Alamo Traces (30 page)

The 1889 petition shows the signatures of a number of influential San Antonio citizens, including Mary Maverick, wife of Alamo delegate to the March 1 convention Samuel Maverick, John S. Ford, and Alamo custodian Tom Rife, who believed that the old woman had been in the Alamo. Rife, however, in 1892 denounced Candelaria as a liar, claiming that she had not been in the Alamo. Rife failed to explain what had caused him to change his mind about the woman.

Given the praise from San Antonio citizens found in an 1871 petition (same file as the 1889 petition) to the legislature, Candelaria appears to have been the Mother Theresa of San Antonio.

50
De la Teja,
A Revolution Remembered
, 79-80; Fannin to De Sauque and Chenoweth, March 1, 1836.

51
Nacogdoches Enlistments, Muster Roll book, 114-115; Forbes to Robinson, January 12, 1836, Nacogdoches, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, III: 498; Townsend Receipt, February 9, 1836, San Felipe, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, IV: 297; James W. Robinson to Sam Houston, February 14, 1836, San Felipe, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, IV: 337; W. P. Grady petition, n.d., M & P-TSL; “Gilmore unit members agreement with Acting Governor Robinson and Council,” [February 16, 1836?], Records of the Permanent Council, TSL.

52
“Gilmore unit members agreement,” February 16, 1836.

53
Robinson to Houston, February 14, 1836.

54
James Gillespie to Thomas J. Rusk, May 29, 1836, Victoria, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, VI: 407-408. Given that acting governor James W. Robinson had ordered all reinforcements to rendezvous at Gonzales, the Gilmore unit most likely traveled to San Antonio through Gonzales.

55
Lieutenant James B. Bonham Republic of Texas pay record, May 15, 1838, James B. Bonham file, AMC-TSL; Williamson to Travis, March 1, 1836; Thomas Ricks Lindley, “James Butler Bonham: October 17, 1835 - March 6, 1836,”
The Alamo Journal
, August 1988.

The Bonham pay document identifies Bonham as a “lieutenant of cavalry.” Contrary to what many historians and writers believe, Travis did not send Bonham out as a courier during the February and March 1836 siege of the Alamo. Travis, on March 3, 1836, wrote: “Colonel Bonham, my special messenger, arrived at La Bahia fourteen days ago, with a request for aid, and on the arrival of the enemy in Bexar, ten days ago, I sent an express to Colonel F. . . .” The rider sent to Goliad on February 23 appears to have been John Johnson.

56
Gray,
From Virginia
, 123-124.

57
Almonte, “Private Journal,” 19-20.

58
Sowell,
Early Settlers
, 9-10; Brooks to Mother, March 2, 1836.

59
Brooks to Mother, March 2, 1836.

60
“Muster Roll, Captain Thomas H. Breece's Co.”; Webb, Carroll, and Branda, eds.,
Handbook
, II: 273; Brooks to Mother, March 2, 1836; Bennett McNelly petition, April 23, 1838, Houston, M & P-TSL.

61
Travis to Convention, March 3, 1836.

62
Williams to Travis, March 1, 1836.

63
Bonham Jr., “James Butler Bonham: A Consistent Rebel,” 129.

64
The belief that the reinforcement force used this route is speculation. However, given the circumstances, it would have been the safest route to Cibolo ford on the San Antonio/Gonzales road. Second, it was the most direct route to join the ranger company from Bastrop. Lastly, with Santa Anna sending local militia units to obtain provisions from the Seguin and Flores ranches, riding on the Goliad/Bexar road would have been too dangerous.

65
The men were John W. Thomson and George Olamio. Thomson is on the current Alamo list. Olamio is not listed. See note 87 for more information on Olamio.

66
Sowell,
Early Settlers
, 9.

67
Almonte, “Private Journal,” 20.

68
Travis to Convention, March 3, 1836.

69
Travis to Ponton, February 23, 1836; Thomas B. Rees to Gerard Burch, Goliad, March 8, 1836, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, V: 28-29; B. H. Duval to William P. Duval, March 9, 1836, Goliad, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, V: 33-34; Joseph B. Tatom to Sister, March 10, 1836, Goliad, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, V: 44; John Cross to Brother and Sister, March 9, 1836, Goliad, John Cross papers, DRT Library; David P. Cummings to Father, February 14, 1836, San Antonio, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, IV: 334; Susanna (Dickinson) Belles affidavit, December 9, 1850, Houston, David P. Cummings file, Court of Claims
records, C-001936, GLO.

