Alamo Traces

by Thomas Ricks Lindley

  In sum, the evidence and its analysis suggest that the typed versions may not have been copied from an original handwritten document. Still, there is evidence that the Adjutant General’s Office may have contacted Mrs. Hannig about the veracity of Zuber’s Rose story, most likely in August 1877, almost a full year after the date of the authentic interview.18

  Adjutant General William Steele wrote Zuber on August 29, 1877, concerning the truth of the Rose story. Unfortunately, Steele’s copy of the letter is missing from the letter book for that period. We do, however, have Zuber’s response, which throws some light on what Steele appears to have written. After his presentation of an obviously untrue story about Lt. Colonel James C. Neill and Mrs. Dickinson, Zuber wrote: “I have made the foregoing digression to explain my reasons for holding that Mrs. Dickinson may be mistaken in the time of Rose’s escape. As to General Almonte’s remark that Rose was killed & Mrs. Dickinson could see his body if she wished. I presume he would have made the same remark of any other man in the Alamo. I think his meaning was equivalent to this, ‘Every man in the Alamo has been killed. Not one has escaped, you can see the bodies of all; or of any one of them, if you wish.’ ”19

  Some individuals might argue that Zuber’s response is proof that there was an original Ross document. Adjutant General Steele, however, appears to have written Zuber that Dickinson had reported that a man named Rose had been killed in the fall of the Alamo and that Almonte had verified Rose’s death. That information clearly conflicts with the Ross document, which does not report that Almonte said Ross was killed. According to the Ross report, Almonte told Dickinson the “deserter” was killed. But by any reasonable interpretation of the Ross document, Ross and the deserter were the same person. Therefore, Ross, Rose, or whoever was killed.20

  What about Zuber’s reference to Dickinson being mistaken about Rose’s time of escape? The Ross account reports that Dickinson said Ross escaped on March 5, and Zuber maintained Rose went over the wall on March 3. Does that difference prove there was an original handwritten Ross document? Probably not. Zuber, however, was certainly worried about Dickinson’s claim of a different escape time for a defender named Rose. Whatever Dickinson told Steele or his representative about the time of a Rose escape conflicted with Zuber’s story that Moses Rose departed the Alamo in late afternoon on March 3. If that is not the case, then why did Zuber respond with a piece of fiction to argue that Dickinson was not in the Alamo during the last three days of the siege and could not have known about Rose’s departure. Remember, Zuber claimed that three days before the final assault the local priest had taken Dickinson and her baby out of the Alamo and placed them in cupola of the San Fernando church.21

  Exactly what Dickinson told the adjutant general or his representative about a defender named Rose will probably never be determined. A written record of the discussion may not have been made. We do, however, know what Dickinson said to a Caldwell County judge about James M. Rose in the summer of 1857. Susanna, when asked to describe Rose, answered: “He was about thirty-five or forty years of age. He was of medium height, heavy set, rather full square face, very quick spoken – he fell with the rest of the defenders of the Alamo – during the siege. I saw Rose often, and upon one occasion heard my husband Capt. Dickinson speak to Rose of a narrow escape he (Rose) had made from a Mexican officer upon the first attack.”22

  First, James M. Rose’s escape was from a Mexican officer, not the Alamo. Second, the event most likely occurred during the enemy’s arrival and capture of Bexar on the afternoon of February 23. It is highly improbable that James Rose’s escape from the Mexican officer occurred in the confusion of the final assault on the morning of March 6, and that Rose stopped to report the incident to Almaron Dickinson, who in turn stopped to tell the story to his wife. The adjutant general or his representative may have simply asked Dickinson: Do you know anything about the escape of a defender named Rose? Dickinson could have answered with her story about James M. Rose’s escape. If she was specifically asked about a “Moses Rose,” she may have assumed Moses Rose was James M. Rose, the “M” standing for Moses.23

  Nevertheless, Zuber’s answer to General Steele about Dickinson’s statements concerning Rose does have one element that is hard to explain. The element is the sentence that reads: “As to General Almonte’s remark that Rose was killed & Mrs. Dickinson could see his body if she wished.” That statement appears to mirror the third part of the Ross report that reads: “Col[.] Almonte . . . told me that the man who had deserted the evening before had also been killed & that if I wished to satisfy myself of the fact that I could see the body, still lying there, which I declined.” The similarity of the two statements seems to verify that at one time there was an original Dickinson report about Ross.24

