Border: Member
David Stern Crockett was the fifth child born to John and Rebecca Crockett on August 17, 1786 in modern day Greene County, Tennessee. Four more children would come after him, giving him eight siblings. His family, who descended from a captain in the Royal Guard of France’s King Louis XIV, fled first to Ireland, and then later on to America, where his great-grandfather was born in New Rochelle in 1709. His name comes from his father’s father, who was killed by Native Americans.
During the 1790s his family moved to Morristown, Tennessee, where they owned a tavern. In 1794, in an attempt to show his father how much he was ready for a rifle, he began hunting with his brothers, learning to use the guns. A little while later, when his father began trading goods for an education for David, David immediately dropped out after being embarrassed by a bully. When his father found out, he was livid with David, who ran away and spent the next few years exploring Tennessee, which is how he got much of his frontier training.
He returns home when he’s fifteen, and his family is happy to see him. A couple of years later, he became contracted to marry a woman named Margaret Elder, who decided she didn’t want to marry him (he was 19 at this time). A year later he married Mary ‘Polly’ Finley and had two children with her, and after she died, he married Elizabeth Patton, with whom he had three children.
In 1813 he was part of the Tennessee Volunteer Mounted Riflemen and eventually was made a Lieutenant Colonel in the Tennessee Militia (1818).
In early 1821, Crockett was in Washington, DC, just visiting the area and getting a feel for the political climate, already thinking of a run for Congressman in a few years, where he came face to face with Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. Santa Anna recognized him as a recently returned enemy and shot him and left him for dead. Diego de la Vega, however, sees Santa Anna commit this crime and knowing who the man was, rushed to Crockett’s side.
Knowing Crockett was important enough to Santa Anna for him to risk exposure by killing him in the open, Diego offers Crockett the chance to be Turned, for vengeance and for his family, and Crockett consents.