Battle of the Alamo from Survivor's Lips

Charles Bledsoe, aged Texan, reaches the city from Arizona and relates history of famous fight - tells of his escape.

Stooping and gray, weatherbeaten from the suns of divers countries, torn by Mexican bullets, minnie balls of the Civil war, and by lances of hostile Indians, and above all, upsetting with his claims the history of the Alamo fight, Charles Bledsoe, an old time Texan, and companion of Big Foot Wallace, and a survivor, he claims, of the battle at the Alamo, is now at Fest's wagonyard on North Flores street.

Bledsoe, who says he is 82 years of age, came into the city Friday, traveling in his battered wagon, drawn by half-starved ponies, having come across the country from Arizona. He came he says, "because he wanted to see if all his old friends were dead." He has been away from Texas for fifty years he says, and wanted to see some of them before he died.

From here he purposes going to Austin, where he had a cousin years ago. It has been suggested by those who have heard this veteran's story that a movement be started for his relief.

According to the old man's story, his entire life has been one of adventure, beginning with skirmishes with the Mexicans while a boy of 12 years, in company with two uncles from Missouri, immediately followed by the battle of the Alamo, and with adventures following in quick succession up to a tamer life at mining in later years, and a life at present of scant pleasure, and practically penniless old age, in which a bare living is eked out by peddling from his old canvas covered wagon. It includes wealth secured by mining in Colorado, poverty and hardship in filibustering expeditions to Nicaragua, hard service in the Civil war and labor as a hostler in the war with Mexico, beside.

Eighty-two years ago he was born near Lexington, Ky., his people moving while he was a child to Missouri. Here while he was a boy of 10 or 12 years, well grown for his age, he ran away with his two uncles Jim and John Bledsoe who had joined a party of adventurers bound for Texas under the leadership of a man named Blair. These thirty men came from Missouri and Arkansas. They had heard of the adventures of Crockett and Bowie and other pioneers in Texas history, and determined to cast in their lot with them.

Their journey was not without adventure. They met while in Texas small bands of Mexican soldiers, and several skirmishes took place, until one morning at a place called Little Creek near San Antonio, they encountered another band of soldiers, and while engaged with them heard the firing of the pioneers who were hotly pursued by an overwhelming force of Mexicans.

The two bands came together during a running fight of several hours and were pursued by the Mexican forces to the Alamo. With the Mexicans on their heels, the panting men rushed into the Alamo and barricaded the doors. Several were shot down while they were crushing in.

At once the building was surrounded by troops. Mexicans climbed on the old earthern (sic) roof and began to tear holes in it and the Texans fired through the roof into them until blood dripped in and the red stains ran down the walls in streams.

Texans, shot through the head as they tried to fire through the windows, fell back upon their comrades and the building reeked with powder smoke. There was no water, and the men fought with powder-blackened faces and parching tongues from early in the afternoon until dusk.

Outside, through the windows in lulls of the firing, could be seen rows upon rows of dead Mexican soldiers, the wounded crawling off to shelter. Little by little the firing of the Americans ceased, for their powder was giving out, until only an occasional shot was fired through the blood spattered windows. The floor was slippery with blood, and the dead and wounded were so thick on the floor that movement was impossible.

"Open the door for God's sake." some one shouted, and the Texans, throwing down their useless flintlocks, drew their long knives and made for the heavy door on which the Mexicans had already begun an assault with timbers. Other soldiers climbed in the windows and shot down the men inside.

The door was forced open little and the long knives and Spanish bayonets clashed in the opening, red with blood. The firing had almost ceased, and the heavy breathing of the men could be heard.

As the door opened, Bledsoe dodged under the clashing weapons, ran around the building and made for the river. Several soldiers saw him and followed shouting, but he gained the river in safety, and notwithstanding a jagged wound across the soldier made by a bullet earlier in the day, managed to swim or crawl for several miles below where he crawled out on the shore, almost dead from fear and exhaustion. Before him loomed the gray walls of a Spanish mission. He thought it a Spanish castle or house, and climbed a mesquite tree to see if there were Mexicans about. Then he followed the river, coming out several miles lower down.

