David Crockett (44 page)

25
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 186.

26
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 133.

THIRTY • LION OF THE WEST

1
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
, trans. George Lawrence, ed. J. P. Mayer (New York: Harper & Row, 1966), 485.

2
Ibid., 200.

3
Alexis de Tocqueville, Journal Entry, Memphis, Tennessee, December 20, 1831, 267, www.tocqueville.org/tn.hmm.

4
Jones,
Crockett Cousins
, 23. William Finley Crockett wed Clorinda Boyett on March 18, 1830, and Margaret Finley Crockett wed Wiley Flowers on March 22, 1830. Both weddings took place in Gibson County, TN.

5
Smith,
Land Holdings
, 42–43. Some authors, including Shackford, have confused the two George Pattons. The George Patton who purchased Crockett’s 25-acre tract in 1831 was his stepson and not his brother-in-law, the other George Patton, who resided in Buncombe County, North Carolina.

6
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 136.

7
Ibid., 133.

8
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 310.

9
Jones,
Crockett Cousins
, 45.

10
Smith,
Land Holdings
, 44.

11
Ibid.

12
William Shakespeare,
As You Like It
, The New Folger Library of Shakespeare (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004), act 5, scene 1.

13
M. J. Heale, “The Role of the Frontier in Jacksonian Politics: David Crockett and the Myth of the Self-Made Man,”
Western History Quarterly
4 (October 1973): 406.

14
Levy,
American Legend
, 182.

15
Vera M. Jiji, ed.,
A Sourcebook of Interdisciplinary Materials in American Drama: J. K. Paulding, The Lion of the West
(Brooklyn: Produced by the Program for Culture at Play: Multimedia Studies in American Drama, Humanities Institute, Brooklyn College, 1983), 10–11. The review appeared in the
Morning Courier and New York Enquirer
, April 27, 1831.

16
Andrew Burstein,
The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving
(New York: Basic Books, 2007), 10–11. In 1793, when Washington Irving was ten years old, his brother William married Julia Paulding, the older sister of James Kirke Paulding. According to Burstein, Paulding is noteworthy for being the first outside the Irving clan to be considered a confidant, and, as important, the one who introduced Washington Irving to Sleepy Hollow.

17
Ibid., 246. Others belonged to the Knickerbockers, but the five listed were the most remarkable.

18
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 171–72. John Wesley Jarvis was born in England and was the nephew of John Wesley, founder of Methodism. Jarvis painted the portraits of many well-known American figures, including Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and James Fenimore Cooper. He was known for his flamboyant dress and manner during his prime years, but his work declined and he died in poverty in New York in 1840.

19
The word
nimrod
, which means hunter, was taken from Nimrod, the name of the mighty hunter and king, and Noah’s great-grandson in the Old Testament.

20
William I. Paulding,
Literary Life of James K. Paulding
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1867), 218–19. William I. Paulding was the son of James Kirke Paulding.

21
Ibid.

22
Adams Sentinel
, Gettysburg, PA, December 17, 1828.

23
Jiji,
Sourcebook
, 27.

24
Jay Winik,
April 1865: The Month That Saved America
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 233.

25
Hauck,
Davy Crockett: A Handbook
, 47.

THIRTY-ONE • BEAR-BIT LION

1
Jiji,
Sourcebook
, 11. Quoting
Morning Courier & New York Enquirer
, November 24, 1831.

2
Ibid. Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 256.

3
Hutton, Introduction,
Narrative
, xix.

4
Information provided by Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, Washington Navy Yard, Washington, D.C. President Martin Van Buren appointed James K. Paulding the eleventh secretary of the navy. He served from July 1, 1838, to March of 1841. Among other governmental positions he held were those of secretary to the Board of Navy Commissioners from 1815 to 1823 and naval agent from 1824 to 1838.

5
Levy,
American Legend
, 184.

6
The etymology of the old adage “bit by the bear” is uncertain, but the phrase possibly served as one of the sources for a classic line uttered by actor Sam Elliott in the 1998 dark comedy film
The Big Lebowski
, produced by Ethan and Joel Coen. In his role as “The Stranger,” Elliot said: “A fella wiser than myself once said, ‘Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, the bar, well, he eats you.’”

7
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 262. The
Southern Literary Messenger
was published in Richmond, VA, from 1834 until 1864. Publisher Thomas Willis White hired Edgar Allan Poe in 1835 as a staff writer and critic. Poe, who usually did not use his middle name during this period, lasted only a month before he was fired for excessive drinking. He was soon rehired and for a time served as the editor of the journal. Poe published thirty-seven reviews of American and foreign books and periodicals while working for the
Messenger
. He left in 1837 but continued to contribute articles and reviews until his death in 1849.

