What a panorama of American history spreads before the mind of one looking back upon the years which have numbered the career of David McCoy, who died near this city on Monday, the 25th instant, aged 104 years, 10 months and 22 days! Born before the federal constitution had been ratified by all of the original thirteen colonies, it has been his fortune to see the country emerge from the many struggles that put a final and unchangeable construction upon that instrument into a nation of the greatest liberty and most wonderful prosperity in the whole record of the world’s history. He first saw the light of day on the banks of the Catawba river, near the town of Morgantou, Burke County, North Carolina, but seven years after the signing of the treaty of peace with Great Britain which established the autonomy of the United States among the nations of the world. He was born during the first term of Washington’s administration, and before the Father of his country retired from office he was a lad old enough to listen with wondering eyes to the story of the war for independence. It was long before the age of steam navigation--even wheeled vehicles were then an uncommon sight outside of New England, almost all travel being done on horseback.

The metropolis of the country in 1790 was Philadelphia, with a population of about 42,000; New York had but 93,000, Boston but 18,000 and Baltimore but 13, 000. The ordinary farmer lived in a small log house, with but a single floor and a garret.

Though the great war for liberty had ended, the era was far from being one of serene peace. The Indians furnished plenty of work for the army to do, and rendered the safety of the fireside so uncertain that one of the first accomplishments taught the lad was to shoot straight. The vast and comparatively unknown region beyond the Blue Ridge and Alleghenies ordered an enticing field to the venturesome spirits of the old colonies - a characteristic inherited from their ancestry and enhanced by the wild life of the frontier. So at 14 years of age young McCoy, with his rifle and horse for companions, went “west to grow up with the country.” This was in 1804, just one year after the Louisiana purchase had made the vast empire west of the Mississippi, from the gulf to the Canadian boundary, a part of the union. He settled at Lexington, Ky., then a small town, but one in which patriotism was intensely American, inspired by such intellects as Clay, the Marshalls, Shelbys and others whose deeds are indelibly written on the pages of history. Eight years later the second war with England was inaugurated. McCoy had now reached man’s estate in years - a strong, stalwart man, whose life and associations in the “dark and bloody ground” had made him a stranger to fear and inured him to hardships, so that he became one of the best soldiers in the mode of warfare then carried on.

The rifle was the constant companion of the heroes of that day, and well for the country it ad been so. It was the unerring marksmen of Kentucky and Tennessee who so utterly routed Packenham and his troops, the pride of the British army, behind the cotton bales at New Orleans. McCoy, however, did not take part in that memorable battle. The work in which he was engaged was of a more dangerous and trying nature. In Governor Shelby’s command, he was with General Harrison in the campaign against the allied forces of Proctor and Tecumseh in the northwest, and he was in the victorious battle of the Thames, when Tecumseh was killed. This incident in his centenarian career was the one most impressed upon his memory, and he delighted in telling how he had passed within a few feet of the spot where the great Shawnee chieftain lay while the life-blood was yet warm in his veins. It was an incident well inclined to be remembered, for the name of Tecumseh had been a power and fear in the border lands for years.

After this conflict had ended McCoy returned to Kentucky, and in December 1813, married Miss Lucintha Davis, in Casey county. The country at large was now entering upon that peaceful era which marked Monroe’s administration. No foreign war, and internal affairs running so smoothly that there was but one political party, five years before agitation of the slavery question made the Missouri compromise a necessity. The rich lands of the Ohio valley yielded an abundance of produce far in excess of the demand for consumption. The Atlantic coast cities being inaccessible, the best and only market was the city of New Orleans. The system of flatboating came into general use, and McCoy followed the lead of others in that enterprise. To see a flatboat working its way down the mighty rivers was no uncommon sight even fifteen years ago - but with what different surroundings to the early days of the pioneers. Then the only way of returning home was on horseback or by foot, a trip fraught with many dangers. Dangers in fact attended every stage of the expedition. Frequently the boats were caught in a freeze and totally wrecked when the ice broke. A flood of water might carry them without the river bed, and subsiding, leave them high and dry in a corn field. Indians and robbers played a conspicuous part in the business, and guard had to be constantly kept against wolves and other animals.

Possessed of that conquering spirit which redeemed the west from the savage and ceased not until California and Texas were added to the national domain, in 1820 McCoy left Kentucky, crossing over into Indiana, where he lived for more than twelve years the life of a successful farmer. But westward the course of empire was taking its way, and the family moved to Missouri. Those were exciting days in the nation’s political history. “By the Eternal” Jackson was in the President’s chair, and the support that stood fast by him in his struggles against the bank and in his fight against nullification came from the west. Tom Benton of Missouri was his right bower in every conflict, the one man upon whom the President could rely to do battle with those intellectual giants. Clay and Webster of the Whigs and Calhoun leading the nullification wing of the Presidents own party. Mr. McCoy, like a large majority of the population west of the Mississippi, was an unwavering Jacksonian Democrat.

He maintained him home in Missouri, with the exception of a years spent in Iowa, until 1863, when he succumbed to the glittering stories of California and, thought now 73 years of age, joined a desert ship across the plains and over the Rockies, to eventually land at Colusa. From their he drifted down to Los Angeles, then up to Crafton in 1866, where he lived for five years. In 1871 he returned to Missouri, but came back to California in 1884, finally settling with his youngest child, Mrs. William T. Morris, in San Timoteo canyon, adjoining Redlands. Old age had now rendered him almost helpless, though at times he would be able to totter about the house and yard and take drives. Imbued with a strong appreciation of the duties of citizenship, from the cradle of constitutional government to the present day it has been always reckoned by him a pride to fulfill that duty. His name appears as a voter in the Great Register of 1894, and his vote in the election of last November was recorded in Mission precinct.

For his service in the war of 1812 he has for the past twenty years been drawing a pension of $12 a month. Forty-four veterans of that war yet remain upon the pension rolls, the oldest of whom is Hosea Brown of Grant’s Pass, Oregon.

Mrs. David McCoy died about 19 years ago, but four children survive the aged father. These are Landon McCoy of Humboldt county, William Western McCoy of San Bernardino, David Hugh McCoy, residing in Missouri, and Mrs. Morris.

The funeral services were conducted by Rev. E.J. Inwood, of the M.E. church, and a large concourse of relatives and friends followed the remains to their final resting place in Hillside cemetery.