Davy Crockett
Davy Crockett, the son of John and Rebecca Hawkins Crockett, was born on August 17, 1786 in Green County, Tennessee. His descendants traced his paternal family ancestry to Antoine de Crocketagne, a Norman Huguenot. In the 1600s, he fled from Bantry Bay, Ireland, to England. Then someone in his family immigrated to New York in 1709. His family moved to the backwoods and became pioneers, which was a life full of danger and poverty. John, David?s father, was at first a soldier in the American Revolution. Then he married Rebecca Hawkins. Her sister was the wife of the first governor of Tennessee, John Sevier. The first thing they tried to do after they got married was farm, but that did not work. So John and his partner decided to get into the mill-building venture. When they nearly completed their first mill, it was completely washed away in a flood.
Portrait of David Crockett, by John Gadsby Chapman...
David Crockett clipper ship card
English: Oil on canvas portrait of Davy Crockett; ...Then they built and operated a small tavern on a wagon road between Knoxville and Abingdon. David was the fifth child in a family of nine children. His family was so poor that they were almost always in debt.
The Crockett family lived in a new and wild country. They did not have much time for anything because of the frequent Indian attacks. There were no big cities nearby that they could go to for shopping and no troops to protect them from the Indians. When David was young, he often wandered a long way with his dog. They would leave home from three to four days and swim the best rivers and eat what they killed that day. David was a brave, strong, and healthy boy. His favorite thing was hunting. He hunted deer, wild turkeys, and sometimes even bears.
David Crockett got his first job...