Authors: James Donovan
Tags: #History / Military - General, #History / United States - 19th Century
The description of Travis is from J. M. Rodriguez’s memoir, reprinted in Hansen, p. 507.
Deaf Smith’s objective of seeing Henry Smith is noted by James Neill in his January 14, 1836, letter to Houston, reprinted in Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 145.
The advisory committee’s mistaken impression that there were enough men in Béxar likely stems from Neill’s letter, in which he wrote: “I hope you will send me one Hundred men from Goliad, unless they have been already sent from some other quarter, as it is absolutely necessary for the support of this place” (Neill to Sam Houston, January 14, 1836, in Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 145). To the best of my knowledge, Manley Cobia, author of
Journey into the Land of Trials,
was the first historian to notice this (p. 152).
The source for the eleven defenders who left to scout for their bounty lands is a February 14, 1836, letter from David Cummings to his father, reprinted in Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 234.
There is some disagreement about the date of Samuel Maverick’s departure; see Marks,
Turn Your Eyes Toward Texas,
p. 52, and Agatha Maverick Welsh’s letter to Charles W. Ramsdell, November 7 (?), 1931 (box 3L74, BCAH). In
Samuel Maverick, Texan,
author Rena Maverick Green makes the case that Maverick remained in the Alamo until several days into the siege; this assumption is apparently based on his late arrival, on March 6, to the convention. But in a letter to a friend in 1847, Maverick wrote: “I was almost a solitary escape from the Alamo massacre having been sent by those unfortunate men only four days before the Mexican advance appeared, as their representative in the convention which declared Independence” (Green,
Memoirs of Mary A. Maverick,
p. 134). And Mrs. Welsh, Maverick’s granddaughter, discussed the subject with Maverick’s eldest son, her uncle, who told her: “He [Maverick] had said that he had had a long talk with Travis just before he had left the Alamo, that he was sitting sideways on his horse with one leg caught around the pommel of his saddle, Travis leaning with his arm on the horse’s neck…” This sounds much more like a man leisurely preparing to leave an uninvested Alamo rather than a man about to gallop through an enemy cordon.
Amos Pollard mentions having plenty of instruments but little medicine in his February 13, 1836, letter to Henry Smith, reprinted in Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 145.
The story of the three Taylor brothers is in Sowell,
Early Settlers and Indian Fighters,
p. 838.
While there are no extant records offering solid proof that Albert Martin attended or graduated from Partridge’s school, revolutionary firebrand (and later historian) Frank Johnson, who doubtless knew Martin, wrote that Martin was a “graduate of Capt. Partridge’s Military school in Connecticut” (Johnson,
A History of Texas and Texans,
vol. 1, p. 269).
James Robinson’s February 13, 1836, letter to Fannin is reprinted in Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 230. Fannin’s letter to Robinson of the next day, February 14, 1836, is reprinted in the same volume, p. 232.
Details of Travis’s instructions to Vaughan are in his February 19, 1836, letter to Vaughan, reprinted in Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 246. Travis sending out Sowell and Lockhart for provisions is noted in Sowell,
Rangers and Pioneers,
p. 136. Details of Blas Herrera’s scouting trip and the February 20 council of war are related in Sutherland’s unpublished narrative reprinted in Hansen, pp. 142–43.
Though some histories of the Alamo claim that the fandango attended by the defenders occurred on the evening of Sunday, February 21, there are several contemporary accounts that strongly indicate that it occurred on Monday, February 22. De la Peña writes: “When General Ramírez y Sesma sighted the town, the enemy was still engaged in the pleasures of a dance given the night before” (
With Santa Anna in Texas,
p. 57); though de la Peña was not with Santa Anna and Ramírez y Sesma’s Vanguard Brigade at that time, he would surely have heard details of its arrival in Béxar. (See also note on p. 416.)
E
LEVEN
:
Circunvalado
Circunvalado
is Spanish for “surrounded”; it is used in Ramírez y Sesma’s March 11, 1836, report (Archivo General de Mexico, Secretaria de Guerra y Marina, Book 335, pp. 166–68, BCAH). The epigraph is from Santa Anna’s “Manifesto,” published in 1837 and translated in Castañeda’s
Mexican Side of the Texan Revolution,
pp. 12–13.
