Alamo Traces
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Blake failed to understand that Starr’s statement only addressed one kind of land grant fraud; individuals who had already received a Mexican headright during the colonial period, mostly Mexicans, who were being exploited by well-to-do Anglos. The second requirement for a Texian first class grant was that the individual had to have arrived in Texas previous to March 2, 1836. The only proof a person needed to meet that requirement was the testimony of two or more witnesses. While the local board could not always check to see if an applicant already owned a Mexican headright, the General Land Office could check for a previous headright before the Texian headright was patented at the state level. Thus, anyone obtaining a second headright in a fraudulent manner could be detected by the authorities.13
Also, the Nacogdoches land office had on file many character certificates that had been completed for the Mexican government. Such documents included the person’s arrival date. Thus, verification of arrival dates for some individuals was within the scope of the land board. A person’s death at the Alamo was another thing. Evidence, other than testimony from surviving Alamo couriers and surviving noncombatants, to verify such a death appears to have been limited to a list that had appeared in the March 24, 1836 issue of the Telegraph and Texas Register. If a witness was willing to lie about a man’s death at the Alamo or lie about having been at the Alamo, a challenge was hard to present. That is, except when the alleged dead man was still among the living. The evidence was only as good as the witness’s word. Louis Rose’s identification of Henry Teal as an Alamo defender and the rejected 1854 bounty certificate suggest that Rose’s word might not have been very good. Clearly, Blake’s assumption that the Rose testimony was truthful because it was accepted by the land board is not valid.14
The certitude of Louis Rose’s testimony is further compromised by other problems. For example, if Louis was “Moses Rose” and had been a member of the Alamo and left on the afternoon of March 3, it seems his testimony would have been the same for all six men, that each man was in the Alamo on March 3 when he left and that he assumed each man was killed in the fall of the Alamo. After all, his final experience with each man would have been the same—all of them would have stood in formation listening to Travis’s plea for them to remain—all the men, except Rose, would have crossed Travis’s line in the dirt. Then Rose climbed a wall and deserted his comrades. Also, Louis Rose, if he was “Moses Rose,” could not have testified with confidence that any man he had left in the Alamo had died there on March 6. According to the Zuber tale, Rose was no longer in the Alamo after dark on March 3. Thus, any number of men could have departed the Alamo after Rose had left and he would not have known about it. The Louis Rose statements, however, are not consistent, when common sense says they should be if he was “Moses Rose.” Therefore, let us examine each statement that has been attributed to Louis Rose.
In the case of F. H. K. Day, Blake reported in his article that Rose said: “died with Travis at the Alamo.” A transcription of the testimony in Blake’s papers identifies the witnesses as (1) William S. Blount, (2) Albert Emanuel, and (3) Louis Rose. The testimony reads: “[1] Emigrated in 1838 [probably a typing error]. (2) Single man dies with Travis in the Alamo March 1836. [3] Order of survey from G. W. Smyth.” The order of the witnesses and the data indicates that Emanuel made the Alamo death statement, not Rose, who appears to have furnished the Smyth data. It seems that Blake, because he believed Louis Rose was Moses Rose, assumed the order of the witnesses and their statements had to be an error. Thus, Blake attributed the statement that Day had died at the Alamo to Rose. Otherwise, certain facts about this evidence are important. The testimony does not identify Rose as a member of the Alamo force or put him in the Alamo during the thirteen-day siege. Even if Rose had been in the Alamo on March 3 and had testified that Day died with Travis in the Alamo, he could not have stated with any certainty that Day had died with Travis. If the escape tale is true, Rose could not have seen Day killed. Nor could Rose have seen Day’s dead body. Thus Blake and others have taken a great leap of faith in assuming Louis Rose had to have been “Moses Rose” in order to have known that F. H. K. Day and the other men Louis Rose testified about died at the Alamo.15
