His name was David Crockett. He never signed his name any other way, but popular culture transformed his memory into "Davy Crockett" and Hollywood gave him a raccoon hat he hardly ever wore. Born into a humble Tennessee family in 1786, Crockett never "killed him a b'ar" when he was only three. But he did cut a huge swath across early-nineteenth-century America--as a bear hunter, a frontier explorer, a soldier serving under Andrew Jackson, an unlikely congressman, and, finally, a martyr in his now-controversial death at the Alamo.
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