His welcome home by the State of Tennessee was to be held at the capital
on June 9th. But Sergeant York, before he went to war, had given an
option--one over which he was showing deep concern. His mountain
sweetheart was to "have him for the taking when he got back." So it was
mutually--amicably--arranged that the foreclosure proceedings should
take place in Pall Mall on June 7th, and their bridal tour would be to
Nashville.
It was an out-of-door wedding so that all of the guests in Pall Mall for
that day could be present, and they came not only from all parts of
Tennessee but from neighboring States. The altar was the rock ledge on
the mountainside, above the spring, under the beech trees that arched
their boughs into a verdant cathedral dome. It had been their
meeting-place when he was an unknown mountain boy and she a
golden-haired school-girl. As the sunlight flickered on the trunks of
those trees it showed scars of knife carvings that carried the dates of
other meetings there.
The swaying boughs were draped with flags and flowers. The ceremony was
performed by Governor Roberts of Tennessee, assisted by Rev. Rosier
Pile, the pastor of the church in the valley, and Rev. W. T. Haggard,
chaplain-general of the Governor's staff. The bridesmaids were Miss Ida
Wright, Miss Maud Brier and Miss Adelia Darwin, and Sergeant York's best
man was Sergeant Clay Brier, of Jamestown.
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