Three Roads to the Alamo

by William C. Davis

  He never suspected how much time would pass before again he crossed his father's threshold. Wandering seemed to come somewhat naturally to young David, as did hardship. First he hired himself to his friend, Jesse Cheek, for a cattle drive to Virginia. He went back over the road he knew now to Abingdon, on to the Roanoke River crossing, then east to Lynchburg, and on through Charlottesville.

  These days before the turn of the century were interesting ones for anyone passing through Charlottesville, for there was the rural seat of the Virginian, Vice-President Thomas Jefferson. He would still have been at his hillside Monticello when David passed through, preparing to return to the capital in Philadelphia for his last session as president of the Senate. Crockett may not have seen him, but Jefferson's presence was strong in Charlottesville. The term of President John Adams was coming to an end; George Washington had but a few weeks to live; and the influence of their Federalist Party was waning with them. Jefferson would probably be chosen president in a few months, and with him would come a renewed adherence to the Enlightenment and a new commitment to democracy. Yet it would be deceptive, for Jefferson's was a middle-class democracy, founded on the landed, the educated, and most of all the successful. David Crockett and his kind were not part of the coming Jeffersonianism. All he could do was aspire to it.

  The drive ended at Front Royal, 375 miles from where it began, a long trip indeed for a thirteen-year-old on foot. With the herd sold, Crockett started on the road back, this time in company with one of the other drovers. With only a horse between them, which the other never seemed to share, they parted company, and with four dollars in his pocket Crockett continued by himself. The road made for easy acquaintance and alliances, and when Crockett met Adam Myers, he agreed to accompany him even though he was heading north. That errand done, however, Myers promised that he was then returning to Tennessee and would take David with him. The weeks on the road had softened his hurt and his anger but not his fear. “I often thought of home, and, indeed, wished bad enough to be there,” he later recalled, but he also remembered “my father, and the big hickory he carried.” He had not forgotten the “storm of wrath” that ruled John Crockett when last he saw him. “I knew my father's nature so well, that I was certain his anger would hang on him.” Better to stay away awhile longer, he thought.18

  One road led to another, though, and none of them seemed to take him home. David's was a trusting and gullible nature. When not acting he spoke plainly and truthfully, saying what he felt or believed without thought or artifice; and he took others at their word and as a result was often deceived. Moreover his habitual acquiescence in the expectations of adult males—expected of all youths—made it difficult for him to refuse even if he did suspect deceit, and more inclined to run than to stand up for himself. And so, even though often moved to tears by his homesickness, he spent three largely unhappy years as a teamster and vagabond. Myers never seemed to get around to going back to Tennessee, instead making runs to Baltimore while David worked as a day laborer at twenty-five cents a day. In the spring of 1800 he went to Baltimore with Myers, giving the man his little hoard of seven dollars for safekeeping on the journey. Never before had he seen a real city, much less something like the Chesapeake Bay. Crockett went down to the wharf to marvel at the great sailing ships, and when he ventured to walk aboard one he encountered the master of the vessel. The winning way that won him instant friends on the road worked for David on the deck of a schooner as well, and shortly the captain offered him a job and a berth for a voyage to England. At age fourteen or nearly so he would have been a bit old for a cabin boy, but hard labor had made him firm and fit, and his stature, probably no more than a few inches over five feet by then, would suit him well for the cramped lower decks. He could make a good deckhand, and his cheerful manner would always be welcome during the long weeks at sea.

  But Myers refused to let him go, and kept him all but confined until they were several days into their return journey, more than once threatening to use his wagon whip on the boy. Finally Crockett simply escaped in the night, taking his clothes but unable to get at his seven dollars. Dejectedly he took to the road, only to encounter yet another in the succession of men who would befriend him. This time Crockett broke down in tears at his misfortune, and the samaritan promised to confront Myers and get his money back. It was to no avail, though, for Myers had already spent it. David moved on with his new friend for a few days, and then set off for Tennessee once more, no longer fearful of his father's wrath after experiencing the deceit and violence of the larger world. As if to soften his disillusionment with humankind, several wagoneers who heard his story took up a collection among themselves and gave him three dollars for the journey. By then it cannot have escaped David Crockett's notice that something in him could win the affection and the trust of others.

