Davy Crockett

Born: August 17, 1786
Hawkings County, Tennessee
Died: March 6, 1836
San Antonio, Texas
American frontiersman and politician

Davy Crockett, American frontiersman and politician, became a folk hero during his own lifetime. Crockett grew up on the frontier and later used his knowledge of it in his political campaigns. Although he is known chiefly as a hunter and a soldier, Crockett also worked for land for settlers, relief for people in debt, and an expanded banking system for Tennessee.

Early life

David "Davy" Crockett, the son of John and Rebecca Crockett, was born on August 17, 1786, in East Tennessee. He was the fifth of nine children. Crockett's father put him to work driving cattle to Virginia when he was twelve years old. After running away from home to escape a beating from his father, Crockett traveled throughout Virginia. He decided that his lack of education limited his marriage possibilities, so he learned to read, to write a little, and to "cypher," or add and subtract.

In 1806 Crockett married Mary Finely and became a farmer. Frontier farming proved unrewarding, and in 1813 he decided to move his family to Franklin County, Tennessee.

Life on the frontier

In 1813, shortly after Crockett moved to Franklin County, frontiersmen ambushed a band of Creek Indian warriors in southern Alabama. Nearby settlers gathered at Fort Mims. The Native Americans attacked the fort and killed over five hundred people. Crockett then volunteered to serve with the frontier military forces in the fight against the Native Americans. In September and October he served as a scout. He went on leave and then returned to military service from September 1814 to February 1815. During this time Crockett served as a scout and a hunter and apparently encountered little fighting.

In 1815 Crockett's first wife died, and he married Elizabeth Patton. While traveling with neighbors in Alabama, he contracted malaria, a disease that causes chills and fever, and was left along the road to die. He recovered and returned to his family, much to their surprise. He has been quoted as remarking about his reported death, "I know'd this was a whopper of a lie, as soon as I heard it."

Local and state politics

In 1817 Crockett and his family moved to Lawrence County, Tennessee. He worked as a justice of the peace and later served as county commissioner. In 1818 he was elected lieutenant colonel of the local military regiment. In 1821 he campaigned for a seat in the state legislature. During the campaign Crockett realized the frontiersmen's isolation and need for recreation. Therefore, he gave short speeches laced with stories that helped lead to his election. Having grown up among the poor settlers, Crockett served as their spokesman. He proposed bills to reduce taxes, to settle land claim disputes, and to protect their general economic interests. In 1823 Crockett was elected to the Tennessee legislature.

Congressional career

In 1825 Crockett ran for a seat in the U.S. Congress but was defeated. He ran again and won in 1827 and was reelected in 1829. Crockett did not agree with many of the policies of President Andrew Jackson (1787–1845). He took a stand against the president on several issues, including Native American removal and land policy. In 1831 when Crockett ran for a third term, he was defeated. Two years later he regained his seat by a narrow margin. In 1834 he published his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee. Then, another defeat in 1835 marked the end of his congressional career.

Death at the Alamo

In 1835 Crockett and four neighbors headed into Texas looking for new land. By January 1836 he had joined the Texas Volunteers, and within a month he reached San Antonio, Texas. Crockett then joined Texans in their fight to hold the Alamo against a Mexican army. In the first week of March he and the other defenders of the Alamo died during the siege and capture of that fort by Mexican troops. Popular tradition says that Crockett was one of the last defenders who died during the final assault. In reality, Crockett was one of the first defenders to die—alone and unarmed, on March 6, 1836.

Crockett's death at the Alamo made him more famous than his political activities did. Through newspaper accounts and other writings—both fact and fiction—legends concerning Crockett's adventures grew. Descriptions of Crockett are varied, but it is generally thought that he was about 5 feet 8 inches tall, with brown hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. He was noted for his humor, his honesty, and his skill as an entertaining public speaker. Those who knew him realized that he was a man of ability and character.

For More Information

Chemerka, William R. The Davy Crockett Almanac and Book of Lists. Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1999.

