The only early Alamo victim list that includes the name Bowman is the roll found in Gray’s From Virginia, 138. Gray listed a “Col. Bowman,” which appears to be an error. Given that the name is listed between the name of William B. Travis and James Bowie, it appears Gray wrote Bowman instead of Bonham.
81 Clinton De Witt Baker, ed., A Texas Scrap-Book (New York and New Orleans: A. S. Barnes & Company, 1875), 112-113. The name “J. B. Bowman” does appear on three secondary Alamo lists, which were complied after the publication of Baker’s book. In the mid-1870s the Texas government attempted to compile a correct roll of Alamo soldiers. Two of the lists can be found in the “Alamo Strays” box in the Archives Division of the Texas State Library. One list is a holographic document that the old veteran Francis W. Johnson signed off on. The second list is found in a newspaper article from an unknown Austin newspaper published in the summer of 1874. Both of these lists appear to have obtained the Bowman name from the early Alamo monument listing. The third list is found in John J. Linn’s Reminiscences of Fifty Years in Texas that was first published in 1883. The book was actually ghost written (Jenkins, ed., Texas Books, 346) by Victor M. Rose. Linn was never in a position during the revolution to have obtained firsthand knowledge of the Alamo and its fall. Thus the Bowman name on his list was most likely taken from Baker’s book.
According to the “Records of the Permanent Council,” January 15-16, TSL and James W. Robinson to the Council, January 16, 1836, San Felipe, Jenkins, ed., Papers, IV: 42, there was one James H. Bowman in San Antonio in mid-January 1836. Thus the name on the first Alamo monument may have been “J. H. Bowman” and is represented as “J. B.” in A Texas Scrap-Book because of a copy error or a typesetting mistake.
Furthermore, while it is negative evidence, the Jesse B. Bowman name or a variant of it is not found on any (all being primary documents) of the siege of Bexar muster rolls, the storming of Bexar rolls, the Alamo rosters, or the February 1, 1836 Alamo voting list. Neither did the Republic of Texas or the state of Texas issue any bounty or donation land grants in the name for service and death in the revolution.
A list found in Frederick C. Chabot’s The Alamo: Mission, Fortress and Shrine (San Antonio: Frederick C. Chabot, 1941), 68-69, attributed to Mrs. Letta A. Small, custodian of the Alamo, is the earliest list this writer has found that includes Jesse B. Bowman, who is listed in a category titled: “Native States Unknown.” This list appears to be the Daughters of the Republic of Texas’s official list prior to their acceptance of Dr. Williams’s roster.
J. B. Ferrell and Bob N. Bowman, in “Jesse B. Bowman, 1785-1836: Defender of the Alamo,” Jesse B. Bowman file, DRT Library, report: “On file at the county courthouse at Cooper, Texas, is a contract between Jesse Bowman and Ambrose Douthit, which said that Jesse Bowman agreed to give Douthit 1/2 of his citia and labor of land. In return Douthit agreed to draw up all paper work and pay for having his land surveyed and any other expenses involved. This land was to be located in the neighborhood of the Red River. This contract was dated Feb 13, 1836.” The Bowman family believes the contract is a forgery because they think Bowman was part of the Bexar garrison at that time and died at the fall of the Alamo. However, given that there is no valid evidence proving that Bowman was part of the San Antonio garrison, it would appear the contract is authentic.
For the Bowman family’s point of view about their ancestor Jesse B. Bowman, one should read Bob and Doris Bowman, The Search for an Alamo Soldier (Lufkin: Best of East Texas Publishers, 1997), 11-67.
82 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 281.
83 Bexar B-519, Fort Bend B-51, Fort Bend B-53, Colorado B-97, Milam B-1512, GLO; Jesse G. Thompson file, AMC-TSL; “List of the names of those who fell in the Alamo at San Antonio de Bexar March 6, 1836,” Muster Rolls book, 2, GLO. The name “______ Thompson” appears after Dr. Pollard.
84 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 249; “List of the names of those who fell in the Alamo at San Antonio de Bexar March 6, 1836,” Muster Rolls book, 2, 3, 255, GLO.
85 Liberty I-317; Military Warrant Ledger, 304-2511, TSL.
86 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 249.
87 Bexar B-962; Nacogdoches I-399; Nacogdoches I-681; Washington I-92, GLO; James E. Winston, “Pennsylvania and the Independence of Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XVIII: 266; Telegraph and Texas Register, March 24, 1836; James Brown, Spanish Land Grant Index, GLO.
