The first night after I left home, I went to Blountville, and stayed at the late Dr. Elkanah R. Dulancy's, who then kept a tavern. Finding I was the son of John Laughlin, and the grandson of his old friend of the same name, who lived in Sullivan, he refused to charge me any bill. I found out who kept store in that town for the Fultons, and slept at the store with him.

On the next morning I set off very early, long before sunrise, and traveled all the way, passing Kingsport and the mouth of Reedy Creek, to Ross' old iron works, then in a state of dilapidation on the North Fork to breakfast. This place, belonging to David Ross of Richmond, Va. and now to his son, Rev. Frederick Ross, had been improved by the late Thomas Hopkins. This place was then Mr. Hopkin's home, as the agent of Ross, and extensively engaged in business for himself in locating and securing Western lands, by which he accumulated a large estate before his death in 1836. When he died, his home was McMinnville, Tennessee, where he had lived many years. -To return from a digression, the tavern and ferry then kept at the ford of the North Fork, a mile or more above where the road crosses now on Ross' bridge, were the property or in charge of Mr. Hopkins. As I descended the chesnut hills, below Holly's old place, where the Abingdon and Mountville roads fork, seven miles west of the latter I overtood two men named Whitworth, Edward and Samuel, brothers, who lived as they said, and as I afterwards learned, near the three forks of Fishing Ford on Duck River, then in Bedford, now in Marshall County, Tennessee. They had been to North Carolina with a drove of horses and were returning home. They told me the place I was going to was forty or fifty miles east of their homes, and that they were going by McMinnville or near to it. I proposed to travel with them, and they said my company would be agreeable. Edward was the older man and loved his grog-Samuel, who was much younger, said his purpose was, being unmarried, to study law in Tennessee with Judge John Haywood, who, he said, lived near Nashville. After we breakfasted together, and traveled on through Hawkins, I discovered that they had traveled the road often as drovers. On getting with eighteen miles of Knoxville, having breakfasted in Granger County at the house of the late Squire Clay, father of Hon. C. C. Clay of Alabama, I found that at the forks of the road at Blain's store, these gentlemen recommended the Emory road, as nearest, it crossing Clinch River at Sutherland's old ferry, and passing twenty or thirty miles north of Kingston and fifteen or twenty north of Knoxville. I regretted this as I wished to see Knoxville, but for the sake of company, being a boy and a stranger, I went on with them. Being very green I told them all my business and prospects. I never knew these men after this journey with them, but judge they were slippery fellows. I discovered from the haste and averted faces with which they passed the Red House, Jarnagin's tavern in Granger I think, and some other places, that they passed without wishing to be known. I afterwards learned, from overhearing their private consultations, that the reason for such conduct was this: as they had gone east, with their horses to market, they had stopped at these places, and had run up bills for provender and lodging, which they had not paid, and were now sneaking by without calling to pay them as they had promised to do. This I thought to be strangely dishonest at the time, and regarded them with suspicion while I remained in their company afterwards. I had never heard before of any such trick of evasion of paying just debts, and looked forward with anxiety to the time when I should part with them. This happened sooner than I expected, for after crossing the mountains to the Crab Orchard, a noted place thirty-six miles east of Sparta, in White County, being of the same name of a famous place in Kentucky history, I suddenly overtook Mr. Shell, with his wagon load of goods, lying by on account of a heavy rain then falling. He was glad to see me, and said if I would stop, my horse being tired, and the day wet, that in two days we would reach Sparta together, where Glenn and Porterfield kept a store for the Fultons, and that there we should find or hear of Buchanan, who had gone on a week before. I agreed to it-and here the Whitworths left me, and I never saw them again, though I afterwards learned that they really lived near the Fishing Ford on Duck River, near where Farmington now is.

Next day, I went on with Shell, traveling slowly with the wagon. The road from Sparta to Crab Orchard, called Simpson's Turnpike, had then just been cut out and opened by Gen. (then Maj.) John W. Simpson. It was new and full of stumps. There were scarcely any houses on it. We camped one night, without fire, sleeping in the wagon, and fastening our horses as wagoners always do. It rained in the night and was cold. Our camp, so to call it, was on the high hill east of the Caney Fork and in hearing of the running waters, near where Maj. Eastland's house now stands. Next day we arrived safely in Sparta, and met Buchanan, just returned from McMinnville, twenty-six miles further west, where he had been and procured a small shanty or cabin built hut to open the goods in. Here I met and got acquainted with Glenn and Porterfield-and Dr. Nourse, since dead, and for the first time saw Gen. George W. Gibbs walking the streets with his wife, he having moved to Sparta, not long before, from Monticello, Wayne County Ky., and had been appointed Clerk of the Circuit Court of White County, Tenn.

Buchanan had known him while formerly in Kentucky, keeping store for John Moore. I have known Gen. Gibbs ever since, sometimes as a friend, and sometimes as an enemy, growing out of politics.

