My Crockett Connections

Rebecca Hawkins Crockett’s home,
birthplace of Davy Crockett

One of my most recognized cousins is Davy Crockett. My relationship is through my fifth great-grandmother, Elizabeth Hawkins Stonecipher. She was first cousins with Davy Crockett on his mother’s side. His mother, Rebecca Hawkins Crockett was sister of Joseph Hawkins, Elizabeth’ father.

There is a connection of a different sort also. Elizabeth’s husband, Solomon Stonecipher’s brother, Absolom was out picking grapes and was mistaken for a deer and Joseph Hawkins shot at him. Davy Crockett writes about the incident in his autobiography:

A Man Shot Instead of a Deer

“There, another circumstance happened, which made a
lasting impression on my memory, though I was but a
small child. Joseph Hawkins, who was a brother to my
mother, was in the woods hunting for deer. He was
passing near a thicket of brush, in which one of our
neighbors was gathering some grapes, as it was in the
fall of the year, and the grape season. The body of the
man was hid by the brush, and it was only as he would
raise his hand to pull the bunches, that any part of him
could be seen. It was a likely place for deer, and my
uncle, having no suspicion that it was any human being,
but supposing the raising of the hand to be an occasional
twitch of a deer s ear, fired at the lump, and as the devil
would have it, unfortunately shot the man through the

body. I saw my father draw a silk handkerchief
through the bullet hole, and entirely through his body ;
yet after a while he got well, as little as any one would
have thought it. What become *of him, or whether he is
dead or alive, I don t know; but I reckon he didn t
fancy the business of gathering grapes in an out-of-the-
way thicket soon again.”

The story goes that Absolom was badly wounded, and he was nursed back to health by Sarah Humbert, whom he later married.

Filed under: Family Files, Genealogy, O'Neil/Neil, ancestors, Davy Crockett, Genealogy, Hawkins, Humbert, Stonecipher