ONE • “KILT HIM A B’AR”
1 Lyrics by Tom Blackburn, music by George Bruns, copyright 1954, Wonderland Music Co.
2 David Crockett, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee (Philadelphia: E. L. Carey and A. Hart, 1834), 190.
3 Ibid., 190–91. Some sources contend that Crockett’s story about climbing a tree and sliding down to stay warm was pure invention—one of his exaggerated yarns later picked up and reprinted in almanacs and newspapers. Others disagree and believe the story has the ring of truth.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 194.
6 J. H. Grime, Recollections of a Long Life (Lebanon, TN: 1930), 8. Rev. John Harvey Grime, a prominent Baptist preacher and religious leader throughout the South, recalled that as a boy in Tennessee he had a hunting dog named after Davy Crockett and another he named Jolar after Crockett’s favorite dog.
TWO • BORN ON A RIVERBANK IN FRANKLIN
1 No records of David Crockett’s birth exist. In all probability, August 17, 1786, is correct. It has always been the accepted date of birth.
2 Kathryn E. Jones, Crockett Cousins (Graham, TX: K. E. Jones, 1984; 2nd printing, rev. ed., 1986), 21–24.
3 From Joy Bland e-mail to the author, April 8, 2009.
4 Joy Bland, “Genealogical Discovery,” Go Ahead: Newsletter of the Direct Descendants and Kin of David Crockett 25, no. 1, August 2008, 3.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Robert L. Geiser, The Illusion of Caring (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973), 148.
8 This quote is attributed to Mary Boykin Chestnut, the daughter of a South Carolina governor and the wife of James Chestnut Jr., the son of one of antebellum South Carolina’s largest landowners.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 16.
10 James Atkins Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, edited by John B. Shackford (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1956), 7.
11 Curtis Carroll Davis, “A Legend at Full-Length: Mr. Chapman Paints Colonel Crockett—and Tells About It,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, April 1960), 170. Crockett made this statement to artist John Gadsby Chapman in 1834 while sitting for his portrait in Chapman’s studio in Washington, D.C.
12 David Dobson, Directory of Scots in the Carolinas, 1680–1830 (Baltimore: Genealogical Printing Company, 2002), 52. The name Crockett may have come from the ancient Norse word krok-r, meaning crook, hook, or bend and probably the root of the old English word crock.
13 Joseph A. Swann, “The Early Life & Times of David Crockett, 1786–1812,” unpublished manuscript.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid. Lowland Scots were an interesting mixture of Celts, Romans, Scandinavians, Germans, English, Irish, and Scots. The region of southern Scotland and northern England was an age-old border battleground where lawlessness had become a way of life. Residents of this contested landscape raided back and forth across the border from before the time of the Romans in the first century AD. This lawlessness and fighting escalated by the seventeenth century, creating an environment of strife and disorder, which effectively undermined any kind of sustained economic opportunity. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the British government confiscated a great deal of Catholic-owned property and enacted penal laws restricting land ownership exclusively to Protestants.
17 Ibid. Over three or four generations, the Scots succeeded in developing the Ulster-Londonderry area that had been torn apart by war and poverty into a thriving industrial region. By the middle of the seventeenth century the county of Ulster was almost totally populated by Scots-Irish. The marshes and bogs had been drained, and fertile lands were planted with a new crop—the potato—brought by Sir Walter Raleigh from the American Indians and soon a staple in the Irish diet. At the same time, the manufacture of woolen and linen products flourished until the English manufacturers tired of Scots in Ulster shipping goods to the American colonies. This resulted in the implementation of harsh trade restrictions, including a ban of the exportation of Irish wool products to anywhere in the world except England and Wales. The mostly English landlords of Ulster also employed a policy referred to as rack-renting, which doubled or even tripled the property rent. The word “rack” became a term of protest, evoking the medieval torture device, to denote excessive rents.
18 Ibid.
THREE • THE CROCKETTS ARRIVE
1 Crockett, Narrative, 14.
2 Ibid., n. 3.
3 Jim Webb, Born Fighting: How the Scots-Irish Shaped America (New York: Broadway Books, 2004), 133.
4 Swann, “The Early Life & Times.”
5 Ibid.
6 Webb, Born Fighting, 118. Although the term Scotch-Irish is commonly used in the United States, the author points out that in other countries, especially Scotland, it is considered rude to refer to a person as being Scotch. He explains that Scotch is a whiskey and that Scots are people whose roots go back to Scotland.
7 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
8 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 4. Located on the Potomac River, separating Virginia and Maryland, the ferry was established in 1744 and was named for Evan Watkins, the ferry owner who resided at his nearby home and farm, Maidstone-on-the-Potomac, a site well known to the Crocketts and other early Scots-Irish.
9 Ibid., 4. Frederick County, VA, Court Records, Order Bk. 2, 456.
10 Ibid., 4–5. It also has been suggested that Elizabeth may have been somehow related to a William Patterson who was mentioned in several deeds involving the Crocketts, and may account for the name Patterson bestowed on one of their grandsons.
11 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
12 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 4. Throughout the early 1770s, the names of David the elder and other family members appeared on legal documents and records in Tryon County and later when it became Lincoln County. These records include various Crocketts serving as witnesses for property deeds, codicils to wills, and mortgages. On at least two occasions David and his eldest son, William, served together as jurors, including on a January 1775 criminal trial in which the jury panel ruled in favor of the defendant and found Thomas Espey, a Tryon County justice of the peace, not guilty of a charge of extortion.
13 Robert Morgan, Boone: A Biography (Chapel Hill: Algonquin, 2007), 20.
14 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 39.
15 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
16 Crockett, Narrative, 14.
FOUR • OVER THE MOUNTAIN
1 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 6.
2 John R. Finger, Tennessee Frontiers, Three Regions in Transition (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 39–41.
3 Ibid., 39.
4 Wayne C. Moore, “Paths of Migration,” First Families of Tennessee: A Register of Early Settlers and Their Present-Day Descendants (Knoxville: East Tennessee Historical Society, 2000), 30.
5 J. G. M. Ramsey, The Annals of Tennessee (Charleston, SC: Walkers & Jones, 1853; reprinted in 1967 for the East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville; reprinted in 1999 by Overmountain Press), 94.
6 Ibid., 96.
7 John Trotwood Moore and Austin P. Foster, Tennessee, The Volunteer State (Nashville and Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1923), v.
8 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 2, 6.
9 Wilma Dykeman, Tennessee, A History (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1984), 43–44.
10 Ibid.
11 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 3, 6. The document signed by two David Crocketts was called the Washington County Petition. It provides additional proof that the David Crockett who is the subject of this book had an uncle named David Crockett Jr.
12 Crockett, Narrative, 15.
13 James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (Nashville: Charles and Randy Elder-Booksellers Publishers, reproduced 1982, originally published by the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1891 and 1900), 55.
14 Crockett, Narrative, 15–16.
15 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 4–5.
16 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
17 Crockett, Narrative, 16.
18 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 101.
19 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
20 James Collins, Autobiography of a Revolutionary Soldier, edited by John M. Roberts (Clinton, LA: Feliciana Democrat, 1859; reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1979), 22.
FIVE • ON THE NOLICHUCKY
1 Fred Brown, Marking Time: East Tennessee Historical Markers and the Stories Behind Them (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005), 112. Rev. Samuel Doak, a Presbyterian minister and a major influence on the Tennessee frontier, came up with the cry for liberty in 1780 after delivering a sermon to the Overmountain Men preparing for the King’s Mountain battle. Doak urged them to fight with “the sword of the Lord and of Gideon,” and the Scots-Irish Presbyterians before him responded as one: “The sword of the Lord and of our Gideons.”
2 Wayne C. Moore, “Paths of Migration,” 39.
3 Ibid.
4 Harriette Simpson Arnow, Seedtime on the Cumberland (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1983), 195. As the author points out, women listening from behind fort walls often mistook the battle whoops of their own returning menfolk, bearing fresh scalps, for those of Indians.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 14–15. Except for the Roster of Soldiers from North Carolina in the American Revolution listing John Crockett as a member of the Lincoln County militia, no detailed record of his service record has been found. There is, however, a record provided for John’s brother Robert, who filed for a pension in 1833 based on his service during the Revolution. It shows Robert serving in various militia posts for several weeks or months at a time from June 1776 until 1781, when he was discharged. Since Robert and John were from the same family and were close in age, their military service records might be similar.
6 Court Records of Washington County, Virginia—Minutes, vol. 1, 39, August 1778.
7 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 6–7.
8 Court Records of Washington, County, Virginia, 54.
9 Ibid.
10 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 5.
11 Austin P. Foster, Counties of Tennessee, A Reference of Historical and Statistical Facts for Each of Tennessee’s Counties (Nashville: Department of Education, State of Tennessee, 1923. Reprinted by The Overmountain Press, 1998), 14. The county was named in honor of General Nathanael Greene, the Rhode Islander who played a key role in the American victories against the British in the South.
12 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 121. The Crockett cabin was located near the confluence of the Big Limestone and the Nolichucky within a large plot of land known as Brown’s Purchase, after Jacob Brown, an itinerant merchant from South Carolina, who had purchased it from the Cherokees with a load of trade goods.