The next day we went on to McMinnville. Buchanan and myself, for the present, as there was no tavern in the town, which had just been laid out into lots the falI before, took lodgings at Maj. Joseph Colville's, more than a mile east of the town on the Sparta road, and lived in the same house now belonging to Charles Schurer, and sold to him by George R. Smartt. Here we stayed, till the store house was fixed and our goods opened. Then we boarded at Mr. Isham Randolph's, the father of Mr. George R. Smartt, and Mr. Doct. Paine, whose house or cabin stood near where the Cumberland Presbyterian Church now stands. We found our board plain and neat, and as good as the new country afforded. Mrs. Randolph, whom I ever knew as an excellent old lady afterwards, and lived to nurse and take care of my grandchildren (Dr. Smartt's children) only died in the latter part of the year 1844.

The late Captain William White, father of William White,' called Buck, and the father of the lady my friend, Mr. Buchanan, afterwards married, removed the same spring to McMinnville from Williamsburg, Jackson County, for the purpose of building the court house for the county, in the new town, which he had contracted to do with the commissioners. He first brought a number of his negros and workmen, and built a double cabin where Mr. Prench's large stable now stands. His negro women cooked for us, and we took up our board among his carpenters and bricklayers, and with himself at this negro quarter as it might be called, and slept in the store. Capt. White, as soon as he built the house, now sometimes occupied as a grocery, and partly as a workshop, right in front of the south door of the court house, and on the corner of a street and the public square, just before and where you begin to descend the hill towards the tanyard; I say, as soon as this house was built, with three rooms, the front one being the bar-room-Capt. White removed his family to McMinnville and opening this house as the first tavern opened in the place, we boarded with him. The backroom below, was the family apartment. At the west end of the house, towards the brick house built by the late Edward Hoge, a large one story frame room was soon added, which contained four or five beds and was a great addition to the establishment. In this last room, and afterwards in the upper rooms of the court house after it was covered, beds were put when the courts were in session, which increased the accomodations for the lawyers very much.

At a former time, and from 1808, when the County Courts were first held in the county, the Courts sat over the river, on a hill, near a spring, on the road to Betsheba Springs. In those times and previously, the old District Court system was in operation, and the District Court for all the Warren, White, Overton, Jackson, Smith, Sumner, and perhaps other counties composing the territory named, sat at Carthage in the County of Smith. Suitors and jurors had to attend at great distances from home. In 1809, the Circuit Court system was first passed by the legislature, mainly at the insistance of the Hon. Thomas H. Benton, now of Missouri, who then represented Williamson County in the Tennessee State Senate. That system, directing a circuit court to be held in each county, twice in each year, went into operation in 1810. N. W. Williams, formerly Clerk of the District Court at Carthage, was elected Judge of the Mountain District Circuit-and held some of his first courts at the old court-house in Warren. When this was the case, the Judge and lawyers boarded about in the neighborhood as best they could. Most of them stopped at the house of old Thomas Wilcher, two miles from the place of holding the court, he living at the place now owned by Buck White, where the old man Wilcher died many years ago, and where the late Joshua Coffee lived. At that time, the late John H. Bowe, Bennett H. Henderson, the late, Alexander Gray, who was a Captain in the late war and afterwards died while a Judge in Missouri, the late Thomas K. Harris, who once, represented the district in Congress, the late Jacob C. Isaacs, and the late Francis Jones, both of Winchester, and both of whom were afterwards members of Congress, were among the lawyers who first practiced in Warren, as was the present Col. A.W. Overton of Smith. Shortly afterwards, Adam Huntsman, Gen. G. W. Gibbs, the late Maj. James McCampbell, an early friend of my father, and under whom I studied law, and Isaac Thomas, now of Alexandria, Louisiana, who also went to Congress in 1814-15 or 1815, all came-out and practiced in the Circuit Court. In August, 1811, I saw the first Circuit Court in session in McMinnville I had ever seen in the state, judge Williams presided, and the court sat under a covered shelter, made of a carpenters work bench for a bar, and seats in front for the jury, with a more elevated seat for the Judge behind the jury box. All was covered over with a shelter of planks and lumber Capt. White had collected for building the court house. It stood about twenty five steps south from the southeast corner of the court house on the public square. That term of the court was attended-in addition to the lawyers I have named-by the late Judge William W. Cooke, the Reporter, by the late Judge Joshua Haskell, by the late Lemuel P. Montgomery, and by the late Maj. John Read, Gen. Jackson's biographer, who commenced the Life, finished by Eaton. Geo. W. Witt also, then of Fayetteville, now dead, was also present, and had previously attended the courts of Warren. At this court, was the first time Maj. McCampbell attended. Immediately afterwards he came to McMinnville to live, from Jefferson in Rutherford, and sent to Wythe County, Virginia, for his family. He afterwards lived at Sparta as a lawyer and tavern keeper, and from thence went to Kentucky or the west, and I never knew his final fate, or when or where he died.