  The money (and his legs) got him just over halfway home, across the Roanoke, before it gave out. He took a month's job to earn five dollars, and then bound himself by an indenture to work four years for a hatmaker who would provide room and board, some small income, and undoubtedly teach him the hatter's trade as well. It would be a useful skill to have, make him independent of his father, and perhaps promise a good living as the Tennessee frontier matured and men craved some headgear more sophisticated than animal skins. But the hatter went broke after a year and a half and left David with nothing for his time. All he could do was take a few odd jobs to earn a little money, and then try once more for Tennessee.

  The spring rains in 1802 had swelled many of the streams, and when Crockett reached the New River just a few miles after starting, the water ran so rough that no ferryman would cross. Determined not to be stopped, he got the use of a canoe and set off by himself, brave if unwise. The raging current and cold wind carried him two miles downstream and soaked him thoroughly before he reached the other side. His clothing almost froze on him as he walked nearly an hour before he came to a house where he stopped and begged a seat by the fire. Better yet, his host offered “a leetle of the creater” to warm the inner man. Liquor was nothing new to a tavern keeper's son and a young man who had been on the high road with the wagoneers. This probably was not David Crockett's first drink, nor was it to be his last, but it is the only one of his life that he thought significant enough to rhapsodize over in his autobiography thirty years later.

  Another ninety miles, and he crossed the line into Tennessee at last, but there he stopped in Sullivan County to visit with an uncle and one of his brothers for several weeks. Finally, as the weather warmed and the days grew longer, he took the road for the final fifty miles to home. He could do it in two days, and well after dark the second evening he saw the familiar Crockett tavern on its slope on the south side of the road. Now the imp in him took over. He had been away for three years, almost. He had surely grown by several inches and filled out. A youthful sprout of whiskers may well have dulled the ruddy cheeks. Would his family know him? He entered and took a place on the fringes of the dim and crowded room of travelers, spoke little, and just watched. When his mother called the guests to the communal table for supper, he sat down, and was just eating when his oldest sister, Betsy, looked hard at him, burst into a smile, and jumped from her stool to grasp his neck, yelling: “Here is my lost brother.”

  Even John Crockett was delighted, and the much-feared birch rod stayed in the corner. The son had traveled widely now, more widely than the father, and had experienced more of the world than any of his brothers. At sixteen he was a man so far as the frontier was concerned. John could not hold him or dictate to him much longer, but although he forgave him, he still expected obedience and one last service. A son's labor belonged to his father by right until that son went off on his own. The old specter of debt never left John Crockett, as it never would, and now he made a bargain with his son. If David would work off a thirty-six-dollar note due another man, his father would thereafter release him from all responsibility, and as well relieve himself from having to provide for him. Young Crock
ett agreed and spent the next six months redeeming the note, even though the workplace put him in the objectionable company of coarse men who gambled and drank far too much. Though never in later years a prude, still David Crockett seemed from his early years to carry with him a rude frontier gentility of good manners and relatively chaste speech. He loved a good story, and by now surely told them toe to toe with the older men, but he stopped short of the obscenity common to the road. Certainly he could and did drink, but as with gambling, there was simply never enough money to indulge to regular excess. He had seen enough of the rougher tavern crowd by now to know that this was not the company he craved. Consequently, when his employer asked him to stay on even after the debt was paid, he declined.

