DESPITE THE BEST EFFORTS of legions of diligent researchers and historians, David Crockett’s genealogy has always been confusing. Even identifying which members of Crockett’s immediate family were the first to leave Ireland with other Scots-Irish and sail to America is an uncertain proposition.
In his autobiography, David Crockett writes: “My father’s name was John Crockett, and he was of Irish descent. He was either born in Ireland or on a passage from that country to America across the Atlantic. He was by profession a farmer, and spent the early part of his life in the state of Pennsylvania.”1
While many authors have accepted this statement as fact, some respected Crockett scholars disagree and contend that Crockett erred. It was actually David’s grandfather, also named David, and sometimes referred to as David the elder to distinguish him from his famous grandson, who was born about 1725 in Ireland, or aboard ship at the time of the migration across the Atlantic.2 The fact remains that the Crocketts came to America just as other Ulster Scots did, aboard a heaving and crowded immigrant ship.
Some Ulstermen and their families, weary of warfare and religious persecution, were so desperate for free and fertile land that they paid their way by signing on as indentured servants. But first they had to survive the dangerous Atlantic crossing, which, depending on the winds, could take anywhere from three weeks to three months. Not only were the ships overloaded, but rations were short, the food vermin-ridden, and the water stagnant. The entire vessel, especially lower decks, reeked from the stench of dysentery, vomit, sweat, and rot. Every soul aboard suffered from lice infestations and a multitude of other maladies. Hunger and thirst were constant, and some passengers died by drinking salt water or their own urine. Burial at sea was particularly difficult; survivors had to watch the shrouded corpses of loved ones cast into the sea. The despair and tension often erupted into brawls, even between family members.
Yet, even with all the horrors that had to be endured aboard ship, the weary and bedraggled passengers believed they had arrived in the Promised Land when the journey to American shores finally ended. Immigrant ships docked at various ports of entry, where enticing advertisements urged the new arrivals to help settle the lands opening up in the west. Philadelphia became the Scots-Irish favored port of entry, since the Pennsylvania colony, established by Quakers, appeared to welcome them. The puritanical New England colonies were less tolerant of the newcomers and had no use for either Scots or Irish.3 The first of the Ulster settlements appeared at Donegal, Pennsylvania, not far from the larger town of Lancaster. Others sprang up beyond, in the rich Cumberland Valley. The Ulster Scots, mostly tenant farmers, were motivated to find a place of their own where land was cheap and they could achieve a reasonable measure of economic freedom and opportunity. The primary pattern of their western migration took them out of Pennsylvania along the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, continuing south and west into what would become Tennessee, or, as the Crocketts did, into North Carolina and then to Tennessee.4
Many of the Scots-Irish migrated as whole congregations, or family groups, just as they had done with their Presbyterian ministers from Scotland to Ireland to America. The extended family unit was extremely tight-knit, and it was common for entire communities of these pioneers to migrate along the same route, stopping at the same places along the way.
“The word clannish was used to describe these Scots for good reason,” explains Joseph Swann, himself a descendant of Scots-Irish pioneers who knew the Crockett family. The Scots-Irish were more concerned with establishing new settlements than with integration. They were intolerant by nature and preferred self-sufficient isolationism to integrated social and vocational progress.5
The Scots-Irish, or Scotch-Irish, as they were erroneously called in America, soon became known as a distinct frontier breed.6 They were accustomed to isolation in a hostile environment. The hard experiences they had endured fighting each other in their homeland and the native Irish in Ulster had tempered their spirits and stiffened their resolve. This made them especially well suited to life on the new western frontier. When not fighting among themselves, they fell upon the American Indians they encountered with the same kind of murderous zeal.
Crockett’s paternal grandfather may have scouted the area or made the move to Virginia as early as 1743. The signature “David Crockatt” appears as a witness to a lease dated January 1743 in Frederick County, Virginia, between Morgan Bryan—grandfather of Rebecca Boone, wife of Daniel Boone—and Roger Turner.7 Bryan had come to the area in about 1730 and brought settlers from Pennsylvania with him. This document is not only the first known written record of David the elder, but his association with Bryan becomes a direct link between the families of two of America’s most mythologized frontier heroes.
