David Crockett: The Lion of the West

by Michael Wallis

  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.

  FOUR

  OVER THE MOUNTAIN

  IN 1776—THE YEAR AMERICA declared its independence and the war against Great Britain produced a growing cohesion among the former colonies—the determined Crockett tribe, including John; his bride, Elizabeth; and led by David the elder—packed up its belongings and made its way over the formidable Appalachian barrier into what eventually became the northeastern tip of Tennessee.1

  Like the waves of other settlers, land speculators, and squatters pouring into this territory, the Crocketts knowingly defied a royal decree that closed off the western frontier to colonial expansion. King George III had issued his Royal Proclamation of 1763 following Britain’s acquisition of French territory in North America at the end of the French and Indian War.2 This measure was intended to stabilize relations of various Indian tribes by making all lands west of the heads of rivers flowing into the Atlantic Ocean from the west or northwest off-limits to any white settlement. Instead of abiding by the proclamation—once described as “a triumph of naïveté, geographical ignorance, and wishful thinking”—restless colonists, eager to increase their holdings and gain new ground, simply ignored it.3 They were angered by the ban on expansion and followed the trails blazed before them by the Longhunters and other Overmountain Men, mostly Scots-Irish settlers who had come west over the Appalachians, or the Allegheny Mountains, as they were then called.

  Longhunters—so named because of the duration of their wilderness hunts—came from Pennsylvania and the Carolinas, but most started in the Holston River Valley of Virginia or the adjacent valley of the Clinch River. They were the first American frontiersmen to go beyond the Blue Ridge Mountains, making their living as hunters, trappers, and scouts for land surveyors. Throughout the 1760s and 1770s, Longhunters provided invaluable information for the settlers streaming into the future states of Tennessee and Kentucky.4 Although they often adopted the
Indian way of life, including some of the dress, most Longhunters considered Indians as competition and, defying the government and more liberal East Coast sentiment, were known to shoot them on sight. They also poached game on Indian lands, disregarded treaties, and randomly broke laws.

  A particularly well known Longhunter was Daniel Boone, who explored the upper Holston River valley for a land speculator, later playing a key role in the early settlement of Tennessee. One of Boone’s camps on Boon’s Creek, a tributary of the Watauga River, become the home of his friend and hunting companion Captain William Bean, Tennessee’s first known permanent white settler, who built his log cabin at the site in 1769.5 That same year, Robert Crockett, a rugged Longhunter and kinsman of David Crockett the elder, was ambushed and killed by Indians near his camp on the headwaters of Roaring River on the old war trail leading from Cherokee territory to Shawnee land.6 It was an act that would be deeply ingrained in the consciousness of the Crockett clan.

  An ethnic mélange of settlers followed the Great Wagon Road and the well-trodden routes of the Longhunters, including English, Welsh, Irish, German, Swiss, French Huguenot, and some African slaves. Most of the newcomers, however, were Scots-Irish, such as the Crocketts. Reflecting early class division in the fledgling Republic, all of them had long detested the autocratic power of the British king and resented what they considered a conspiracy to take away their God-given freedom.

  “If abused, they fight; if their rights are infringed they rebel; if forced, they strike; and if their liberties are threatened, they murder,” wrote Tennessee historian John Trotwood Moore. “They eat meat and always their bread is hot.”7 It was frequently said that the Scots-Irish in Tennessee feared only God himself. And yet another adage about these early pioneers suggested that they kept the Sabbath, as well as anything else they could get their hands on. For the Crocketts, that meant getting their hands on the new lands that waited over the mountains.

  The principal communities that were being established in the region of what became east Tennessee were on the North Holston, Watauga, and Nolichucky rivers, and in Carter’s Valley, a settlement named for merchant John Carter. In fact, the Crockett family chose Carter’s Valley as their new home.8 They found thick forests and distant mountains—the oldest east of the Mississippi—sitting “like dethroned kings,” as poet Sidney Lanier put it. The Crocketts and other settlers built one-room log cabins with dirt floors and mud and stick fireplaces close to the swift-flowing streams threading from the highlands. They found hidden springs, cleared land for planting, and, working together, carved settlements out of the land with their own hands.

  David Crockett, his sons, and the other newly arrived white settlers believed they had moved to within the boundary of the Virginia Colony, but a survey revealed that almost all of the settlements were south of North Carolina’s western claims in land that had been guaranteed to the Cherokee Nation. In 1772, when ordered to disband and relocate to north of the boundary, the settlers, who were living beyond the bounds of any organized government, formed an alliance they called the Watauga Association, with John Carter being made one of the commissioners. At the same time, the audacious Wataugans, as they called themselves, schemed to get around the sanctions for purchasing land imposed on them by the British.9 In 1775, they dispatched a delegation, loaded down with gifts and trade goods, to a parley with the Cherokee leader Attakullakulla to see about leasing Indian land. Despite pleas from the aging Indian leader’s son, Dragging Canoe, who eloquently but forcefully protested that tribal land was melting away “like balls of snow in the sun,” a deal was struck that eventually led to whites purchasing Cherokee land. “You have bought a fair land, but there is a cloud hanging over it,” Dragging Canoe told the Wataugans. “You will find its settlement dark and bloody.”10 Dragging Canoe’s prediction would prove true, and eventually there would be serious repercussions for the white settlers, including the Crocketts.

