Crockett, John E.

Born: 1805-07-27 Tennessee

Died: 1855-09-16 Shelby County, Illinois

Flourished: Shelby County, Illinois

John E. Crockett was a farmer, father of John A. L. Crockett, and nephew of Davy Crockett. Commonly addressed as "Elliott," his middle name, Crockett was living in Shelby County, Illinois, as early as 1836. He resided where the counties of Shelby, Coles, and Moultrie joined. In 1836, Crockett purchased forty acres of public land near Paradise in Coles County, and he also acquired eighty acres near Girard in Macoupin County. Several months later, Crockett purchased eighty acres near Windsor in what would become the Ash Grove Township in Shelby County. In 1850, he was living and farming in Shelby County and owned real property valued at $1,360. In 1852, the Moultrie County Circuit Court tried and convicted John A. L. Crockett of manslaughter, and Elliott campaigned to get his son a pardon. This campaign included Abraham Lincoln, who had helped defend John A. L. Crockett.

George R. Dekle, Sr., Prairie Defender: The Murder Trials of Abraham Lincoln (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2017), 66-67; James W. Trent, Jr., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 5; Illinois Public Domain Land Tract Sales, Coles County, 145:84; Macoupin County, 145:88; Shelby County, 145:154, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Shelby County, IL, 110; People v. Crockett, Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org/Details.aspx?case=135617; Anthony Thornton to Augustus C. French; Gravestone, Ellis Cemetery, Windsor, IL.