The scene of Béxar on the morning of February 23, 1836, and most of the details of the Texians’ move into the Alamo are related in Sutherland’s unpublished narrative, reprinted in Hansen, p. 142.
The description of John W. Smith is taken from “Incidents in the Life of John W. Smith” (Frank M. Gillespie Papers, BCAH).
The decision of Ramírez y Sesma to refrain from attacking on the morning of February 23 is discussed in de la Peña,
With Santa Anna in Texas,
pp. 56–57.
The information on Miñón derives primarily from his self-penned service record in Borroel,
Field Reports of the Mexican Army,
vol. 6, pp. 25, 27, 35.
A conversation with Elise P. Kidd, great-granddaughter of John Sutherland, revealed that one of her grandparents told her that Dr. Sutherland was “short to medium in height.”
Travis’s February 23, 1836, letter to Andrew Ponton is reprinted in Hansen, p. 28.
John Sutherland detailed his injuries in an 1854 petition for bounty land reprinted in Hansen, p. 164, and in an undated draft of his story (Hansen, p. 171).
John Sutherland insisted that a man named Johnson was the first express rider to Goliad, though he could not remember his first name (see Sutherland’s unpublished narrative, reprinted in Hansen, p. 146). Lindley’s well-reasoned conclusion in
Alamo Traces
(pp. 89 and 109, n. 20) that this express rider was most likely John Johnson, a member of the garrison as listed on the February 1, 1836, Alamo election return, seems reasonable. The Mistress Kenner pension claim in the TSLA files (audited claim 100, reel 56, frame 324) shows that John B. Johnson was a member of Travis’s cavalry, pressing a horse belonging to Mistress Kenner for $30.
The February 23, 1836, letter from Bowie and Travis to Fannin is quoted in Foote,
Texas and the Texans,
vol. 2, p. 224. The original of this message is not extant; Foote’s use of it in his 1840 history is its earliest known publication, and the only source for it.
Though Crockett was not the official commander of the self-styled Tennessee Mounted Volunteers, he clearly assumed some leadership duties of the group, or a portion of them, and was considered its leader by the members. Confirmation of this fact includes the following: (1) a volunteer named Charles Lewis Brown stated in an affidavit years later that he “served under Colonel David Crockett” (Brown pension claim, reel 205, frame 59, ROT [Republic of Texas] Claims, TSLA); (2) in a letter to the editor of the
Austin City Gazette
signed by a “Volunteer of 1836,” published in the April 14, 1836, issue of that newspaper, the anonymous author claimed he had left Nacogdoches in February 1836 with a company of “about sixteen men under the command of Col. Crockett”; (3) in an audited claim signed by Sam Houston, a volunteer named Peter Harper wrote that on January 8 he “commenced at Nacogdoches under Col. Crocket” (reel 41, frame 350, ROT [Republic of Texas] Claims, TSLA); and (4) one volunteer who rode with Crockett and died in the Alamo, B. Archer M. Thomas, signed a receipt in Washington as “one of D Crocketts Com[mand]” (Chariton,
100 Days in Texas,
p. 171).
Sutherland’s unpublished narrative is the only source for Crockett’s assigned position in the Alamo (reprinted in Hansen, p. 176).
Thomas Ricks Lindley discusses the Mexican wounded left behind in his well-researched three-part article “Mexican Casualties at Bexar.”
In a series of handwritten revisions and additions made to the original text of his 1860 pamphlet “The Fall of the Alamo,” Reuben Potter made the sources for his version of some of the events clearer: “When Mr. [Nat] Lewis visited the Alamo, the town was in possession of the enemy, the confusion which prevailed there beggared description. Bowie with a detachment was engaged in breaking open deserted houses in the neighborhood and gathering corn. Another squad was driving some cattle into the inclosure… East of the Long Barrack.”
Juan Seguín’s June 7, 1890, letter, in which he describes the women lining the streets as the men left Béxar for the Alamo, is reprinted in Matovina,
The Alamo Remembered,
p. 91.