Moseley, Elizabeth R. Davy Crockett, Hero of the Wild Frontier. Champaign, IL: Garrard, 1967. Reprint, New York: Chelsea Juniors, 1991.

Rourke, Constance. Davy Crockett. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1998.

Crockett, Davy (1786–1836), frontiersman, congressman, folk hero.David Crockett was born in Tennessee where, in 1806, he married Mary (Polly) Finley. She died in 1815, and a year later he married Elizabeth Patton. Although he served as a militia officer, justice of the peace, town commissioner of Lawrenceburg, and a volunteer in the Creek War (1813–1814), Crockett was a relatively unknown backwoods hunter and storyteller when he was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1821. There he took an active interest in land policies relating to western settlement. In 1827, he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Serving two terms (1827–1831), he split with his fellow Tennessean, President Andrew Jackson, on land issues and Indian removal. Crockett was defeated for a third term in 1831, when he openly opposed Jackson's policies, but was reelected in 1832 as a Whig party candidate. As the 1836 election approached, some Whig leaders touted Crockett as their alternative to Jackson's handpicked successor, the Democrat Martin Van Buren. However, President Jackson and Tennessee governor William Carroll helped engineer Crockett's 1835 congressional defeat. “You may all go to hell,” he proclaimed, “and I will go to Texas.” His last letters reveal that he hoped to rejuvenate his political career in Texas and make his fortune as a land agent.

Arriving in Texas in February 1836 amid the movement for Texan independence from Mexico, Crockett joined Colonel William B. Travis at San Antonio de Bexar. On 20 February, Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna laid siege to the Alamo, a San Antonio mission occupied by Travis and his forces. During Santa Anna's first shelling of the Alamo, Travis wrote, Crockett was everywhere “animating the men to do their duty.” On 6 March, the Alamo was overrun. According to Lieutenant José Enrique de la Peña, Crockett and five or six other survivors were captured and executed on Santa Anna's orders.

Crockett was celebrated in humorous stories based on his adventures, and by the early 1830s he had already become the subject of fanciful exploits and tall tales. The mythmaking was enhanced by his heavily publicized tour of eastern cities in 1834, by his autobiography, and by other “autobiographical” books and almanacs actually written by others. For many Americans his stand at the Alamo completed the union of history and legend that made Davy Crockett a premier representative of frontier individualism. When the Disney company released a big‐budget film about the Battle of the Alamo in 2004, patriotic organizations protested the portrayal of Davy Crockett in less than heroic terms. Clearly the Crockett legend remained potent nearly 170 years after his death.
See also Alamo, Battle of the; Folklore; Indian Removal Act; Indian Wars; Texas Republic and Annexation.

Bibliography

James Adkins Shackford , David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 1956; rev. ed., 1986.
Michael A. Lofaro and Joe Cummings, eds., Crockett at Two Hundred: New Perspectives on the Man and the Myth, 1989.

Michael A. Lofaro

Paul S. Boyer

Crockett, Davy (David) (1786–1836), born in Tennessee, spent a shiftless youth until his political career began (c. 1816) with his appointment as justice of the peace. He boasted that none of his decisions was ever reversed because of his dependence on “natural‐born sense instead of law learning.” After being twice elected to the state legislature, he accepted a humorous proposal that he run for Congress, and to his surprise was elected, serving from 1827 to 1831, and again from 1833 to 1835. Because of his opposition to Jackson, the Whigs adopted him as a convenient tool through whom to draw the backwoods democracy to its standard. Davy was soon turned by skillful politicians into a frontier hero, whose picturesque eccentricities, backwoods humor, tall tales, shrewd native intelligence, and lusty pioneer spirit were all aggrandized. Whig journalists were soon at work and in short order turned out such books, attributed to Davy, as Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett (1833), An Account of Col. Crockett's Tour to the North and Down East (1835), The Life of Martin Van Buren (1835), and Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (1836). With the exception of the last, which is posthumous, he may have had a hand in all these works, and he gladly claimed the Tour and life of Van Buren. Swallowing the Whig bait, he enjoyed his sudden rise to fame and was glad to aid in propagating the myth, which, however, removed him from office, since his constituents would not tolerate his desertion of Democratic principles. Piqued, he left Tennessee to participate in the war for Texan independence, and a few months later died in the heroic defense of the Alamo, adding a final dramatic chapter to his career. A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, of the State of Tennessee (1834) passes as his autobiography, although the claim has often been disputed. In any case the book has the robust manner attributed to Crockett, and contains fine examples of the farce and exaggeration of the tall tale.