88 Travis to Houston, February 25, 1836.
89 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 309-310; Robert Brown army discharge, June 5, 1836, Headquarters, La Bahia [Goliad], Robert Brown file, AMC-TSL.
90 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 251.
91 Charles Clark C-1549, Court of Claims collection, GLO; Milam B-1425 and Travis B-648, GLO.
92 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 276.
93 Goliad B-227, Bexar B-1917, Fannin B-1304, GLO; Lost Book of Harris County, 96 and 141; “New Orleans Greys, Capt. Wm. G. Cooke, in the Army before Bexar 1835,” Muster Rolls book.
94 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 161-163 and 269; Nacogdoches enlistments, January 14, 1836, Muster Rolls book, 115, GLO. Charles Linley, age thirty-one, a Nacogdoches resident, was England born and joined the Texas army on January 14, 1836. One of Williams’s sources for Jonathan Lindley is C. M. S. R. No. 9189, which shows that Lindley joined the Bexar garrison on December 14, 1835. Williams’s belief that Charles Linley and Jonathan Lindley were the same man is impossible to understand.
95 Albert Cook Myers, Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania 1682-1750 (1902; reprint; Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1985), 179; Jonathan Lindley, entry 369, folder F, Montgomery County Clerk Returns, GLO; Jonathan Lindley probate inventory, Vol. A, 135-136, Montgomery County, Texas; Telegraph and Texas Register, March 24, 1836; Gray, From Virginia, 140-141; “List of Men who have this day volunteered to remain before Bexar,” Jonathan Lindley pay certificate, Jonathan Lindley file, AMC-TSL; Jonathan Lindley file, New Handbook of Texas records, Texas State Historical Association, University of Texas, Austin, Texas.
96 “Williams note,” Grant to Williams, March 12, 1936. Williams believed only she had a right to publish and use material from her study. Never mind that it had already been published in a journal, which made it available to the public for fair use.
97 Leita Small to George P. Carrel, January 6, 1939; George P. Carrel to the Alamo Committee, January 11, 1939, San Antonio; Amelia Williams to George P. Carrel, January 19, 1939, Austin; Leita Small to Amelia Williams, January 21, 1939; all letters are in the Williams Papers, CAH.
98 Amelia W. Williams to Stuart McGregor, February 10, 1941, Austin, Williams Papers, CAH.
99 Williams to Carrel, January 19, 1939.
100 Ibid.
101 Williams, “A Critical Study,” 237.
102 Oates, ed., The Republic of Texas, 19; Schoewer and Glaser, Alamo Images, 4.
103 Alamo — Providing for the Purchase, Care and Preservation of. S. H. B. No. 1, Section 2, January 26, 1905, General Laws of Texas, chapter 7. 28th, 29th, 30th Legislatures: 1903, 1905, 1907.
Chapter Three
Travis’s Bones:
Reinforcement of the Alamo
Do hasten on aid to me as rapidly as possible, as from the superior number of the enemy it will be impossible for us to keep them out much longer. If they overpower us, we fall a sacrifice at the shrine of our country, and we hope posterity and our country will do our memory justice. Give me help, oh my Country! Victory or death!
