"
Old Coonrod Pile lived in the valley until his life spanned from the
days when it was a hunting-ground of the Indians to the time when he can
be remembered by some of the men and women now living in Pall Mall, who
knew him as the most influential man of his time in the section, the
owner of the river-bottom farm land, vast acres of hardwood timber, a
general store and a flour mill worked by his slaves--a man grown to such
enormous size and weight that in his last days he went about his farm
and to oversee his workers in a two-wheeled cart pulled by oxen.
Those of the valley who now remember him were children when he died, for
he was born on March 16, 1766, and his death occurred on October 14,
1849.
He saw his valley home changed from a part of the State of Franklin to a
part of the State of Kentucky, then to Tennessee, and the abstracts to
the deeds for land he owned show that Pall Mall was first in Granger
county, later in Overton and finally in Fentress county as the State of
Tennessee developed. Pall Mall is but seven miles from the Kentucky
line, and for many years Coonrod thought he had taken up his residence
within the Kentucky border.
Settlers of those days in leaving the Carolinas and Virginia traveled
usually due west in search for a new home. It was this belief that he
had settled in Kentucky that has led many to the opinion that Coonrod's
former home was in Virginia.
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