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Davy's
Widow
Elizabeth Patton Crockettby
Mike Cox Acton
State Historic Site
the Smallest State Park in Texas |
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The
woman from Tennessee left no letters or diary to provide future generations with
any insight into her thinking, but it’s not hard to imagine her feelings when
she opened the envelope from Austin.
The communication came from Comptroller
James B. Shaw. The state’s chief financial official begged leave to inform her
that under the provisions of “An Act to provide for ascertaining the Debt of the
late Republic of Texas,” approved by the Legislature on Feb. 7, 1853, her claim
for the services rendered by her late husband had been audited and authenticated.
Enclosed she would find a warrant on the State of Texas in payment of that service
“in par funds, as having been at that rate so available to the Government.”
That wording must have been about as easy for the 65-year-old widow to understand
as it is today, but Texas had finally reimbursed her family for its loss. The
widow’s name was Elizabeth Patton Crockett. Her husband went by David. And he
died hard.
It happened on the morning of March
6, 1836. Historians continue to debate whether the former U.S. Congressman
from Tennessee went down in the heat of battle swinging his trusty rifle “Old
Betsy” or faced summary execution after surrendering to the Mexicans who had besieged
the old mission for 13 days.
Eight weeks before, writing his children
from San Augustine
on Jan. 9, 1836, Crockett had proclaimed Texas “the
garden spot of the world.” He said he intended to settle in the northern part
of Texas and “am in hopes of making a fortune for
myself and family bad as has been my prospects.”
Indeed, the celebrated
frontiersman had never had much luck with money. Nor had he fared a whole lot
better in politics, having famously told his former constituents, “Since you have
chosen to elect a man with a timber toe to succeed me, you may all go to hell
and I will go to Texas.”
Official proof
of the return Crockett’s estate realized on his ultimate investment can be found
in the State Archives, where Second Class, “B.” certificate No. 6127 remains on
file. After Comptroller Shaw signed the document on Dec. 2, 1854, his office sent
Mrs. Crockett a check from the grateful State of Texas for $24.
Though
Crockett’s paycheck came 17 years late, on Dec. 23, 1837 the Republic of Texas
had issued Bounty Warrant No. 1295 to his heirs. That certificate entitled Mrs.
Crockett to 1,280 acres in North Texas in return for her late husband’s government
service, but the Comanches who roamed the area saw the land as theirs.
Finally, eight years after Texas became a state,
Mrs. Crockett left Tennessee in 1853 with her two children – a grown, married
son named Robert Patton Crockett and a daughter, Matilda, to claim her land. The
Crocketts stayed in Waxahachie
until a surveyor could determine the boundaries of her land, a job he undertook
in exchange for half the property. What Elizabeth ended up with was 640 acres
on Rucker’s Creek, about six miles from present Granbury. |
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Site
of the Home of Elizabeth Crockett Centennial Marker
Photo courtesy Ruth Cade,
2008
See Texas Centennial |
Living
in a log cabin built by her son, Elizabeth spent the last six years of her life
in the place her husband had come to make his fortune. On the morning of Jan.
31, 1860, wearing the widow’s black she had worn since first learning of her husband’s
death, Elizabeth left her cabin to take a walk and shortly fell dead at the age
of 72.
Elizabeth
was buried at the small community of Acton.
Four years later her daughter died and was buried near her.
In 1911,
Senators O. S. Lattimore and Pierce Ward introduced legislation appropriating
$2,000 for “the erection of a monument over the remains of Mrs. Elizabeth Crockett.”
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Explaining the bill
to his senate colleagues, Sen. Ward said he first learned of the Crockett family’s
Hood County connection while a student at Granbury Methodist College in the fall
of 1880. By that time, of course, the only direct survivor was Robert Crockett.
“Naturally I felt like making his acquaintance and I found him residing near
the banks of the Brazos River, manager and keeper of the toll bridge that spans
the river,” the senator said. “I would often visit him.”
Ward recalled
that Crockett took “great pleasure” entertaining “college boys” and would “relate
many incidents of his father’s career as he had learned them when a boy.”
If Ward ever wrote down any of the stories he heard from Robert Crockett,
who died in 1889, they are not known today. But the senator’s bill made it through
the Legislature, and the monument was unveiled in May 1913 by the widow Crockett’s
namesake, her great-granddaughter. |
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Note
the "Acton State Historic Site" sign by the burial plot
Photo courtesy
Sam
Fenstermacher, June 2005 |
Since
1949, the 12 by 21-foot burial plot at Acton
has been a state park – Texas’ smallest.
The 28-foot marble monument
features a statue of a bonneted pioneer woman standing on a pedestal, her hand
forever shading her eyes as she looks to the west, eternally wondering when her
husband will come home.
© Mike
Cox
"Texas
Tales" -
March 8, 2005 column |
Acton
State Historic Site Contact Information
c/o Cleburne State Park
5800 Park Rd 21
Cleburne TX 76031
817/645-4215
http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/acton/
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