William B. Travis1
Alamo history, as it currently stands, reports only one reinforcement of the Alamo garrison during the thirteen-day siege. That relief came from thirty-two mounted men from Gonzales who entered the Alamo at 3:00 a.m. on March 1, 1836. Twentieth-century citizens of Gonzales crowned the group as the “Immortal Thirty-two.” That nomination includes the myth that the men knew their action was suicidal but willingly entered the Alamo to die for Travis and Texas independence. Also, the rest of Tex
as stood accused of having deserted Travis and his band of men at the Alamo. New evidence shows that the reinforcement of the Alamo was not that simple or that simple minded. Nor did all of Travis’s countrymen desert him.2
Travis, in the March 3, 1836 missive that reported the arrival of the Gonzales relief, also wrote: “I hope your honorable body [Convention assembled at Washington-on-the-Brazos] will hasten on reinforcements, ammunitions and provisions to our aid as soon as possible. . . . If these things are promptly sent and large reinforcements are hastened to this frontier, this neighborhood will be the great and decisive ground.” Travis, even more emphatic, wrote his good friend Jesse Grimes: “I shall have to fight the enemy on his own terms, yet I am ready to do it, and if my countrymen do not rally to my relief, I am determined to perish in the defense of this place, and my bones shall reproach my country for her neglect.”3
The Alamo neighborhood did not become the “decisive ground” in the way Travis had hoped, but new evidence shows that far more men than thirty-two answered Travis’s plea for assistance. The following analysis is not a complete accounting of the siege and storming of the Alamo. Rather, the work is an attempt to identify who went into the Alamo the first day, who entered during the siege, who attempted to enter, and who left during the siege. The story of those men, women, and children commenced on February 23, 1836, the day that Santa Anna’s centralist army stormed into Bexar to avenge the 1835 Texian victory over the forces of General Martin Perfecto de Cos and to make an example of the Alamo defenders.4
William Barret Travis
Photo courtesy Texas State Library & Archives Commission
First Day — Tuesday, February 23, 1836
Sunrise of the first day likely found many of the Alamo soldiers just going to bed. Others may have been at breakfast, eating flour tortillas with their eggs instead of the usual American biscuits. A small number of men were on duty at the Alamo. The garrison had celebrated George Washington’s birthday the previous night, and the wild fandango, as was the Texian way, had continued through the night. Drinking, gambling, dancing, and romantic adventures with the young women of Bexar were the only rewards of service at the frontier post.5
Mexican dragoon
Photo courtesy Joseph Musso collection
Already the vanguard of General Santa Anna’s Army of Operations Against Texas was within striking distance of the Texian rebels. The night before, General Joaquin Ramirez y Sesma, with one hundred sixty mounted infantrymen, had departed from the Medina River, about eighteen miles west of San Antonio. Their mission was to prevent any escape of the Texians. Sometime during the advance, Trinidad Coy, a Texian spy, was captured by the Mexican advance. Coy, probably hoping to give Travis and Bowie some time, told the Mexican general that an ambush awaited his troops. Santa Anna had ordered his generals to be cautious in approaching the enemy in order to prevent an early defeat that might demoralize his untested soldiers. Therefore, Ramirez y Sesma halted at 7:00 a.m. on Alazan Creek, a mile or so west of the city, to await his commander and the larger force. The Mexican presence in Texas, however, had not gone unnoticed.6
Years later Francisco Ruiz reported: “. . . the forces under the command of Travis, Bowie, and Crockett having on the same day, at 8 o’clock in the morning, learned that the Mexican army was on the banks of the Medina river, they concentrated in the fortress of the Alamo.” Travis and Bowie, at that point, appear to have believed that the enemy force was under the command of Ramirez y Sesma, rather than Santa Anna.7
Despite their shocked surprise, fatigue, and hangover headaches, the rebels managed to pull things together. One or more soldiers were left in the San Fernando church bell tower to watch for the enemy. Otherwise, the defenders, their family members, and a number of Mexican-Texians (Tejanos and Tejanas) hurried behind the Alamo walls. The relocation was far from smooth.8
In 1878 Ruben M. Potter, the second historian to pen an account of the fall of the Alamo, reported:
The first sight of the enemy created as much confusion with as little panic at the Alamo as might be expected among men who had known as little of discipline as they did of fear. Mr. [Nat] Lewis, of San Antonio, informed me that he took refuge for a few hours in the fort when the invaders appeared, and the disorder of the post beggared description. . . . Some of the volunteers, who had sold their rifles to obtain the means of dissipation, were clamoring for guns of any kind; and the rest, though in arms, appeared to be mostly without orders or a capacity for obedience. No “army in Flanders” ever swore harder. He saw but one officer who seemed to be at his proper post and perfectly collected. This was an Irish Captain, named [William B.] Ward, who though generally an inveterate drunkard, was now sober, and stood quietly by the guns of the south battery ready to use them. Yet amid the disorder of that hour no one seemed to think of flight.9
