David 'Davy' Crockett (1786 to 1836) was a soldier, frontiersman, politician, storyteller, and, long before his famous death at the Alamo on 6 March 1836, a celebrity. Scholar Michael Wallis writes:

Perhaps more than anyone of his time, David Crockett was arguably our first celebrity hero, inspiring people of his own time as well as a twentieth-century generation.

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He steadily rose to fame through his charisma and natural talent for storytelling while campaigning for a seat in the Tennessee legislature in 1821, but he became a celebrity in 1831 through James Kirke Paulding's play The Lion of the West, in which the hero, Nimrod Wildfire, is based on Crockett. His fame expanded through Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee (better known as Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee) in 1833 and A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee in 1834, Crockett's autobiography (written with his friend Thomas Chilton), the only work authored by Crockett himself.

By the time he reached the Alamo in February 1836, he was an internationally recognized American hero, and his death at the Battle of the Alamo, at the hands of Antonio López de Santa Anna, was reported worldwide, transforming him finally into the celebrity martyr of the Alamo.

Crockett remained a popular figure throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, as early films featured him as a heroic figure of the West. His popularity had a resurgence in the 1950s, which could be called 'Crockett mania' when Disney Studios released the Davy Crockett miniseries (1954 to 1955) starring Fess Parker as Crockett. Boys and girls both dressed like Crockett, bought Crockett lunchboxes, carried Crockett pencil cases, and, of course, wore his famous coonskin cap.

His fame then received a further boost through John Wayne's The Alamo (1960), in which Crockett is played by Wayne, The Alamo: 13 Days to Glory TV miniseries (1987), where he is portrayed by Brian Keith, and John Lee Hancock's The Alamo (2004) with Billy Bob Thornton as Crockett. Although none of these later pieces inspired the mania of the Disney films, they continued the legend and legacy of Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier, and great American hero.

The Ballad of Davy Crockett, which serves as a kind of narration throughout the Disney films, claims he was "born on a mountaintop in Tennessee," but David Crockett was actually born in the State of Franklin, a region proposed as the 14th state of the Union in 1784, located in what is now East Tennessee. The fledgling state failed to win the votes needed for admission to the USA in 1785, and the territory became part of Tennessee and nearby states.

David's parents were John Crockett and Rebecca Hawkins, married in 1780, and David was one of nine children, born on 17 August 1786 in the region that is now Greene County, Tennessee. When he was 12 years old, his father indentured him to one Jacob Siler as a cowboy herding cattle, and when he was done, he returned home.

David's father then enrolled him in school, but he had no interest in "book learning" and, after a fight with another student, took to skipping school and spending his days in the woods exploring and hunting. When his father found out he had been "playing hooky", he was going to beat him, but David ran away, joining another cattle drive to Virginia.

In 1802, he returned home to find his family in debt and so worked this off through service to his father's creditors, including one John Canady. His attempts to court Canady's niece did not go well, but, fearing that his illiteracy was blunting his prospects for marriage, he arranged for Canady to teach him to read and write at the age of 18. He later met Polly Finley at a harvest "frolic" (a festival), fell in love, and the two were married on 16 August 1806 when he was 20. The couple would have three children, including John Wesley Crockett, later a United States Congressman.

The new Crockett family stayed in East Tennessee, near their families, for a little over five years before moving to Elk River in 1811 and then to Rattlesnake Spring in Franklin County in 1813. Crockett established a homestead there, which he named "Kentuck," and, that same year, he enlisted in the Tennessee militia.

Andrew Jackson had been appointed major general of the Tennessee militia in 1802 and still held that command when the Creek War began with the Fort Mims Massacre of 30 August 1813. Creek warriors, known as Red Sticks (because they had chosen the "red stick of war"), slaughtered at least 250 settlers and militia at the fort, causing widespread panic in the surrounding region.

Crockett, despite Polly's pleas that he stay to protect her and the children, rode out on 20 September in answer to a call for volunteers to fight the Creeks. As a member of the Second Regiment of Volunteer Mounted Riflemen under Colonel John Coffee, he was deployed to Alabama and participated in the massacre of Creeks at Tallushatchee on 3 November 1813, under the command of Andrew Jackson.

In one scene from the 2004 film The Alamo, Crockett relates how he does not eat potatoes anymore because, after the massacre, hungry and without provisions, they found a store of them beneath a Creek home they had burned. The movie takes most of Crockett's dialogue directly from his autobiography, in which he writes how "the oil of the Indians we had burned up on the day before had run down on and they looked like they had been stewed with fat meat" (Davis, 29). The Tallushatchee Massacre made a lasting impression on Crockett, as Wallis notes:

Only a few months after enlisting as a Tennessee Volunteer, Crockett had to have realized that he was a hunter, not a soldier…If confronted or challenged, Crockett never cowered or backed down from man or beast. Anyone armed only with a knife willing to fight a fully-grown bear to the death may have exhibited a great deal of recklessness but certainly had no coward in him. And that was just the point. Crockett was much more comfortable hunting and killing wild game than he was hunting and killing human beings. The role Crockett liked best during his military stint was the same one he preferred as a civilian, that of hunter-gatherer.