  The estimated two thousand white émigrés soon transformed much of the Cherokee land by clearing forests and planting crops and orchards. More log cabins popped up across the landscape, and, despite bringing in livestock that encroached upon much of the grasses and tall cane along the streams, the white families killed great numbers of deer, bear, and other game. It became clear to the Cherokees that, unlike the Longhunters, who came and went, this new wave of whites were going to remain. The Cherokees had never expected such a great number of newcomers, and many tribal elders who had never agreed to the transactions in the first place were deeply troubled by what they witnessed. Serious dissension developed within the tribe, and the more militant Cherokees grew emboldened and understandably formed an alliance with the British during the American Revolution.

  After several skirmishes with the Cherokees, the settlers sought outside assistance to stem further hostilities. On July 5, 1776, the day after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, David Crockett and his eldest son, William, were two of the more than one hundred thirteen Wataugans who signed (or, as two men did, made their mark on) a petition asking North Carolina to annex their land and provide protection from the British and Cherokee warriors. Because North Carolina and Virginia had not agreed on boundary lines, similar petitions were sent to the Virginia government in 1776 and 1777 from Carter’s Valley—including the signatures of David the elder and those of David Jr., William, and John Crockett.11 The Watauga Association continued until 1778 and was finally annexed to North Carolina. By then it was too late for David the elder and some members of his family who had built a split-log cabin and established growing fields. In his Narrative of 1834, Crockett recounted his father’s early life in east Tennessee when he wrote: “He settled there under dangerous circumstances, both to himself and his family, as the country was full of Indians, who were at that time very troublesome.”12

  Those “troublesome” times struck the family with a fury in the spring of 1777. John Crockett was away, on duty as a frontier ranger, one of the volunteers who were authorized bounties of land in return for combating hostile Indian raiding parties.13 During much of 1776 and 1777, John’s elder brother Robert also was gone, serving with the militia as a draftsman and helping build fortifications on the North Carolina frontier. While these Crockett men were off protecting other settlers, a party of Creek Indians and renegade Cherokees, known as Chickamaugas, emerged from the forest and descended on the homestead of David and Elizabeth Crockett. “By the Creeks, my grandfather and grandmother Crockett were both murdered, in their own house, and on the very spot where Rogersville, in Hawkins county, now stands. At the same time, the Indians wounded Joseph Crockett, a brother to my father, by a ball which broke his arm; and took James a prisoner, who was still a younger brother than Joseph, and who, from natural defects was less able to make his escape, as he was both deaf and dumb.”14

  If a son named David Crockett Jr. in fact existed, then perhaps he also perished in the Indian raid along with his parents. Some sources also believe that an unnamed Crockett daughter was present and was brutally scalped but survived. No records have been found to substantiate such a story. A reference to the massacre is found in an April 27, 1777, letter from Colonel Charles Robertson to Richard Caswell, the governor of North Carolina, in which a dozen unnamed victims are mentioned.15

  William and Robert Crockett were named executors of the estate of their slain father and legally represented the interests of Joseph and James, their minor orphaned brothers. Joseph, who had his arm broken by a rifle ball in the attack that killed his parents, lost the use of his hand and fashioned an imitation hand so that he could eat. Joseph later was appointed straymaster for Sullivan County, Tennessee, by Governor William Blout and helped gather stray livestock and return them to their rightful owners.16 James, the youngest Crockett son, was the only family member held captive by the Indian raiders. “He remained with them for seventeen years and nine months,” David wrote in the Narrative, “when he was discovered and recollected by my father and his eldest brother
, William Crockett; and was purchased by them from an Indian trader, at a price which I do not remember; but so it was, that he was delivered up to them and they returned him to his relatives.”17 For the rest of his life, those who knew him, including family, referred to James as “Dumb Jimmie.” In Fentress County, Tennessee, where he eventually lived, he was once lost in a hollow on the waters of White Oak that became known as Dumb Jimmie’s Hollow.18 James spent most of his remaining years searching in vain for lost silver and gold mines he had been taken to blindfolded while being held captive.

  The murderous attacks profoundly affected the Crockett family. In the aftermath of his parents’ violent deaths, John Crockett was concerned about the safety of surviving family members, especially his wife, Rebecca, but he continued his service in the militia for the duration of the war against Great Britain. John, along with his brothers William, Robert, and Alexander, faithfully served under Colonel Isaac Shelby in the summer of 1780 at the pivotal Battle of King’s Mountain in northwest South Carolina. Credited by many historians as the engagement that turned the tide of the American Revolution’s southern campaign, this fierce battle forever dashed any hope that Britain had of attracting American colonists to their cause.

  After gathering at Fort Watauga in what is now Elizabethton, Tennessee, the Crocketts and their fellow Overmountain Men, made up about a half of the colonial force that met the British Loyalists at King’s Mountain. Using Indian-style guerrilla tactics and taking deadly aim with their long rifles, the American patriots either killed or took prisoner large numbers of their enemy, including the British commander, who tried to escape through the battle lines. The entire engagement lasted one hour and five minutes.19