By 1748, David the elder had established a home in the Shenandoah Valley, just over the border in the northernmost part of Frederick County, Virginia, “4 miles from Watkins Ferry lying on both sides of the Wagon Road.”8 These settlers would soon find out that county sheriffs were entitled to a percentage of the annual taxes levied on residents by the House of Burgesses for the support of civil government in the colony. David Crockett’s name is listed among the tithables of Frederick County in 1748.9
Of considerable importance at about this time was the fact that David the elder wed the teenaged Elizabeth, whose year of birth is estimated to be 1730, and who would remain a devoted frontier wife and mother for almost thirty years. Elizabeth’s maiden name is unknown, but there is much speculation that she was the daughter of Jonas and Elizabeth Hedge. This is based on a recorded deed signed by David the elder and bearing the mark of Elizabeth. The document shows that the couple sold 352 acres of land that had been granted to Hedges, indicating that he may have given the property to the Crocketts.10
It is unclear exactly how many children Elizabeth bore. Crockett family genealogists have pieced together a possible birth order for as many as seven sons: William, David Jr., John, Robert, Joseph, Alexander, and James. Of these sons, little is known of David Jr. and Alexander, although the signatures of both David Crockett Sr. and David Crockett Jr. have been found on recorded documents. It is likely that there also would have been daughters in this family, but despite a few vague references, no supporting records have ever surfaced. John Crockett, who would father the famous David Crockett, was born about 1753 in Frederick County, Virginia.11
The Crocketts were some of the earliest settlers in the area around Frederick Town, Virginia, which in 1752 would be renamed Winchester, the seat of Frederick County. Once the camping grounds of Shawnee Indians, this area of Virginia was settled in the early 1730s by Pennsylvania Quakers who traveled what had been known as the Warriors’ Path before becoming the Great Wagon Road. This also was the route taken by Crockett family members and their fellow Scots-Irishmen when they settled on the eastern flank of North Mountain in Nollville, Virginia, and, later, Berryville, a Frederick County settlement near Winchester.
At the same time that David the elder moved from Pennsylvania to Virginia, a sixteen-year-old George Washington also arrived in Frederick County. He started work as a surveyor and, with his earnings, soon began purchasing land. By 1755 he kept a small office in a Winchester log cabin while he supervised the construction of Fort Loudon at the north end of town, bringing in blacksmiths from his family’s Mount Vernon estate to do the ironwork. Washington also held his first elective office in the county, serving in the House of Burgesses, and, during the French and Indian War, he commanded a regiment headquartered in Winchester. No records have been found that indicate whether Washington had contact with the Crocketts; it is doubtful. However, before the close of the century, the nation’s new capital, less than seventy miles northwest of Winchester, would be named for Washington, and some years after that, the Crockett clan would have one of their own serving in the U.S. Congress.
The family of David and Elizabeth Crockett left Frederick County, Virginia, by June 13, 1768, the date on their last deed, and wended their way to the newly created Tryon County (renamed Lincoln County ten years later), west of the Catawba River in southwest North Carolina.12 Their final land transaction was the sale of 352 acres of land to Robert Watt, the parcel of land once owned by Jonas Hedge that led to speculation that Elizabeth was a Hedge daughter.
Besides civic chores, such as serving as jurors and witnessing legal documents, the Crocketts stayed busy facing the demands and hardships of daily life on the frontier wilderness. The forests of Tryon County offered plenty of game for sharp-eyed marksmen toting their long rifles crafted by skilled German gunsmiths in Pennsylvania. Hunters also spent considerable time shooting and trapping varmints. In Tryon County, the bounty for the scalp of an adult wolf earned a pound sterling, while a young wolf scalp brought ten shillings and a wild cat scalp five shillings. Like other frontier boys, the Crockett sons learned how to handle firearms and how to track animals. They were taught that a rifle was an essential tool and that, indeed, there was truth to the adage that a man must choose his rifle with as much care as he chose his wife.13 Several Crockett sons were soon to marry.
It is probable that sometime in 1775—the year the American Revolution broke out in northeast New England—one of the sons, John Crockett, married Rebecca (or Rebekah) Hawkins, whose family was said by some early Crockett researchers to have come from Joppa, Maryland, founded on the Gunpowder River in the early 1700s. According to the official genealogy of the Crockett family, Rebecca was the daughter of Nathan, born in 1722, and Ruth Cole Hawkins, born in 1724. Both of them were born in Baltimore County, Maryland, where they also married, on February 14, 1744. This family later moved to the same area in Virginia where the Crocketts lived. Rebecca’s known siblings were brothers Aaron, Joseph, Matthew, Wilson, John, Nicholas, and Nathan Jr., and sisters Mary Elizabeth and Ruth.14
The early life of Rebecca Hawkins Crockett has been obscured, and many inaccuracies have been handed down. Some accounts list her birthplace as Baltimore and the year of birth as 1764. One source declares that she and John Crockett married in 1780. Much of the confusion resulted from Notable Southern Families, a work published in 1928 in which authors Janie French and Zella Armstrong claimed that the Crockett family was the offspring of French Huguenots who had migrated to Ireland and then to America. However, many more reliable researchers, including Crockett descendants, have questioned those findings and pointed out inaccuracies and glaring errors in the French and Armstrong work. Although the Huguenot information frequently resurfaces as well-documented fact, it is not. No link has been established between the Huguenot Crocketts and the family of David Crockett. Nor does any reliable information support the claims by French and Armstrong that Rebecca Hawkins Crockett was in any way related to Sarah Hawkins Sevier, the wife of John Sevier, a future governor of Tennessee and a U.S. congressman.15
In his 1834 autobiography, Crockett wrote what he knew of his mother: “She was an American woman, born in the state [colony] of Maryland, between York and Baltimore. It is likely I may have heard where they were married, but if so, I have forgotten. It is, however, certain that they were, or else the public would never have been troubled with the history of David Crockett, their son.”16
For Crockett, who never demonstrated a longing to learn more about his family’s past, that bit of information seemed to be enough.