  There are, however, other explanations for the Almonte “remark.” If the Ross document ever existed, Steele or whoever talked with Dickinson may have misunderstood her. For example in the clearly authentic Dickinson document of September 23, 1876, the interviewer wrote that Dickinson was fifteen years old at the fall of the Alamo. That is incorrect. Dickinson married Almaron Dickinson when she was fifteen years old. Her exact age at the time of the Alamo is unknown, but she would have turned twenty-two sometime in 1836. Angelina, Dickinson’s infant daughter, would have been fifteen months old on March 14, 1836. Perhaps Susanna said that all the defenders, including Rose (probably meaning James M. Rose), had been killed. Then the interviewer assumed she had obtained that from Almonte because it was a common, though wrong, belief that he had taken her from the Alamo.25

  Then there is the possibility that Steele made up the Almonte statement about Rose being killed to bluff Zuber to see how he would respond. And Zuber answered with a huge lie about Dickinson not being in the Alamo the last three days of the siege.26

  Lastly, there is the possibility that there never was a written record of Dickinson’s conversation about Rose’s escape and that the Ross document is a fraud created by an unknown person to substantiate the Moses Rose tale by furnishing an eyewitness and eliminating the problematic date of March 3 found in the Zuber account and the Louis Rose land grant testimony. If that is the case, the document’s creator could have used Zuber’s letter to Steele as a springboard for the alleged Almonte statement.

  Moreover, the creator of such a forged document would have been confronted with another problem in attributing the statement to Dickinson. The writer, however, would have had no choice as Dickinson was the only Alamo survivor still living in the 1870s who could serve as an acceptable eyewitness to verify the Moses Rose tale. The problem was that Dickinson had given earlier affidavits that identified James M. Rose as the only man in the Alamo with the last name of Rose. The alleged Dickinson statement solves that complication by calling the deserter Ross. In sum, the Ross document seems, at least to this writer, to be almost too perfect in what it says.

  In the end there may not be sufficient evidence to prove to most people that the Ross document is fiction. On the other hand, given that there is no original handwritten Ross document; given that Steele’s copy of his letter to Zuber is missing; given that Zuber’s response to Steele indicates Steele reported that Almonte had told Dickinson Ross had been killed; given the improbable nature of the Ross document’s data; given the perfection of the Ross statement in providing answers to the major flaws in the Zuber and Louis Rose evidence, branding the document as highly unreliable and a fraud is a reasonable conclusion.

  Nevertheless, if one wants to accept the Ross document as authentic and assume that the typed statements actually refer to Moses Rose/Louis Rose, there are two problems one must do away with in order to make it work. First, the alleged Dickinson statement can be read to mean that Ross had not escaped the Alamo but had been killed in the attempt. Moreover, that interpretation is reinforced by Zuber’s response to Steele’s missive showing that Dickinson said Rose was killed. Therefore, Ross could not have been Moses Rose, if there ever was such a person.

  Additio
nally, when Walter Lord assumed that the name Ross had to refer to Moses Rose because a man named Ross had never been identified as an Alamo defender, the famed writer made a serious mistake. There was an Alamo defender named “Ross.” He was Ross McClelland, a little Irishman from Mina. So, if the alleged Dickinson statement about Ross is authentic, she was most likely talking about McClelland. Still, this investigator believes the Ross document is a forgery.27

  Chapter Seven Notes

  1 Lord, A Time, 202-203.

  2 Ibid.

  3 Ibid.; “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876.

  4 “Alamo Strays” box, Archives Division, Texas State Library. Former archivist Michael A. Green was kind enough to inform this investigator of the box. The box of documents appears to be the same one that Walter Lord examined in his research on the Alamo.

  5 Version number one of the alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross, “Alamo Strays” box, TSL.

  6 Version number two of the alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross, “Alamo Strays” box, TSL.

  7 Zuber, “An Escape,” 81; Dobie, Boatright, and Ransom, eds., In the Shadow of History, 36; “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876; F. H. K. Day, Number 106, M. B. Clark, Number 203, David Wilson, Number 427, Marcus Sewell, Number 579, “Proceedings of Land Commissioners,” John Blair, Number 259, “Rough Minutes.”

