Subject: Alamo Architecture
Date: 03/ 25/99
From: Wendel Dickason

I am building a 1:160 scale model (and Latex mold)of the Alamo church, c.1836, but have run into some conflicting information in the various plats, drawings and textual resources I have been trying to use (Nah!! That can't happen!). I have been comparing the plats and artworks found mostly in Schoelwer's "Alamo Images" and Nelson's "The Alamo-An Illustrated History", and using the 1961 U.S. Dept. of Interior Survey for precise measurements. I would appreciate any answers, confirmations, or additional resources I might use to make this model as accurate as possible.

1. Sacristy roof: design and construction...mortar? Did it follow the contours of the vaulting or was it flat on top, or even sloped to aid in runoff?
2. Rectory roof: same question, but had some damages been repaired with timber or thatch as per one account?
3. Were there drains from the roofs? Where?
4. Were the Sacristy and Rectory the same height? How high?
5. Shape of the Sacristy: rectangular and extended out about 10' to north beyond the Rectory or was it an 'inverted L' shape, wrapping around the Rectory? Or was that depiction just showing an extension of the second wall between the church and convento?
6. And what about that second wall? Was it there in 1836...roofed?
7. Was there a window in the east wall of the Sacristy?
8. Did the corral wall (north to south) connect to the northeast corner of the Sacristy or was it where it now stands in the courtyard?
9. Was there a window in the west wall of the Rectory? How high up? Why so high?
10. Was there a thin buttress on the north wall of the Rectory, a few feet west of the Sacristy door?
11. How deep were the scaffolding holes in outside walls of the church?
12. Was the nave door to the Rectory cut in during Army renovations between 1847 and 1850?

Wendel Dickason
Cedar Hill, Texas

1. The sacristy roof is of stone and mortar, and in 1836, at least, (and still today, I think, although I haven't been up on that part) was about two feet thick with an outer surface of hard plaster. It followed the curves of the vaulting, although not as steeply around the edges.
   
   
2. By the "rectory" I suppose you mean the room called the "Monk's Burial Chamber" on the HABS drawings, the flag room today. This room was the "antesacristy," and served as the sacristy when the sacristy was serving as the church. In 1772, the room had two doors and three windows. In 1793, the "rectory" had a roof of cedar beams, probably with boards over these, and a thick (about 1-foot) layer of clay with a plaster weather coat on the upper surface. In the room today you can see two funny stubs about eight feet above the floor, one on the east and one on the west wall: these are the spring points of a stone arch that supported the roof across its mid-point. In 1793, this arch was water-damaged and was being held up by wooden supports. By the 1840s, a wall had been built across the room under the arch to give it permanent support. Two doors are shown passing through this wall from the southern half of the room to the northern half.
   
   
3. The Sacristy had drains; the hard-plaster upper surface was shaped so as to carry the water to "canales" at specific points. Only thing is I don't know where those were... probably at the north corners and the midpoint of the East Side.
   
   
4. Yes, they were within three or four inches of each other, pretty close to 17 feet high from the floor of the "rectory" to the upper surface of the roof(s).
   
   
5. The sacristy was a rectangle; the walls extended another 15 feet 2inches from the inner surface of the present sacristy crosswall to the outer surface of the original end wall along the east wall of the sacristy. The present "ruins" about chest high around the north end of the sacristy are built on the original foundations. The "second wall" is indeed the stub of a second wall, the inner or patio-side wall of a room north of the "rectory." Two arched doorways opened from the "rectory" into this northern room.
   
   
6. Seth Eastman did a drawing in 1948 looking south at the north face of the main south wall of the convento enclosure, the original doorway through it towards the church, and the ruined but still standing portions of this northern room. It appears to have still been roofed as of the time of the battle. The rest of this row of rooms along the main had probably fallen by the time of the battle.
   
   
7. The inventories indicate three windows opening into the sacristy, one of them large. I suppose that one of the two smaller windows is the one over the doorway into the "rectory." The other small one was probably through the east wall of the sacristy, in the area removed by probably through the north wall.
   
