The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation (62 page)

Captain William Heard remembered chasing down the Mexican soldiers for more than a mile, and is quoted in Moore,
Eighteen Minutes,
p. 346.

Santa Anna’s request to be treated as a general is quoted in
Eighteen Minutes,
p. 382.

The Elve Bowie quote regarding her son upon hearing of his death is in Bowie,
The Bowies and Their Kindred,
p. 262.

Rezin Bowie’s service in the Texas army is mentioned in PTR 5, p. 402; PTR 6, p. 126; and Yoakum,
History of Texas,
vol. 2, p. 152. His commission as a colonel appears to have been used chiefly for publicity purposes in connection with enlistment.

De la Peña’s opinion of the reasons for the campaign’s failure are in
With Santa Anna in Texas,
p. xxvii. Much of de la Peña’s post-campaign activity, and the details of his eventual fate, was unearthed by historian Roger Borroel, whose research efforts concerning the Mexican army have added much valuable information; see Borroel,
Field Reports of the Mexican Army,
vol. 6, pp. 1–20.

Sánchez’s later years are discussed in Sánchez-Navarro, “A Mexican View of the Texas War,” pp. 64–68.

The proportions of established Texian colonists to newcomers in the Texian army before San Jacinto and at that battle are from Lack,
The Texas Revolutionary Experience,
pp. 123 and 127.

N
INETEEN
: L
AST
R
ITES

The epigraph and the other Juan Seguín quotes are from his speech given upon burying the remains of the Alamo defenders; it is reprinted in the
Telegraph and Texas Register
of April 4, 1837.

Susanna Dickinson’s 1881 return to the Alamo was chronicled in the April 28, 1881,
San Antonio Daily Express
. Details of her daughter’s tragic life are in the
Austin American-Statesman
of October 14, 2000.

Details of Joe’s escape are given in the ad taken out by Travis’s executor, John Rice Jones, which ran in the
Telegraph and Texas Register
from May 26, 1836, through the month of August, 1836; Joe’s alleged sighting in the Austin area is noted in Pittman, “One Did Survive!”

The details of Louis “Moses” Rose’s ordeals, and his later life, are in “Documents from Nacogdoches County Records Relating to Moses (Louis) Rose,” Robert Bruce Blake Collection, BCAH, reprinted in Hansen, pp. 274–82; in Jelinek,
Survivor of the Alamo,
pp. 201–5; and in phone conversations during September 2011 with historian Raymond Powell of Mansfield, Louisiana, who generously supplied his notes on the subject. Although Jelinek adds some fictional touches to Rose’s story, the basic elements are rooted in fact, as he interviewed descendants of the Ferguson family. See also the Afterword.

The information regarding Gonzales after the Texas Revolution, and the activities of the Kent family, are from Wilkes, “The Andrew Kent Home,” and Bennet, “The Battle of Gonzales.”

The Crocketts’ move to Texas, and details of Elizabeth Crockett’s life and death there, are from Lake, “David Crockett’s Widow.”

A
FTERWORD
: M
OSES
R
OSE AND THE
L
INE

The epigraph is from a Frank Johnson note in “Historical Notes—Alamo,” p. 773 (box 2D187, Francis White Johnson Papers, BCAH).

The Walter Lord quote explaining the paucity of primary accounts of the Alamo is in Lord, “Myths and Realities of the Alamo,” p. 18.

The J. Frank Dobie quote about the line is reprinted in Hansen, pp. 286–87.

The William P. Zuber article “An Escape From the Alamo” was first printed in the 1873
Texas Almanac,
which is available at the Portal to Texas History website,
http://texashistory.unt.edu/
.

The July 20, 1876, letter from Rufus Grimes to E. M. Pease is in the AGO File, TSLA.

The
cum grano salis
comment is in Morphis,
History of Texas,
p. 187.

The September 1877 Susanna Dickinson Hannig interview with the Texas adjutant general’s office is reprinted in Hansen, p. 48. The September 14, 1877, letter of William P. Zuber to General William Steele commenting on the interview and Almonte’s quote in it is in the AGO File, TSLA.

The interview in the
National Police Gazette
has not been reprinted since its May 4, 1878, appearance; thanks to Joseph Musso, who supplied it. The May 19, 1881, interview in the
San Antonio Daily Express
was Mrs. Hannig’s last and most extensive.

As an old man, Enrique Esparza was interviewed several times. The May 19, 1907,
San Antonio Daily Express
interview by Charles Merritt Barnes was his last and longest; it is reprinted in Matovina,
The Alamo Remembered,
p. 82.

The account by Esparza in Driggs,
Rise of the Lone Star
, is reprinted in Hansen, p. 117.

The Robert Bruce Blake information about Rose can be found in the Proceedings of the Board of Land Commissioners, Nacogdoches County Clerk’s Office, which can be found in Blake’s “Documents from Nacogdoches County Records Relating to Moses (Louis) Rose,” Robert Bruce Blake Collection, vol. LXI: pp. 126–40, BCAH, and are also reprinted in Hansen, pp. 273–74, 278.

