DAVID

See also:

• DAVID CROCKETT (1786–1836)
• CROCKETT, SAMUEL RUTHERFORD (186o– )

CROCKETT (1786–1836)  , American frontiersman, was born in Greene county, Tennessee, on the 17th of August 1786 . His education was obtained chiefly in the rough school of experience in the Tennessee backwoods, where he acquired a wide reputation as a hunter, trapper and marksman . In 1813–1814 he served in the Creek War under Andrew Jackson, and subsequently became a colonel in the Tennessee militia . In 1821–1824 he was a member of the state legislature, having won his election not by political speeches but by telling stories . In 1827 he was elected to the national House of Representatives as a Jackson Democrat, and was re-elected in 1829 . At Washington his shrewdness, eccentric manners and peculiar wit made him a conspicuous figure, but he was too independent to be a sup-porter of all Jackson's measures, and his opposition to the president's Indian policy led to administration influences being turned against him with the result that he was defeated for re-election in 1831 . He was again elected in 1833, but in 1835 lost his seat a second time, being then a vigorous opponent of many distinctively Jacksonian measures . Discouraged and disgusted, he left his native state, and emigrated to Texas, then engaged in its struggle for independence . There he lost his life as one of the defenders of the Alamo at San Antonio on the 6th of March 1836 . A so-called " autobiography," which he very probably dictated or at least authorized, was published in Philadelphia in 1834; a work purporting to be a continuation of this autobiography and entitled Colonel Crockett's Exploits and Adventures in Texas (Philadelphia, 1836) is undoubtedly spurious . These two works were subsequently combined in a single volume, of which there have been several editions . Numerous popular biographies have been written, the best by E .

S .

Ellis (Philadelphia, 1884) .