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and joined the new republic’s army. John Wesley Crockett went to the U.S. Congress in 1837 and served two terms, representing his father’s former district. He was able to push through the passage of a land bill similar to the measure Crockett had long championed. By 1854, Elizabeth was finally granted the “league of land” promised to Crockett as his share for serving as a Texas soldier. She and some of the family moved to Texas and built a good cabin. Elizabeth wore black every day until her own death, in 1860.25 She died never knowing for sure how her husband had been killed on the morning of March 6, 1836, at the Alamo.

Indeed, no one knows with any certainty how David Crockett died. His death has been obscured by legend, with accounts and theories of his death including scenarios both implausible and ludicrous. The two adult survivors, Travis’s slave Joe and Susannah Wilkerson Dickinson, had managed to stay hidden during the battle. Both of them independently claimed that, after the fighting stopped, they saw Crockett lying dead and mutilated with the corpses of Mexican soldiers all around him. Neither of them saw or knew how or when Crockett was killed. Nonetheless, the popular press and dime novelists used these accounts to perpetuate the Crockett myth.26

One popular theory was that Crockett died while swinging old Betsey over his head. Some claimed that Crockett donned a disguise and snuck away from the Alamo like a sniveling coward. Still others believed Crockett was among a gang of fifty or more defenders who tried to escape the doomed mission only to be cut down by Mexican cavalry. Stories appeared claiming that reports of Crockett’s death were false. An Ohio newspaper stated that Crockett was discovered alive among a stack of Texians executed by the Mexican troops and was taken to a private residence, where his wounds were dressed and he was making a successful recovery: “He had received a severe gash with a tomahawk on the upper part of his forehead, a ball in his leg, and another through one of his thighs, besides several other minor wounds.”27 In 1840, four years after the battle, a Texas newspaper published an account of William C. White, who maintained that he had seen “with his own eyes in the mines of Gendelejera [Guadalajara], in Mexico our own immortal CROCKETT, and heard from his own lips an account of his escape from the massacre at the Alamo.”28 As late as 1893, the New York Times reported that San Antonio policemen saw Col. Crockett at the Alamo after it had been converted into a subpolice station. The bold headline read, davy crockett’s “ghost.” According to the report, on rainy, dismal nights Crockett and “the spirits of those who lost their lives within…hold a levee in the upper rooms of the structure.” Especially troubling were the loud sounds that sounded like dancing and an apparition in the place where Crockett lost his life.29

Gen. Sam Houston spelled out what may be the most likely scenario soon after the fall of the Alamo. In a dispatch sent March 11 to Col. James Fannin, Houston broke the news of the deaths of all of the defenders and stated, “After the fort was carried seven men surrendered, and called for Santa Anna, and for quarter. They were murdered by his order.”30 Although Houston did not mention Crockett by name, his letter adds credence to the persistent rumor that at least seven individuals were taken captive and summarily executed. Another reference to prisoners being executed appeared in 1837, when Ramón Martínez Caro, Santa Anna’s secretary, wrote that Gen. Manuel Fernández Castrillón had discovered five men hiding inside the Alamo after it had been taken by Mexican troops. Instead of immediately killing them, the general ordered the captives taken before Santa Anna, who reprimanded Castrillón for disobeying his command to give no quarter and take no prisoners. Santa Anna then turned his back while soldiers killed the prisoners. “We all witnessed this outrage which humanity condemns but which was committed as described,” wrote Martínez Caro. “This is a cruel truth, but I