Dr. Horatio “Horace” A. Alsbury, the garrison’s Spanish translator, was one of the Texians who moved his family into the Alamo. In addition to Alsbury, there was his wife, Juana Navarro Alsbury, her infant son, Alijo Perez Jr., and Mrs. Alsbury’s sister, Gertrudis Navarro. Juana and Gertrudis were the nieces of Juan Martin Veramendi, James Bowie’s father-in-law. Their father was Jose Angel Navarro, one of the city’s leading centralists. Both women, however, had been reared in the federalist home of Veramendi and were viewed as sisters to Bowie’s dead wife, Ursula Veramendi.10
Dr. Alsbury, after getting his family settled in the Alamo, departed for Gonzales with the news that the Mexican army was in the vicinity of San Antonio. Merchant Nat Lewis, however, did not join the garrison. Lewis, known as Don Pelon because of his bald head, left on foot that morning for Gonzales. At that juncture, the Alamo force numbered one hundred fifty-six effectives. There were fourteen or more men in the Alamo hospital, and Bowie was beginning to feel the effects of the typhoid pneumonia that would soon put him on his deathbed.11
Still, Bowie and Travis, despite a mid-February argument over who was to command the garrison in the absence of Lt. Colonel James C. Neill, worked to unite people, materials, and provisions to meet the enemy. Ignacio Perez, a local government contractor, sold Travis thirty head of cattle that were quickly herded into the courtyard on the east side of the Alamo to join an unknown number of horses. Eighty or ninety bushels of corn were found in houses abandoned by the citizens of Bexar. Most of the corn came from Gabriel Martinez’s small hut located on the east side of the Alamo.12
Also, the defenders dismantled Antonio Saez’s blacksmith shop that was located near the Alamo and carried the materials into the compound to help fortify the sprawling structure. In the days before Santa Anna’s arrival, Saez had aided the Texians by repairing their arms and cutting up pieces of iron to be used in the place of canister shot for the Alamo cannon.13
The Alamo defenders were well armed. The compound’s artillery commanders had twenty-one cannon of various calibers. Eighteen guns were combat-ready on the walls. The Alamo armory was stocked with 816 rifles and muskets and over 14,600 cartridges. Except for cannonballs of certain calibers, the artillerymen had plenty of ball, grape, and “cut-iron” shot. Each defender had a bayonet for his musket. Others had swords or large butcher knives for the close fighting. Cannon and rifle powder, however, were in short supply.14
Provisions and weapons were in order, but Travis and Bowie still had little intelligence that identified the exact whereabouts of the enemy. The two commanders, however, knew that the opposing army would be moving in their direction Thus, Travis, probably around high noon, sent Captain Philip Dimmitt and Lieutenant Benjamin Noble, who had arrived in mid-February with supplies, out to locate the Mexican force.15
About the same time, Santa Anna’s army joined its detachment of mounted infantry in the Alazan hills. After the revolution, Santa Anna, forgetting his order about caution, claimed the storming of the Alamo could have been avoided had Ramirez y Sesma obeyed his orders to dragoon the Texians without delay. Yet, at the time, the Mexican commander-in-chief was content to linger on the Al
azan.16
As the Mexican army took a lunch break, additional men, women, and children scurried into the Alamo for safety. Other citizens hurriedly packed and left the city for their lower San Antonio River ranch houses or headed east to the Anglo-Celtic colonies.17
Captain Almaron Dickinson, however, settled his artillery company in the fortress and then left to get his family. Riding up to his temporary home, he found Susanna, his young wife, and Angelina, their baby girl, ready to move. Susanna handed Angelina up to Almaron, then she jumped up behind him for a fast ride to the Alamo.18
The invading army, after a stop of an hour and a half, resumed its advance. Between 2:30 and 3:00 p.m. the Texian bell tower sentry saw dust clouds rising from the road that ran west to Leon Creek. Travis was quickly notified of the sighting. Needing more information because Dimmitt and Noble had not returned, Travis sent John W. Smith, the Alamo’s storekeeper, out to scout the Leon Creek road. Smith was a San Antonio merchant and carpenter who knew the area well. Soon after Smith’s departure, the enemy marched into view near the city’s graveyard, west of the city.19
Travis and Bowie could see they were going to need armed assistance to win the coming fight. They then sent John Johnson to Colonel James W. Fannin Jr., commander of the Texian force at Goliad, on the San Antonio River, about ninety miles southeast of Bexar. Johnson carried a note that read:20
We have removed all our men into the Alamo, where we will make such resistance as is due to our honor, and that of the country, until we can get assistance from you, which we expect you to forward immediately. In this extremity, we hope you will send us all the men you can spare promptly. We have one hundred and forty-six men [correct number was 156], who are determined never to retreat. We have but little provisions, but enough to serve us till you and your men arrive. We deem it unnecessary to repeat to a brave officer, who knows his duty, that we call on him for assistance.21
Alamo Traces Page 12