![]() By 1831 Crockett had become the model for Nimrod Wildfire, the hero of James Kirke Paulding’s play, The Lion of the West, as well as the subject of numerous books and articles. ![]() Notoriety gave Crockett’s image a life of its own. Crockett was defeated in 1831, when he openly and vehemently opposed Jackson’s policies, but was reelected in 1833. Polk on several important issues including land reform and the Indian removal bill. He campaigned as an honest country boy and an extraordinary hunter and marksman–someone who was in every sense a “straight shooter.” Reelected to a second term in 1829, he split with President Andrew Jackson and the Tennessee delegation headed by James K. House of Representatives from his new West Tennessee residence in 1827. Reelected in 1823, but defeated in 1825, he won election to the U.S. ![]() The family moved to Lawrence County in the fall of 1817.Īlthough he served as a justice of the peace, Lawrenceburg town commissioner, and colonel of the Fifty-seventh Militia Regiment of Lawrence County, Crockett was relatively unknown before his 1821 election to the Tennessee legislature, representing Lawrence and Hickman Counties. A year later, he married Elizabeth Patton, a widow with two children. Soon after his discharge, Polly gave birth to Margaret, their third child Polly died that summer. In 1813 they moved again, this time to Franklin County, where Crockett twice enlisted as a volunteer in the Indian wars from 1813 to 1815 following the wars, he was elected a lieutenant in the Thirty-second Militia Regiment of Franklin County. They remained in East Tennessee until 1811, when the Crocketts and their two sons, John Wesley and William, settled in Lincoln County. He soon found all forgiven and reciprocated their generosity by working for a year to settle his father’s debts.ĭavid married Mary “Polly” Finley on August 14, 1806, in Jefferson County. When he returned home in 1802, he had grown so much that initially his family did not recognize him. His “strategic withdrawal,” as he called it, lasted about thirty months. Preferring to play hooky rather than attend school, he ran away from home to escape his father’s wrath. In his search for a better life for himself and his family, he participated in a process that we now call the American dream.ĭavid was the son of John Crockett, magistrate, unsuccessful land speculator, and tavern owner, and Rebecca Hawkins Crockett. He lived in Tennessee for all but the last few months of his life and promoted the gradual westward expansion of the frontier through Tennessee toward Texas. History melted even more easily into legend as eager writers, editors, and producers provided an omnivorous public with an increasing number of remarkable tales about the heroic frontiersman and turned the flesh-and-blood David into the legendary Davy.īorn on August 17, 1786, in Greene County in East Tennessee, Crockett grew up with the new nation and helped it grow. Both the historical figure who died at the Alamo and the legendary hero kept alive in the media of his day and ours, Crockett partly invented his own myth. congressman, folk hero, and icon of popular culture, was an intriguing composite of history and myth. David Crockett, frontiersman, Tennessee legislator and U.S. ![]()
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