Alvin's early years consisted of hard work, discipline, and guns.
"Alvin Cullum York was born on December 13, 1887, in Pall Mall Tennessee. His ancestry fought in the Civil War; both of his grandfathers joined with the Union. Their children, Mary Brooks and William York, married and had eleven children, eight boys and three girls. Alvin was their third son. William York loved hunting and was said to be one of the best marksman in Tennessee. He would often take his sons hunting with him. Here, Alvin learned from the best. " - Bronte |
"On the border between unionist East Tennessee and secessionist Middle Tennessee, Fentress County became a kind of no-man's-land where bushwhackers and guerrillas wrote some of the most grisly chapters of the war. The fighting disrupted the local economy and plunged the Yorks, the Piles, and many other families into hard times that did not end with Lee's surrender." - Lee “But feuds are dying out. Larnin’ is getting into the mountains. Roads are being built. Officers are going after the killers. And better’n all, the mountain people are beginning to understand hit’s all wrong and don’t profit nobody nohow.” – York |
Fentress County, Tennessee
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"Alvin York's youth was shaped by the difficult conditions of mountain life. William York squeezed a meager living out of seventy-five acres of farmland, did some blacksmithing, and kept order among his large brood with generous servings of what he called 'hickory tea.' Mary Brooks York did neighbors' laundry, often taking payment in old clothes which she then altered to fit her children. Because poverty forced responsibility on the children at an early age, Alvin was hoeing the cornfields before he was six, and even on days when his father excused him from that tedious chore, he was expected to help his mother with the housework." - Lee
"Guns were a major part of York's boyhood. William York was an avid hunter and quickly seized any chance to take his handmade muzzle-loader down from the rack. Since in the Valley of the Three Forks of the Wolf hunting was still more necessity than sport, Alvin began using weapons while he was yet very small. His earliest memories were of stalking snakes and lizards in the yard with a bow and arrow, and he could scarcely recall a time he did not own a gun. Because a poorly placed shot cost the family precious meat, his father demanded accuracy, and Alvin remembered that his father repeatedly 'threatened to muss me up right smart if I failed to bring a squirrel down with the first shot or hit a turkey in the body instead of taking its head off.' As he grew older, Alvin frequently went night hunting in the summer and was gone for days on end during the slow winter months." - Lee |
A replica of a Flintlock Muzzleloader like what Alvin York used.
“The rifle played a big part in the conquering and developing of this-here mountain country. I ain’t got much poetry in me, but any I have I sorter spill out on rifles and shooting and hunting. I am sorter used to these things. I understand them. I know how to make the most of them.” – York |
A Tennessee turkey-shoot competition.
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"We tie the turkeys behind logs with only their heads showing and shoot offhand; that is, standing up from a mark sixty yards away. We draw for positions and then take our turn shooting We never know when the turkey is going to put his head above the log, or how long he is going to keep it there, or whether he is going to bob or weave just as you have drawn a find bead on him." - York |
“Of course, they wanted us to go to school and we was most all anxious to get some larnin’. But we were very poor, and ‘most all the other mountain people were poor too, and there was only money enough for the school to keep going about two and a half months each year, and that was in the middle of summer. It was too cold in the wintertime. The roads were bad. There were no bridges over the creeks and we couldn’t get acrost; and we couldn’t afford warm clothes neither. And even in the summertime they had to dismiss school for two or three weeks for crops and foddering. I went for about three weeks a year for about five years. I larned to read and write. I had about a second-grade education. I don’t think I could have passed the second grade. The schoolhouse was a little frame one-room building over on the hill. There were about one hundred pupils and only one teacher. We used to sit on benches made out of split logs with two pegs mortised in them. The benches had no backs. They were so high that when I used to sit on them I could scarcely touch the floor with my feet. During the last year we had two or three desks.” - York |
"A typical creek-bed road in the mountains" - York |
"An important period in York's life began in November 1911, when his father died of complications after being kicked by a mule. Alvin now assumed the enormous responsibility of supporting the rest of the family, and his life became an assortment of deprivations and disappointments. Seeking release from his frustrations, York 'went all the gaits' as he 'gambled, drank moonshine, and rough-housed,' the traditional vices of the mountain men." - Lee