AS THE NINETEENTH CENTURY emerged into being, an astute Virginian took the helm of a fledgling nation that had been born of revolution and now was eager to expand. Many eyes were fast turning westward toward a vast and uncharted continent, not least of those the new president, Thomas Jefferson. Restless frontiersmen set out to clear the wilderness, conquer native tribes, and exploit the land’s wealth of resources. They also unknowingly supplied ample infusions of romance into the American myth. At the vanguard were Scots-Irish descended from Ulster forefathers. They became the first settlers to call themselves Americans.
David Crockett was steadily evolving into one of those high-spirited Americans. Like the developing nation, he, too, continually grew stronger and more self-confident. Much of his positive attitude came from being gainfully employed from age sixteen to twenty by John Canaday. After going to work on the Canaday farm, one of David’s immediate goals was to purchase a new wardrobe to replace his few clothes, which, as he described them, were “nearly all worn out,” and “mighty indifferent.”1
A logical reason for Crockett’s desire to improve his appearance resulted from his growing interest in the opposite sex. Whether or not Crockett enjoyed any amorous adventures when he trekked around the countryside is unknown. Back home, the young man’s dark good looks and muscular frame had to have appealed to the young women living in the area. Likewise, those same women most certainly caught the eye of Crockett.
The possibility of romance came David’s way in the summer of 1803, two months into his long term of service for the Canaday clan. David was love-struck by the arrival of Amy Summer, a nineteen-year-old visiting the Canadays from her home in Surry County, North Carolina. Amy’s father was a half-brother to John Canaday, making her his half-niece. She also was a Quaker and, back in North Carolina, part of the Westfield Monthly Meeting of Friends.2 Even with all his self-assurance, David became tongue-tied whenever he thought about sharing his true feelings with Amy.
For though I have heard people talk about hard loving, yet I reckon no poor devil in this world was ever cursed with such hard luck as mine has always been, when it came over me. I soon found myself head over heels in love with this girl…and I thought that if all the hills about there were pure chink, and all belonged to me, I would give them if I could just talk to her as I wanted to; but I was afraid to begin, for when I think of saying anything to her, my heart would begin to flutter like a duck in a puddle; and if I tried to outdo it and speak, it would get right smack up in my throat, and choak me like a cold potatoe.3
After a few false starts, Crockett finally mustered the gumption to approach Amy. “I told her how well I loved her; that she was the darling object of my soul and body; and I must have her, or else I should pine down to nothing, and just die away with the consumption.”4
Apparently, the young woman was not taken aback by David’s sudden admission of love. However, she was “an honest girl, and didn’t want to deceive anybody,” and her response was not what Crockett sought or expected: she explained that she was already spoken for and was engaged to marry her first cousin, Robert Canaday, the youngest son of Crockett’s employer. David was shattered. “This news was worse to me than war, pestilence, or famine; but still I knowed I could not help myself. I saw quick enough my cake was dough, and I tried to cool off as fast as possible; but I had hardly safety pipes enough, as my love was so hot as mighty nigh to burst my boilers. But I didn’t press my claims any more, seeing there was no chance to do any thing.”5
Fortunately, those vanquished expressions did no lasting harm to the anguished seventeen-year-old. Having mastered the woods, he was both resilient and insightful. He analytically pondered his failure to win Amy’s heart, and concluded that it was going to take more than fresh trousers and shirts to achieve any success in love or, for that matter, in life. “I began now to think, that all my misfortunes growed out of my want of learning,” mused Crockett. “I had never been to school but four days…and did not yet know a letter.”6
One of the married Canadays lived a mile away and had opened a school in his home. Crockett was able to strike an arrangement with the Canadays allowing him to attend school for four days and then work on the family farm for two days to pay for his learning and board.7 On the seventh day, David, like everyone else, followed God’s lead and rested.
The work-study regimen worked well. David applied himself and became both a diligent student and a devoted farmworker. He kept up this routine for six months and learned enough to read his primer, write out his own name, and “cipher some in the first three rules of figures.” For the rest of his life Crockett was to continue to make improvements in his reading and writing skills. Several signed documents and letters in his hand attest to this. He also read various periodicals and books, including selections from Shakespeare; Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography; and, as it was later known, a rudimentary translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, which must have provided ample, if not even salty, entertainment, with its amorous tales of spurned and passionate love.8
“And this was all the schooling I ever had in my life, up to this day,” Crockett wrote of his time in the Quaker school. “I should have continued longer, if it hadn’t been that I concluded I couldn’t do any longer without a wife; and so I cut out to hunt me one.”
