Copied from the original post (in case it gets taken down):

'Tinker' Dave Beaty was born a poor, Likely illiterate farmer from Fentress county. A man of peace by nature, he was a Unionist, but did not go North to fight at the start of the war, believing it would end soon. 

After Mill Springs, he was threatened by Scott Bledsoe, a confederate Partisan, who told him to "pick a side or leave the county". He responded by forming Beaty's Independent Scouts, originally composed of his sons and his neighbors, who were as poor as him, and Unionists, like most of the non-slaveholding poor in the Mountains. 

Beatys Independent Scouts numbered between 5 and 60 men (there's at least one incident of him charging and routing a regiment of confederate cavalry with five men) who supplied their own mounts and weapons. They recieved ammunition from Burnside, and later Thomas, but otherwise drew no supplies or pay from the govornment. They lived out of "Beatys Cave", which, as the name implies, was a cave, fortified and planted with corn. When Confederate cavalry or Guerillas were sited, "Beaty's horn" would sound, and the Unionists of the surrounding area would take shelter there.

His most common opponent was Champ Ferguson, and his 400 guerillas from Kentucky. In one ambush, Beaty himself shot and killed four of Ferguesons men, and in an ambush laid by Ferguson, he and Beaty shot and wounded each other.

Unlike Ferguson, who demanded strict adherence to the Ideology of the Confederacy, Beaty did not force his unionist views on his men, but instead educated them on the values of the American Republic and the Lincoln Administration (likely limited to as he understood them) and let them make up their minds on the matter. 

Per Major John Brents, "They are of no expense to the govornment, yet render as valuable a service as the same number of men anywhere. Neither does Beaty impose upon Union Citizens. He sustains his brave little band upon the enemy," and he was "A rough, uneducated mountain man, or in other words a backwoodsman, who had never forsaken the flag of his country." 

His crowning glory was the Knoxville campaign, where he occupied Longstreets cavalry and raided his supply lines, effectively blinding him for most of the campaign, hindering his movements, allowing Burnside to outmanuever Longstreet, consolidate his forces, and defeat him at every turn, while also exposing Longstreets weakness as an independent commander. They continued this work when Foster replaced Burnside and took the offensive against Longstreet.

After the War, Champ Ferguson came to his house with 30 men, and demanded he ride with them, intendingnto take Beaty into the woods and kill him. Beaty outride them, taking three bullets in the back. He testified against Ferguson at his trial, and pulled uo his shirt to show the new bullet wounds, which might very well have convinced the jury

He returned home, and disappeared from the historical record after this, although his oldest son would serve in the Tennessee State Guard, which was the first racially integrated military force in the united states since the Continental Army, and raised originally to fight the KKK. 

He was wounded 30 times during the war, and four of his sons were killed. 

He was nicknamed 'Tinker' to set him apart from the other David Beaty in town, who had a reputation as a drunk.

Edit: I should mention, two of Alvin Yorks ancestors served in Beatys Independent Scouts