  Crockett took a job with a Quaker instead, a job that started to earn him some cash of his own. But a few days into the effort the man informed him that he, too, held a note against John Crockett, this one for forty dollars. He suggested that if David would work for him for six months, he would sign the note over to him, in effect making David his father's creditor. David knew his father too well for that. “I was certain enough that I should never get any part of the note,” he said later. Nevertheless, perhaps out of guilt for the three years of uncertainty he had put the family through during his disappearance, he agreed, and toiled away until the Quaker presented him with the debt. Then young Crockett went to the Crockett tavern and handed his father the note, not in presentation for payment but as a present, and this time it was John Crockett who broke into tears. The act was more than a gift, however. It was David Crockett's declaration of independence. There would never be another caning, no more appropriation of his labor, no more fear. His debt to his father, in every sense, was paid. He was nearly seventeen. Now he was a man.

  No sooner did Crockett take another job than he decided that it was time for him to take a wife as well. His first infatuation was with the Quaker's niece, and it hit him powerfully. “I have heard people talk about hard loving,” he confessed, “yet I reckon no poor devil in this world was ever cursed with such hard love as mine has always been, when it came on me.”19 Overcome by his feeling, and no doubt as well inhibited by his humble circumstances, he could barely speak to her. After several false starts he told her how he felt, only to find out that she was already engaged to another.

  Though he thought himself heartbroken, still Crockett took it well enough to realize that his prospects for finding a wife—not to mention his prospects in the world—would improve if he had some education. It took more than riding a wagon or walking behind a herd of cattle to make one a man of the world. He needed schooling, and a better effort than he had made of it during those four days several years before. Education cost money, of which he had none, and so Crockett turned to the only currency he had, his labor. He struck a bargain with a schoolmaster to work for him one or two days a week, in exchange for receiving lessons on the other days.

  It proved to be a felicitous arrangement. Thanks to his age, Crockett would have been placed with the other older boys, there being no other divisions or grades among the pupils. The master taught them chiefly by repetition of their lessons, aloud, over and over until they knew them by rote, with the result that some called it a “blab” school. Yet once he mastered the alphabet and the beginnings of a vocabulary, Crockett could find the lessons of some interest. Textbooks were few, but regardless of the age of the intended pupils, they were written for adults, with no differentiation by age or grade. The reading books, such as they were, came from New England, mostly, and were often just compilations of biblical sayings, anecdotal stories about animals, some encyclopedia entries, newspaper articles, and of special interest to Crockett, excerpts from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The selections taught moral and civic examples, as well as the reading itself, and there was also some elementary mathematics, history, geography, grammar, of course, and even bits of art and music. There was probably also a spelling primer, though spelling in England and America—not yet standardized—was idiosyncratic, its chief goal comprehension rather than uniformity. There being no dictionaries, Crockett, like most other nonuniversity students of his time, learned to spell phonetically, writing as he spoke, and thus unconsciously incorporating his East Tennessee drawl into his written words.20

  Crockett later played down his education, but in fact in six months he learned enough of sums and multiplication that he could calculate his own almost constant debt, and he learned to read well enough that in the years ahead he expanded his education on his own. By the measure of his time and place, he was now a literate man, and some considerable distance ahead of his friends and associates in learning. He would have continued his program further but for the now burning desire to have a wife, and quite consciously he shopped about the neighborhood for a suitable mate. He soon found one in Margaret Elder, and paid court to her with much the same application that he invested in his schooling—and nearly as long. By October 1805, with Crockett now nineteen, she accepted his suit and he proudly appeared before the clerk of the court at Dandridge, Jefferson County, to obtain his marriage license.21

  Nothing seemed to pass easily for young Crockett. With the wedding arrangements set, he took his proudest new possession, a rifle, to a shooting match just five days before the intended nuptials. He shot well at the meet, having a good eye and an apparent natural skill with the weapon, and won the prize of a whole beef, which he sold immediately for five dollars. That only buoyed his step as he walked to Margaret's home, where he intended to observe the previously neglected formality of asking her parents for their permission to wed. On the way he met her sister, who tearfully told him that he was deceived, and that his betrothed planned to marry another on the morrow. “It was the cap-stone of all the afflictions I had ever met with,” he confessed. As he sadly turned his face homeward, dejection almost overcame him, and he concluded that “I was only born for hardships, misery, and disappointment.” For several weeks, in an almost universal experience that at the moment seemed uniquely his own, he neither ate nor slept, unable to free his mind of the torment of his lost love and her deception. “It was the worst kind of sickness,” he said, “a sickness of the heart.”22

