John Wesley Crockett

John Wesley Crockett's election was a family rematch. In 1837 the Whig took the seat of Adam Huntsman, the Jacksonian who had beaten his father, Davy Crockett, two years before. He served in Congress until 1841, then as attorney general for the Ninth District until 1843. He and his wife Martha Hamilton had fourteen children. In 1843 he moved to New Orleans as a commission merchant, and a few years later he turned to newspaper work. He died in Memphis in 1852, not long after moving there.

What the plaque says

John Wesley Crockett From 1837 to 1841, John W. Crockett, the son of David Crockett, represented the same congressional district as his father, after the legendary frontiersman died at the Alamo in 1836. He married Martha Hamilton in 1828 and practiced law in Paris. Crockett was state attorney general for the Ninth District from 1841 to 1843. He moved to New Orleans in 1843, became editor of the National in 1848, and established the Crescent in 1850. Crockett died in Memphis in 1852, a few months after moving there. He is buried here in the Old City Cemetery.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge — 11 mi
  A 51,000-acre refuge along Kentucky Lake and the Tennessee River, created in 1945 for migratory birds, with a visitor center in Springville and a drowned Archaic site nearby.
• Paris Landing State Park — 16 mi
  A Kentucky Lake state park on the site of a Tennessee River steamboat landing, created after the 1944 TVA dam drowned a sulphur-spring resort.
• Patsy Cline Crash Site Memorial — 19 mi
  An engraved rock off Mt. Carmel Road near Camden marking where a small plane carrying Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas and Hawkshaw Hawkins went down on March 5, 1963.
• Johnsonville State Historic Park — 26 mi
  A Tennessee River park on the site of a Union supply depot shelled in November 1864 and of the town later drowned by Kentucky Lake, with earthworks, a railroad bed and an African American cemetery.

More markers nearby

• David Edward Jackson — steps away
• James Davis Porter — steps away
• John DeWitt Clinton Atkins — steps away
• Edwin Wiley Grove — steps away