13 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 5.
14 Ibid., 6.
15 Ibid., 33, 34, 431, n. 17, n. 19.
16 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
17 Arnow, Seedtime, 194. Known as “Little John” by the Indians he fought, Sevier, of French Huguenot descent, also was called “the handsomest man in Tennessee.”
18 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 386–87.
19 Ibid. Greene County became a bastion of support for the State of Franklin—one of the great political experiments on the eighteenth-century frontier—and the capital was established at Greeneville, founded in the early 1780s. John Crockett took an active part in meetings and signed various documents and petitions pertaining to the State of Franklin.
20 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
21 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 517–18.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid., 659.
24 Crockett, Narrative, 18–20.
25 Stanley J. Folmsbee, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee by David Crockett, A Facsimile Edition with an Introduction and Annotations by James A. Shackford and Stanley J. Folmsbee (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1973), 19.
26 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
SIX • A BOY’S LEARNING
1 Swann, “Early Life & Times.” Greene County Deed Book, vol. 3, 320, November 27, 1792, John Crockett from St of NC 197 acres Stogdons Fork, Lick Creek, Grant #1243.
2 Alice Daniel, Log Cabins of the Smokies (Gatlinburg, TN: Great Smoky Mountains Natural History Association, 2000), 3.
3 Crockett, Narrative, 20.
4 Fred Brown, “The Stoneciphers,” Knoxville News-Sentinel, September 22, 1996. The Stonecipher family had come to America from Germany by way of Rotterdam in the mid-1700s. They were hired by the governor of Virginia to cut stone for buildings in the expanding Tidewater lands and in 1777 the family moved to the new frontier that would become Tennessee.
5 Ibid.
6 Crockett, Narrative, 21.
7 Brown, “Stoneciphers.”
8 Ibid.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 21.
10 Brown, “Stoneciphers.” Absalom and Sarah Stonecipher raised ten children. When Absalom died at the age of eighty-two in 1851, he had outlived David Crockett by fifteen years.
11 Kay K. Moss, Southern Folk Medicine, 1750–1820 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), 2, 27.
12 Ibid., 8. For example, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a renowned Philadelphia physician, knew enough to counsel his aspiring students to seek out practitioners of domestic medicine. “When you go abroad always take a memorandum book and whenever you hear an old woman say such and such herbs are good, or that a compound makes a good medicine or ointment, put it down, for, gentlemen, you may need it.” Before his death in 1813, Rush was professor of the practice of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, America’s preeminent medical school at the time.
13 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
14 Michal Strutin, Gristmills of the Smokies (Gatlinburg, TN: Great Smoky Mountains National History Association, 2000), 3.
15 Ibid., 7.
16 A millstone believed to have been removed from the site of the Crockett gristmill destroyed in the 1794 flood was eventually donated to the Crockett Tavern Museum in Morristown, TN, where it can still be seen.
17 Crockett, Narrative, 21.
18 From the Crockett Tavern and Pioneer Museum files. Swann, “Early Life & Times.
19 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 39: Grant of 300 acres in Jefferson County, TN, to John Crockett, April 14, 1792. Estle P. Muncy, People and Places of Jefferson County (Rogersville, TN: East Tennessee Printing Co., 1994), 3, 5–8. Formed by Territorial Governor William Blount in 1792 and bounded by the French Broad and Holston rivers, the county was named for Thomas Jefferson. The following year Dandridge, established in honor of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, the wife of President Washington, was named the county seat. Mossy Creek, named for the profusion of long, vividly green moss fronds waving in the currents of the stream, was first settled in the 1780s. The community retained its name for almost 120 years, until 1901, when it became Jefferson City
20 William Douglas Henderson and Jimmy W. Claborn, Hamblen County: A Pictorial History (Virginia Beach, VA: Donning Company, 1995), 85.
21 Crockett, Narrative, 22.
22 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 7.
SEVEN • COMING OF AGE
1 Warren Moore, Mountain Voices: A Legacy of the Blue Ridge and Great Smokies (Chester, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 1988), 39.
2 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 7.
3 Henderson and Claborn, Hamblen County, 85. A development of private residences was built on the 1,952-foot-high Crockett Ridge starting in the early 2000s.
4 Crockett, Narrative, 22.
5 June 14, 1797, Bent Creek Day Book, May 1796–June 5, 1800.
6 Crockett, Narrative, 22–23.
7 Wallace L. McKeehan, Sons of DeWeitt Colony Texas, 1997–2006, The Sylar Family, www.tamu.edu/ccbn/mckstorysylarframe.htm. His family surname means “ropemaker” in German. It was spelled a variety of ways in America, including Sylar, Seiler, Silor, and Siler, the spelling used by David’s new employer. In 1793, Siler married fourteen-year-old Jane Hartley, and they established themselves near the home of her father, Peter Hartley, in Rockbridge County, VA.
8 Ibid. The famed Natural Bridge formed an arch that was sacred to Indian tribes and one of the wonders of the new world for European visitors during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 23.
10 Ibid., 23–24.
11 Ibid., 24.
12 Ibid., 24–25.
13 Ibid., 25–26.
14 Ibid., 29.
15 Ibid., 29–30.
16 Ibid., 30.
17 Ibid., 32.
18 Ann K. Blomquist, ed., Cheek’s Cross Roads, Tennessee Store Journal, 1802–1807 (Baltimore: Gateway Press, 2001), ix.
EIGHT • THE ODYSSEY
1 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
2 Extracted from files of the Berkeley County Historical Society, Martinsburg, West Virginia.
3 Crockett, Narrative, 32.
4 Ibid., 33.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., 34.
7 Ibid., 35.
8 Ibid. Perhaps the horses pulling the wagon did see a ghost, as Crockett humorously suggested. Elliott City, MD, formerly named Elliott’s Mill, has been called the most haunted small town in the state and one of the most haunted spots on the eastern seaboard.
9 Ibid., 36–37.
10 Ibid., 37.
11 Ibid., 38.
12 Ibid., 39.
13 Ibid., 39–40.
14 James Strefhan Johnson III, “The Evolution of an American Small Town,” master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, June 2004, 18. A warrant was issued for Boone’s arrest, but by then he had moved on. To this day the document is intact at the courthouse.
15 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 10.
16 Ibid.
17 Crockett, Narrative, 40.
18 Ibid., 40–41.
19 Ibid., 41.
20 Ibid., 42.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 42–43.
NINE • RISE ABOVE
1 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
2 Lareine Warden Clayton, Stories of Early Inns and Taverns of the East Tennessee Country (Nashville: National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Tennessee, 1995), 85. The costliest spirit at the time was wine, at ten cents for a half pint, the same price as a full dinner.
3 Crockett, Narrative, 45.
4 Ibid.
5 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 John and Margaret Thornbrough Canaday Family, www.freepages.family.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mygerman. In later years, Lost Creek Meeting became a station on the Underground Railroad, helping runaway slaves find freedom.
9 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
10 Ibid.
11 Crockett, Narrative, 46.
12 Ibid., 46–47.
13 Ibid., 47.
14 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
15 Ibid.
16 Bent Creek Baptists Church Minutes, Saturday, February 4, 1803. The baptism took place on Samuel Riggs’s property.
TEN • LOVESICK
1 Crockett, Narrative, 47.
2 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
3 Crockett, Narrative, 47–48.
4 Ibid., 48.
5 Ibid., 48–49.
6 Ibid., 49.
7 Ibid.
8 Crockett and Thomas Chilton, a friend and colleague in the U.S. Congress, read Ovid’s classic work as they prepared to write the Crockett autobiography.
9 Ibid. Records show that the Elders lived along Lick Creek, in Greene County, at the same time as David and his family.
10. Swann, “Early Life & Times,” quoting an 1893 article by Alexander Hynds in the Louisville Courier Journal.
11 Crockett, Narrative, 50.
12 Randell Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett (Winston-Salem, NC: John F. Blair, 2006), 21–22.
13 Jefferson County Marriage Records Book 1, Entry Number 526, Jefferson County Courthouse, Dandridge, TN. The Crockett-Elder license at the Jefferson County courthouse is a copy. The original document was mistakenly discarded during a housecleaning of the archives, and eventually ended up in the possession of a private party in Tampa, FL. When it surfaced at a broadcast of Antiques Roadshow, an appraiser from Christie’s in New York said the document’s historical significance was immeasurable.
14 Crockett, Narrative, 53.
15 Ibid., 53–54.
16 Ibid., 54.
ELEVEN • POLLY
1 Crockett, Narrative, 54.
2 Ibid., 55.
3 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 13.
4 Crockett, Narrative, 57. In Crockett’s day virtually all people of German extraction were simply described as Dutch, as in Pennsylvania Dutch.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 57.
6 Ibid., 58.
7 Ibid., 58–59.
8 Robert E. Corlew, Tennessee: A Short History (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1981), 111–12.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 58.
10 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
11 Crockett, Narrative, 59. Plaguy, also plaguey, meaning irritating or bothersome.
12 Ibid., 59–60.
13 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 14. Crockett described Billy Finley as being “clever,” at that time a word meaning friendly or sociable.
