David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [67]
Crockett had no time for long courtships or wooing coy damsels. He was driven by a practical need to find a dependable helpmate so he could earn a living and, most importantly, feed his family. Crockett did not wait long to look for a new wife, and he did not have to go very far to find one. He was well aware that his neighbor, the war widow Elizabeth Patton, was as likely a candidate as any women in Franklin County. She and her son, George, and daughter, Margaret Ann—close to the age of Crockett’s two eldest children—lived on what Crockett described as “a snug little farm” just west of his Kentuck on Bean Creek.13
Born in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on May 22, 1788, Elizabeth was one of the eight children—two sons and six daughters—of Robert Patton, a native of Ireland, and his wife, Rebecca. The Pattons were prominent Presbyterians and donated land for the Patton Meeting House, one of the earliest churches established west of the Blue Ridge Mountains. As the owner of a thriving plantation with more than a thousand acres of prime farmland on both sides of the Swannanoa River, the Pattons were considered well-to-do and of considerable wealth. It was also well known around the county that Elizabeth had $800 in gold, a considerable sum in those times.14
Elizabeth married her cousin James Patton, son of her father’s brother, and they moved to Tennessee, where George and Margaret Ann, nicknamed Peggy Ann, were born. Crockett was acquainted with James Patton, a Tennessee Volunteer killed at the Battle of Talladega in 1813, where Crockett had also fought against the Red Sticks.
Elizabeth needed a husband and Crockett needed a wife. “I began to think, that as we were both in the same situation, it might be that we could do something for each other,” Crockett explained.15
Nothing at all like Polly Crockett, Elizabeth was described as large, sensible, and practical. It was said she had a good business mind and was someone with regular habits. It seemed little, if any, great passion would mark David and Elizabeth’s relationship, but it also seemed that the Pattons’ 250-acre farm and gold coin sweetened the idea of marriage for Crockett. “I soon began to pay my respects to her in real good earnest; but I was as sly about it as a fox when he is going to rob a hen-roost,” Crockett noted. “I found that my company wasn’t at all disagreeable to her; and I thought I could treat her children with so much friendship as to make her a good stepmother to mine, and in this I wasn’t mistaken, as we soon bargained, and got married, and then went ahead.”16
On May 21, 1815, Crockett was elected a lieutenant in the local county militia, and his marriage with Elizabeth took place sometime that summer, just a few months after Polly’s death.17 Decades after the nuptials, an amusing story surfaced about the wedding ceremony. It had been passed down through the family of Richard Calloway, a Franklin County magistrate and a Crockett friend who was called upon to perform the wedding ceremony in the Patton home, filled with neighbors, friends, and kinfolk of the bride and groom, including their children. Just as the bride was due to make her entrance, a grunting pig that had slipped through an open door burst into the room, causing much laughter and commotion. Crockett rose to the occasion and, with his foot, ushered the porcine intruder out the door while exclaiming, “Old hook, from now on, I’ll do the grunting around here.”18
True to his promise, Crockett did do the grunting. Only months after the wedding, while the combined family of five small children was just getting comfortable with their new living situation, Crockett was stricken with an illness. It was not milk sickness or cholera or smallpox. It was something altogether different. Crockett showed all the symptoms—restlessness, irritability, and an uncontrollable need to open the