Will Walker and Nancy Louisa Caylor Walker moved into the wilderness of Middle Prong of Little River the year they were married in 1859.
They were the first settlers of what came to be known as Walker's Valley.
Will is said to have hewn to the logs and put them up for the house when they first moved into the valley - a home that sheltered them for all 60 years of their marriage.
Will was born in Tuckaleechee Cove at what now is Townsend, Tennessee. He was more than six feet tall and so obviously powerful of build, even in his latter years. (See photo of Will Walker, Click here)
The Civil War started about two years after he and Nancy moved upstream into the isolation of Middle Prong, and many of his former Cove neighbors were soon fighting, all on the Union side. Will stayed home and took some teasing to the effect that he had done so in order to run after the women. There was no suggestion that he was looked upon as a slacker, though.
He had 75 stand of bees in only one location, at a place he called the "Blowdown", where the wind had felled a grove of poplar trees several miles upstream from his home. Most of the bees at this location and others were in sections of hollow black-gum logs - bee gums.
Will sold big quantities of honey. Bear were also plentiful in the uninhabited reaches of the valley above him as well as deer and wild turkey. All of these were frequent table fare in Walker Valley because of Will's skill with the muzzle-loader.
Although, Nancy bore several children in the early years of their marriage and remained his legal wife and outlived him, Big Will also is known to have had common-law wives, concurrently.
He is known to have had at least 25 or more children between the three women (his legal wife and two common law wives) and his faithful wife Nancy is said to have been the midwife in the delivery of almost if not all of them. He is remembered as having a truly fatherly regard for all of his offspring.
One of Big Will Walker's grandchildren says he was a strict father to the big broods of children he sired by the common-law wives he settled in Walker's Valley.
By his own measure of what an educated person was, he wanted his offspring educated. Several made it to college, and some made it all the way through college. At least one of them returned to Walker Valley to teach in the school that Will had built there for the children.
A number of missionaries made their way into the Valley, usually carrying Bibles and quoting from it to try and convert Will from his polygamous ways.
In return they would get a torrent of Bible quotes in return. Will knew the bible and had read it so many times that he could quote long passages including those that dealt with the Biblical patriarchs who had several wives.
Will is believed to have fathered his last child about the time he was 70 years old. The the great vigor he had shown for so many decades, since before the Civil War, began to fade.
In the later years when age was taking its toll on Will and most of his children had gone off on their own ways, it was harder to keep up the valley as it had always been done and he was unable to make a living for him and Nancy. A friend visited him during this time and found the front door of their log home open, in the dead of winter. Sticking out of the door were ends of some fence rails about 14 feet long, with the other end burning in the open fireplace. The rails were too long to fit in the room with the door closed and Will did not feel up to chopping them shorter.
Finally, he was in such need that he sold his beloved valley with most of its giant trees still standing, to the lumber company.
The money he received wasn't much, not by today's measures and even by the standard of that day. The money was all gone by the time Will died in 1919.
The railroad builders and the loggers hadn't moved into the valley yet so Will was allowed to die in the wilderness as he had loved it and managed to keep it, in the same log house he and Nancy had built years before.