14 Crockett, Narrative, 61.
15 Ibid., 62.
16 Ibid., 63.
17 Ibid., 64.
18 Crockett’s first rifle, owned by noted Crockett historian Joseph Swann, has been in his family’s possession for several generations. The rifle is on public display at the Museum of East Tennessee History in Knoxville. See “Crockett’s First Rifle,” photograph and story.
19 Ibid.
20 Jefferson County Marriage and Bond Book, 1792–1840, Marriage Bond, “David Crockett to Polly Finley,” August 12, 1806, Jefferson County Courthouse, Dandridge, Tennessee.
21 Ibid.
22 Joseph Swann, “The Wedding of David Crockett and Polly Finley,” Go Ahead: Newsletter of the Direct Descendants and Kin of David Crockett 23, no. 2 (December 2006), 2–4.
23 Ibid., 3.
TWELVE • FINLEY’S GAP
1 Crockett, Narrative, 67.
2 Ibid.
3 Swann, “Early Life & Times.” Swann, whose own family settled in the area early on, states that an Indian trader named Isaac Thomas guided several of the men from the expedition who later settled on lands they had traversed. Swann believes it is possible that John Crockett was among the soldiers who followed the route down Long Creek to its source on the south side of Bays Mountain and over the mountain near Finley’s Gap to the Dumplin Creek valley, which followed on to the southwest.
4 Muncy, People and Places of Jefferson County, 183.
5 Ibid., 200.
6 J. L. Caton, “Davy Crockett and Polly Finley in Jefferson County,” March 1, 1958, transcription of unpublished memoir of George Cox, Crockett File, Jefferson County Historical Archives, Jefferson County Courthouse, Dandridge, TN.
7 Ibid.
8 Crockett, Narrative, 68.
9 Joseph A. Swann, “The History of David Crockett’s First Rifle,” unpublished paper.
10 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
11 Crockett, Narrative, 68.
12 Written account of John L. Jacobs, Cullasaja, Macon County, NC, November 22, 1884, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville.
13 Hugh Talmadge Lefler, ed., A New Voyage to Carolina by John Lawson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1967), 116. Originally published in London in 1709, Lawson’s journal was the first popular American travel book, an international best seller, and an important source document for colonial natural history. The origin of the bearskin as ceremonial headwear dates to the early 1700s, when several British regiments adopted sixteen-inch-high bearskin hats.
14 Arnow, Seedtime, 398.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Information obtained by Joseph Swann gleaned from the Quarles Family files of Reverend Reuell Prichett, former Jefferson County (TN) historian.
18 Crockett, Narrative, 68.
19 Joseph A. Swann, Transcript Copies of Circuit Court File 1808–1835, Jefferson County Archives, Jefferson County Courthouse, Dandridge, TN.
20 Heritage Jefferson County (Dandridge: The Bicentennial Committee of Jefferson County, TN, 1976), 4.
21 Ibid., 4–5.
22 Swann, Transcript Copies. Only a few years later, Trimble would allow a young Sam Houston—future political hero of Tennessee and Texas—to spend six months reading for the law in Trimble’s office before Houston established his own law office in Lebanon, TN.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
THIRTEEN • KENTUCK
1 Written account of John L. Jacobs.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Crockett, Narrative, 68. Lincoln County was created in 1808 and named after Revolutionary War hero General Benjamin Lincoln. In 1806, the Cherokees and Chickasaws ceded the land comprising the new county to the United States, and settlers began arriving immediately to get their share of the fertile soil.
5 From Surveyors Entry Book C, Surveyors District II, Entry No. 3944, 414, Tennessee State Archives. “Surveyed. David Crockett…enters 5 acres of land in Lincoln County and on the head waters of the East fork of Mulberry Creek a North Branch of the Elk River. Beginning at a Beech marked D.C. Standing about 60 or 70 yards north eastwardly.”
6 Crockett, Narrative, 69.
7 The Gowen Papers, Gowen Research Foundation, Lubbock, TX, http://freepages.geneaology.roots.web.com/-gowenrf.
8 Ibid.
9 John S. C. Abbott, David Crockett: His Life and Adventures (New York: Dodd & Mead, 1875), 86.
10 Ibid.
11 Crockett, Narrative, 69.
12 William C. Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 25.
13 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 42.
14 Ibid.
15 Gert Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman: An Account of His Life, while a Resident of Franklin County, 1812–1817 (Winchester, TN: Franklin County Historical Society, 2007), 11–13. Archard Hatchett (1782–1852) and his son, James L. Hatchett (1838–1904), were laid to rest in the Hatchett Cemetery on the family farm, according to the Cemetery Records of Franklin County, Tennessee, as compiled by the Franklin County Historical Society, Winchester, TN.
16 Ramsey, Annals of Tennessee, 94.
17 Russell Family Files, Kraus-Everette Genealogy, www.larkcom.us/ancestry/main/.
18 Bean Family Files, Kraus-Everette Genealogy, www.larkcom.us/ancestry/main/.
19 Ibid.
20 Robert V. Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821 (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 115.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Franklin County, TN, Files, Tennessee Historical Commission; Tennessee Historical Society, Nashville, TN; Franklin County Historical Society, Winchester, TN.
24 Bean Family Files, Kraus-Everette Genealogy.
FOURTEEN • “REMEMBER FORT MIMS”
1 John S. Bowman, general ed., The World Almanac of the American West (New York: World Almanac/Pharos Books, 1986), 88. President Madison proclaimed a state of war between the United States and Britain on June 19, 1812. He had received the support of the House of Representatives (79–49) on June 4 and of the Senate (19–13) on June 18. Madison and Congress were unaware that on June 16 the British agreed to suspend orders authorizing British ships stopping American vessels.
2 Paul S. Boyer, ed., The Oxford Companion to United States History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 814.
3 Ibid.
4 Tom Kanon, “Brief History of Tennessee in the War of 1812” (Nashville: Tennessee State Library and Archives, 2008), www.tennessee.gov/tsla/history/military/tn1812.h.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 71.
6 Finger, Tennessee Frontiers, 232.
7 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 188.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 David Stewart and Ray Knox, The Earthquake That Never Went Away (Marble Hill, MO: Gutenberg-Richter Publications, 1993), 17.
11 Ibid., 21. The largest quake occurred on February 7, 1812. It is considered to be one of the largest quakes not only in the United States but in the world. This is the quake that caused the Mississippi to run backward. The retrograde motion of the river lasted only a few hours, but the resulting waterfalls remained for two or three days.
12 Norma Hayes Bagnall, On Shaky Ground: The New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811–1812 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996), 41, 49, 50.
13 Russell H. Caldwell, Reelfoot Lake Remembered (Union City, TN: Caldwell’s Office Outfitters, Inc., 2005), 24.
14 Lake County Tennessee Historical Society, History and Families, Lake County Tennessee, 1870–1992 (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing, 1993), 14.
15 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 188.
16 Buddy Levy, American Legend: The Real-Life Adventures of David Crockett (New York: Berkley Books, 2005), 38–39.
17 Ibid.
18 Richard Boyd Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982), 19.
19 H. W. Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times (New York: Anchor Books, 2006), 192.
20 Ibid., 194.
21 Ibid., 195.
22 Ibid.
FIFTEEN • “WE SHOT THEM LIKE DOGS”
1 Crockett, Narrative, 73.
2 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., general ed., The Almanac of American History (New York: Bramhall House, 1986), 197.
3 Crockett, Narrative, 71–72.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid., 73.
6 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 14.
7 Ibid.
8 From “Regimental Histories of Tennessee Military Units During the War of 1812,” prepared by Tom Kanon, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, Tennessee.
9 Family Histories: Franklin County Tennessee, 1807–1996 (Winchester, TN: Franklin County Historical Society, 1996), 14.
10 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 191.
11 Webb, Born Fighting, 188.
12 Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, 188–90.
13 Ibid., 196.
14 Crockett, Narrative, 75.
15 Ibid.
16 Crockett, Narrative, 82.
17 James Parton, The Life of Andrew Jackson, in Three Volumes (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), vol. 1, 427–29. The journalist James Parton wrote this book less than fifteen years after Andrew Jackson’s death. It is considered the first scholarly biography of the seventh president, although Parton said that even after years of study, instead of discovering the real Jackson, he found only an enigma.
18 Crockett, Narrative, 85–86.
19 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 18.
20 Ibid., 19.
SIXTEEN • RIDING WITH SHARP KNIFE
1 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 20.
2 House of Strother Newsletter, February 1991, vol. 3, no. 1, 10.
3 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 20.
4 Benson John Lossing, The Pictorial Field-Book of the War of 1812 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1868), 764.
5 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 20.
6 Crockett, Narrative, 92.
7 Ibid., 92–93.
8 Ibid., 93.
9 Andrew Burstein, The Passions of Andrew Jackson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003), 93.
10 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 227, 383–84.
11 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 22.
12 Lossing, Pictorial Field-Book, 766. According to Lossing, Jackson shared in his soldier’s privations and also ate acorns to sustain life.