   
8. The corral wall extended to the north from the northwestern corner of the sacristy.
   
   
9. There is a filled opening high on the west wall of the "rectory." It appears to have been part of the construction by Honore Grenet after he cutoff the north end of the sacristy and cut back on the north wall of the "rectory," and built new walls across portions of this area. Seems to me I remember a photograph of this area from the outside when the H.G. store was still standing, and the window was there, same size and shape as the others of H.G.'s store. The 1793 inventory says there was a window through this wall, but it was apparently destroyed when much of the northwest corner of this room was rebuilt.
   
   
10. Maybe you mean north of the Sacristy door. [There's] still a big buttress just north of the door today. Farther north, in the northeastern corner of the "rectory," on the inside (and on the outside too, if you know where to look), you can see the traces of one of the arched doorways that went north out of the "rectory" into the northern room -- this looks like a buttress incorporated into the north wall of the "rectory." Is that what you're talking about? This one is the last traces of the original north wall of the "rectory." The 1793 inventory says that there was a window through the south wall into the nave of the church, but since this would be unlike any church I've ever seen, I'm assuming the person making the inventory saw the deep niche and thought it was a window, without looking any closer.
    
    
11. The scaffolding holes were never measured, as far as I know, but standard practice would have been about 6 to 9 inches deep and maybe 4 or 5 inches across.
    
    
12. The doorway from the nave into the rectory was not there as of 1848-49. It was cut at some later date, but that date is unknown, although the irregular shape makes an Army origin likely. Note that the opening was not cut entirely through the wall, but through a niche on the "rectory" side that was about half the wall thickness deep. Traces of the finished surface are still recognizable on, I think, the east edge of the opening, on the "rectory" side of the wall. Did you ever wonder why there's a window over the doorway from the sacristy into the "rectory"? I don't have an answer, but I certainly have wondered about it.

Jake Ivey,
Archaeological Consultant to Alamo de Parras

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Subject: Surrender Plan
Date: 03/29/99
From: John Warren

Any truth to the rumor that Crockett tried to work out a surrender plan with Santa Anna in the last days before the battle? Personal meetings?John Warren
Ladoga,Indiana

The so-called "rumor" sounds very similar to the account of Enrique Esparza given to the San Antonio Light on November 22, 1902 :

"After the first few days I remember that a messenger came from somewhere with word that help was coming. The Americans celebrated it by beating the drums and playing on the flute. But after about seven days fighting there was an armistice of three days and during this time Don Benito had conferences every day with Santa Anna...

...Don Benito, or Crockett, as the Americans called him, assembled the men on the last day and told them Santa Anna's terms, but none of them believed that any one who surrendered would get out alive, so they all said as they would have to die any how they would fight it out."

In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that as a "high private" Crockett was in a position to negotiate such terms with Santa Anna or anyone else.

There are many such apocryphal stories surrounding this siege. This one had its origins with an old man 66 years after the fact. It is also highly unlikely that if Esparza as an eight-year-old boy HAD witnessed any of this that he could have understood what was happening and then remember it in such vivid detail six decades later.


Subject: Irish Colonists
Date: 04/08/99
From: Robert L. Durham

San Patricio was settled by colonists from Ireland and, from what I've read, they sided with Mexico against the Texian Revolutionaries, even fighting on the side of the Mexicans at Lipantlan. Several questions concerning the Irish colonists:

1. Were there other Irish colonies in Texas besides San Patricio?

2. The Irish colonists must have been torn between two loyalties, much as the Tejanos -- by language and culture, it seems they would have identified with the colonists from the U. S. but, based upon religion, with the Mexicans. Were there also Irish colonists fighting on the side of the Texas Revolution?

3. After the Revolution, what were the repercussions for those who fought against the Texians?

Robert L. Durham
Dayton, OH

First, you may be confusing the Irish colonists recruited as a result of Irish empresarios McMullen, McGloin, Power and Hewetson with the interesting, but later and relatively unrelated desertion of members of the US Army, mostly Catholic, not all Irish, to the Mexican Army who were tagged as the San Patricio (St. Patrick in Spanish, probably because of an Irish leader) Battalion in the US-Mexican War.