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Crockett was discharged in 1815 and returned home. Polly died soon after his arrival, of unknown causes, and, needing to find a mother for his children, Crockett married the widow Elizabeth Patton, who had two children, and the couple would have three more.

With a large family to support, Crockett understood he needed a steady job and so moved them all to what would become Lawrence County, Tennessee, in 1816, becoming a businessman, town commissioner, and justice of the peace. This was Crockett's introduction to the world of politics and his standing in the community was further enhanced when he was elected colonel of the Fifty-seventh Militia Regiment of Lawrence County in 1818.

Crockett now had name recognition in the county, and in January 1821, he resigned as commissioner and won election to the Tennessee legislature representing Hickman and Lawrence counties. He was especially interested in alleviating the suffering of the poor, particularly that of the lower-class farmers in Tennessee whose lands were taken by their more affluent neighbors through land grants. Crockett opposed slavery, although he owned slaves through what he saw as a matter of necessity in operating his farms and businesses, and, though never known as a slave-trader, bought and sold slaves.

In 1827, he was elected to the United States House of Representatives, was re-elected in 1829, and came into conflict with Andrew Jackson, who was then President of the United States, over the issues of land reform and Jackson's Indian Removal Act. Crockett felt that Native Americans were entitled to their ancestral lands, and Jackson had no right to forcibly deport them. His stand for Native American rights and opposition to Jackson's other policies did not sit well with his constituents, and he lost his bid for reelection in 1831.

By this time, however, he had become a national celebrity. In 1830, the Shakespearean actor James Henry Hackett sponsored a competition for a wholly original American comedy, not influenced by European models or language, that he could star in. The competition was won by Hackett's friend James Kirke Paulding of Hyde Park, New York (who would later serve as Secretary of the Navy) who had submitted The Lion of the West, whose hero, Nimrod Wildfire, was closely modeled on Crockett or, rather, the public image Crockett and others had created: the honest, courageous backwoodsman of the West and self-made man.

The Lion of the West opened in New York City on 25 April 1831 and was an immediate success. Nimrod Wildfire (the first name taken from the famous hunter in the biblical Book of Genesis) appeared on stage in buckskin, holding a long rifle, and wearing a coonskin cap, speaking in a West Tennessee accent and making the kinds of boasts that would attach themselves to the actual Crockett:

My name is Nimrod Wildfire – half-horse, half alligator, and a touch of the earthquake – that's got the prettiest sister, fastest horse, and ugliest dog in the district, and can out-run, outjump, throw down, drag out, and whip any man in all Kentucky.

(Wallis, 233)

The success of The Lion of the West spawned The Life and Adventures of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee (republished as Sketches and Eccentricities of Colonel David Crockett of West Tennessee) in 1833 by an anonymous author (later identified as Matthew St. Clair Clarke). In 1835, Crockett's Almanac was first published, a farmer's almanac but including tales of Crockett's adventures out west, "grinning down" bears, fighting Indians, and rescuing damsels in distress. Scholar William C. Davis comments:

Suddenly, out of the chance juxtaposition of the man and the times, the real Crockett stood in danger of being swallowed by the jaws of his own folk image. (317)

This kind of consideration never occurred to Crockett, however, because he realized he could exploit his newfound celebrity to win back his seat in Congress, which he did in 1833. At the same time, it galled him to think of the money the anonymous author of Sketches and Eccentricities was making off his name and life. And so, in 1834, with the help of Thomas Chilton, he wrote his autobiography, A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee. The book was an instant bestseller, quickly going through several printings. Davis writes:

The book must have sold between five and ten thousand copies that first year, at an average wholesale price of about fifty-eight cents. If the margin on that was only twenty cents a copy, still Crockett's 62.5 percent share must have brought him between $875 and $1,750, and probably more. It was no fortune, but enough to relieve much of the strain of debt.

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Crockett was burdened with significant debt at this point. His businesses had failed, his wife had left him and moved in with her relatives, and he had been forced to sell off large parcels of his Tennessee properties. When he lost re-election in 1835, he said he had done his best for the people of his district and they had rejected him; so they could all go hell, and he would go to Texas (Davis, 408).

He left on 1 November 1835, and his youngest daughter, Matilda, later wrote how she remembered him departing wearing the buckskin and coonskin cap, carrying the long rifle, looking every inch the part of the character people had come to know as 'Davy' Crockett. He told his family he would send for them as soon as he had staked out land in Texas. He had no interest in the Texas Revolution or Texian independence. Like many who had gone to Texas, Crockett was only looking for a place to start over.

