History
Substantial Native American settlements existed at the Nolichucky's Big Limestone Creek confluence as early as the Woodland period (1000 B.C. - 1000 A.D.) and continued sporadically for several centuries. Heavy cultivation in the 19th and 20th centuries destroyed much of the site's prehistoric value, although excavators unearthed numerous projectile points and other cultural material scattered by prehistoric inhabitants.
Euro-American settlers began arriving in the Nolichucky valley after the French and Indian War. In 1771, a merchant named Jacob Brown established the Nolichucky Settlement, which included much of the current park lands. Brown initially leased the land from the Cherokee and purchased it in 1775. The settlement aligned itself with the nearby Watauga Association during the American Revolution and became part of Washington County, North Carolina in 1777. In 1783, the Nolichucky Settlement and several other settlements split off from Washington County to form Greene County. A speculator named George Gillespie purchased the land in 1782, and Gillespie would be the property's owner at the time of Crockett's birth. Samuel Stonecypher purchased the property in 1824, and the Stonecypher family was still in possession of the property when the Davy Crockett Birthplace Association purchased it in the 1950s. The DCBA established the park and transferred ownership to the state of Tennessee in 1973.
Read more about this topic: Davy Crockett Birthplace State Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every literary critic believes he will outwit history and have the last word.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)