In his book
Alamo Traces,
Thomas Ricks Lindley argues that Blake misrepresented his original sources. But the crucial documents cited by Blake that Lindley claims do not exist—specifically, the Proceedings of the Board of Land Commissioners—were found by Todd Hansen in the office of the county clerk in Nacogdoches County. Hansen was allowed to photocopy excerpts from the original proceedings; he subsequently transmitted a copy to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library at the Alamo on June 11, 2005, for their vertical file on Moses Rose, and verified that Blake’s transcript accurately reflects his cited source.

Blake’s “Rose and His Escape from the Alamo” is reprinted in Hansen, pp. 274–82.

More evidence of Rose’s nature is evident in a document I recently found, dated October 31, 1834. It is a petition signed by fifty-two of the town’s citizens, addressed to the Department of Nacogdoches political chief, Henry Rueg, requesting permission for Louis Rose to be allowed to make a living by supplying the town with fresh beef (another citizen had managed to obtain an exclusive license to do the job). The signatories state their wish to see “Louis Rose occupied as usual instead of stalking unemployed about the streets and stores” (Nacogdoches Archives, pp. 244–248, BCAH).

The Davis quote concerning his disbelief in the line is in
Three Roads to the Alamo,
pp. 731–32.

The first Amelia Williams quote about A. D. Griffith and the line is from her groundbreaking “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo,” p. 31. The second Williams quote about Griffith (and his sister, Mrs. Susan Sterling) is found in a letter from Williams to Samuel Asbury, dated February 1, 1932 (box 2A138, Samuel Erson Asbury Papers, BCAH). The Williams notes from her interview with Griffith are in folder 6 (Dickinson), box 2N492, Amelia Worthington Williams Papers, BCAH.

The Dobie column about Charles Ramsdell appeared in the
Dallas Morning News
of March 31, 1940.

The Amelia Williams quote stating that Mrs. Sterling “avowed that it was” when asked about the truth of the line story is in a letter from Williams to Samuel Asbury, dated November 7, 1933 (box 2A138 [the Alamo File], Samuel Erson Asbury Papers, BCAH).

The two letters from W. T. Neblett to Amelia Williams are dated April 4, 1935, and April 26, 1935, and are in the General Correspondence folder for 1935 (box 2N490, Amelia Worthington Williams Papers, BCAH).

The Frank Johnson quote is found in the file entitled “Historical Notes—Alamo,” p. 773 (box 2D187, Francis White Johnson Papers, BCAH).

See chapter 15 endnotes for details and citations regarding the last night in the Alamo.

Dobie’s discussion of the line is reprinted in Hansen, p. 286.

For more on Rose and his foolhardiness in claiming to be a deserter rather than an Alamo scout, see Lon Tinkle’s entertaining but fanciful
13 Days to Glory,
pp. 184–85, where he makes this point in a discussion of the Zuber account. A final tantalizing tidbit can be found in the BCAH files, in the Samuel Erson Asbury Papers. Asbury, a leading historian of the Texian revolution, corresponded with many other historians, including Roy F. Hall, author of
Collin County: Pioneering in North Texas
(Westminster, MD: Heritage Books, 1975), who lived in McKinney, Texas. At one point, Hall was heavily into research for a book on the battles of Texas, and in a letter to Asbury dated August 26, 1933, he wrote: “By the way, I recently unearthed something which hints that one man from the Alamo made his way through the lines on the 3
^rd
of March, and this was written [in] 1848!” (this letter is in box 2A141, Samuel Erson Asbury Papers, BCAH). When Hall’s manuscript was finished, he sent it to his publisher, who lost it. Apparently it was the only copy. Hall’s papers were burned in a fire in his widow’s house in 2002.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

B
OOKS

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A Texas Scrap-Book
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Bancroft, Hubert Howe.
History of the North Mexican States and Texas
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Barker, Eugene C., ed.
The Austin Papers
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Barr, Alwyn.
Texans in Revolt: The Battle for San Antonio, 1835
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Batson, James L.
James Bowie and the Sandbar Fight
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Baylor, George Wythe.
John Robert Baylor: Confederate Governor of Arizona
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Berlandier, Jean Louis.
Journey to Mexico During the Years 1826 to 1834.
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Binkley, William C.
Official Correspondence of the Texan Revolution 1835–1836
. 2 vols. New York: Appleton-Century, 1936.

Blair, E. L.
Early History of Grimes County
. Austin, TX: privately printed, 1930.

Borroel, Roger, ed.
Field Reports of the Mexican Army During the Texan War of 1836.
9 vols. East Chicago, IN: La Villita Publications, 2001–2008.

———, ed.
The Itineraries of the Zapadores and San Luis Battalions During the Texas War of 1836
. Vol. 1 of
Mexican Battalion Series at the Alamo
. East Chicago, IN: La Villita Publications, 1999.

———, ed.
The J. Sanchez Garza Introduction to the Rebellion of Texas: The Diary of Lt. Col. José Enrique de la Peña
. East Chicago, IN: La Villita Publications, 1998.