Historians, in spite of Dickinson's claim that Travis had sent an express rider to get Cummings, continue to claim that Cummings returned to the Alamo with the first Gonzales reinforcement that entered the Alamo on March 1.

Colonel Juan N. Almonte, “Private Journal,” 17, reported that thirty men from Gonzales entered the Alamo on the night of February 24. Given that the returning Cummings group would have entered the Alamo from the east, having traveled on the Gonzales road, it is easy to understand why Almonte might have believed they were reinforcement from Gonzales.

70
Williamson to Travis, March 1, 1836; “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876; Travis to Convention, March 3, 1836. In regard to Fannin, Travis wrote: “Col. Fannin is said to be on the march [R. M. Williamson letter of March 1] to this place with reinforcements, but I fear it is not true, as I have
repeatedly
sent to him for aid without receiving any.”

71
“Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876, Morphis,
History of Texas, from its Discovery and Settlement
, 174-177. According to Morphis, Susanna Dickinson reported: “I heard him [Crockett] say several times during the eleven days of the siege: ‘I think we had better march out and die in the open air. I don't like to be hemmed up.' ”

72
David Harmon affidavit and J. B. Pevito affidavit, RV 1205, VD-GLO. Pevito described Harmon's enlistment with these words: “I saw David Harmon the applicant go off from his home, on Cow Bayou as a soldier to join the army. His father went with him to see him mustered in. Dave was quite young & a mere stripling of a boy, & I asked his father at the time where he was going with David, & he said that David was young but he had to learn, & he was going to see him mustered in the army.”

73
J. C. Neill's Alamo roster, Muster Rolls book, 20; “List of the names of those who fell in the Alamo at San Antonio de Bexar,” Muster Rolls book, 2; Alamo voting list, February 1, 1836;
The Telegraph and Texas Register
, March 24, 1836. Neill's return and the February 1, 1836 Alamo voting list, show Major Evans's first name to be George. The
T&TR
list and the page two list in the Muster Rolls book show Evans's first name as Robert. The page two list appears to have been taken from the
T&TR
list. Neill's Alamo roster and the voting list are the more reliable lists. Thus, it appears that Evans's first name was George, as so identified by David Harmon's affidavit.

74
“Sheet” appears to be a euphemism for feces or Harmon's pronunciation of Crockett's pronunciation of shit.

75
Ibid.; Robert Whittock affidavit, RV 1153, VD-GLO. It appears that the additional men Harmon was able to enlist were in Captain William W. Logan's company. They joined Sam Houston's army at Beeson's Ferry on the Colorado River after the Alamo had fallen.

76
Ibid.; Sowell,
Early Settlers
, 9; James Taylor and Edward Taylor affidavit, March 3, 1836; J. C. Taylor affidavit, September 6, 1890, George Taylor
affidavit, February 2, 1836 and J. C. Taylor affidavit, August 7, 1890; James Taylor, Edward Taylor, and William Taylor affidavit, March 3, 1836; “War News: Texas and Florida,”
Arkansas Gazette
(Little Rock), April 12, 1836; Adina de Zavala,
The Alamo: Where the Last Man Died
(San Antonio: The Naylor Company, 1905), 35; Mark Derr,
The Frontiersman: The Real Life and the Many Legends of Davy Crockett
(New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1993), back flap of the dust jacket; W. D. Grady petition to the Legislature of the State of Texas, n.d., M & P-TSL.

The Zavala book quotes part of a late nineteenth-century poem by James Jeffrey Roche that reports Crockett entered the Alamo with the Gonzales reinforcement. W. D. Grady stated that he had been employed as a printer with the
Texas Telegraph and Register
at San Felipe when expresses from Travis and Crockett arrived from the Alamo. William Patton, Crockett's nephew, is a good guess as the person who carried the package of letters to Gonzales. Patton appears to have been with Crockett at the Alamo, but he did not die there. At least the family never made any claims that Patton died with Crockett.

77
Jose Urrea,
Diario De Las Operaciones Militares De La Division Que Al Mando Del General Jose Urrea Hizo La Campana De Tejas
(Victoria de Durango: Imprenta Del Gobierno & Cargo de Manual Gonzalez, 1838), 54-55.