  8 Susanna (Dickinson) Bellows affidavit, November 21, 1853, Harris County, Susanna Bellis affidavit, July 16, 1857, Caldwell County, James M. Rose file, C-7115, Court of Claims collection, GLO.

  9 Lord, A Time, 202-203.

  10 “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876.

  11 Alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross.

  12 Almonte, “Private Journal,” 22-23.

  13 “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876; Annie E. Cardwell interview, “Attended first Texas Presbytery in 1849,” Gonzales Inquirer, June 7, 1911.

  14 Ruiz, “Fall of the Alamo,” 80. See Chapter Nine, this book, for the evidence and analysis that explains why Ruiz was not at San Antonio on March 6, 1836.

  15 Cardwell, “Attended,” June 7, 1911; Morphis, History of Texas, from its Discovery and Settlement, 177.

  16 Alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross; “Testimony of Mrs. Hannig,” September 23, 1876.

  17 Alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross; Zuber, “An Escape,” 83.

  18 Zuber to Steele, September 14, 1877.

  19 Ibid.

  20 Alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross.

  21 Zuber to Steele, September 14, 1877.

  22 Susanna (Dickinson) Bellis affidavit, July 16, 1857.

  23 Ibid.

  24 Zuber to Steele, September 14, 1877; Alleged Hannig statement concerning Ross.

  25 Webb, Carrol, and Branda, eds., Handbook, I: 500-501.

  26 This explanation is pure speculation, but as they say, between heaven and earth anything is possible.

  27 Merrett and Saul statement, July 1838; Erath, “Memoirs of Major George Bernard Erath,” 230-231.

  Chapter Eight

  Mexican Casualties at the Alamo:

  Big and Little

  In fact, the plight of our wounded was quite grievous, and one could hardly enter the places erroneously called hospitals without trembling with horror. The wailing of the wounded and their just complaints penetrated the innermost recesses of the heart; there was no one to extract a bullet, no one to perform an amputation, and many unfortunates died whom medical science could have saved.

  Jose Enrique de la Pena1

  The exact number of Mexican soldiers killed and wounded during the siege and storming of the Alamo is one of the minor mysteries of the Alamo story. As almost always with the Alamo, there is little agreement on the issue. The numbers are high and low. Dr. John Sutherland, who said he was Travis’s first courier to Gonzales, wrote that Santa Anna told him: “ ‘We brought to San Antonio five thousand men and lost during the siege fifteen hundred and forty-four of the best of them. . . .’ The question, however arises, did he mean that 1,544 men were lost to the service, some killed and some permanently wounded, or did he allude to the latter? Mr. [Francisco] Ruiz says ‘Santa Anna’s loss was estimated at 1,600 men,’ which would have left us in the dark, had he not indicated plainly from another remark that he meant the killed only. Speaking of one charge made by the Toluca battalion, he says: ‘They commenced to scale the walls and suffered severely. Out of 800 men, 130 only were left alive.’ By this remark the former is relieved of mystery, showing that he meant to say that 1,600 was about the number killed; for if 670 men fell out of one battalion in one assault, the number slain during the entire siege must have been fully as great in proportion.” Santa Anna, however, on March 6, 1836, wrote that he had lost 70 dead and 300 wounded in the final assault of the Alamo. Other Mexican reports give numbers close to Santa Anna’s figures.2

  General Santa Anna

  Photo courtesy of Texas State Library and Archives Commission

  Recently, new primary sources have come to hand that add new data to the story of the Mexican dead and wounded at the Alamo and to the medical services available to Santa Anna’s troops. The new sources are: (1) a statement, dated August 1, 1836, from Colonel Nicolas Condelle, commander of the Morelos battalion at the siege and storming of Bexar, which reports the activities of Dr. Jose Faustino Moro, the Mexican army’s senior doctor at Bexar in 1835 and 1836; (2) a letter, dated December 15, 1835, from General Martin Perfecto de Cos that contains data about the siege and storming of Bexar and his departure from the city; (3) a muster roll for the Morelos battalion, dated October 3, 1835, at Bexar; (4) a Jose F. Moro letter, dated August 5, 1836, which reports medical corp activities in 1835 and 1836; (5) a Martin Perfecto de Cos letter, dated December 3, 1835, which gives details about Mexican activities during the siege and storming of Bexar; (6) a list of the Mexican officers and units that passed through San Antonio in 1836; (7) a summary, dated August 1, 1836, prepared by the physician who treated most of the soldiers, which gives the number of Mexican dead and wounded from the Alamo.