Crockett set out with 30 others heading to the same place, and, wherever they stopped, crowds turned out to see him, and local dignitaries hosted dinners in his honor. Always attuned to the interests of his audience, he periodically made speeches on "Texian Independence" and suggested he was joining the fight against the tyranny of Santa Anna.

He arrived in Nacogdoches, Texas, in January 1836, and, with a host of others, signed an oath to serve in the Volunteer Auxiliary Corps for six months. In return for his service, he was promised 4,600 acres (1,900 ha) of land. In December 1835, the Texians had defeated Mexican General Martín Perfecto de Cos, brother-in-law of President Santa Anna, at the Alamo in San Antonio de Béxar. To many Texians, the struggle for independence was over, and they had won. Crockett, most likely, signed the oath believing he would never have to actually do any fighting.

After Cos had left Texas, the Alamo was garrisoned by Texians under Colonel James C. Neill. General Sam Houston, in command of the regular army, sent James "Jim" Bowie to the Alamo to destroy it, in case Santa Anna tried to recapture Texas and use the old fort as a base camp. Bowie and Neill, however, insisted the Alamo should be held and sent word for reinforcements.

Among those who arrived was Lt. Colonel William Barret Travis, who took over Neill's command in early February when he left to deal with family issues. Travis and Bowie then agreed to co-command the garrison. Crockett and around 30 other volunteers who had signed the oath in Nacogdoches arrived on 8 February, and the men quickly rallied around him, offering to elect him their commander, but Crockett refused. After Jim Bowie fell ill on 24 February, Travis assumed full command of the Alamo.

Although reports began to trickle in that Santa Anna's army was marching toward the Alamo, these were ignored as gossip, and the garrison was taken by surprise when, on 23 February, the Mexican army marched into San Antonio and the siege of the Alamo began. Wallis writes:

Accounts of Crockett's activities during the siege include reports of his effort to bolster morale among the men with stories and playing lively jigs on a borrowed fiddle. It was said that Crockett and a Scotsman named John McGregor, who brought bagpipes to the fight, amused the garrison, and perhaps even the surrounding Mexican troops, with their musical interludes in between skirmishes and repulsed assaults.

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These accounts come from the letters of William B. Travis from the Alamo and the report given by Susanna Dickinson, who survived the siege and the Battle of the Alamo. There is no evidence from Crockett's autobiography or letters, nor accounts from those who knew him, that he ever played the fiddle. Crockett was a consummate entertainer and storyteller, however, and the reports of him bolstering the morale of the garrison with tall tales are easy to believe.

The Alamo held against Santa Anna for 13 days until the morning of 6 March 1836, when it was stormed in an assault, and all the defenders were massacred. Shortly after the fort was taken, however, rumors circulated that five or six defenders had surrendered and were executed by the direct order of Santa Anna, and that, among these, was Crockett. This claim has become increasingly accepted since the 1955 publication of the memoirs of Mexican Colonel José Enrique de la Peña, present at the fall of the Alamo.

Whether Davy Crockett died swinging his rifle, the last man standing at the Alamo, as depicted in Disney's Davy Crockett miniseries, or was executed after the battle as given in The Alamo (2004) does not really matter. There is no doubt that Crockett fought to the last, and, according to de la Peña, died with dignity. Wallis comments:

participation in the quintessential event in Texas history was all part of a drama that had been playing out for the almost half-century that he had lived, and the final scene took place at the Alamo. The curtain calls, however, have never ceased for the Davy Crockett of imagination. The Alamo is what most people think of when they hear his name. Other than the ubiquitous raccoon cap only worn in later years for the benefit of his adoring fans, it is the Alamo that most evokes the image of Crockett.

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The Lion of the West remained the most popular play in American theater from its premiere until Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was adapted for the stage in 1852. Crockett's Almanac also remained popular, published between 1835 and 1856. Crockett's brand of self-deprecating humor influenced writers such as Mark Twain and politicians, including Abraham Lincoln, and Crockett's autobiography is credited with establishing a unique brand of wit commonly associated with American comedy and satire.

After Disney's Davy Crockett aired in 1954 to 1955, Crockett again became America's favorite hero. As Wallis notes:

The man David Crockett may have perished on March 6, 1836…but the mythical Davy Crockett, now an integral part of the American psyche, perhaps more so than any other frontiersman, lives powerfully on.

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Crockett's legacy not only informed the Disney films of the 1950s and John Wayne's The Alamo in 1960 but also TV shows, including an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1997 to 2003) and the episode "The Alamo" in the science fiction series Timeless (2016 to 2018), not to mention countless videos, documentaries, and books. David Crockett of Tennessee became larger than life while he lived and, even before his death, was transformed into the hero 'Davy' Crockett, which is how he is remembered today and always will be.