Davy Crockett (David Crockett) , 1786-1836, American frontiersman, b. Limestone, near Greeneville, Tenn. After serving (1813-14) under Andrew Jackson against the Creek in the War of 1812, he settled in Giles co., Tenn., and in 1821 was elected to the state legislature. In 1823, Crockett, having moved to the extreme western part of the state, was reelected from his new constituency. When it was jokingly suggested that he should run for Congress, he took the proposal seriously and served three terms in the House (1827-31, 1833-35). His dress, language, racy backwoods humor, and naive yet shrewd comments on city life and national affairs made him a popular figure in Washington. Crockett became a political opponent of Jackson, and the Whigs took him up so assiduously that he became the showpiece of conservatism. Resenting his defeat for reelection in 1835, Crockett left Tennessee for Texas, where he heroically lost his life in the defense of the Alamo . A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett (1834), An Account of Col. Crockett's Tour to the North and Down East (1834), and Col. Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (posthumous, 1836), supposedly written by Crockett himself in his own idiom, do not match, either in content or style, those letters definitely known to be his.

Bibliography: See his Narrative, facsimile edition edited by J. A. Shackford and S. J. Folmsbee (1973); study by J. A. Shackford (1956); W. C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo (1998).

Crockett, Davy (1786–1836) frontiersman, U.S. congressman, and folk hero, born David Crockett in Greene County, Tennessee. Crockett was a volunteer in the Indian wars in the southeast (1813–15) and a militia officer. As a state legislator (1821–25), he took an active interest in public land policy regarding the West. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives (1827–31, 1833–35), campaigning as a “straight shooter.” Crockett was the hero of tall tales in Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David Crockett of West Tennessee (1833) and Crockett Almanacs (1835–1856), and he published an autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee (1834). Defeated in a reelection bid, remarked, “you may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” In Texas, Crockett joined Col. William B. Travis in the defense of the Alamo, “animating the men to do their duty” (1836).

Crockett, Davy

Davy Crockett was a frontiersman, Indian scout, and politician who became one of America's first folk heroes. His backwoods philosophy, homespun humor, and image as a rough-edged hunter and Indian fighter made him an extremely popular figure during his lifetime. Crockett's reputation—and the tall tales about him—grew to legendary proportions after his death.

Born in Tennessee in 1786, Crockett had no formal schooling and worked on farms as a child. From 1813 to 1815, he served as a scout under Andrew Jackson (who later became the country's president), fighting the Creek Indians. His wartime record and plainspoken humor made him popular with voters. He was elected to the Tennessee legislature in 1821 and to the U.S. Congress in 1827. He went to Texas to help settlers there overthrow Mexican rule but died defending the Alamo on March 6, 1836.

Crockett was known as the "coonskin congressman" because of his many stories about hunting raccoons and bears. He loved to tell tall tales that showed him as stronger, smarter, braver, and a better shot than anyone else in the land. The stories grew more fantastic after his death, thanks largely to a series of adventure books featuring Crockett as the hero. In these tales, he climbed Niagara Falls on an alligator's back, drank the entire Gulf of Mexico, twisted the tail off a comet, and outsmarted a businessman. He also traveled the world performing marvelous feats of daring and skill. In many ways, Davy Crockett is America's own celebrated hero, whose deeds and adventures compare to those of legendary ancient warriors such as Achilles* and Beowulf*.

Crockett, Davy (David) (1786–1836) US politician and frontiersman. He served in the Tennessee legislature (1821–26) and the US Congress (1827–31, 1833–35). A Whig, he opposed the policies of Andrew Jackson and the Democrats. He died at the Alamo.