78
Sowell,
Early Settlers
, 9; James Taylor and Edward Taylor affidavit, March 3, 1836; J. C. Taylor affidavit, September 6, 1890, George Taylor affidavit, February 2, 1836, and J. C. Taylor affidavit, August 7, 1890; William B. Travis to Jesse Grimes, March 3, 1836, Alamo, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, IV: 504-505; William B. Travis to David Ayres, March 3, 1836, Alamo, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, IV: 501; William B. Travis to Rebecca Cummings, March 3, 1836, Alamo, reference to the letter in Holley,
Interviews
, 20; Williamson to Travis, March 1, 1836; Fannin to De Sauque and Chenoweth, March 1, 1836.

The Taylor documents place Crockett on the Cibolo Creek on the night of March 3, 1836. The affidavits claim that Crockett was so sick at the time he could not execute his signature on the document. Thus he signed with an “X.” Crockett did suffer from malaria. A sudden attack of the illness can be brought on by extreme stress, which Crockett would have been under while he was on the Cibolo. If that was the case, he could have experienced shaking chills that would have prevented him from writing his name.

79
Almonte, “Private Journal,” 20; Bennett McNelly affidavit, April 23, 1838, Houston, M & P-TSL; “War News: Texas and Florida,”
Arkansas Gazette
, Little Rock, April 12, 1836; Joseph B. Tatom to Sister, March 10, 1836, Goliad, Jenkins, ed.,
Papers
, V: 44-45; C. O. Edwards to John Dollar, July 12, 1881, Oakville, Texas Veterans Association Papers, Box 2N251, CAH.

Tatom probably obtained his information from a member of the combined March 4 reinforcement, who had returned to Goliad. Tatom, however, incorrectly believed that the addition of fifty soldiers to the Alamo increased the total number of Alamo defenders to 200 men. Tatom's number seems to be based on the belief that Travis only had 150 men. That
number was close to correct on February 23. The 150 figure, however, does not take into account the fourteen men in the hospital, the thirty men who entered with Martin and Smith on March 1, and the thirty men who probably returned to the Alamo from Cibolo Creek on February 24. Thus, the actual Alamo number appears to have been: 150 effectives, plus 14 in the hospital, plus 30 that returned from the Cibolo, and 84 reinforcements, minus 14 Tejanos who departed the Alamo and 7 couriers, which equals 257 total men on March 6.

The C. O. Edwards letter appears to speak to the March 4 relief effort. In describing the military actions he had been involved in, Edwards wrote: “I was in no noted Battle. I was always out on post or in advance or in [the] rear of the main army and was subject to order at all times. I was in several pretty warm skirmishes. One on the Salado and at the Alamo hill before the capture of the Alamo. And as the Army moved on eastward I was stationed on the Brazos at Fort Bend. . . .” Alamo hill would appear to have been Powder House hill about a half mile due east of the Alamo on the Gonzales road. If that is the case, it would appear that the March 4 reinforcement encountered Mexican patrols on Salado Creek about five miles from the Alamo and at Powder House hill before they were able to swing around to the north to approach the Alamo from the west. A careful search of Texas State Library and General Land Office documents has failed to locate any more data on Edwards.

80
Almonte, “Private Journal,” 20; Filisola,
Memoirs
, II: 178. Filisola reported that a group of 32 men from Gonzales entered the Alamo two days before the final assault. The morning of March 4 would have been exactly two days before the March 6 attack. By the time Filisola wrote his book, the “Gonzales Thirty-two” were established as the only reinforcement to enter the Alamo. It appears that Filisola had an informant that reported the March 4 entry, and Filisola wrongly assumed it had to be the group of thirty-two.

81
“Muster Roll, Capt. Chenoweth's Co.”; Jesse Badgett interview, April 15, 1836.

82
“Muster Roll, Captain Thomas H. Breece's Co”; “A list of votes Received at Refugio Mission by the Volunteers at that point . . . ,”.; February 1, 1836, and San Patricio voting list, February 1, 1836, Election Returns, TSL; Alamo voting list, February 1, 1836; Conrad Eigenauer pay document for death at Alamo on March 6, 1836, May 29, 1838, Houston, AMC-TSL; Conrad Eigenauer Court of Claims file, C-002495, GLO; Robert Musselman, Thomas P. Hutchinson, and John J. Baugh affidavit, December 29, 1835, in Francis William Jackson file, AMC-TSL; Joseph H. Barnard, “A List of the Men under the Command of Col. J. W. Fannin at Goliad in March 1836, corrected from the list published in the
Telegraph
of Nov. 9, 1836,” Joseph H. Barnard Papers, CAH.

The names of these ten men from the original Greys company do not appear on the February 1 Alamo voting list, which shows they were not members of the Bexar garrison as of that date. Eigenauer voted at Refugio. Stephen Dennison voted at San Patricio.