13 Crockett, Narrative, 93.
14 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 27.
15 Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, 212.
16 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 24.
SEVENTEEN • “ROOT HOG OR DIE”
1 A. J. Langguth, Union 1812: The Americans Who Fought the Second War of Independence (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), 284.
2 Ibid., 284–85.
3 Ibid., 285.
4 Finger, Tennessee Frontiers, 234.
5 Ibid.
6 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 216–17.
7 Ibid., 217.
8 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 32.
9 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of the American Empire, 219.
10 Ibid., 226.
11 Ibid., 231.
12 Finger, Tennessee Frontiers, 235.
13 Ibid.
14 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 21.
15 Ibid., 232–33.
16 Crockett, Narrative, 101.
17 Ibid.
18 Petersen, 33.
19 Ibid.
20 Crockett, Narrative, 102.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid., 103.
23 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 35, 37.
24 Crockett, Narrative, 106.
25 Ibid., 107.
26 Ibid., 109–10.
27 Ibid., 115.
28 Several sources and dictionaries credit Crockett with having introduced this idiomatic expression in his published autobiography in 1834. It was used in many parts of the country well prior to that date.
29 Crockett, Narrative, 120.
30 Ibid., 122.
EIGHTEEN • CABIN FEVER
1 Crockett, Narrative, 123.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid., 123–24.
4 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 43.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 124–25.
6 Walter J. Daly, M.D., “The ‘Slows,’ The Torment of Milk Sickness on the Midwest Frontier,” Indiana Magazine of History 102 (March 2006): 29.
7 Ibid., 30–31.
8 Ibid., 34. One of the most characteristic symptoms of the sickness was an offensive odor to the patient’s breath, often so strong that it could be detected on entering a frontier cabin.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 125.
10 Ibid., 125–26.
11 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 24.
12 Crockett, Narrative, 126.
13 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 34.
14 Old Buncombe County Genealogical Society, Old Buncombe County Heritage Book, vol. 2 (Winston-Salem, NC: Hunter Publishing Co., 1981), 289.
15 Crockett, Narrative, 126.
16 Ibid., 127.
17 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 47.
18 Ibid.
NINETEEN • A TINCTURE OF LUCK
1 Crockett, Narrative, 118–20.
2 Van Zandt County Genealogical Society, Canton, TX, www.txgenweb3.org/txvanzandt/vzgs.htm.
3 Franklin County, TN, Will Book, 1808–1847, Folder 036 A, Franklin County Courthouse Annex, Winchester, TN. Frances T. Ingmire, Franklin County, Tennessee, Abstracted Wills, 1808–1875 (St. Louis: Frances Terry Ingmire, 1984), 27–28. David signed the document, but his brother John was unlettered and left his mark. Besides the Crocketts, a local man named John W. Holder was the third witness to the signing of the Van Zandt last will and testament. Jacob Van Zandt Sr. died January 6, 1818. One of his grandsons and the son of Jacob Jr., Crockett’s hunting mate, was Isaac Van Zandt, born in Franklin County in 1812. He went on to become an important political leader in the Republic of Texas, died of yellow fever while campaigning for governor in 1847, and had a Texas county named in his honor. Another descendant—Townes Van Zandt—became one of the premier Texas musicians during the 1970s and 1980s. Townes died at his Tennessee home of either a heart attack or a blood clot following hip surgery on New Year’s Day 1997, the same date that his idol, Hank Williams, died of a heart attack in 1953.
4 Crockett, Narrative, 127.
5 Ibid., 127–28. Tuscaloosa, AL, Tuscaloosa County, Alabama Department of History & Archives, Montgomery, AL, www.archives.state.al.us/counties/tuscaloo.html. Incorporated in 1819, just one day after Alabama became a state, Tuscaloosa served as the state capital from 1826 until 1846.
6 Ibid.
7 Crockett, Narrative, 128.
8 Sonia Shah, “Resurgentmalaria.com,” www.resurgentmalaria.com/americas, 2006. This Web site, hosted by investigative journalist Sonia Shah, provides history, background, new technology, and other information about the disease.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 129.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., 130.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 131–32.
14 Ibid., 132.
TWENTY • “ITCHY FOOTED”
1 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 23.
2 Brands, Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times, 314–15.
3 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 329.
4 Wilma Mankiller and Michael Wallis, Mankiller: A Chief and Her People (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993), 86.
5 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 330.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 331.
8 Crockett, Narrative, 132–33.
9 Shackford and Folmsbee, Facsimile Edition, 132, n. 17.
10 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 70. The will of Robert Crockett was written on September 8, 1834, and probated on March 2, 1836. Will Book C, 196, Cumberland County, KY.
11 Samuel K. Cowan, Sergeant York and His People (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1922), 24–25.
12 Conrad “Coonrod” Pile Files, http//homepages.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~bp2000/ fentress/pile_c.htm.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid. Coonrod Pile and his wife, Mary Pile, were interned in the Wolf River Cemetery at Pall Mall. Nearby their graves lie the remains of the famous great-great-grandson, Sergeant Alvin C. York.
15 Alvin C. York, Sergeant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary (New York: Doubleday & Doran, 1928), March 1918 entry.
16 The Gowen Papers, Gowen Research Foundation, Lubbock, TX, http://freepages.geneaology.roots.web.com/-gowenrf.
TWENTY-ONE • “NATURAL BORN SENSE”
1 Bobby Alford, History of Lawrence County, Tennessee (n.p., the author, 1994), 21.
2 Petersen, David Crockett, The Volunteer Rifleman, 49. According to Petersen, Crockett became a member of the Shoal Creek Corporation in April 1817.
3 Lawrence County Historical Society, Lawrence County, Tennessee, Pictorial History (Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing, 1994), 14.
4 Alford, History of Lawrence County, Tennessee, 21.
5 Ibid., 27.
6 Ibid., 17. Jackson began work on the Military Road in the autumn of 1816, and the new route was completed in 1820. It was 516 miles in length, a reduction of more than 220 miles from the route of the Natchez Trace. In 1822, mail service from Nashville to New Orleans was transferred to the new road, effectively replacing the Natchez Trace as the major north-south highway.
7 Ibid., 18. Foster, Counties of Tennessee, 82. Murfreesboro remained the state capital until 1826, when the capital moved yet again to Nashville, thirty-five miles to the north.
8 Alford, History of Lawrence County, Tennessee, 28–29. On September 20, 1823, a petition containing the names of 220 citizens of Lawrence County was sent to the state legislature stating that the chosen location for Lawrenceburg was suitable.
9 Ibid., 28.
10 Crockett, Narrative, 133.
11 Ibid., 133–34.
12 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 38.
13 Crockett, Narrative, 135. By the early 1820s, when Crockett held state and federal elective office, he had read some law. A law book that Crockett reportedly gave a friend in 1828 ended up on display at the Alamo.
14 Alford, History of Lawrence County, Tennessee, 24.
15 Crockett, Narrative, 137.
16 Alford, History of Lawrence County, Tennessee, 25.
17 Crockett, Narrative, 138.
18 Ibid.
19 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 23.
TWENTY-TWO • GENTLEMAN FROM THE CANE
1 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 41.
2 Joseph C. Guild, Old Times in Tennessee (Nashville: Tavel, Eastman & Howell, 1878), 322–24. Judge Jo Guild, as he was best known, was a Crockett contemporary, a veteran of the Seminole War, and a well-known Tennessee lawyer.
3 Ibid., 138–45. Irvine’s commission was dated February 17, 1820.
4 Alford, History of Lawrence County, Tennessee, 31.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 144.
6 Levy, American Legend, 87.
7 MemphisHistory.com, www.memphishistory.org/Beginnings/FoundersandPioneers/JohnCMclemore/tabid/112/Default.aspx. One of the founders of Memphis, McLemore was touted as a potential gubernatorial or senatorial candidate, but he never ran for office. He lost much of his wealth when the LaGrange and Memphis Rail Road failed and the financial panic in 1837 further reduced his holdings. In an effort to accumulate another fortune, he joined the California gold rush in 1849. He remained in California twelve years, returning to Memphis before his death in 1864.
8 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 43.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 138.
10 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 70.
11 Crockett, Narrative, 140.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 141–42.
14 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 24. Matilda, Crockett’s youngest child, would live longer than any of her siblings. She survived three husbands and died in Gibson County, TN, on July 6, 1890, a month before her sixty-ninth birthday.
15 Crockett, Narrative, 143.
16 Ibid. In his autobiography, Crockett wrote that when they met, Polk was a member of the state legislature. Crockett was confused. Polk was still clerk of the state senate and would not become a legislator until the next term. Beginning in 1825, Polk was elected to his seven terms in the U.S. Congress; thus he was a fellow representative of Crockett’s during all of Crockett’s state legislative and congressional years.
17 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 47.
18 Ibid., 52.
19 Levy, American Legend, 95–96.
TWENTY-THREE • LAND OF THE SHAKES
1 Crockett, Narrative, 144.
2 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 50.
3 Levy, American Legend, 97.
4 Edward S. Ellis, The Life of Colonel David Crockett, reprinted from the 1884 edition (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 1984), 58–59.