Nat Lewis’s background as a whaling man from near Nantucket is noted in his obituary in the
San Antonio Daily Express
of October 23, 1872.
The source for the information on Carlos Espalier is Musso, “Col. Bowie’s Freed Slaves,” and the Antonio Menchaca affidavit, Carlos Espalier File, Memorials and Petitions File, TSLA.
Nat Lewis’s memories of the morning—including recollections about William Ward, and the profanity—are in Potter, “The Fall of the Alamo,” p. 7, and Potter’s notes to it, cited above.
Some later accounts claim that Alsbury was in Béxar on February 23, went into the Alamo with his wife, and rode out later as a courier. But Mrs. Alsbury told a later interviewer: “When the news of Santa Anna’s approach, at the head of a considerable force, was verified in San Antonio, Dr. Alsbury proceeded to the Brazos river to procure means to remove his family, expecting to return before Santa Anna could reach the city. He failed to do so; and his wife went into the Alamo where her protector was, when the Mexican troops were near by” (Hansen, p. 87). And an August 1, 1888,
Dallas Morning News
story about Mrs. Alsbury published soon after she died quotes from a story published in the
Hempstead Advance-Guard,
“edited by a nephew of Horace A. Alsbury”: “When she was within the walls of the Alamo, she was Mrs. Alsbury, wife of Dr. Horace A. Alsbury, who had placed her under the protection of Col. James Bowie when San Antonio was expecting the invasion of Santa Anna.” Additionally, there is this comment written by Dr. Joseph Barnard in his journal (Barnard was saved by a Mexican officer from the Goliad massacre and then moved to Béxar to assist with the wounded there): “Tuesday, [April] 17
th
,—Dr. Alsbury came into town to-day from General Filisola, now commander in chief, with a pass. He (Dr. Alsbury) is son-in-law to Angelo Navarro, with whom I live. His wife and sister, together with a Negro of Bowie’s, were in the Alamo when it was stormed. He has come in order to look after his family and take them off” (quoted in Hansen, p. 612). Finally, John Sutherland writes in an early draft of his account written soon after 1860: “On Sunday morning [February 28, 1836] the writer in Company of Dr Alsbury & ten other Americans crossed the Guardaloup River at Gonazales & fell in with and waited on Capt John N Seguin” (Hansen, p. 179). It is clear from these accounts that Alsbury was not in the Alamo or Béxar on February 23.
That there were several black servants inside the Alamo, enslaved or otherwise, seems fairly certain. Joe, in his first account to the convention on March 20, 1836, was quoted by a reliable witness as relating that “the negroes, for there were several negroes and women in the fort, were spared. Only one woman was killed, and Joe supposes she was shot accidentally, while attempting to cross the Alamo. She was found lying between two guns” (Hansen, p. 78). Mary Maverick, the wife of Samuel Maverick and a resident of San Antonio soon after the battle, wrote: “The survivors were… 2 negro servants of Bowie,” and then identified her source: “This present writer visited the site [of pyres] with Dr. and Mrs. Allsbury in Fall of 1838” (“Fall of the Alamo,” an account by Mary A. Maverick “compiled from H. Yoakum and Oral Testimony,” in Green,
Samuel Maverick, Texan,
p. 55). A doctor stationed in Goliad and sent to Béxar after Fannin’s surrender wrote: “Tuesday, [May] 17th—Dr. Alsberry came in to town to-day…. His wife and sister, together with a Negro, [of] Bowie’s, were in the Alamo when it was stormed” (Joseph H. Barnard, in Huson,
Dr. J. H. Barnard’s Journal,
p. 42). And according to Juana Alsbury, after the battle, “Don Manuel placed them in charge of a colored woman belong to Col. Bowie, and the party reached the house of Don Angel Navarro in safety” (Hansen, p. 88). Finally, Sam Houston, in a letter from Gonzales penned soon after information was received of the Alamo’s fall, wrote: “Three negroes and Mrs. Dickinson were all in the fort, who [es]caped Massacre as reported!” (Houston to Raguet, March 13, 1836, reprinted in Hansen, p. 518).