8
Ibid.

9
Ibid., 262–63.

10
Ibid., 263.

11
Matthew St. Clair Clarke (probable author),
Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee
(New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833). Reprint of
Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee
(Cincinnati, 1833), 20.

12
Ibid., 164.

13
James T. Pearce, “Folk Tales of the Southern Poor-White, 1820–1860,”
Journal of American Folklore
63, no. 250 (October–December 1950), 398.

14
The New England Magazine
5, no. 6 (1833), 513–14. The magazine was launched in Boston in 1831 and ceased publication in 1835.
American Monthly Magazine
was its successor.

15
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 139–41.

16
Crockett,
Narrative
, 210.

17
Ibid.

18
H. Niles,
Niles’ Weekly Register
, Baltimore, MD, September 7, 1833. Archivists contend that this publication was an early precursor to modern news magazines.

19
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 144.

THIRTY-TWO • GO AHEAD

1
Hauck,
Davy Crockett: A Handbook
, 70–71.

2
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 147.

3
Levy,
American Legend
, 192.

4
Ibid. Thomas Chilton was born in 1798 near Lancaster, KY, a son of Reverend Thomas John Chilton and Margaret Bledsoe. One week before his seventeenth birthday, he married and started study for ordination as a Baptist minister. At the same time, he studied for the bar, and he eventually established a legal practice before entering politics. In 1835, Chilton had tired of politics and resumed the practice of law as well as his Baptist ministry. During a revival meeting in Alabama, he converted to Christianity his maternal cousin, Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, who went on to become an ordained Baptist minister and in 1845 cofounded Baylor University in Texas. Chilton pastored churches in Alabama and Texas, where he died in 1854. The town of Chilton, TX, was named for his son, Lysias B. Chilton, and a grandson, Horace Chilton, became the first native-born Texan to serve in the U.S. Senate from Texas.

5
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 148.

6
Crockett,
Narrative
, 172.

7
Joseph A. Swann, Presentation to the East Tennessee Historical Society, Knoxville, February 12, 2003.

8
Joe Reilly, PhD, Presentation to the International Psychohistorical Association, Fordham University, New York, June 7, 2007.

9
Aaron D. Purcell and Michael A. Lofaro, “The Davy Crockett Experience, Now Online! Part I: Born on a Mountain, Bought on EBay,” University of Tennessee,
The Library Development Review
, 2002–2003, 6.

10
Ovid’s
Metamorphoses
(Dublin: J. Exshaw, 1774), in fifteen books: with the notes of John Minellius, and others, in English.

11
From Aaron Purcell e-mail to the author, March 27, 2009. Aaron D. Purcell, PhD, currently serves as director of Special Collections and associate professor at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. Michael A. Lofaro, PhD, professor of American studies and American literature, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

12
Purcell and Lofaro, “The Davy Crockett Experience, Now Online!” 7.

13
Michael A. Lofaro, “Part II: Davy And Ovid?”
Library Development Review
(University of Tennessee), 2002–2003, 7.

14
Shackford,
David Crockett: The Man and the Legend
, 265.

15
Ibid., 265–66.

16
Ibid., 266.

17
Ibid., 267–68.

18
Davis,
Three Roads to the Alamo
, 331.

THIRTY-THREE • JUST A MATTER OF TIME

1
Michel de Montaigne, “Of Age,”
Essays of Michel de Montaigne
, translated by Charles Cotton, edited by William Carew Hazlitt, 1877, www.fullbooks.com/The-Essays-of-Montaigne-VB.html.

2
James L. Haley,
Sam Houston
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002), 50–52. Houston had just turned forty-six when he wed the teenaged Eliza Allen at her family’s home, Allenwood, on January 22, 1829. The marriage was doomed before it started. Apparently the young woman had never loved Houston. She loved a suitor her family disapproved of, and it was for this reason that they insisted she marry Houston.

3
Jack Gregory and Rennard Strickland,
Sam Houston with the Cherokees, 1829–1833
(Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press, 1967), 36, 44–45. Diana Rogers was the daughter of Captain John “Hell-Fire-Jack” Rogers, a wealthy Scottish trader who had been a Tory captain in the American Revolution, had fought at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and later directed the Cherokee emigration to Arkansas. Diana’s uncles were Chief John Jolly and Chief Tallantusky. Her brothers operated profitable trading establishments and saltworks, and her sisters married wealthy Cherokee merchants. She was related to Sequoyah, whose alphabet had made him one of the most important figures in the Cherokee Nation.

4
Ibid., 44–46.