Raised in frontier poverty and without education until his teenage years, David Crockett was hired out for income while still a child and once escaped captivity during a winter storm. To avoid punishment from his father for being absent from school, he ran away for almost three years, traveling as far as Baltimore before returning home in 1802. After unsuccessful courtships, he married Mary "Polly" Finley in 1806, and they soon had two sons, John Wesley and William. The family moved to middle Tennessee in 1811 and settled on Bean Creek, where a daughter, Mary, was born in 1812. In 1813, Crockett entered the Creek War and served in two enlistments in General Andrew Jackson’s army. Polly died in early 1815, and by the summer of 1816 he married the widow Elizabeth Patton, who had two children from her previous marriage; together they had three children between 1816 and 1822. After exploring northern Alabama and nearly dying of malaria, David, Elizabeth, and six children moved to Lawrence County in 1817. There he began a political career as a justice of the peace, colonel and commandant of the 57th Tennessee Militia, and a representative to the state legislature, while he and Elizabeth used her money to build and operate a distillery, gunpowder factory, and grist mill until a flood destroyed the complex in 1821. By 1822 the family had moved to Gibson County in northwest Tennessee. Known for bear hunting, Crockett continued rising in state politics, failed in his first bid for Congress in 1825, nearly died in a flatboat crash on the Mississippi River in early 1826, and was rescued to Memphis, where Mayor Marcus Winchester became his supporter. He won election to Congress in 1827 and served three terms in Washington City, becoming a national celebrity for his backwoods oratory and expression. During his congressional years, he broke with President Jackson and most of the Tennessee delegation over squatters rights and the removal of Indians from their ancestral lands; after losing the 1831 election, his national reputation helped him regain his seat in 1833 despite gerrymandering by opponents. His fame also inspired the play The Lion of the West, and by 1834 he had aligned fully with the Whig Party and published A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett of the State of Tennessee. After narrowly losing reelection in 1835, he turned to Texas seeking financial and political recovery, intending to explore North Texas along the Red River before returning home, but he was drawn into the revolutionary movement against Mexico and joined the army as a volunteer. By February 1836 he reached San Antonio and joined a small Texan garrison; after a thirteen-day siege, Mexican forces stormed the Alamo on March 6, and every defender there, including Crockett, was killed.