The Revolutionary soldiers had twenty years to locate their grants, and
in 1797 Rowan appeared with surveyors, claiming by his entry of 1780 the
"Valley of the Three Forks o' the Wolf." He operated under two land
warrants of 320 acres each, and in his registry of one of them he
specified "a tract on the north side of Spring Creek (now Wolf River),
together with the improvements of Coonrod Pile."
Old Coonrod traded with him, and Rowan took up his residence in what is
now Overton county. As late as 1817 there appeared "one Vincent Benham"
with title under a conflicting grant dated in 1793. Old Coonrod traded
with him and with "$10 in hand" Benham went his way.
But the deeds which Coonrod recorded were voluminous, with corners as
explicitly marked as any land title of to-day. Up on one of the
mountainsides upon a rock there is a crudely carved "X" which was made
by Coonrod to mark a corner which called for a "beech tree" that has
disappeared, and this mark and the forks of Wolf River, corners in
Coonrod's titles, stand to-day as survey points for the boundaries of
the farms now in the valley.
Coonrod built his home beside the spring, now known as "York Spring."
Its yard includes the spot where he made his first camp and where he
killed his first deer. Characteristic of him, he built well.
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