And, right now, there’s a good one brewing between the states of Florida and Tennessee over an 1805 Crockett marriage license application.

In the one corner is 90-year-old Margaret V. Smith from Tampa, who says the license application has been handed down through generations of her family, after it was originally pitched when Jefferson County officials were cleaning out the courthouse in Dandridge, Tenn.

In the other corner is 78-year-old Lura Hinchey, archive director and lifelong resident of Jefferson County, who says the license application is a “stolen document” that needs to be immediately returned to the Dandridge courthouse.

Of course, then, there’s your usual gaggle of judges and lawyers.

The story is said to have begun back in the 1930s when Jefferson County tax collector Harry Vance told his brother that workers were cleaning out the courthouse and discarding old “unimportant” documents. That is, supposedly, when the brother, Paul Vance, obtained the document.

Little happened during the next 70 years.

But the first punch, so to say, wasn’t thrown until after a 2005 Antiques Roadshow segment aired, with an appraiser putting a $25,000-50,000 price on the early scrap of paper. According to a transcript on the television show’s website, Margaret Smith said she inherited it from her father.

“They were throwing away everything they thought was unimportant,” Smith told the Roadshow appraiser. “This document never happened – David Crockett didn’t marry this woman … so they felt that it had no value whatsoever, and therefore it was going to be pitched out.

“And my uncle, my dad’s elder brother, saw it, and being a fan of Crockett, he grabbed it right quick. And it’s been in the family ever since.”

Shortly after the show - in February 2006 - Jefferson County Attorney S. Douglas Drinnon filed a lawsuit against Smith, demanding the return of the Crockett document.

Although Hinchey claims that the county had been asking Smith for the document since 1999, little else was “officially” or legally being done to return the document to Tennessee.

“The state had never asked for it back,” Smith’s son, Vance Smith, also an attorney, told the Associated Press. “They found out it had some significant money value … she said it was hers and she wasn’t giving it up.”

In making a decision on the 2006 lawsuit, during a November 2009 hearing, Tennessee Judge Allen W. Wallace sided with Jefferson County.

“Number one, that is a Jefferson County historical document, period,” he said. “No, question about that.”

Continuing, Wallace said he believed the “history” of the missing document fell short of credibility.

“The explanation given as to how this got out of the records down there, that – that dog just won’t hunt,” Wallace said.

Defying Wallace’s ruling, Smith told The Petersburg Times on Dec. 31, 2009: “Well, they’re not going to get it. It has been out of (Jefferson County’s) possession since long, long, ago. I consider it part of my family papers.”

As a result of that story, on Jan. 4 Drinnon filed legal papers in Hillsborough Circuit Court in Florida to enforce the Tennessee order and have the paper returned. No date has been set for the hearing.

In addition, attorney Stephen E. Yeager has filed an appeal with the state of Tennessee, maintaining the county did not take “prompt action” on recovering the Crockett paperwork. The appeal also addresses other legal technicalities in contesting the Wallace’s court decision.

The original license, filed by Crockett at the age of 19, was for marriage to Margaret Elder, who history says changed her mind only days before the wedding. Within a year, Crockett married Mary “Polly” Finley who died in 1815 after the birth of their second child. Later that year, Crockett married Elizabeth Patton, a widow with three children of her own.

Of course, Crockett went on to become arguably one of the most famous heroes to come out of Tennessee, dying at the age of 53 during the famous battle of the Alamo in 1863.

Eric C. Rodenberg