  But it passed. Indeed, as young hearts heal rapidly, so did his, and within a few months he courted again. At a frolic one evening he met Polly Finley, “and I must confess, I was plaguy well pleased with her from the word go.” David wooed both mother and daughter, seeing in the former an ally in his campaign. He soon discovered that he had a rival, but Polly preferred young Crockett, and in time, with the mother's objections being their chief obstacle, they came to an understanding. Once more Crockett went to the court clerk in Dandridge, where on August 12, 1806, now aged twenty, he took out another marriage license. Two days later he and his brothers and a few friends approached the Finley home. In an old frontier custom, he sent the others to the house with an empty jug. If William Finley filled it with drink, it was a sign that David and his wedding party were welcome and the match approved. His friends came back with a brimming container, David sent for the preacher, and the match was made.23

  The couple spent their first few days living with her parents and his, and then, with the wedding gift of two cows with calves, Crockett rented a small farm near Finley Spring on Bay's Mountain in Jefferson County and commenced making his own way. He quickly came to a sobering realization: “Having a wife, I wanted every thing else; and, worse than all, I had nothing to give for it.” What he got was the almost immediate start of a family. On July 10, 1807, Polly gave birth to John Wesley, and two years later to William. Polly made them a comfortable home within their meager means, and David could at least feed them from his hunting in the wilderness, but he simply could not provide enough to pay even their rent, much less anything for the necessities they could not make themselves. Years later a friend of the time could only recall Crockett as “a poor man.” Faced with the problem, he did as his family before him, and as his people had done for generations. He
moved on.24

  In the next four years the Crocketts moved twice. First, sometime in the fall of 1811, he took them a grueling 150 miles west past Knoxville, across the Tennessee River, over the Cumberland Plateau, and then south to Lincoln County, almost to the Alabama Territory line. There, on the Mulberry fork of the Elk River, he marked his initials on a beech tree for a reference point, and laid out a five-acre claim on state land, built a cabin, and several months later received a warrant for title to the property. The hunting was good in the area, better than in the home he had left, and perhaps Crockett indulged too much his passion for taking the deer and other game, for once more he failed to prosper on the land. He entered a claim for fifteen more acres next to his first holding, but lost both tracts in the end for delinquency on his taxes. By then he had already removed his family anyhow, to Bean's Creek, a few miles south, and just above the Alabama border. Arriving sometime in 1813, for some reason he chose to call his new home “Kentuck,” which, given his itinerant nature, might just as well have signaled his next intended destination if this claim did not show profit.25

  If ever David Crockett had any awareness of politics or of national affairs on a sphere greater than his immediate neighborhood in these years, he gave no indication, but now outside events compelled his attention. The United States was at war with Great Britain again, as he well knew, but that was a faraway war. However, from the Canadian border to the Gulf Coast, the British were enlisting native allies to distract the Americans, capitalizing on relations already strained by the pressure of white westward expansion. Anticipating the need for a preemptive strike, some whites that summer attacked a party of Creek at Burnt Corn Creek in southern Alabama Territory, inaugurating what would be called the First Creek War. The Creek were not long in retaliating. White settlers and a couple of companies of Mississippi volunteers occupied a stockade at Fort Mims, about thirty miles up the Alabama River from Mobile, and on August 30, 1813, the Creek struck by surprise. The whites never even got the gates to the fort closed. After several hours of brutal and largely one-sided fighting, nearly five hundred lay dead in the stockade. No more than fifty escaped to spread the news of the massacre through the shocked frontier. The British might be hundreds of miles away, but now there was war right here on their hearths.