Moreover, given the difference in what Blake reported in the article and what is found in his transcript, there is a question of what original document Blake used as his source. The only original document from the Nacogdoches land board hearings still in existence that pertains to Day reports: “106 [certificate number] M. Patton & Teal heirs of F. H. K. Day – Should be Moses L. Patton and heirs of Henry Teal ass [assignees] of F. H. K. Day (given name unknown).” It is possible that whatever Blake saw, the original document or documents may have been lost over the years as there is now no original document detailing the Day statements or the Louis Rose testimony about Henry Teal. The Day evidence, however, does not end at Nacogdoches.16
A first class headright certificate, number 117, for Day was also issued by the Gonzales County land board. This certificate and other Gonzales probate affidavits identify Day as Freeman H. K. Day, who immigrated to Texas in 1832. W. W. Smith reported: “. . . Day did not make his home in any one particular municipality. . . . Day joined the army and fell in the Alamo. . . .” Thomas L. Grubbs said Day came to San Antonio as a member of Hayden Edwards’s company and remained at Bexar after Edwards had returned home in December 1835. Gonzales resident Horace Eggleston swore that “he knew and was acquainted with F. H. K. Day and that . . . Day left Gonzales with the Gonzales Company of volunteer rangers and . . . by the order of Col. Williamson proceeded to San Antonio and that the said Eggleston believes and has good reason to believe that the said Day fell in the Alamo.” Both the Nacogdoches certificate and the Gonzales one were approved and patented by the General Land Office.17
If Louis Rose and the other Nacogdoches witnesses were lying about having known Day, they could have obtained their information from other sources. Day’s Alamo death could have been an assumption based on the list of Alamo defenders that appeared in the March 24, 1836 Telegraph and Texas Register. There was some kind of Alamo victims list available in Nacogdoches. In the case of Alamo defender William Charles M. Baker’s first class application, J. M. White said: “Knew him in the fall of 1835 was a soldier in the army at the battle of San Antonio, was killed in the Alamo (says report.).” All the data contained in the Nacogdoches testimony, except for the statement that Day died with Travis, could have been obtained from Day’s Mexican land grant application. The fact that Day remained in Bexar could have been obtained from Edwards, a Nacogdoches resident. In sum, Louis Rose would not have had to be in the Alamo to have known that Day had died with Travis. But then Rose never said such a thing. As previously stated, in the case of F. H. K. Day, it appears that Albert Emanuel claimed that Day had died at the Alamo. And there is no evidence that Emanuel was at the Alamo or escaped over the wall with Moses Rose.18
The second Alamo victim application in which Rose gave testimony was the Henry Teal submission. As previously shown, Teal was not an Alamo soldier and did not die at the fall of the Alamo. Rose might have been mistaken about Teal. Still, such a mistake is hard to understand as Teal was nowhere near the Alamo during the siege and storming of the fortress. Teal was in Nacogdoches until March 5, 1836, the day before the Alamo fell and did not join Houston’s army until March 23. Therefore, it appears that Rose gave false testimony in that case.
The third case in which Blake claimed Rose testified was the application submitted by “John Forbes Admr. [administrator] of M. B. Clark, decd.”19 Blake’s transcription reads:
M. B. CLARK – I. W. Burton knew applicant the summer of 1835. Left this place for San Antonio, thinks he is since dead. Absalom Gibson states [Clark] left here for the army, in the Alamo. Stephen Rose states he saw him a few days before the fall of the Alamo, a single man.20
Part of the original document that contained the Rose testimony appears to have been lost. One page of that original record survives, and it reports
Burton’s statement about Clark to read: “I. W. Burton states that he knew of [Clark] during the summer of 1835 that he left for San Antonio has never [been] heard of since is of [the] opinion that he died.” The differences between Blake’s version and the original show that Blake’s transcription is not an exact copy, which shows that Blake was not very attentive in transcribing documents.21
There are other problems with the Blake transcription of the Clark application. First, the “Rose” witness was Stephen Rose, not Louis Rose. Second, the Stephen Rose testimony does not locate Clark, Louis Rose, or Stephen Rose in the Alamo. Nor does Stephen identify himself or Louis Rose as a member of the Alamo garrison. This testimony is a good example of how the Moses Rose story completely biased Blake’s analysis of the evidence. Blake, because he appears to have believed the Zuber story about Moses Rose, made two assumptions. He assumed, without any evidence to prove it, that Stephen Rose was Louis Rose, and that Louis Rose was Moses Rose. Therefore, the only way Stephen Rose could have seen Clark “a few days before the fall of the Alamo” was if Clark and Moses/Louis/Stephen Rose were in the Alamo on March 3, 1836. Nice theory, but where is the evidence to support it?
