Fess Parker and the Craze for Coonskin Caps

 

Fess Parker (a distant relative through my grandmother) wasn’t a real pioneer but he played one on TV. He was born in Fort Worth, 100 miles north of Fort Parker, in 1924.  With assistance from the GI Bill he obtained a degree in history at the University of Texas, and a masters in theatre from USC. Due to his good looks, folksy demeanor, and striking height (he was 6’6”) he immediately began getting speaking parts in tv and movie westerns as soon as he hung out his shingle as an actor in the early 1950s. Walt Disney cast Parker as Davy Crockett in the titular mini-series in 1956, which was so popular it set off a national craze for coonskin caps among American schoolchildren. And so we return again to the Disney version of history. In 1964 Parker was cast as the title character in the series Daniel Boone, attired in nearly the same costume, and put in the same setting, log cabins in the Tennessee/Kentucky frontier. This show lasted until 1970. The lives of Crockett and Boone have been mythologized since the time of dime novels, but they were actually real men, with complicated and interesting lives. Boone, of course blazed the trail through the Cumberland Gap that opened Kentucky and founded the town of Boonesborough. His traveling companion and brother-in-law John Stewart may be another relative of mine. Davy Crockett on the other hand was able to parlay his fame as a frontiersman into a seat in the US Congress, one of the first congressmen from Tennessee, and the political enemy of the genocidal Andrew Jackson, which later proved disastrous. Crockett lost his Congressional seat and later died in Texas, defending the Alamo. Another martyred hero of the Alamo was Colonel William Travis, the man for whom I and all cracker Travises such as myself are named.  “Travis” appears as a character name in numerous Westerns, as well as the related frontier family classic Walt Disney’s Old Yeller.