Witnissing this court and hearing the lawyers and hearing them speak, specially Judge Cooke, who was an able and energetic man, again remewed and inflamed my scarcely slumbering desire to become a lawyer. To gain a knowledge of law and forms, I voluntarily wrote for Maj. Colville, the Clerk of the county court in his office. Pleasant Henderson, who was killed by lightning in his own house in McMinnville in 1837, was Clerk of the Circuit Court, and also kept Col. William Mitchell's Land Office-the Surveyor's office of the district in which lands were entered by virtue of North Carolina Land Warrants-and was considered the most knowing business man in the town. The late John A. Wilson had a store in town kept in a log house, since destroyed, which stood on the corner of the next lot east of the present dwelling and store house of William White. Charles Sullivan, the father of the wife of the late John Cain, also kept a small store in the log house, across the street, and on the south side of the square, opposite to the old tavern house before described. Wilson got broke, and moved to the western district in 1820 or 1821, and died. Sullivan left his wife and family, and took up with a girl called Sally Taylor, had a new set of children, and was killed some years ago in a brawl or fracas with a kinsman on a steamboat in the lower Mississippi. A man named William Barnett was sheriff and John McLean and Jeptha V. Isbell, his deputies. Barnett, as sheriff, was succeeded by Gen. Wm. Smartt, and he by Isham Perkins, and he by Leighton Ferrell-since dead-and whose farm, Hickory Hill, is now my property and home.

A post office, at which a weekly mail, on horseback, passed from Knoxville to Nashville, and returned, generally in each week, but sometimes failed. Maj. Colville was the first postmaster, and as his deputy, he living out of town, I kept the office for him. At that day, we never contemplated to see daily and triweekly stages running over the same route and distance. The horse mail passed through Sequatchie Valley-the stages now running, pass by Sparta, while horse mails cross the country in almost every direction at this day, and have for a great many years.

In the summer of 1811, Mr. Felix Grundy, then living at Nashville as a lawyer, where he had removed from Kentucky in 1808, became a candidate for Congress. Under the census of 1810, all of what is now Middle Tennessee, constituted a Congressional district. Col. (the late) Barkley Martin of Bedford, the late Col Wm. P. Anderson who then lived at Nashville and others got up a public meeting and passed resolutions against Mr. Grundy's election-and published them in a handbill signed by Martin as the Chairman of the meeting. Mr. Grundy answered in a circular letter. The late Gen. Isaac Roberts of Maury County was run in opposition to Mr. Grundy. In August, when the election came off, Mr. Grundy was elected by a large majority. I do not now remember whether Col. Robert Weakley (who died in Feb. 1845) or the late Jesse Wharton had been Mr. Grundy's predecessors. T. M. Miller, I think, was the member from the Knoxville District for the latter part of the term of 1809-10 and 1810-11, which had expired on the 4th of March 1811, filling out the second year of an unexpired term of G. W. Campbell, who had been elected to the Senate. I saw Miller on his way home, as I travelled with the Whitworths-he passing Squire Clay's in Granger, or Mr. Copeland's, while we were resting and waiting for breakfast. It was the first time I had ever seen him.

After I went to Murfreesboro to live in Oct. 1815, I got acquainted with Mr. Grundy, of which more hereafter.

After Maj. McCampbell, a lawyer, and old acquaintance of my father, came to McMinnville to live, I disclosed to him my wishes to study law, and fairly set in to reading every spare hour I had from some time in the year 1812, when I was about 18 years old. I read Blackstone' Commentaries with great diligence-and on being frequently examined as to my studiousness, Maj. Mc. encouraged me to persevere. In the winter of 1812-13, we formed a debating society, meeting at Capt. White's tavern, and of which Andrew Buchanan, the late Hugh Brevard, the late Leighton Ferrell, Dr. Lemuel Gilliam, now of Jackson County, Alabama, and others were members-and in this society I made my first essay in public speaking, on such questions as are usually discussed in such societies. I found that I labored under an unconquerable (as I believed) timidity and diffidence, though time and practice wore if off very much in subsequent years after I came to the bar in 1817-18. But up to this hour, I have never risen in any public assembly, to speak on an important subject, or one in which I felt a deep interest, without feeling all the nervous timidity and tremulous anxiety, and fear of failure, often producing a stammering, which I felt in my earliest attempts. It has ever been the case with me whether in the courts, the Legislature, or before assemblies of the people, I have never yet, and at my time of life, I never expect to overcome it. I don't feel a desire to do so, for I have ever found that in proportion to my excitement, interest, and diffidence in commencing my speeches, have been the success of the efforts I made in the end. I never made a reasonably good speech in my life where I felt a calm unconcern at the commencement of it.

So, I commenced reading law- a doubtful beginning of an endeavor which I had determined from early boyhood to make, if ever opportunity offered. On its becoming known in the village, that such was my design, and such my studies, some laughed at me for the attempt, while others, sober minded friends who know me best, encouraged me, saying that if I even failed in succeeding at the Bar, yet I would find myself greatly improved and made more respectable by it. So, I perservered -- and besides reading law, in the summer and fall of 1812, I read Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-the same copy of the work I now have in my library, and which I afterwards purchased of the late John A. Wilson. It was then an era in my fortunes to become possessed of such a work.

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