Blake, without proof, said that “Moses” was a nickname. Also, he offered no explanation as to why the land board would have known Louis Rose as Stephen Rose. A mistaken board identification of Louis Rose does not make sense. There were other Rose families in the Nacogdoches area of which Stephen could have been a member. In fact, he may have been Louis Rose’s son. Blake never mentioned it, but Louis Rose had a family when he entered Texas. Also, each witness that appeared before the land board had to take an oath before giving testimony. The oath procedure probably required that the witness state his or her name. Therefore, in the absence of valid evidence, one cannot assume that Stephen Rose and Louis Rose were the same person.22
Then there is the problem of the current identification of Clark as an Alamo defender. Yes, the land board issued a certificate for Clark, and the name is on the official roster of Alamo defenders. Yet, the Nacogdoches headright testimony furnishes no clear proof that shows Clark died at the Alamo. The belief that Clark was at the fall of the Alamo is based on Blake’s string of suppositions, which have no supporting evidence. Moreover, there is no other evidence that identifies M. B. Clark as an Alamo defender. No, this does not make Stephen Rose a liar, but it does raise suspicions.23
The next Alamo application for which Louis Rose gave a statement was: “254 The heirs of John Blair, decd. By I. [Isaac] Lee, administrator.” Blake’s transcription of the application data identifies the witnesses as “Elisha Roberts & James Carter & Lewis Rose.” Blake claimed the men said: “1st [Roberts] knew him as a resident 8 or 11 years ago. 2nd [Carter] states he knew him 8 years – left him at San Antonio. 3rd [Rose] left him in the Alamo 3 March 1836.”24
The actual record, however, in imperfect language, reads: “Elisha Roberts Know him for 8 or 10 years before May 1835 Killed in the Alimo James Carter Known him for 8 years and allway Left him at San Antonio Knew him to reside Hear [Nacogdoches] Before May 1835 Lewis Rose Knew Mr. Blair Left him in the Alimo 3 March 1836 Single man.” While the core element of the Rose statement has not changed, the comparison shows that once again Blake’s transcriptions cannot be trusted to be accurate.25
While Rose’s statement about Blair is the most definitive one yet examined, it does not identify Rose as a member of the Alamo garrison. Blake and others have assumed that because Rose claimed he had left Blair in the Alamo on March 3 that Rose had to have been in the Alamo on March 3 to have preformed such an act. Nevertheless, Isaac Lee, Blair’s estate administrator and cousin, was not so sure about Blair’s death. In April 1837 Lee reported that Blair had “died while absent in the service of Texas on or about fifth of March 1836.” Then, in 1846, Lee reported that Blair had “departed this life sometime during the year A.D. 1835.”26
While Rose’s February 7, 1838 statement about Blair appears to be more definitive than the statements given previously, the following day in his testimony for the Charles Haskell application, Rose was far from certain about Haskell. According to Blake’s transcription, Rose said: “Knew him 4 years supposes him killed in the Alamo.” Unfortunately, it appears the original record of the Haskell application has been lost. Nevertheless, Blake’s transcription does not identify Rose as a member of the Alamo garrison or place him in the Alamo during the siege. Nor is Rose’s testimony by itself conclusive proof that one Charles Haskell was an Alamo soldier or that he died with Travis.27
The next application containing a Louis Rose statement offers additional damage to Blake’s thesis. The alleged defender was one David Wilson. Blake’s transcription identifies the witnesses as “Wm. R. Luce, David Cook & Lewis Rose.” Blake reported that the men testified: “1st knew him before 2nd May 1835, lived in this county, went to the Army, knew him on his way to the Army. 3rd Knew him before 2nd May 1835, was in the Alamo when taken.”28
The actual holographic record reads somewhat different from Blake’s typescript. The witnesses were David Luce, David Cook, Lewis Rose, and Juan Mousolla. Luce said: “Known him from [unclear] & living in this country think he died in the Alimo.” Cook reported: “Knew before heard he was killed in the Alamo.” Rose claimed: “knew him for 6 years 3 Day of March 1836 then he was in the Alimo.” Mousolla said: “known him before 3 May 1835.” Again, the actual record shows that Blake’s transcriptions cannot be trusted.29