  Moreover, when the investigator integrates the new evidence with the old evidence, insights and conclusions arise that go beyond the issues of the number of Mexican dead and wounded at the Alamo and the nature of the Mexican medical services at Bexar in 1835 and 1836. In this case, the investigative process takes the reader in a different direction and reveals evidence about the authenticity of two influential Mexican accounts of the Texas Revolution and one Mexican-Texian account of the fall of the Alamo. Those narratives being La Guerra de Tejas: Memorias de un Soldado by Jose Juan Sanchez and With Santa Anna in Texas: A Personal Narrative of the Revolution, the Jose Enrique de la Pena narrative. The Sanchez narrative is supposed to be a contemporary diary that he kept during the fall and spring campaigns in Texas. Whereas, the Pena narrative, a manuscript of over four hundred pages, is alleged to be a memoir based on other sources and a second draft of Pena’s contemporary campaign diary, a 109-page manuscript that has never been published. The Mexican-Texian chronicle is the much-used Francisco Ruiz report that appeared in the 1860 Texas Almanac.3

  To determine the approximate number of Mexican casualties for the 1836 siege and storming of the Alamo, one must first determine General Martin Perfecto de Cos’s number of dead and wounded in the fall campaign of 1835. Cos left a number of wounded men behind when he departed the city on December 12, 1835. Those men were later included in an August 1, 1836 hospital report of the Mexican dead (the men who died from their wounds while being treated) and wounded from the Alamo.

  Mexican street scene

  Photo courtesy of Joseph Musso collection

  Let us start with the battle of Concepcion in late October 1835, and Lieutenant Colonel Jose Maria Mendoza, General Cos’s secretary. Besides Mendoza’s main job of taking dictation, he commanded fifty infantrymen from the Morelos battalion at the old mission on October 28. In addition to Mendoza’s men, Colonel Domingo de Ugartechea commanded 20
0 cavalrymen and Lieutenant Francisco de Castaneda commanded two “guerrillas” of sixty horsemen each. The Mexican force had two field pieces, a long bronze six-pounder and a gun of unknown caliber. General Vicente Filisola later observed: “There were more than two hundred of the enemy ambushed at that place, and they were able to fire point blank and with great accuracy. Thus in less than ten minutes almost all fifty brave men of the Morelos group were lying on the ground either dead or wounded, and the artillery piece [the six-pounder] was in the hands of those traitors.”4

  In regard to the Mexican dead and wounded, Rafael Muzquiz, the governor of Coahuila and Texas, reported on November 7, 1835, that after two engagements with the enemy, the Mexican force had suffered forty wounded and fourteen killed. Muzquiz, however, destroyed the credibility of his report by claiming that seventy-five Texians had been killed. When in fact, only one Texian, Richard Andrews, had been killed.5

  Samuel Maverick, who at the time was a prisoner in the city, reported: “Oct. 28th. Fifteen Mexican infantry out of the 42 wounded brought in are, this morning, dead; besides this havoc of the infantry, artillery-men, etc. there were some of the cavalry killed. It is probable that more than 42 were brought off wounded for they [Mexicans] reported 8 (only) left dead [on the field], whereas the Padre (who went with 10 men at the request of Austin to Gen’l Cos) reports 23 dead [on the field] and some dying in the American Camp. There must be at least 80 put past duty [dead and wounded]. The old Padre reports but one [Richard Andrews of Bastrop] man as being touched, and he only wounded in a tender part [grapeshot in the gut].” Then on October 29 Maverick reported there had been “Several [Mexican] deaths” in the city.6 Using the Maverick numbers, it appears that as of October 29, the Mexican dead were 15, 23, and 2 for a total of 40 men. The wounded stood at twenty-five or more. Of course, that number would change over time. Men would die, other soldiers would recover, and additional men would be wounded.