He Wasn't Davy
Historians and journalists point out that Crockett was not known as “Davy” during his lifetime. Arnold Garcia Jr. noted, “The real Crockett would wince at being called ‘Davy.’”
Historian Stephen Hardin wrote, “[Crockett] never encouraged anyone to call him ‘Davy.’” An historical advisor to the film Alamo (2004), sniffed that Crockett “…referred to himself as David.”
Crockett signed his correspondence and official documents with “David.” There is no record of him ever stating that he preferred David over Davy.
There are examples in contemporary newspapers and correspondence of others, including Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk, calling him Davy.
Crockett referred to himself as Davy during a speech in Ohio on July 12, 1834. His youngest son, Robert Patton Crockett referred to him as Davy years later. He grew up with six or seven siblings. None ever called him Davy?
He Was Lazy
John Fischer, editor of Harper’s wrote in the 1950s that Crockett was, “a youthful juvenile delinquent… indolent and shiftless.” Actually, Crockett never stopped working from twelve years old to the time of his death at forty-nine.
As a child he worked as a drover, freighter, farm hand, and hatter. As an adult he was a farmer, soldier, scout, magistrate, justice of the peace, town commissioner, militia officer, Tennessee State Legislator, hunter, trail blazer for new roads, author, and a volunteer soldier in the Texas revolution.
He attempted to be a miller and a transporter of barrel staves down the Mississippi River. He also represented Tennessee as a member of the United States House of Representatives for three terms.
He Was Uncouth
Rhodes Scholar Vernon Louis Parrington wrote in 1927 that Crockett was “[A] sloven… a true frontier wastrel… the biggest frog in a very small pond.”
Contemporary descriptions differ. William L. Foster, “A pleasant, courteous, and interesting man, who, though uneducated in books was a man of fine instincts and intellect…. a man of high sense of honor, of good morals, not intemperate, nor a gambler.”
Artist John Gadsby Chapman wrote, “[Crockett] rarely, if ever, exhibited in conversation or manner, attributes of coarseness of character that prevailing popular opinion very unjustly assign to him. I cannot recall to mind an instance of his indulgence in gasconade or profanity.” The Niles Register, “[Crockett is] just such a one as you would desire to meet with if any accident or misfortune had happened to you on the highway.”
He Was Of A Diminutive Stature
James Atkins Shackford interviewed two elderly Crockett grandchildren for his 1956 biography David Crockett: the Man and the Legend.
The descendants, never seeing their grandfather, speculated on his height as 5’8” to 5’10.” Contemporaries differ. Helen Chapman described Crockett as: “Tall in stature and large in frame.”
John L. Jacobs, “About six feet high, weighed about two hundred pounds, had no surplus flesh, broad shouldered, stood erect, was a man of great physical strength.”
He Never Wore A Coonskin Cap
Crockett’s youngest daughter, Matilda, said of her father’s departure for Texas, that “He was dressed in his hunting suit, wearing a coon skin cap.”
James Davis, seeing Crockett leaving Memphis for Texas wrote, “He wore that same veritable coon-skin cap and hunting shirt.”
Teacher Sarah S. King recalled, in 1936, a visit to her classroom many years earlier by Alamo child survivor Enrique Esparza. According to King, Esparza stated that Crockett “Wore a buckskin suit and a coonskin cap.”
Crockett may not have cultivated the coonskin cap as a trade mark, but he certainly wore one, at least on his way to Texas and the Alamo.
He Abandoned His Family
Crockett left Tennessee in autumn 1835 and died at the Alamo the following March. Historians judge this to constitute abandonment.
Before leaving, Crockett wrote to his brother-in-law, “I want to explore Texas well before I return.”
Daughter Matilda recalled that he wanted to move his family immediately but her mother convinced him to look the country over first before settling there. She also told of a barbecue and barn dance arranged by Crockett for family and friends before he left, hardly the actions of a man abandoning his family.
He Kept A Journal In Texas
When Crockett died, publishers Carey and Hart hired Richard Penn Smith to create a Crockett “journal.”
The finished product, Colonel Crockett’s Exploits and Adventures in Texas concludes dramatically on March 5, 1836, the day before the Alamo battle, with Crockett declaring, “Go ahead! – Liberty and independence forever!”
It is fiction except for historical and geographic material melded into the narrative.
Smith lifted much of the description of the Alamo siege from the journal of Colonel Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, captured at the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836, and published in the New York Herald in June 1836.
Crockett’s “Journal” is still cited in many works as Crockett’s own.
William Groneman III is the author of David Crockett: Hero of the Common Man. He can be reached at wgroneman@yahoo.com