Also, it is important to understand that the witnesses did not furnish conclusive evidence that Wilson had been killed in the Alamo. Luce said he thought Wilson had been killed in the Alamo. Cook heard that Wilson had been killed in the Alamo. Nor did Rose claim he was a member of the Alamo garrison or that he was in the Alamo and departed on March 3, 1836. Luce and Cook only believed that Wilson had died at the Alamo, and they could have based their statements on a newspaper report. The Telegraph and Texas Register list of Alamo victims included “David Wilson, Nacogdoches.” The roll included three other men that Rose testified about: “_____Blair, _____ Day, and _____ Heiskill [Haskell].”30
Rose’s testimony in the cases of Heiskill, Blair, and Day was critical evidence. For example, consider the Blair application. Elisha Roberts identified Blair as a resident of Texas previous to March 2, 1836. James Carter put Blair in San Antonio. Rose furnished the final piece. He said John Blair was in the Alamo on March 3, 1836. While Rose may or may not have been telling the truth about Blair, one conclusion is clear. Lee, Blair’s cousin and administrator, could not have claimed that John Blair, his cousin, was the Blair on the Telegraph and Texas Register list without the Louis Rose statement. The same can be said for the F. H. K. Day and Charles Haskell applications for headright certificates. Perhaps Rose’s statement was necessary to prove that a “Nacogdoches” David Wilson died at the Alamo, even though he might not have been from that settlement. The newspaper list might have been wrong about Wilson’s origin.
One thing, however, is certain. If a man named David Wilson died at the Alamo, he was not the husband of Ophelia P. Wilson, who received the bounty and donation land grants for her husband’s death at the Alamo. David Wilson and Ophelia P. Morrell married in Vincennes, Indiana, in 1830. They arrived in Texas in 1835. David appeared before the Harris County land board on February 2, 1838, and received a league and labor headright certificate. He died sometime before July 3, 1847.31
The Harris County David Wilson is clearly not the Wilson who was killed at the Alamo. Who was the David Wilson reported to have been killed at the Alamo? A David Wilson signed the Goliad Declaration of Independence on December 20, 1835. At that time Captain Philip Dimmitt was in command at Goliad. Dimmitt’s morning reports for the period show that Wilson was not in Dimmitt’s unit. The name “D. Wilson” is on the February 1, 1836 Alamo voting list, but is not on Lt. Colonel James C. Neill’s return of about December 30, 1835. If D. Wilson was David Wilson, he most likely entered the Alamo with James Bowie on January 18, 1836. Thus, if L
ouis Rose had been Moses Rose and had been a member of Bowie’s company, one would think that Rose would have identified Wilson as one of Bowie’s men and would have known more about him. As it is, it appears that Rose identified a man as having been at the Alamo who was not at the Alamo.32
The only sources that unequivocally identify one “David Wilson” as an Alamo defender are the Telegraph and Texas Register roster and the Rose statement that Wilson was in the Alamo. Wilson was not identified as a single man in the land grant application, but his estate was granted one third of a league, the allotment for a single man. The David Wilson that can be identified as being in Nacogdoches in 1835, however, was David Willson, a married man with family, who had arrived in Texas in 1829. Thus, it appears that the David Wilson, a single man, who was identified by Rose, David Luce, David Cook, and Juan Mousolla, was not the true Nacogdoches Wilson.33
The last headright application that Blake claimed Louis Rose had been a witness for was “579 The Heirs of Marcus Sewell by John McDonald Administrator.” Blake identified the witnesses as “John Dorset, Adolphus Sterne & L. Rose.” Blake reported that Dorset had said he “knew him 3 years ago [and] understood he fell in the battle of the Alamo.” Sterne reported: “knew him before the 2 May 1835 [and] understood he fell in the battle of the Alamo.” Lastly, Blake wrote that Rose said: “Knew him in the Alamo and left him there 3 days before it fell.”34
Dorset and Sterne only believed Sewell had died at the Alamo. Dorset and Sterne could have obtained that belief from the Telegraph and Texas Register list of Alamo victims, which also included the name “_____ Sewell.” Once again it appears Rose furnished the needed proof to put Marcus Sewell in the Alamo. In this case, however, that is not correct. The actual record of the testimony given for the Sewell application shows only two witnesses: Dorset and Sterne. Is this the same document Blake examined? Who knows? But it is the record he claimed he saw.35