5 Ibid., 145.
6 Ibid.
7 Crockett, Narrative, 144–45.
8 Guy S. Miles, “David Crockett Evolves, 1821–1824,” American Quarterly 8, no. 1 (Spring 1956): 53. In a footnote in his seven-page essay, Miles, described as “a Tennessee hunter and Professor of English at Morehead State College,” praised the soon to be published work of Professor James Atkins Shackford, noting that “it is badly needed as a corrective to too much surmising on the key figure.” The University of North Carolina Press published Shackford’s work, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, later that year.
9 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 53.
10 Jonathan K. T. Smith, The Land Holdings of Colonel David Crockett in West Tennessee (Jackson, TN: Mid-West Tennessee Genealogical Society, 2003), 11.
11 Ibid.
12 Crockett, Narrative, 147.
13 “A Sportsmen’s Paradise,” New York Times, January 11, 1891.
14 Ibid.
15 Crockett, Narrative, 148.
16 Ibid., 149–50.
17 Ibid., 151.
18 Ibid., 152–53.
19 Ibid., 154.
20 Smith, Land Holdings, 12.
TWENTY-FOUR • IN THE EYE OF A “HARRICANE”
1 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 56.
2 Ibid. Mansil Crisp was born in North Carolina in 1764 and lived in South Carolina from the 1790s to the early 1800s, when he moved to Tennessee. He died in 1850.
3 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 34.
4 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 57–58.
5 Herbert L. Harper, ed., Houston and Crockett: Heroes of Tennessee and Texas: An Anthology (Nashville: Tennessee Historical Commission, 1986), 147.
6 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 58. Crockett quotes from the Nashville Whig, August 14, 1822.
7 John Patton Erwin, a native of North Carolina and member of the Whig Party, served as mayor of Nashville in 1821–1822 and again in 1834–1835.
8 Carroll County (TN) Deed Book A, 29–30.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 155.
10 Foster, Counties of Tennessee, 102.
11 Carroll County (TN) Court Minutes, 1821–1826, vol. 1, 20.
12 First Families Old Buncombe (FFOB), Patton Family records, www.obcgs.com/patton.htm.
13 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 45.
14 Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook, 34–35.
15 Crockett, Narrative, 155.
16 Ibid., 155–56.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., 161.
20 Crockett, Narrative, 162–63.
21 Ibid., 163–64.
22 Ibid., 164–65.
TWENTY-FIVE • A FOOL FOR LUCK
1 Foster, Counties of Tennessee, 115–16. Madison County was created on November 7, 1821, from the Western District, and the first courthouse was completed in Jackson in September 1822.
2 Crockett, Narrative, 166.
3 Ibid., 166–67.
4 Ibid., 167.
5 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 63, 160. William Butler married Martha Hays, the daughter of Rachel Jackson’s sister.
6 Crockett, Narrative, 167–68.
7 Ibid., 167.
8 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 64.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 66.
11 Ibid.
12 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 34–36.
13 Ibid., 35–36.
14 Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook, 38.
15 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 67.
16 Crockett, Narrative, 171.
17 Levy, American Legend, 120.
18 National Banner and Nashville Whig, September 27, 1824.
19 Crockett, Narrative, 172.
20 Ibid., 173.
21 Levy, American Legend, 124.
TWENTY-SIX • BIG TIME
1 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 37.
2 Gert Petersen, A Chronology of the Life of David Crockett, unpublished, 2001, 25.
3 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 74.
4 Ibid.
5 Crockett, Narrative, 174.
6 Crockett, Narrative, 195.
7 Ibid., 196.
8 Ibid., 198–99.
9 Petersen, Chronology, 26.
10 History of Shelby County, Tennessee (Nashville: Goodspeed Publishing Co., 1886–1887), 865–67.
11 Ibid.
12 Michael Lollar, “First Memphis Mayor Receives a Grave Injustice,” Memphis Commercial Appeal, commercialappeal.com, May 26, 2009.
13 Ibid. Amarante Winchester was ostracized by Memphis society, and Winchester’s career declined. Eventually city aldermen passed an ordinance forbidding anyone of mixed race from owning property or living within the city limits. This caused the Winchesters to move to a farm outside of Memphis. They remained married until her death in 1840. Two years later, Winchester married a nineteen-year-old widow. Later he was elected to the state legislature. He died in 1856.
14 Levy, American Legend, 132.
15 Ibid., 133.
TWENTY-SEVEN • “THE VICTORY IS OURS”
1 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 78.
2 Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600–1860 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 414–15.
3 Ibid., 415.
4 Jackson Gazette, Jackson, TN, Circular Letter “To the Republican Voters of the 9th Congressional District of the State of Tennessee,” David Crockett, Gibson County, September 16, 1826.
5 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 119–20. Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 82. By 1830 only a congressional district in Illinois had more voters than the Ninth District.
6 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 82.
7 Crockett, Narrative, 201–2.
8 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 81–82.
9 Crockett, Narrative, 204.
10 Ibid.
11 Mark Derr, The Frontiersman: The Real Life and Many Legends of Davy Crockett (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1993), 143.
12 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 123.
13 Ibid., 122–23.
14 Ibid., 124. Anne Brown Clay was born in Lexington, KY, on April 15, 1807, the daughter of Henry Clay and Lucretia Hart. Anne married James Patton Erwin on October 21, 1823, in Fayette County, KY. She died of blood poisoning shortly after childbirth, in November 1835.
15 Christopher Marquis, “Andrew Jackson: Winner and Loser in 1824,” American History 43, no. 1 (April 2008): 57.
16 Davis, 124–25.
17 Written account of John L. Jacobs.
18 Ibid.
19 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 84.
20 Levy, American Legend, 142.
21 Z. T. Fulmore, The History and Geography of Texas as Told in County Names (Austin: E. L. Steck, 1915), 105–6. Carson was elected to Congress in 1827, 1829, and 1831. Once a trusted friend of Andrew Jackson, he became estranged from Sharp Knife and was defeated in the campaign of 1833. Carson lived for a time in Texas, where a county was named for him, and he died in Hot Springs, AR, in 1840.
22 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 86.
23 Levy, American Legend, 142.
TWENTY-EIGHT • MAN WITHOUT A PARTY
1 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 283–84. William L. Foster’s father, Ephraim H. Foster, served two terms as a U.S. senator from Tennessee. He had been Andrew Jackson’s personal secretary during the Creek and New Orleans campaigns but fell out with Jackson over fiscal policies and became an early leader in the Whig Party.
2 History and Families of Lake County, Tennessee, 1870–1992, 14. Historical records show that Crockett made camp beneath the towering cypress trees on Bluebank Bayou in the land of the shakes during the early 1830s.
3 Excerpted from John L. O’Sullivan, “Annexation,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 17 (July 1845): 5–10, from David J. Voelker, www.historytools.org, 2004.
4 Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence, 5.
5 Paul Andrew Hutton, “Mr. Crockett Goes to Washington,” American History 35, no. 1 (April 2000): 26. Dr. Hutton teaches history at the University of New Mexico and has devoted many years to Crockett research.
6 Swann, “Early Life & Times.” Crockett’s letter to James Blackburn is dated February 28, 1828.
7 Walter Blair, “Six Davy Crocketts,” Southwest Review 25 (July 1940): 452–53. Although some other sources have questioned the authenticity of this quote, it sounds like vintage Crockett.
8 Paul Hutton, Introduction, Narrative, xxi.
9 Blair, “Six Davy Crocketts,” 110–11.
10 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 126. John Quincy Adams Diary 37, November 11, 1825–June 24, 1828, 349.
11 Abbott, David Crockett: His Life and Adventures, 260–63.
12 Adams, Diary 37, 349.
13 Congressman James Clark letter, Jackson (TN) Gazette, February 14, 1829.
14 Congressman Gulian C. Verplanck letter, Jackson (TN) Gazette, February 14, 1829.
15 Dennis Brulgrudery, pseudonym, letter, Jackson (TN) Gazette, March 7, 1829.
16 David Crockett letter to George Patton, January 27, 1829, transcript provided by Joe N. Bone, manager-curator, Crockett Cabin-Museum, Rutherford, TN.
17 Ibid.
18 Missouri Republican, August 15, 1829.
19 Levy, American Legend, 161.
TWENTY-NINE • TRAILS OF TEARS
1 Levy, American Legend, 163.
2 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 114.
3 Levy, American Legend, 163–64.
4 Burstein, Passions of Andrew Jackson, 185.
5 Mankiller and Wallis, Mankiller, 88.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., 79.
8 Remini, Andrew Jackson and the Course of American Empire, 1767–1821, 264.
9 President Andrew Jackson’s Case for the Removal Act, First Annual Message to Congress, December 8, 1830.
10 Ibid.
11 Based on the author’s personal observations and associations with many members of the Cherokee Nation, including several principal chiefs, as well as tribal activists and scholars of Cherokee cultural history. Besides completely shunning twenty-dollar bills, some Oklahoma Indians have been known to ink large X’s across Jackson’s face.