From a tree he saw another body of men, who proved to be Cherokee Indians. They surrounded him, and through one who spoke a little English, he learned that they had been fighting Mexicans also, and that they regarded him as a friend, and would take care of him.

With this band of Indians he went across the Arkansas river. They had plenty of horses. He did not hear of his companions in the Alamo until long afterward, when their fate was told him in New Orleans.

With these Indians he made his home until war was declared with Old Mexico. He then joined a party of traders bound for New Orleans, and while there was engaged by Gen. Taylor to care for his horse. Troops were pouring into New Orleans to take part in the war. He acted as servant to Gen. Taylor throughout the war, but took no part in the fighting.

Meeting With Wallace.

After the war he came to San Antonio, where he met Big Foot Wallace, who was then acting as a sort of ranger, making up parties to go out within a radius of forty miles of San Antonio wherever hostile Indians were reported. The little commands of from two to eight or ten men under Wallace had innumerable fights with the Indians, in one of which Bledsoe received a lance thrust under his ribs on the left side, and still bears a long white scar.

After peace was declared, he joined Wallace, who was known as "Cap," and who was acting as guard or escort to the stage line carrying the mail between San Antonio, through old Fort Franklin, now El Paso, and Albuquerque, N.M. The guards of the stage rode on horseback with it, and drove before them a bunch of mules in order to change with those drawing the stage. On the second trip a fight took place with Indians at Devil's river, in which two men with the stage were killed. This was six miles up the river from what is known as Painted Cave.

Some time after this a man named French organized in San Antonio a company of filibusters to go to Nicaragua. They intended to join Gen. Walker, a filibuster. The company formed in this city, and the men were enrolled in front of the Alamo. Bledsoe became a member of the company. This party marched to Port Lavaca and took passage to Graytown on a steamer. At Greytown (sic) they met a man named Kinney, said to have been a Texan, who claimed the whole country.

After eighteen months in Nicaragua, Bledsoe returned through Texas and entered the Union army, joining the Fiftieth infantry under Major White at Rio Grande del Norte. This command went to Fort Leavenworth, and was afterward ordered to Salt Lake. This was about 1855 or 1856.

In the Civil War.

Bledsoe served in the Union army with the Western division under Generals Rosecrans and Blunt, taking part in a number of battles. Near Fayetteville, Ark., he received a ball in the hip, and his hand was shattered by a minnie ball near Little Rock. Bledsoe believes the troops were opposed to Generals Cooper and Kirby Smith in this fight, but is not sure.

Even now, he says, when he thinks of that fight at the Alamo he sometimes finds himself cursing the Mexicans. He says he can still see the blood dripping down, and can hear the awful hell of noise inside the walls, but he remembers little of the outside view, for he was "in too big a hurry" when he got out. He saw the bodies of several Mexicans, though, as he ran.

"And they murdered them." he said. "They murdered them next day. There was not one left. Of course now we are at peace, but if ever this country is at war with Mexico and I am alive I will not be too old to remember that fight. Oh I will remember it, and I won't be too old to fight either. That was murder; cold-blooded murder."

He says he can almost hear the cheering, and the bullets whizzing through the windows and flattening against the walls.

"When they told me," he said, "away over there in New Orleans that both my uncles had been murdered, I can't tell you how I felt. Maybe I will be able to show it some day."

The old man says he never married, and that his whole family consists of his two ponies and his dog. His wagon, which is standing in the wagon yard, is one of the old-fashioned canvas covered sort in very bad repair, though it has served its owner for a house for many years while traveling.

Bledsoe says that years ago he acquired considerable money in mining in Colorado, and had a good bank account in Denver, but that it has been wiped out long ago. He is now too old, he says, to look for gold and beside is almost paralyzed from his wounds.

He will be at the wagon yard for some days, and would like those who may have known of him or his friends to talk with him.