteers, as a kind of suttlers clerk. After the war, he raised a family of sons-and after the death of his wife, lived in 1840-1 in Creelsburg, Russell Co. Ky. with one of his sons who was a tavern keeper. They followed trading up and down the Cumberland, but were never successful in business as I have heard. In 1840, old Jerry, in answer to a friendly letter I wrote him from McMinnville, wrote me a very long letter, full of respects and regards for myself and parents but to which he added a page or two of old, vulgar, exploded arguments in favor of atheism. He must have been over 80 years old when it was written. I never wrote him but one letter afterwards, in 1841 or 1842, and receiving no answer, I have supposed him dead. I never saw him after he left Knox Co. Ky. and I never saw any portion of his family. He was a kind teacher to me, however, and I feel indebted to him for all my early knowledge of the branches of education I have mentioned. May he rest in peace-and be happy if alive-and may he, before death, discard all his infidelity!

At the same time I went to school to him, Betsy Craig, a daughter, of Wm. Craig, who afterwards married Joseph Gilless, now State Senator from Whitley and Knox, and my cousin Sally Duncan, daughter of my uncle John, who afterwards married Elijah Gerting and now lives in Missouri, and also my cousins Thomas and John Sharp Laughlin, went the same road partly, and at the same time. I was greatly attached to these two girls, and for them both, felt the first tinglings of youthful affection and first love, sometimes called puppy love, which I ever felt for any of the sex. They were both a little older than myself. Mrs. Gilless, I learn has been dead some years. I never saw her after we removed back to Virginia, or Cousin Sally since the fall of 1810, or spring of 1811, when she visited her relations in Virginia in company with her mother and husband. She has children married I understand-and once lived in Illinois or Iowa, but has removed to Missouri, since her mother, my father's sister Polly, has removed to that country. At this moment, while I am writing, I feel a strong desire to remove to the same country, and spend my old age, which will soon be on me, among the friends of my youth. God knows, whether I shall ever be able to realize these wishes, and castle-building day dreams. The older I get, however, the more they haunt me. My father and my boys have the same wishes. In Livingston and Chariton Counties, Missouri, great numbers of the relations and kindred to whom I was most attached in youth, such as survive, now live; and among them, if I had a home, improved and prepared, I believe I could, with a moderate competency, spend a comfortable old age.

In the reminiscences of my grandfather Laughlin, and my father, I have omitted to mention in the proper connection that a fierce Indian war broke out on Holston, about Abingdon, in the year 1776, and that the people, among whom was my grandfather's family were for a long time confined to an old stockade fort, called Black's Fort, which stood on the hill just south of the public part of Abingdon, across the little creek. In this subject, see two letters of the 13th of July and 15th of June, 1842, in Williams' American Pioneer, printed in Cincinnati, Ohio in that year, at pages 133 and 358.

I ought also to have stated, that my father, besides being in 1788 in Martins campaign to Look-Out Mountain, was in other expeditions, and that my uncle Thomas, and numbers of my relations were at the Battle of King's Mountain. Also, that my brothers Nathan, John and Clinton, all served tours of volunteers duty at Norfolk, and the coasts of Virginia, during the late war. Two of them, Nathan and John, had serious and severe spells of sickness at Norfolk and returned home sick. Two of them served under an old lawyer of Abingdon, formerly a member of the Assembly of Virginia, Henry St. John Dixon, who now, I understand lives in Mississippi.

