Crockett, David (Davy) (1786-1836)

David (Davy) Crockett (1786-1836)

Source

Frontiersman and congressman

Hero . David Crockett was a respected, if less-than-successful, frontier politician in the 1820s and 1830s. However, as a result of a series of tall tales published about “Davy” Crockett, a backwoods superhero who wrestled alligators and could wade the Mississippi River, he became a central character in American folklore.

Origins . Unlike Daniel Boone, Crockett was born on the frontier, in a cabin along the Nolichucky River in Tennessee. Following a familiar pattern of frontier life, the Crocketts moved often. As a young man Crockett finally settled in the extreme northwest corner of the state, near the Missouri border.

Alamo . He enlisted twice with the Tennessee militia commanded by Andrew Jackson but was not present at either of that group’s two most famous battles, Horseshoe Bend (27 March 1814) and New Orleans (8 January 1815). Back home, Crockett began a career in politics. He served as a justice of the peace and state legislator before winning a congressional seat as a Democrat in 1827. He lost his seat in 1831 after he broke with his party’s president, Andrew Jackson, but returned two years later as a Whig. After losing his battle for reelection in 1835, Crockett moved to east Texas in search of a new home. He participated in the defense of the Alamo, a mission converted to a fort in Texas’s war ot Independence, and died when it fell to Mexican troops on 6 March 1836.

Significance. Although he died in the siege at the Alamo and had a respectable career as a politician, Crockett’s fame can be attributed to the media in Jacksonian America. Crockett’s frontier drawl and penchant for folksy stories had always drawn the attention of journalists, and in the 1830s dozens of Davy Crockett books and almanacs flooded the market. Many of them, filled with coarse language and virulent racism as well as remarkable exploits, became best-sellers. These tall tales were later rediscovered by Hollywood in the 1940s and 1950s—the same actor, Fess Parker, played both Crockett and Daniel Boone in popular movies and television shows—and his fame continues to this day.

Source

Michael A. Lofaro and Joe Cummings, eds., Crockett at Two Hundred: New Perspectives on the Man and the Myth (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).