San Antonio Express newspaper, April 28, 1881, Thursday.
The Express representative yesterday enjoyed a most pleasant visit to the Alamo. It was not his first visit there by any means. The grey walls of the old structure have been familiar to him for many years, but the visit yesterday was rendered the more enjoyable from the fact that the party with whom the reporter made this visit was quite a noted one. It consisted of Mrs. Susan J. Hannig, of Austin, the only survivor of the massacre at the fall of the Alamo; Mrs. Rebecca Black, the grand-niece of Deaf Smith, the famous Texas spy; Col. H. B. Andrews, vice-president of the G.H. & S.A. railway, and lady; Bishop Quintard, of Tennessee; Dean Richardson, of St. Mark's cathedral, and two little nieces of Mrs. Hannig.
An erroneous impression exists, which is that the Alamo had no survivor. Thermopylae's field of blood left one man to tell the story of the terrible struggle, how Spartan courage met the hordes of Xerxes, and it is said that the Alamo left no one to tell the story of her fall. This is correct, as far as manly courage goes, but there was a brave woman left to give to the present the details of its horrors. Her name is Mrs. Hannig. Some have doubted that this was true, that Mrs. Hannig was really at the Alamo during that immortal contest when Travis, Crockett and Bowie fell, and that name of the Alamo became perpetuated to all ages. But those who are skeptical on this point would doubt no more should they accompany the aged lady to the scene, and hear her tell of the bloody struggle that marked the experience of her presence there in 1836.
After a long absence indeed, after the lapse of forty-five years, Mrs. Hannig yesterday returned to the old scene. She is a Tennessean by birth, is now sixty-six years of age, and when the Alamo fell lost her husband, Captain Dickinson. Just before the Mexicans arrived, headed by Santa Anna, she was, together with her child, at the Musquiz house, near Main Plaza. The enemy appeared first in swarms early in the morning in the southwestern suburbs of the city. Their forces were from ten to thirteen thousand strong. As soon as they were announced to be coming, her husband rode up to the door of her abode and called to her to seize her child and take refuge in the Alamo. She mounted the bare back of the horse he rode, behind his saddle, and holding her child between her left arm and breast, soon reached the old church. An apartment was assigned her, while her husband turned away, after an embrace and a kiss, and an eternal adieu, to meet his obligation to his fellowmen and his country. By this time the Mexican bugles were sounding the charge of battle, and the cannon's roar was heard to reverberate throughout the valley of the San Antonio. But about one hundred and sixty sound persons were in the Alamo, and when the enemy appeared, overwhelmingly, upon the environs of the city to the west, and about where the International depot now stands, the Noble Travis called up his men, drew a line with his sword and said: " My soldier, I am going to meet the fate that becomes me. Those who will stand by me, let them remain, but those who desire to go, let them go and who crosses the line that I have drawn, shall go!" The scene is represented by Mrs. Hannig to have been grand, in that its location was above the results and influences of ordinary sentiment and patriotism, and bore the plain tinge of that divinity of principle which characterizes the acts of the truly noble and the brave.
The heroes defied the Mexican, thought the former were but a handful and the aztec horde came on like the swoop of a whirlwind. Organized into divisions, they came in the form of a semi-circle that extended from northeast to southwest, but the strongest attack was from about where the Military plaza is and from a division that marched up from the direction of the Villita. Three times they were repulsed, and the two cannon, planted high upon the ramparts, carried dismay with their belches of fire and lead. There was indeed a resolution to battle till the end. And that fated end came, and brought with it horrors of which even the vivid conception of Crockett could not have dreamed. Mrs. Hannig says there was no second story to the Alamo at that time, it was all one floor. She can give but little of the struggle, as she was in a little dark room in the rear of the building. The party yesterday entered this apartment, and even with a candle could scarcely see each other's faces. The old lady recognized almost every stone, however, and the arch overhead and the corners she said, with tears in her eyes, came back as vividly to memory as though her experiences of yore had been but yesterday. She showed the reporter where her couch had stood, and the window through which she peeped to see the blood of noble men seeping into the ground, and the bodies of heroes lying cold in death. It was to this room that she saw and he was a man named Walker, who had often fired the cannon at the enemy. Wounded, he rushed into the room and took refuge in a corner opposite her own. By this time the Alamo had fallen and the hordes of Santa Anna were pouring over its ramparts, through its trenches and its vaults. The barbarcue horde followed the fated Walker, and, as Mrs. Hannig describes that scene, "they shot him first, and then they stuck their bayonets into his body and raised him up like the farmer does a bundle of fodder with his pitchfork when he loads his wagon." Then she says they dropped the body. They were all bloody, and crimson springs coursed the yard. The old lady says she doesn't know how it all happened, yet tells a great deal. What became of her husband, Almaron Dickinson, she cannot tell, but saw him last when he went from her presence with gun in hand to die for his country. She says that for a while she feared her own fate, but soon was assured by an English colonel in the Mexican army that the Mexicans were not come to kill women but to fight men. Through the intervention of Almonte she was permitted to leave the city on a horse and carry her child with her. Before she left, however, she was conveyed back to the Musquiz place, her home before the time that she was a widow, and the terrible fate which met the followers of Travis, Bowie and Crockett came on. After leaving on the horse, she proceeded a short distance beyond the Salado, when she met with Travis' servant, who had escaped from the guard and was lurking in the brush. The servant recognized her and followed after her. It may be here remarked, incidentally, that there were in the Alamo at its fall about seventy-five men who had been wounded in the fight with Cos, and they were all killed, outright, in spite of their pleadings. The servant of Travis followed her for some time, and when about fifteen miles distant three men were observed approaching. The heart of the woman did not quail, but the servant feared Indians. Said she, under these circumstances: "This is a bold prairie, and if it is an enemy we must meet them face to face." But the apprehensions of the party were assuaged when it was discovered that the dreaded forms were Deaf Smith, Robert E. Handy and Captain Karnes, sent out by General Sam Houston to ascertain the condition of the garrison of the Alamo. It was a meeting of friends, and soon Mrs. Dickinson, now Mrs. Hannig, reached Gonzales. Her subsequent history would require too much space to be given.
The review of the Alamo was truly interesting, and the reporter could not keep pace with her recitals of experiences there in the long ago. It was asked whether the men who defended the Alamo were drunk, as some have published, when the fight came on, severely to defeat the effect of the noblest of human contests for liberty, Mrs. Hannig declared that any such assertion would be no insult in common patriotism, and condemned it. She had never seen either Travis, Crockett or Bowie under liquored influence, and deprecated any impression of such nature as might come abroad. As the time of the fatal rencounter, all were ready for the fray, and all prepared to die for the nationality of the republic of Texas.
True womanly courage is exemplified by the conduct of Mrs. Hannig. She loved her own, and that was the child she hugged to her bosom. Her life had been endangered, and they wanted to take her child away from her, but she would not concede, and so she subjected herself to trials, looking consequences squarely in the face, and knowing that firmness would be bound to bring about her ultimate vindication.
A few pleasant moments were spend by the party after the old Alamo had been inspected, and its scenes revived by the only present survivor, when Mr. Grenet's best was produced, not his best beer, but his best of Mumm's celebrated wine. And then the little party dissolved, it was with more than one regret, and will never be forgotten.