Like the majority of Austin and DeWitt colonists, Irish immigrant colonists in the 1825-1835 period were loyal Mexican citizens whose regional autonomy and lives after invitation to immigrate by a short-lived liberal and visionary Mexican Republican government were threatened by a return to vice-regal despotism and racism. There is no evidence that the individual timetable of transition from loyalty into resistance to adopted government, both of which transcended race and religion, was any different for fresh Irish-Mexican colonists than first, second, third or more generation Mexican immigrants from Europe filtered through the United States of the North. This is despite the fact that the two Irish colonies consisted of a higher proportion of native Tejanos than the Austin and DeWitt colonies and that the Irish were "formal" Catholics. I havearguedpreviously that the majority of Austin and DeWitt colonists were "de facto" Catholics in context of real life in colonial Texas, in practice no different than "formal" Catholics (what was the measure of a Catholic in early Texas, or for that matter today?).

Irish McMullen-McGloin colonists (municipality San Patricio de Hibernia) and Power-Hewetson (municipality Mission Refugio) and their descendants (including empresarios James McGloin and James Power) pervade all major actions toward Texas independence, both as a State within the Mexican Republic and independent Republic. Capt. Hugh Fraser's local Refugio militia  which included Tejanos lead the resistance locally and joined Fannin's troops in the region with a significant number becoming victims of massacre. Mutual respect, transcending race and religion, among the Irish colonists and their

Tejano neighbors was evidenced by the intercession of centralist loyalist Capt. Carlos de la Garza of the Victoriana Guardes to spare local colonists, one-time friends and neighbors, from execution after capture at Goliad and Refugio by Urrea's forces, even though he had aided in their capture. This was reciprocated in later years by tolerance and protection by local families of the old Tejano Captain, who refused to leave his Texas ranch amid threats of retribution in days of the Republic and died there after years as a productive regional Texan in 1882.

Wallace L. McKeehan

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Subject: Sam Houston
Date: 04/08/99
From: Rose Doss

1. Who made Sam Houston's coffin?
2. Who was the father of Governor James Hogg?
3. Who was George Washington Baines?

Rose Doss
Texas

Though these questions are beyond the scope of this web site or this Forum, I'll attempt to answer at least part of your questions.

1. Don't know this one. But, Sam Houston died on July 26, 1863 and was dressed in Masonic ceremonial trappings. He was buried in Oakwood Cemetery at Huntsville.
    
2. James Stephen Hogg was the first native governor of Texas. He was born near Rusk on March 24, 1851, the son of Lucanda (McMath) and Joséph Lewis Hogg.
    
3. George Washington Baines was a Baptist pastor, teacher, and editor. In 1850 his family moved to Huntsville, Texas, where Baines preached and began a lifelong friendship with Sam Houston.

Subject:Sam Houston's coffin
Date: 04/10/99
From: Rick Tepker

From M.K. Wisehart, "Sam Houston: American Giant" (1962):  "His coffin was built by a Union prisoner of war, the ship's carpenter from the Harriet Lane, a Federal Vessel captured at Galveston.  This carpenter had been released from a penitentiary cell by the General's intervention."  I recall reading that Houston's last days often were with Union prisoners of war, whose rights to decent treatment he had defended.

Rick Tepker
Norman, Oklahoma

Subject: G.W. Baines
Date:04/10/99
From:Wallace McKeehan

One might add that G.W. Baines was President of Baylor University and great grandfather of President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Wallace McKeehan
Bellaire, TX

Subject:New Orleans Greys' Flag
Date: 04/11/99
From: Clayton Umbach

I've just discovered this page and am delighted to see there are so many folks genuinely interested in the Alamo and related history. As a recently retired U.S. naval officer returned to Texas, I'm eager to jump back into this subject which has fascinated me since childhood.

By the way, I was one of the "ring leaders" that spearheaded efforts in late 1985 and early 86 to get Congress to ask Mexico for a loan of the New Orleans Greys' flag in time for Texas' 150th. I'm surprised at how much press it got-- some negative-- which probably didn't help matters much. At any rate, Mr. Kevin Young is correct. The flag belongs to Mexico, and should remain there. Captured battle standards were a big deal in that age (George Custer's brother won one of his two medals of honor for capturing a confederate flag) and we do have a few Mexican flags at San Jacinto. Not to mention Santa Anna's cork leg! Looking forward to reading more of your interesting comments.

Regards,
Clayton Umbach
Houston Texas