56 Facts About Alvin York

Alvin York earned decorations from several allied countries during the war, including France, Italy and Montenegro.

Alvin York was born in rural Tennessee, in what is the community of Pall Mall in Fentress County.

Alvin York's parents farmed, and his father worked as a blacksmith.

The eleven Alvin York children had minimal schooling because they helped provide for the family, including hunting, fishing, and working as laborers.

Alvin York was drafted during World War I; he initially claimed conscientious objector status on the grounds that his religious denomination forbade violence.

In October 1918, Private First Class Alvin York was one of a group of seventeen soldiers assigned to infiltrate German lines and silence a machine gun position.

The German officer responsible for the machine gun position had emptied his pistol while firing at Alvin York but failed to hit him.

Alvin York was later promoted to sergeant and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.

Alvin York's feat made him a national hero and international celebrity among allied nations.

Alvin York later formed a charitable foundation to improve educational opportunities for children in rural Tennessee.

Alvin York died in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1964 and was buried at Wolf River Cemetery in his hometown of Pall Mall, Tennessee.

Alvin Cullum York was born in a two-room log cabin in Fentress County, Tennessee.

Alvin York was the third child born to William Uriah York and Mary Elizabeth York.

William Uriah Alvin York was born in Jamestown, Tennessee, to Uriah Alvin York and Eliza Jane Livingston, who had moved to Tennessee from Buncombe County, North Carolina.

Mary Elizabeth York was born in Pall Mall to William Brooks, who took his mother's maiden name as an alias of William H Harrington after deserting from Company A of the 11th Michigan Cavalry Regiment during the American Civil War, and Nancy Pyle, and was the great-granddaughter of Conrad "Coonrod" Pyle, an English settler who settled Pall Mall, Tennessee.

The Alvin York family is mainly of English ancestry, with Scots-Irish ancestry as well.

The family was impoverished, with William Alvin York working as a blacksmith to supplement the family's income.

The men of the Alvin York family farmed and harvested their own food, while the mother made all of the family's clothing.

The Alvin York sons attended school for only nine months and withdrew from education because William Alvin York needed them to help work on the family farm, hunt, and fish to help feed the family.

When William York died in November 1911, his son Alvin helped his mother raise his younger siblings.

Alvin York was the oldest sibling still residing in the county, since his two older brothers had married and relocated.

Alvin York was a violent alcoholic prone to fighting in saloons.

Alvin York's congregation was the Church of Christ in Christian Union, a Protestant denomination that shunned secular politics and disputes between Christian denominations.

On June 5,1917, at the age of 29, Alvin York registered for the draft as all men between 21 and 30 years of age were required to do as a result of the Selective Service Act.

In November 1917, while Alvin York's application was considered, he was drafted and began his army service at Camp Gordon, Georgia.

Alvin York served with his division in the St Mihiel Offensive.

Alvin York's actions silenced the German machine guns and were responsible for enabling the 328th Infantry to renew its attack to capture the Decauville Railroad.

Alvin York was promptly promoted to sergeant and received the Distinguished Service Cross.

Alvin York's heroism went unnoticed in the United States press, even in Tennessee, until the publication of the April 26,1919, issue of the Saturday Evening Post, which had a circulation in excess of 2 million.

Alvin York toured the subway system in a special car before continuing to Washington, where the House of Representatives gave him a standing ovation and he met Secretary of War Newton D Baker and the President's secretary Joe Tumulty, as President Wilson was still in Paris.

Alvin York proceeded to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he was discharged from the service, and then to Tennessee for more celebrations.

Alvin York had been home for barely a week when, on June 7,1919, York and Gracie Loretta Williams were married by Tennessee Governor Albert H Roberts in Pall Mall.

Alvin York refused many offers to profit from his fame, including thousands of dollars offered for appearances, product endorsements, newspaper articles, and movie rights to his life story.

However, it was not the fully equipped farm he was promised, requiring Alvin York to borrow money to stock it.

Alvin York subsequently lost money in the farming depression that followed the war.

In 1935, Alvin York, sensing the end of his time with the institute, began to work as a project superintendent with the Civilian Conservation Corps overseeing the creation of Cumberland Mountain State Park's Byrd Lake, one of the largest masonry projects the program ever undertook.

Alvin York became a relatively rare high-profile public voice for intervention.

Alvin York served on his county draft board and, when literacy requirements forced the rejection of large numbers of Fentress County men, he offered to lead a battalion of illiterates himself, saying they were "crack shots".

Alvin York represented not what Americans were but what they wanted to think they were.

Alvin York lived in one of the most rural parts of the country when a majority of Americans lived in cities; he rejected riches when the tenor of the nation was crassly commercial; he was pious when secularism was on the rise.

For millions of people, Alvin York was the incarnation of their romanticized understanding of the nation's past when men and women supposedly lived plainer, sterner, and more virtuous lives.

Ironically, while Alvin York endured as a symbol of an older America, he spent most of his adult life working to bring roads, schools, and industrial development to the mountains, changes that were destroying the society he had come to represent.

Alvin York cooperated with journalists in telling his life story twice in the 1920s.

Alvin York allowed Nashville-born freelance journalist Sam Cowan to see his diary and submitted to interviews.

For many years, York employed a secretary, Arthur S Bushing, who wrote the lectures and speeches York delivered.

Alvin York had refused several times to authorize a film version of his life story.

Finally, in 1940, as Alvin York was looking to finance an interdenominational Bible school, he yielded to a persistent Hollywood producer and negotiated the contract himself.

In 1941 the movie Sergeant Alvin York, directed by Howard Hawks with Gary Cooper in the title role, told about his life and Medal of Honor action.

Alvin York eventually built part of his planned Bible school, which hosted 100 students until the late 1950s.

Alvin York had gallbladder surgery in the late 1920s and had pneumonia in 1942.

Alvin York was hospitalized several times during his last two years.

Alvin York died at the Veterans Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, on September 2,1964, of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 76.

Matthew Ridgway representing President Lyndon Johnson, Alvin York was buried at the Wolf River Cemetery in Pall Mall.

Alvin York received the Medal of Honor, and over the years, three of the others who lived through that day's fighting received valor awards, including the Distinguished Service Cross for Early in 1929, and the Silver Star for Merrithew in 1965.

Alvin York and related academic lectures has brought about new scrutiny on the subject and renewed calls for the men involved other than York to be honored.

Alvin York's record became the subject of controversy in Germany in 1928, after a Swedish journal published an article about Alvin York's exploits which some Germans felt impugned the honor of the German armed forces.