David Edward Jackson
David Edward Jackson was an American pioneer, trapper, fur trader, and explorer.
Davey Jackson has often been referenced to as a son of the American Revolution. His father Edward Jackson and his Uncle George Jackson both served as Virginian Militia Officers during the Revolutionary War. During the War of 1812, Jackson was commissioned as an Ensign in the 19th Infantry in Virginia.
The Jackson family included several notable military patriots. Genealogical records show that Colonel Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, who famously led the Confederate victory at Harper’s Ferry, Maryland, in 1862, was the nephew of David Edward Jackson, founder of Jackson Hole. Despite their shared last name, however, they were not related to President Andrew Jackson, whose family came from South Carolina and had Scots-Irish roots.
Davey Jackson was born in Buckhannon, Virginia, on October 30, 1788, into a prominent family. In addition to learning the business, farming, hunting and surveying skills of his father, he was educated at the Virginia Randolph Academy. In 1809, at age 21, he married Juliet Norris and the couple had four children.
In 1822, Jackson saw an ad in a Missouri newspaper, seeking young men to travel the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains, to be employed as guides, hunters, explorers and trappers with the Rocky Mountain Trading Company. Although his wife was against the idea, Jackson saw this as a great opportunity to explore and gain wealth. He joined the company, along with many other young men, such as Jim Bridger, William Sublette, and Jedediah Smith, while his wife and children remained in Virginia.
For eight years Jackson pursued this adventure, fraught with troubles, including harsh weather, difficult terrain, competition from Canadian, British and French trading companies, and both kindness and treachery from the Native tribes. The company suffered many losses as their beaver pelts were often stolen. Many trappers died under the harsh conditions of life in the Rocky Mountains, or by murder at the hands of competitors or native tribes.
Eventually Davey Jackson, William Sublette and Jedediah Smith formed their own fur trading company, “Smith, Jackson and Sublette.” Jackson often returned to the valley in the Teton Mountains where he had established his own trapping territory, which Sublette eventually dubbed “Jackson’s Hole.”
He and his partners sold out in 1830, as the fur trade was declining. Jackson became involved in other expeditions, including to Santa Fe and California, both under Mexican control since it had achieved independence from Spain in 1821.
Jackson returned east, without amassing his fortune. He reunited with his son William Pitt Jackson in St. Genevieve, Missouri, in the early 1830’s.
On a business trip to Paris, Tennessee in 1837, Jackson became ill with Typhus Fever. By December 1837, although gravely ill, he managed to write a letter to his oldest son Edward John Jackson, known as “Ned,” asking him to conclude all his business dealings. He provided his son a thorough written account of all the money that was owed to him, and all the debts he had yet to pay.
Jackson died shortly after that at age 49, on December 24, 1837, in Paris, Tennessee. He was a long time member of the Masons. Upon his death Jackson was buried by fellow Masons from Paris, Tennessee, in the Paris City Cemetery, Henry County, Tennessee.
Early life
Paternal ancestry
David Edward Jackson was the grandson of John Jackson and Elizabeth Cummins . John Jackson was a Protestant from Coleraine, County Londonderry, Ireland. While living in London, England, he was convicted of the capital crime of larceny for stealing £170; the judge at the Old Bailey sentenced him to seven years of indentured servitude in the British colonies of North America. Elizabeth, a strong, blonde woman over tall, born in London, was also convicted of larceny in an unrelated case for stealing 19 pieces of silver, jewelry, and fine lace, and received a similar sentence. They both were transported on the prison ship Litchfield, which departed London in May 1749 with 150 convicts. John and Elizabeth met on board and had declared their love in the weeks before the ship arrived at Annapolis, Maryland. Although they were sent to different locations in Maryland for their indentures, the couple married in July 1755.The family migrated west across the Blue Ridge Mountains to settle near Moorefield, Virginia in 1758. In 1770, they moved farther west to the Tygart Valley. They began to acquire large parcels of virgin farming land near the present-day town of Buckhannon, including 3,000 acres in Elizabeth's name. John and his two teenage sons were early recruits for the American Revolutionary War, fighting in the Battle of Kings Mountain on October 7, 1780. John finished the war as captain and served as a lieutenant of the Virginia militia after 1787. While the men were in the Army, Elizabeth converted their home to a haven, "Jackson's Fort," for refugees from Indian attacks.
John and Elizabeth had eight children. Their second son was Edward Jackson ; Edward and his wife had three boys and three girls; the second boy being David. Their third son was Jonathan Jackson, father of Thomas, known as Stonewall Jackson when he served as a general in the Civil War.