After our family settled in Kentucky, our principal dependence for meats was for many years on my father's skill in hunting. For the first year or two, fat bears were plenty, and in the fall could be found on Indian Creek, Watts Creek, and in all hills and mountains round about. In the winter, they were found in hollow trees, caverns in the rocks, and in caves, hibernated, from which they were driven by fire, smoking, cutting down the trees, or fought out by dogs, of which every hunter kept four or five. Sometimes the hunter himself would, with the aid of a torch, venture into a rock house or cave, often crawling on his hands and knees, in order to shoot the bear in his hole, where he refused to be expelled by dogs or smoke. Some were so killed, and then dragged out. My father had many dangerous and fearful adventures of this sort, especially after the principal seat of hunting adventure was transferred to the inaccessable country around the falls of Cumberland. I remember one hunting expedition of a week or two in which Uncle Wm. Martin and father-and it was during the last late fall or early winter we lived in the Laurel country-hunted about the falls, and on both sides of the river below the falls. After they had been out sometime, Uncle Martin came home, twelve or fifteen miles for horses to pack home the meat they had killed, bear and venison. I returned to the hunting ground with him to help to manage the horses. When we got to the river, my father was at a camp on the other (south) side. After hobbling the horses, Uncle Martin soon made a raft of an old Sycamore hollow log we found drifted up high and dry among the rocks. We crossed on it, with ease and safety, though the river is rapid and rough, dashing all the way through the narrows and rocks, with high cliffs on both sides, from the mouth of Laurel up to the falls. Our adventure was near the mouth of Dogslaughter Creek. Staying on the south side one night, we found father, and all crossed over with the meat and skins on hand the next day, and camped near the river, in a laurel thicket; the next night, our horses being safe out on the hills in the wild pastures of grass and late pea-vine. The night we so camped, several foxes came in hearing of us and barked fiercely in their peculiar way. At a greater distance, great numbers of wolves kept up a fearful howling nearly all night. We had a good warm fire, some blankets and many dried skins, so that we were quite comfortable. That night, for the only time in my life, I slept with my head on the body of a trusty old hunting dog, who lay quietly all night, for a pillow. Hunters were frequently in the habit of such indulgence in very cold weather, and when they wished the dog as a faithful watchman to warn them of the approach of animals or persons too near the camp. On this occasion, we got home safely next day, loaded with fat bear meat, and fine venison. In the midst of these adventures, and when sitting around the camp-fires of long evening-while cooking the frugal meal and baking the jonnicake at which my father and Uncle Martin were both proficients-or while they were smoking the social pipe after a day's laborious sport, or chewing the Virginia weed-neithers being disciples of King James the 1-they related hundreds of anecdotes, and and recounted hundreds of hunting and youthful adventures, or often launched out into relations of their reminiscencies of the closing scenes of the Revolutionary War, or of Indian adventures and expeditions, chiefly against the Cherokees with which they were both still more familiar. When my uncle Thomas happened to be of the company, being the older man, and having often served against the Indians, and been in the hottest of the fight at Kings Mountain, where Ferguson was defeated and slain, he frequently was more minute and exact in his relations. Of my old uncle John Sharp, my great uncle-who commanded a company under Shelby at Kings Mountain, he related the following story-true and witnessed by himself-which is characteristic of Capt. Sharp, as well as of the true Whig soldier of the Revolution. Capt. S. with his company of choice men was stationed at an important point as part of a reserve by order of Col. Campbell, the Commander-in-Chief himself. After the fight grew warm, and the firing was incessant and general all around the mountain, and it was evident that the Americans were steadily ascending the mountain on the advance, hemming the British and tories more closely in, and no sign of a retreat anywhere, Capt. S. could stand it no longer. He gave his sword for a good rifle to one of his men, gave the orders to his lieutenent which he had recruited himself-ordering him to fulfill them to the letter whether he ever returned or not-then he bounded off up the mountain to the battle, rushed into the nearest and fiercest point of conflict, and advancing from tree to tree, and sometimes in masses with the troops, he continued to fire away as fast as he could load and discharge his rifle. He was a first rate hunter and rifle shooter. Near the close of the conflict, and after the day was won, the firing having begun to subside, Col. Shelby or Col. Sevier came riding by, and finding Capt. Sharp absent from his post, covered with dust, smoke and sweat, firing away like a man fighting for his life, called out to him- "in the name of God, what are you doing here Capt. Sharp, a mile from your post." Deliberately bringing his gun to an order, and bowing, for his hat was gone in the heat of his pursuits, he said deliberately, "Colonel, I came to help and kill and whip the vile, murderous, robbing tories, and as I was placed where my very purpose in coming out to the field was about to be defeated-and by which my word to my wife and father was about to be broken-you see me here, doing what I said I would do. I have kept my word. If they are defeated, I submit to an instant arrest, and court martial as soon as you please; but if they are not whipped, let me fight on till the battle is over, as it will make my case no worse, and then I will voluntarily bring you my sword and submit to a voluntary arrest.

I regret that I cannot remember whether it was Shelby or Sevier to whom he addressed himself. They both knew him as a tried soldier, and I need not say, that he was never arrested for deserting his post and disobeying orders. The old anecdote, with his very words, I have heard my uncle Thomas Laughlin who was standing by at the time, and my two grandfathers who were both his brothers-in-law, repeat a hundred times. My father who was not in the battle, tells me it was a standing good story in the neighborhood where they all lived, after the war, for a great many years, and was always repeated in connection with Capt. Sharp's name and Kings Mountain Battle as long as he lived.

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