Texas Says No to Davy Crockett Letter
December 7th, 2007 at 4:49 pm
Despite all the hoopla back in September over an alleged letter from Texas revolutionary figure David Crockett, it turns out the state of Texas will not shell out $490,000 for it because it cannot be verifiably authenticated.
We said at the time that the lack of misspelling and stellar penmanship of the letter likely indicated it was not written by Crockett — who spent most of his scholarly days in Andrew Jackson’s war against the Creek Indians (and perhaps wrestling bears). He certainly was not above misspelling a few words.
The letter was unveiled as a great find for Texas, and even Gov. Rick Perry showed up to marvel over the historical wonder. Today he changed his tune accordingly.
“Our hope and belief was this would prove to be a rare, historic acquisition…” Perry said. He lauded the “due diligence” of the Texas Historical Commission and the verification process.
The commission wisely gave itself 120 days to verify and back out if need be. We have to agree that this was a good idea. The episode had us all thinking about Texas history for a while — which is healthy I think. But above all, the procedure in place has kept the state from dumping 500 Large into something that’s not what it purports to be — which is important.
