Walter Crockett (d. by 10 December 1816), member of the Convention of 1788, was born in the 1730s. His parents, Joseph Louis Crockett and Jeanne de Vigné Crockett, emigrated from Ireland to Pennsylvania and eventually settled along the Roanoke River in an area of shifting boundaries that became Orange County in 1734, Augusta County in 1738, Botetourt County in 1769, Fincastle County in 1772, and Montgomery County in 1776. Little is known about his youth or education, but by April 1764 Crockett had become a sergeant in the Augusta County militia. Recommended in 1769 for selection to the Augusta County Court, he took his oath as a justice for the new county of Botetourt on 13 March 1770, by which time he had also won promotion to captain of the county militia. Crockett was appointed a member of the court for newly established Fincastle County in December 1772 while continuing to serve as a militia captain. During Dunmore's War in 1774 he led a company across the Ohio River against the Shawnee. Crockett had married Margaret Steele Caldwell, a widow, by September 1771. They had at least one son and two daughters.
On 20 January 1775 Crockett attended the first meeting of the Fincastle County Committee and signed its resolutions, which called for breaking from Great Britain if the rights of the Virginia colonists were not safeguarded. In the spring of 1777 he won election to the House of Delegates representing Montgomery County, which had been created the previous year. Arriving about a month after the assembly session opened, he was added to the Committee of Public Claims. Reelected to a second term, he missed the first session, arrived late for the second session in October 1778, and served again on the same committee.
Crockett's involvement in planning the defense of Montgomery County probably accounts for his lackluster attendance at the General Assembly. He missed the first session of his third term in May 1779, but he had been busy suppressing a Loyalist rebellion that threatened the lead mines in southwestern Virginia. That October the General Assembly passed an act protecting Crockett, William Campbell (1745–1781), and their men from any penalties or lawsuits that might arise from their extralegal actions during that effort. Crockett arrived at the House of Delegates in November 1779 for the session that had begun the previous month but was not added to any committees.
Conflict between Loyalists and Patriots in the western part of the state continued, and in August 1780 Crockett led about 250 militiamen against Loyalists along the New River. On 2 July 1781 he accepted command of one of two Montgomery County militia battalions and received orders to raise men for General Nathanael Greene's campaign in the Carolinas. The next year Crockett served as one of Colonel William Preston's field officers for Montgomery and attempted to raise a company of militia to guard the frontier, but he had difficulty attracting enough recruits. He was also appointed sheriff of the county. Crockett continued to bear responsibility throughout the 1780s for defending the county from attacks by Native Americans and often wrote the governor concerning the dangers that backcountry settlers faced. By February 1789 he had become county lieutenant.
In the spring of 1788 Crockett was one of two Montgomery County delegates elected to a convention called to consider ratification of the proposed constitution of the United States. Present throughout the proceedings, he voted on 25 June in favor of requiring the addition of a bill of rights to the Constitution before ratification, and after that motion failed, he voted with the minority against ratifying the Constitution. Two days later he joined antifederalists in voting to limit the taxing power of Congress.
Crockett represented Montgomery County in the House of Delegates for a final term in 1789, when he served on the Committee of Propositions and Grievances. In that year, the area of the county in which he lived became part of Wythe County, and in 1790 he was named to the new county's court and also became the county clerk. Beginning in 1792 Crockett served as a trustee for the town of Evansham as well as for Wythe Academy. He continued to farm along the New River for the rest of his life. Walter Crockett wrote his will on 9 January 1807 and died on an unrecorded date not long before 10 December 1816, when his will was proved in the Wythe County Court. He was reportedly buried near the Austinville lead mines in Wythe County.
Sources Consulted:
Janie Preston Collup French and Zella Armstrong, Notable Southern Families: The Crockett Family and Connecting Lines (1928), 204–205, 256–258 (with birth year about 1732 based on birth order and presumed death year of 1811); David B. Trimble, Crockett and Graham of Southwest Virginia (1992), 1, 26 (with birth year about 1737 based on different birth order and death year of 1811); numerous references in Mary B. Kegley and F. B. Kegley, Early Adventurers on the Western Waters (1980–1998); Crockett correspondence in Lyman C. Draper Papers, MSS 5QQ48, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wis., in Preston Family Papers, Virginia Musuem of History and Culture, Richmond, and published in "Preston Papers," The John P. Branch Historical Papers of Randolph-Macon College (1901–1918) 4 (1915): 306, 310, 319, 324–325, 330–331, 338, 342, "Preston Papers," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 26 (1918): 371–372, 377–378, ibid. 27 (1919): 49, 165–166, ibid. 28 (1920): 242–245, 347–348; William J. Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner, and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia, the Road to Independence: A Documentary Record (1973–1983), 2:255, 4:176, 347, 484, 5:375, 6:130–131, 136, 327, 7:286, 439, 441, 446; William P. Palmer et al., eds., Calendar of Virginia State Papers and Other Manuscripts, 1652–1869 (1875–1893), 4:31, 159–160, 295–296, 408, 564, 5:42, 205–206; William Waller Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large: Being a Collection of All the Laws of Virginia, from the First Session of the Legislature, in the Year 1619 … (1809–1823), 10:195; John P. Kaminski et al., eds., The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Ratification of the Constitution by the States, vols. 8–10: Virginia (1988–1993), 10:1539, 1541, 1557; will and estate inventory in Wythe Co. Will Book, 2:171, 179–180.