In no time, Crockett found a young woman who could not have seemed more appropriate. She was living about ten miles from John Canaday’s farm, at the Dumplin community, not far from Dandridge in Jefferson County. Named Margaret Elder, she was from “a family of pretty little girls” whom David had known for many years. “They [the Elders] had lived in the same neighborhood with me, and I thought very well of them.”9 Margaret, described later as “a tall, buxom lass, with cherry bitten cheeks and luscious lips, mischievous eyes, and hands doubly accustomed to handling the spinning wheel or rifle trigger,”10 appeared to be everything David wanted in a frontier wife. He steadily courted her “until I got to love her as bad as I had the Quaker’s niece; and I would have agreed to fight a whole regiment of wild cats if she would only have said she would have me.” The increasingly frustrated Crockett, however, was unable to extract commitment from the always loving but also coy and elusive Margaret. Maybe she saw the inevitable in her future—a lifetime of waiting at home with a passel of kids while her husband stalked game, entered shooting matches, and caroused with the other menfolk.
In the late summer of 1805, David and Margaret were asked to serve as attendants at the marriage of Robert Canaday and Amy Summer, the beguiling Quaker girl Crockett had once desired.11 After he and his “little queen,” as he referred to Margaret, performed their duties, Crockett was inspired to press his case for them to wed. Margaret remained evasive, but Crockett persisted and “gave her mighty little peace,” until at last she caved in and agreed to marry him. He was ecstatic and later noted that marrying Margaret would make him “the happiest man in the created world.”
By this time, Crockett had become friendly with a young man from Kentucky who had been bound out to work for John Canaday. This fellow was about the same age as David and, like him, had also discovered the bevy of eligible Elder girls and became smitten with one of Margaret’s sisters. Aware that Canaday frowned on “courting frolics,” the pair of young bucks devised a scheme that enabled them to woo the Elder sisters without their employer knowing about it.12 “We commonly slept up-stairs, and at the gable end of the house there was a window. So one Sunday, when the old man and his family were all gone to meeting, we went out and cut a long pole, and, taking it to the house, we set it up on end in the corner…. After this we would go upstairs to bed, and then putting on our Sunday clothes, would go out the window, and climb down the pole, take a horse apiece, and ride about ten miles to where his sweetheart lived, and the girl I claimed as my wife.”
The young men—always careful to sneak back into the Canaday house before daybreak—continued their night courting and romancing right up until the time of David and Margaret’s wedding. The couple had set an autumn date, and on October 21, 1805, Crockett donned his best—and no doubt only—suit of clothes and rode to the Jefferson County courthouse at Dandridge to procure the marriage license.13 Just nineteen, he was more than ready to quit being a bachelor and create a home of his own.
The marriage plans dissolved unexpectedly a few days later when David caught wind of a shooting match and frolic. The crack marksman saw a good chance to make some money. He told Canaday that he was off to hunt deer but, instead, picked up his rifle and rode directly to the match. After all, it was being held on the way to the Elder home, where he planned to end his day by finally asking for their daughter’s hand, something that he had long put off.
At the shooting match, Crockett’s aim with his long rifle was as true as ever, and, when it ended, he and a companion had won the prize—a whole beef. He sold his portion for a hefty five dollars in “real grit,” gold and silver coins. With “a light heart and my five dollars jingling in my pocket,” he rode off to see his fiancée and her parents.14 A couple of miles from the Elder home, Crockett stopped on an impulse for a brief chat with one of Margaret’s uncles. At the cabin he found that her younger sister was visiting, and when David greeted her, the girl burst into tears. She blurted out that Margaret was jilting David. She had no intention of marrying him but instead, the very next day, was going to wed another man, who had also procured a wedding license.
“This was as sudden to me as a clap of thunder of a bright sunshiny day,” Crockett recalled. “It was the cap-stone of all the afflictions I had ever met with; and it seemed to me, that it was more than any human creature could endure. It struck me perfectly speechless for some time, and made me feel so weak, that I thought I should sink down.”15
After a while, David recovered enough to pull himself upright and take his leave. Through her sobs, the girl urged him to continue on to her home and reason with Margaret. She said her parents preferred David to the other suitor, and there was a chance he could break up the match. “But I found I could go no further,” he noted long after, “…concluding I was only born for hardships, misery, and disappointment.”16
Crockett was not guiltless in this matter. More than likely his propensity for shooting matches and social frolics contributed to the demise of the couple’s relationship. Furthermore, his blustery, dominating personality may have failed to recognize the emotional needs of a prospective spouse. There was clearly room on both sides for blame.