12 Martin Luther King Jr. also has been suggested as a replacement for Jackson on the twenty-dollar bill.
13 Levy, American Legend, 168.
14 Crockett, Narrative, 205–6.
15 Swann, “Early Life & Times.”
16 Walter Blair, David Crockett: Legendary Frontier Hero (Springfield, IL: Lincoln-Herndon Press, 1955, rev. ed. 1986), 181–87. From Speeches on the Passage of the Bill for the Removal of the Indians, Delivered in the Congress of the United States, April and May, 1830 (Boston: Perkins and Marvin, 1830; New York: Jonathan Leavitt, 1830).
17 Ibid.
18 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 116–17, 129. Levy, American Legend, 174–75.
19 Crockett, Narrative, 206–7.
20 Levy, American Legend, 173.
21 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 112.
22 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 181–82.
23 Ibid., 207–8.
24 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 132.
25 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 186.
26 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 133.
THIRTY • LION OF THE WEST
1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 485.
2 Ibid., 200.
3 Alexis de Tocqueville, Journal Entry, Memphis, Tennessee, December 20, 1831, 267, www.tocqueville.org/tn.hmm.
4 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 23. William Finley Crockett wed Clorinda Boyett on March 18, 1830, and Margaret Finley Crockett wed Wiley Flowers on March 22, 1830. Both weddings took place in Gibson County, TN.
5 Smith, Land Holdings, 42–43. Some authors, including Shackford, have confused the two George Pattons. The George Patton who purchased Crockett’s 25-acre tract in 1831 was his stepson and not his brother-in-law, the other George Patton, who resided in Buncombe County, North Carolina.
6 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 136.
7 Ibid., 133.
8 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 310.
9 Jones, Crockett Cousins, 45.
10 Smith, Land Holdings, 44.
11 Ibid.
12 William Shakespeare, As You Like It, The New Folger Library of Shakespeare (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), act 5, scene 1.
13 M. J. Heale, “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics: David Crockett and the Myth of the Self-Made Man,” Western History Quarterly 4 (October 1973): 406.
14 Levy, American Legend, 182.
15 Vera M. Jiji, ed., A Sourcebook of Interdisciplinary Materials in American Drama: J. K. Paulding, The Lion of the West (Brooklyn: Produced by the Program for Culture at Play: Multimedia Studies in American Drama, Humanities Institute, Brooklyn College, 1983), 10–11. The review appeared in the Morning Courier and New York Enquirer, April 27, 1831.
16 Andrew Burstein, The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving (New York: Basic Books, 2007), 10–11. In 1793, when Washington Irving was ten years old, his brother William married Julia Paulding, the older sister of James Kirke Paulding. According to Burstein, Paulding is noteworthy for being the first outside the Irving clan to be considered a confidant, and, as important, the one who introduced Washington Irving to Sleepy Hollow.
17 Ibid., 246. Others belonged to the Knickerbockers, but the five listed were the most remarkable.
18 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 171–72. John Wesley Jarvis was born in England and was the nephew of John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Jarvis painted the portraits of many well-known American figures, including Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and James Fenimore Cooper. He was known for his flamboyant dress and manner during his prime years, but his work declined and he died in poverty in New York in 1840.
19 The word nimrod, which means hunter, was taken from Nimrod, the name of the mighty hunter and king, and Noah’s great-grandson in the Old Testament.
20 William I. Paulding, Literary Life of James K. Paulding (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1867), 218–19. William I. Paulding was the son of James Kirke Paulding.
21 Ibid.
22 Adams Sentinel, Gettysburg, PA, December 17, 1828.
23 Jiji, Sourcebook, 27.
24 Jay Winik, April 1865: The Month That Saved America (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 233.
25 Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook, 47.
THIRTY-ONE • BEAR-BIT LION
1 Jiji, Sourcebook, 11. Quoting Morning Courier & New York Enquirer, November 24, 1831.
2 Ibid. Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 256.
3 Hutton, Introduction, Narrative, xix.
4 Information provided by Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. President Martin Van Buren appointed James K. Paulding the eleventh secretary of the navy. He served from July 1, 1838, to March of 1841. Among other governmental positions he held were those of secretary to the Board of Navy Commissioners from 1815 to 1823 and naval agent from 1824 to 1838.
5 Levy, American Legend, 184.
6 The etymology of the old adage “bit by the bear” is uncertain, but the phrase possibly served as one of the sources for a classic line uttered by actor Sam Elliott in the 1998 dark comedy film The Big Lebowski, produced by Ethan and Joel Coen. In his role as “The Stranger,” Elliot said: “A fella wiser than myself once said, ‘Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, the bar, well, he eats you.’”
7 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 262. The Southern Literary Messenger was published in Richmond, VA, from 1834 until 1864. Publisher Thomas Willis White hired Edgar Allan Poe in 1835 as a staff writer and critic. Poe, who usually did not use his middle name during this period, lasted only a month before he was fired for excessive drinking. He was soon rehired and for a time served as the editor of the journal. Poe published thirty-seven reviews of American and foreign books and periodicals while working for the Messenger. He left in 1837 but continued to contribute articles and reviews until his death in 1849.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 262–63.
10 Ibid., 263.
11 Matthew St. Clair Clarke (probable author), Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833). Reprint of Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee (Cincinnati, 1833), 20.
12 Ibid., 164.
13 James T. Pearce, “Folk Tales of the Southern Poor-White, 1820–1860,” Journal of American Folklore 63, no. 250 (October–December 1950), 398.
14 The New England Magazine 5, no. 6 (1833), 513–14. The magazine was launched in Boston in 1831 and ceased publication in 1835. American Monthly Magazine was its successor.
15 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 139–41.
16 Crockett, Narrative, 210.
17 Ibid.
18 H. Niles, Niles’ Weekly Register, Baltimore, MD, September 7, 1833. Archivists contend that this publication was an early precursor to modern news magazines.
19 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 144.
THIRTY-TWO • GO AHEAD
1 Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook, 70–71.
2 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 147.
3 Levy, American Legend, 192.
4 Ibid. Thomas Chilton was born in 1798 near Lancaster, KY, a son of Reverend Thomas John Chilton and Margaret Bledsoe. One week before his seventeenth birthday, he married and started study for ordination as a Baptist minister. At the same time, he studied for the bar, and he eventually established a legal practice before entering politics. In 1835, Chilton had tired of politics and resumed the practice of law as well as his Baptist ministry. During a revival meeting in Alabama, he converted to Christianity his maternal cousin, Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, who went on to become an ordained Baptist minister and in 1845 cofounded Baylor University in Texas. Chilton pastored churches in Alabama and Texas, where he died in 1854. The town of Chilton, TX, was named for his son, Lysias B. Chilton, and a grandson, Horace Chilton, became the first native-born Texan to serve in the U.S. Senate from Texas.
5 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 148.
6 Crockett, Narrative, 172.
7 Joseph A. Swann, Presentation to the East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville, February 12, 2003.
8 Joe Reilly, PhD, Presentation to the International Psychohistorical Association, Fordham University, New York, June 7, 2007.
9 Aaron D. Purcell and Michael A. Lofaro, “The Davy Crockett Experience, Now Online! Part I: Born on a Mountain, Bought on EBay,” University of Tennessee, The Library Development Review, 2002–2003, 6.
10 Ovid’s Metamorphoses (Dublin: J. Exshaw, 1774), in fifteen books: with the notes of John Minellius, and others, in English.
11 From Aaron Purcell e-mail to the author, March 27, 2009. Aaron D. Purcell, PhD, currently serves as director of Special Collections and associate professor at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. Michael A. Lofaro, PhD, professor of American studies and American literature, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
12 Purcell and Lofaro, “The Davy Crockett Experience, Now Online!” 7.
13 Michael A. Lofaro, “Part II: Davy And Ovid?” Library Development Review (University of Tennessee), 2002–2003, 7.
14 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 265.
15 Ibid., 265–66.
16 Ibid., 266.
17 Ibid., 267–68.
18 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 331.
THIRTY-THREE • JUST A MATTER OF TIME
1 Michel de Montaigne, “Of Age,” Essays of Michel de Montaigne, translated by Charles Cotton, edited by William Carew Hazlitt, 1877, www.fullbooks.com/The-Essays-of-Montaigne-VB.html.
2 James L. Haley, Sam Houston (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 50–52. Houston had just turned forty-six when he wed the teenaged Eliza Allen at her family’s home, Allenwood, on January 22, 1829. The marriage was doomed before it started. Apparently the young woman had never loved Houston. She loved a suitor her family disapproved of, and it was for this reason that they insisted she marry Houston.
3 Jack Gregory and Rennard Strickland, Sam Houston with the Cherokees, 1829–1833 (Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), 36, 44–45. Diana Rogers was the daughter of Captain John “Hell-Fire-Jack” Rogers, a wealthy Scottish trader who had been a Tory captain in the American Revolution, had fought at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and later directed the Cherokee emigration to Arkansas. Diana’s uncles were Chief John Jolly and Chief Tallantusky. Her brothers operated profitable trading establishments and saltworks, and her sisters married wealthy Cherokee merchants. She was related to Sequoyah, whose alphabet had made him one of the most important figures in the Cherokee Nation.
