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 th
an 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, Ame
rican 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.
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