Childhood
David Edward Jackson, son of Col. Edward Jackson, was born in Randolph County in the Allegheny Mountains of what was then part of Virginia and is now in West Virginia. When he was eight, his mother died. His father remarried three years later. In 1801, when he was 13, his family moved west, settling near Weston, West Virginia Lewis County, on the Allegheny Plateau. Jackson's father and stepmother had nine more children.Ashley and Henry
Jackson married and moved to Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, with his wife and four children in the early 1820s, planning to engage in farming. The town had been founded by French colonists in the late 18th century. His older brother, George, had preceded him to the area and owned a sawmill.Instead of farming, Jackson responded to William Ashley's advertisement looking to employ men for his and Andrew Henry's new fur trade venture. Jackson was probably hired as a clerk. In the spring of 1822, Jackson headed up the Missouri River with Henry and 150 other men in a fur trade expedition to Native American tribes on the upper river. A few weeks later, Ashley sent more men, including Jedediah Smith on a boat called the Enterprize. It sank and left the men stranded in the wilderness for several weeks.
Ashley himself brought up an additional 46 men on a replacement boat, and they and the stranded group finally reached Fort Henry. It had been built over the summer by the first group of 150 men.
image:An Arrikara warrior 0027v.jpg|thumb |180px |right |Arikara warrior
Bodmer
It is not known if Jackson returned to St. Louis with Ashley that fall, or traveled with Jedediah Smith in the spring of 1823. At that time, Major Henry ordered Smith and some other men to go down the Missouri to Grand River in order to meet Ashley and buy horses from the Arikara, but warning him of the Native Americans' hostility to whites. They had recently had a skirmish with men from the Missouri Fur Company. Ashley, who was bringing supplies as well as 70 new men up the river by boat, met Smith at the Arikara village on May 30. They negotiated a trade for several horses and 200 buffalo robes. They planned to leave as soon as possible to avert trouble, but weather delayed them. An incident precipitated an Arikara attack on the Ashley party. Forty Ashley men were caught in a vulnerable position, and 12 were killed.
Ashley and the rest of the surviving party traveled by boat downriver, ultimately enlisting aid from Colonel Henry Leavenworth, Commander of Fort Atkinson. In August, Leavenworth sent a force of 250 military men, 80 Ashley-Henry men, 60 men of the Missouri Fur Company, and a number of Lakota Sioux warriors, enemies of the Arikara. They intended to subdue and punish the Arikara. After a botched campaign, Leavenworth negotiated a peace treaty.
Either David Jackson or his brother George had been appointed commander of one of the two squads of the Ashley-Henry men in this military expedition.
Smith, Jackson & Sublette
Little is known about Jackson's movements until just after the 1826 Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, a major gathering of trappers and traders. It is presumed he was at the first, 1825 rendezvous held on Henrys Fork of the Green River, but he may not have been at the one held in 1826 at Bear River in Cache Valley. Soon after the rendezvous, Ashley, along with his party taking back the furs, traveled with Smith and William Sublette to near present-day Georgetown, Idaho. There, Jackson and the other men bought out Ashley's share of the Ashley-Smith partnership.As a partner, Jackson took on the role of field manager, possibly because of his similar role when working for Ashley. That fall, Jackson, Sublette, and Robert Campbell trapped along the Snake River system, then moved up into the upper Missouri and over the Great Divide to the headwaters of the Columbia River.)
Jackson and his party traveled south to Cache Valley, where they spent the rest of the 1826-1827 winter. He was at the 1827 rendezvous at Bear Lake, then returned to St. Louis, Missouri, which had become a center of fur trade, with Sublette for a short time.
Jackson returned to the fur country for the 1828 rendezvous, after which he traveled with a party to the Flathead Lake, Montana region, where they wintered. The next spring, Smith found him along the Flathead River. The two partners and their men trapped down to Pierre's Hole, where they joined Sublette. The rendezvous that year, was held near present-day Lander, Wyoming. Jackson is thought to have returned afterward to the upper Snake River region in northwest Wyoming, then traveled east to spend the winter with Smith and Sublette along the Wind and Powder rivers. Jackson returned to the upper Snake in the spring of 1830, then returned to the Wind River Valley for the annual rendezvous.
At the rendezvous, Smith, Jackson and Sublette sold out their interests in the fur trade to a group of men who called the firm the Rocky Mountain Fur Company. The three partners returned to St. Louis, having made a tidy profit in their enterprise.