4 Ibid., 44–46.
5 Haley, Sam Houston, 74–75.
6 Ibid., 81.
7 Bill Porterfield, “Sam Houston, Warts and All,” Texas Monthly, July 1973, www.texasmonthly.com/1873-07-01/feature6.php.
8 Haley, Sam Houston, 82.
9 Ibid., 84. Booth was born in England in 1796 and named for Marcus Junius Brutus, one of the main assassins of Julius Caesar. Booth was the father of John Wilkes, Edwin, and Brutus Booth Jr. He enjoyed a thirty-year acting career that brought him critical acclaim throughout the nation. In his later years, Booth suffered from a combination of acute alcoholism and insanity. His health steadily declined, and he became known as “Crazy Booth, the mad tragedian.” In 1852, following a tour of California, performing with sons Edwin and Junius Brutus Jr., the elder Booth drank impure river water while on a steamboat and died after enduring five days of fever.
10 Ibid., 85.
11 From Catalogue of the Centennial Exhibition Commemorating the Founding of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association of the Union, 1853–1953, Mount Vernon, VA: 1953. In her later years, Madame Le Vert worked tirelessly on behalf of the “Save Mount Vernon” movement. She also authored Souvenirs of Travel, a record of her two journeys through Europe in the 1850s.
12 Poe probably wrote “To Octavia” in 1827.
When wit, and wine, and friends have met
And laughter crowns the festive hour
In vain I struggle to forget
Still does my heart confess thy power
And fondly turn to thee!
But Octavia, do not strive to rob
My heart of all that soothes its pain
The mournful hope that every throb
Will make it break for thee!
13 Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame, Octavia Walton Le Vert (1811–1877), www.awhf.org/levert.html.
14 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 308, n. 24.
15 Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame, http://famousamericans.net/octaviawaltonlevert/. Octavia and her husband had five children, several of whom died as children. During the Civil War, she remained in Mobile and welcomed both Union and Confederate soldiers to the family home. Public opinion turned against her, and she was denounced as a “Yankee spy.” By the close of the war, her husband was dead and most of their money gone. She traveled and gave public readings until her death in 1877.
16 Haley, Sam Houston, 101.
17 Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., gen. ed., The Almanac of American History (New York: Bramhall House, 1986), 229.
18 The Gettysburg Star & Republican Banner, Gettysburg, PA, March 11, 1834.
19 Ibid. Crockett’s letter of response to the Mississippi Whigs was written in Washington City and dated February 24, 1834.
20 Working Man’s Advocate, New York, May 3, 1834.
21 Joseph Jackson, Market Street Philadelphia: The Most Historic Highway in America, Its Merchants and Its Story. Originally published as a series of articles in the Public Ledger in 1914 and 1915, it was republished by the newspaper in book form in 1918, 193.
22 Leon S. Rosenthal, A History of Philadelphia’s University City (Philadelphia: West Philadelphia Corporation, 1963), http://uchs.net/Rosenthal/rosenthaltofc.html.
23 The Mail, Hagerstown, MD, May 9, 1834.
24 Working Man’s Advocate, New York, May 3, 1834.
25 William Groneman III, David Crockett: Hero of the Common Man (New York: Forge Books, Tom Doherty Associates, 2005), 117.
26 Levy, American Legend, 205.
27 Ibid. Irving Wallace, The Fabulous Showman: The Life and Times of P. T. Barnum (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), 69–70.
28 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 390–91.
29 Groneman, David Crockett: Hero of the Common Man, 118.
30 Ibid., 120.
THIRTY-FOUR • GONE TO TEXAS
1 From information provided by the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, from July 2001 exhibition titled A Brush with History: Paintings from the National Portrait Gallery. Chester Harding (1792–1866) is the only artist known to have painted a portrait of Daniel Boone from life. Boone sat for the portrait near his Missouri home just a few months before his death in 1820. When Crockett sat for his portrait in Boston during the 1834 book tour, Harding was considered the city’s most popular painter.
2 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 289. In appendix 4 of his book, Shackford devotes ten pages (pp. 281–91) to discussing the various Crockett portraits.
3 John Gadsby Chapman (1808–1889) was born in Alexandria, VA, and named for his maternal grandfather John Gadsby, a well-known tavern keeper. He displayed an interest in art early on and received encouragement from several established painters. Besides his formal training, he traveled abroad and in Italy copied the works of the old masters. James Fenimore Cooper commissioned Chapman to copy Guido Reni’s work Aurora, and Chapman also accompanied Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, on two sketching trips in Italy. Chapman returned to the United States in 1831, married, and had three children. He contributed illustrations to some of the works of James Kirke Paulding, creator of The Lion of the West. Chapman and his family moved to Italy and resided there for many years. Chapman visited the United States briefly after his wife died and returned for good in 1884. He spent his last five years living in Brooklyn.
4 Grime, Recollections, 165.
5 Davis, “A Legend at Full-Length,” 165.
6 Ibid., 166.
7 Ibid., 167.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid., 168.
11 Ibid., 159, 168. Crockett biographer James A. Shackford claimed that Crockett’s eldest son, John Wesley Crockett, did not consider Chapman’s portrait to be the best likeness of his father. Chapman, in his nine-page handwritten reminiscence of Crockett and the portrait, states, “From its beginning to completion, Colonel Crockett’s interest in the execution of the picture never abated, and it received his unqualified approval in every aspect.”
12 Ibid., 171–72.
13 Ibid., 172.
14 Ibid., 173.
15 Ibid., 171.
16 John Wesley Crockett (1807–1852) studied law, was admitted to the bar, and established a law practice in Paris, TN. He held numerous local and state offices before being elected as a Whig to the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Congresses, serving the same district his famous father had represented earlier. John Wesley served in Congress from 1837 to 1841 and was next elected to be the attorney general for the ninth district of Tennessee, and served from 1841 to 1843. In 1843 he moved to New Orleans and became a commission merchant as well as a newspaper editor. He returned to Tennessee in 1852 and died there that same year. He was buried in Paris, TN.
17 Davis, “A Legend at Full-Length,” 171.
18 Ibid., 173.
19 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 164.
20 Ibid., 163, 166.
21 Ibid., 167.
22 Ibid., 167–68; 309, n. 19. James C. Kelly and Frederick S. Voss, Davy Crockett: Gentleman from the Cane, An Exhibition Commemorating Crockett’s Life and Legend on the 200th Anniversary of His Birth, Published by the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, City of Washington, and the Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, 1986, 28–29.
23 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 309, n. 19.
24 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 181.
25 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 169.
26 Ibid., 170.
27 Levy, American Legend, 216.
28 Adam R. Huntsman Biographic Sketch, Adam Huntsman Papers, 1835–1848, Tennessee State Library and Archives, Nashville, TN. The collection is made up almost entirely of correspondence written by Huntsman to his friends and political allies. Most of the letters were written to James K. Polk, then governor of Tennessee. In these letters Huntsman has written entirely of politics, the progress of his party, and the campaigns of the candidates. Many of the letters refer to Crockett, defeated by Huntsman in 1835. The majority of the letters were written from Jackson, TN, where Huntsman resided.
29 Adams Sentinel 9, no. 6 (November 26, 1834).
30 Crockett letter to Charles Schultz, December 25, 1834, Gilder-Lehrman Collection, Pierpont Morgan Library, New York.
31 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 178.
32 Ibid., 178–79. Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 119.
33 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 201.
34 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 399.
35 Levy, American Legend, 227.
36 Crockett letter to Carey and Hart, August 11, 1835, Crocket Vertical File, Maryland Historical Society.
37 Charleston Courier, August 31, 1835.
38 National Gazette and Literary Register, Philadelphia, PA, December 29, 1825. “There are now four vacancies in the senate of Missouri; that the legislature convenes in January next, and the acting Governor has failed to issue writs of election…. Col. McGuire has resigned, Mr. Carr has removed from the State, Mr. Brown is at Santa Fe, in the service of the General Government, and Col. Palmer is said to have taken French leave and gone to Texas.” The term French leave is used to describe someone who evades creditors.
THIRTY-FIVE • TIME OF THE COMET
1 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 210.
2 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 408.
3 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 187.
4 Quintard Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998), 54.
5 Ibid., 39.
6 Stephen F. Austin correspondence to Edward Lovelace (or Josiah Bell), City of Mexico, November 22, 1822. Correspondence Regarding Slavery in Texas, Sons of DeWitt Colony, Texas, www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/dewitt.htm, Wallace L. McKeehan, ed.
7 Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days (Austin: Gammel Book Company, 1900), online edition, Southwestern Classics On-Line/Lone Star Junction, 1997, www.oldcardboard.com/lsj/olbooks/smithwic/otd.htm. Noah Smithwick was born in Martin County, North Carolina, on January 1, 1808. Smithwick moved with his family to Tennessee in 1814 and then drifted with the tide of emigration to Texas in 1827. He was a keen observer of many events during the evolution of Texas, and his lurid anecdotes were first published in book form in 1900. Texas historian J. Frank Dobie considered Smithwick’s work the “best of all books dealing with life in early Texas.” The Noah Smithwick Papers, 1835–1922, are located at The Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 T. R. Fehrenbach, Lone Star: A History of Texas and Texans (New York: Collier Books, 1980), 152.
