Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett grew up in a family sunk repeatedly into debt, and his own labor went to pay it off before he was a teenager — his father hired him out at 12 to help settle an account with a cattle drover, and Crockett spent nearly three years drifting through odd jobs before finding his way home. He had almost no formal schooling and learned to read only as an adult. He scouted briefly in the Creek War in 1813 and 1814, married Polly Finley in 1806, and, after her death in 1815, married Elizabeth Patton that same year, taking on her two children along with his own three surviving ones. Debt from flooded businesses on the Obion River, not ambition, pushed him into Tennessee politics.

Crockett served two nonconsecutive terms in the Tennessee legislature before three terms in Congress, from 1827 to 1835, representing west Tennessee. He was the only member of the state's delegation to vote against Andrew Jackson's 1830 Indian Removal Act, calling it 'a wicked, unjust measure' and accepting his district's anger over it rather than his own president's. He lost his House seat twice, in 1831 and for good in 1835, undone both times by the Jackson political machine he had crossed. That second defeat produced the line that outlived the career: he told his constituents they could go to hell, and he would go to Texas. He reached the Alamo mission in San Antonio on February 8, 1836, three weeks before Santa Anna's army began its siege.

What happened to Crockett on the morning of March 6, 1836, is not settled and has not been for nearly two centuries. Several accounts from Alamo survivors describe finding Crockett's body surrounded by more than a dozen Mexican dead, his knife still lodged in one of them — a death in the fighting. A different account surfaced in 1955, in the recovered diary of Mexican officer José Enrique de la Peña, which says Crockett and a handful of others survived the assault, were taken prisoner, and were executed on Santa Anna's order minutes later. Analysis of the manuscript's paper and ink, completed in 2001, found it consistent with 1830s Mexican military documents, and most historians now lean toward the surrender-and-execution account. Santa Anna's own memoir does not resolve it either way, and no remains were ever identified.

Crockett was already a folk figure before he died, the subject of stage plays and comic almanacs that turned a backwoods congressman into the 'King of the Wild Frontier.' Walt Disney's 1954 television series, with Fess Parker in a coonskin cap, revived the legend and put its theme song at the top of the pop charts for weeks. Tennessee and Texas both claim him: a state park marks his birthplace, and a Crockett County sits in each state. The Alamo itself has become the more contested shrine of the two, its founding story of unanimous, willing martyrdom challenged by the same historians who reopened the question of how Crockett actually died.

Davy Crockett's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Creek War scout service mission
  Served under Col. John Coffee during the Creek War 1813
• Tennessee land-reform bills law
  Introduced repeatedly in Congress to secure poor settlers' land titles; never passed 1829
• Vote against the Indian Removal Act other
  The only member of Tennessee's delegation to vote no 1830
• A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, Written by Himself book
  Co-written with Thomas Chilton; built the frontier persona in his own words 1834

• August 17, 1786 aged 0 Born in Greene County, Tennessee
• 1799 aged ~13 Runs away from home for nearly three years Worked as a cattle driver, teamster, and hat-maker's apprentice before returning to his father's tavern in 1802.
• September 1813 aged 27 Enlists as a scout in the Creek War
• 1821 aged ~35 Elected to the Tennessee legislature
• 1827 aged ~41 Elected to the US House of Representatives
• May 1830 aged 43 Casts Tennessee's only vote against the Indian Removal Act 'I believed it was a wicked, unjust measure.'
• 1834 aged ~48 Publishes A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett
• August 1835 aged 48 Loses reelection and leaves for Texas Told his former constituents they could go to hell; he would go to Texas.
• March 6, 1836 aged 49 Dies at the Alamo, at 49 Accounts differ on whether he died fighting or was captured and executed.

• Sam Houston 1793–1863
  Commander at San Jacinto who became president of the Republic of Texas and later its governor and senator. fellow Texas revolutionary
• Andrew Jackson 1767–1845
  Seventh President whose populist policies and Indian Removal Act left a deeply contested legacy. political rival
• John Wayne 1907–1979
  Western star whose screen persona became a durable symbol of American masculinity. portrayed him on screen
• Daniel Boone 1734–1820
  Frontiersman who blazed the Wilderness Road through the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. the frontier legend he was measured against