12 Terry Corps, Historical Dictionary of the Jacksonian Era and Manifest Destiny (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2006), 306–7.
13 Eugene C. Baker, “Stephen F. Austin and the Independence of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly Online 13, no. 4 (1933): 271, http://www.tshaonline.org/. Mary Phelps Austin Holley, born in Connecticut in 1784, was a first cousin to Stephen F. Austin. Her brother, Henry Austin, and his family had gone to Texas to join the Austin Colony, and Mary was a frequent visitor. Both her father and her husband, Horace Holley, a Unitarian minister, died of yellow fever, as did Mary, in 1846.
14 Taylor, In Search of the Racial Frontier, 41.
15 David J. Weber, ed., Foreigners in Their Native Land: Historical Roots of the Mexican Americans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1973), 152.
16 The University of Tennessee Special Collections Library, MS 1225, David Crockett letter “To the Editors” [Gales & Seaton], Weakley County, TN, August 10, 1835.
17 Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook, 47.
18 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 212.
19 The Gazettte, Little Rock, AR, November 17, 1835.
20 Time magazine, “Just Around the Backbone of North America,” October 7, 1957, www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,809942,00.html.
21 Richmond Enquirer 32, no. 63, December 10, 1935.
22 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 194–95. Jonesboro was established by ferryman Henry Jones in 1815 and became a major hub as both the farthest navigable point upstream on the Red River and a terminus for Trammel’s Trace.
23 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 213–14.
24 Pat B. Clark, The History of Clarksville and Old Red River County (Dallas: Mathis, Van Nort & Co., 1937), 14–15.
25 Ibid., xiv.
26 Ibid., 12.
27 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 216.
28 New-Bedford Mercury 29, no. 34, February 26, 1836.
29 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 199.
30 Levy, American Legend, 245.
31 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 409.
32 Hutton, Introduction, Narrative, xxv.
THIRTY-SIX • EL ALAMO
1 Arkansas Gazette, May 10, 1836. This account of the Nacogdoches banquet speech was published more than two months after the fall of the Alamo. Various versions of the speech also appeared in several other newspapers of the day.
2 Jones, In the Footsteps of Davy Crockett, 204, quoting Niles’ Weekly Register, April 9, 1836.
3 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 218–19.
4 Ibid., 216.
5 Ibid., 217–18. John Forbes, The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tshaonline.org/. Forbes was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1797 and immigrated to the United States in 1817. He settled in Cincinnati, OH, and in 1834 moved with his family to Nacogdoches, where he became chairman of the Committee of Vigilance and Public Safety. He was elected first judge of Nacogdoches Municipality on November 26, 1835, and administered the oath of allegiance to many army recruits, including Crockett, as they passed through Nacogdoches. He went on to become aide-de-camp to Sam Houston and served during the campaigns at Anahuac and San Jacinto. It was said that he acquired Santa Anna’s sword. In 1856 he became mayor of Nacogdoches, and he died there in 1880.
6 John H. Jenkins, ed., Papers of the Texas Revolution, vol. 4 (Austin: Presidial Press, 1973), 13–14.
7 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 414. Corzine came to Texas from Alabama in 1835 and settled near San Augustine. In October 1836 he was elected senator to the First Congress of the Republic of Texas, but he resigned two months later to become judge of the First Judicial District. Corzine died in San Augustine in 1839.
8 Ibid.
9 Copy of original Crockett letter and accompanying transcript from Sally Baker, Crockett Tavern Museum Archives, Morristown, TN.
10 Rod Timanus, On the Crockett Trail (Union City, TN: Pioneer Press, 1999), 41. Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. “Patton, William Hester,” www.tshaonline.org/handbook/ online/articles/PP/fpa54.html. Helen Widener, “Republic of Texas—Freedom Fighter—William Patton,” Irving Rambler, August 2, 2007, 11. At one point there were two William Pattons reported at the Alamo, but neither of them was there on March 6 when the old mission was stormed. The older one was William Hester Patton, a Kentuckian who had commanded a company of Texian insurgents at the siege of Bexar from December 5 through December 10, 1835. This Patton became the aidede-camp to General Houston. After the Battle of San Jacinto, he was given custody of Santa Anna and accompanied him to Washington, D.C., prior to the Mexican leader’s release and subsequent return to Mexico. Patton went on to serve in the Second Congress of the Republic of Texas and was murdered by bandits at his home on the San Antonio River in 1842. The other Patton—Crockett’s nephew—may have been sent from the Alamo bearing a message. If so, he thus was spared the fate of the others who perished there. On March 17 his name appeared on the muster rolls of Captain Henry Teal’s company of regulars, an outfit that fought at San Jacinto. Although he was due a sizable parcel of land for his military service, Patton probably left Texas soon after his discharge.
11 Hutton, Introduction, Narrative, xxix–xxx.
12 H. W. Brands, Lone Star Nation (New York: Anchor Books, 2004), 349–50.
13 John M. Swisher, The Swisher Memoirs, edited by Rena Maverick Green (San Antonio: Sigmund Press, 1932), 18–19.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Paul Robert Walker, Remember the Alamo: Texians, Tejanos, and Mexicans Tell Their Stories (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 2007), 34.
17 Michael Wallis and Suzanne Fitzgerald Wallis, Songdog Diary: 66 Stories From the Road (Tulsa: Council Oak Publishing, 1996), 146–49. After March 6, 1836, Santa Anna was also called the “Butcher of the Alamo,” depending on the side of the border. “His Serene Highness,” the moniker Santa Anna preferred, had a love-hate relationship with the Mexican citizens he governed off and on for many years. “If I were God,” he once said, “I would wish to be more.” He survived a few expulsions, coup attempts, and exiles, as well as battles against the United States and France. The dictator, who had lost a leg to a French cannonball at Veracruz in 1838, died alone, in poverty and mostly forgotten, on June 21, 1876.
18 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 204–6.
19 James L. Haley, Texas: From Frontier to Spindletop (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), 29.
20 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 282–83.
21 Amelia Williams, “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 32, no. 4 (1934): 237. John McGregor was born in Scotland in 1808 and emigrated to Texas in the early 1830s. When Sam Houston put out the call for volunteers, McGregor left his farm, armed with a shotgun and his bagpipes, and rode west to San Antonio, where he became known as the “Piper of the Alamo.”
22 Editorial in the Telegraph and Register, published at San Felipe de Austin (vol. 1, no. 24), Thursday, March 24, 1836.
23 Shackford, David Crockett: The Man and the Legend, 214.
24 Walker, Remember the Alamo, 54–55.
25 Levy, American Legend, 285–86.
26 Hauck, Davy Crockett: A Handbook, 50–51.
27 Marshall J. Doke Jr., “A New Davy Crockett Story,” Heritage 4 (2007): 29.
28 Brazoria Courier, Brazoria, TX, March 31, 1840.
29 New York Times, May 18, 1893.
30 Davis, Three Roads to the Alamo, 568.
31 A Guide to the José Enrique de la Peña Collection, 1835–1840, 1857, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. The bulk of the collection consists of Peña’s personal papers, which provide an eyewitness account of the Mexican army’s campaign to suppress the Texas Revolution. The personal papers fall into two sections: a field diary of 109 pages and an extended memoir of 400 pages based upon the diary. Peña wrote the memoir by verifying happenings he recorded in his field diary and by adding information based on his fellow officers’ reports.
32 “Controversial Alamo Memoir Appears Authentic, Says UT Austin Forgery Expert,” University of Texas at Austin, Office of Public Affairs, May 4, 2000. Following several weeks of evaluation, a University of Texas forgery expert said that he found the memoir’s paper consistent with the materials of the period, and watermarks in the diary paper match watermarks in the paper used by the Mexican army at the time. He further declared the narrative to be genuine and said he saw “no signs that the memoir had been tampered with.”
33 Hutton, Introduction, Narrative, xxxv–xxxvii.
34 The Texas Constitutions of 1836 or 1876 and the U.S. Constitution do not provide explicit provisions for the state’s right of secession. Proponents of Texas secession, however, point out that Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution adopted in 1876 states that “Texas is a free and independent state, subject only to the Constitution of the United States,” and makes no mention of the state’s being subject to either the U.S. President or U.S. Congress. They also note that the Texas Constitution states, “All political power is inherent in the people…they have at all times the inalienable right to alter their government in such manner as they might think proper.” In 2009, Texas Governor Rick Perry, as part of a reelection campaign, suggested secession as an alternative that Texas might want to pursue. “There’s a lot of different scenarios,” Perry said at that time. “We’ve got a great union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that. But Texas is a very unique place, and we’re a pretty independent lot to boot.” The Texas Constitution does clearly spell out an option to divide itself into five separate entities. The Ordinance of Annexation, passed on July 4, 1836, by the Texas Convention, reads: “New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas and having sufficient population, may, hereafter by the consent of said State, be formed out of territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution…”