And in Ms. Williams’s handwritten rough notes of an interview with A. D. Griffith (found by Todd Hansen during his research for The Alamo Reader but not included there), there is even more:
As young boy sat for hours and listened to his uncle J. D. Griffith and Capt. Frank Dupree talk about early days. Says that some time in 60s heard them talk about Rose…. When he made his appearance at home and told about his escape from the Alamo—told all people he was sure Travis and all his men were dead by that time for there was no chance for them to hold out against St. Ana’s force. Said when Travis gave him chance to go he took it…. Capt. Frank Dupree saw Rose—When Rose said when all hope lost—all—Rose—said Rose crawled thru aqueduct after dark—said crawled 4 or 5 hundred yards in thistle—went home. Frank Dupree: You damn dirty coward or you would have stayed; Got chance at life and took it—All against him—worked on him so people talked about mobbing him—Afraid and skipped out. [Griffith] Must have been in 50s for was about 8 or 10 yrs old.
This is a significant document. Captain Frank Dupree (who earned that rank serving with the Texas Cavalry, then part of the army of the Confederate States of America, during the Civil War) told the Griffiths in the 1850s that he talked to Rose, who supplied the details listed above—many years before the Zuber account was published in 1873, and before A. D. Griffith could have heard it from his grandmother, whom he saw very little of as a child. Moreover, some details supplied by Dupree have never been published anywhere before now.
Corroboration of the A. D. Griffith claim appeared the next year from Dobie. In a 1940 Dallas Morning News story entitled “The Line That Travis Drew,” he wrote: “Charles W. Ramsdell, professor of history in the University of Texas, and one of the pillars in the Texas State Historical Society, married A. D. Griffith’s daughter. Ramsdell tells me that he, too, used to hear Griffith relate the story—not however, as coming from Mrs. Dickinson but as coming from his paternal family, who were among the early colonists. When the revolution broke out, they were living in what is now Grimes County. According to tradition in the Griffith family, Rose came to their home on his way east from the Alamo and told of his escape.” (More information on the Zuber account—or at least the likelihood that the Rose story could have been accurately passed from Rose to Mrs. Zuber to her son—would be supplied in a July 4, 1967, column by Frank X. Tolbert. He quoted a June 9, 1935, affidavit by a grandson of Mary Ann Zuber, who wrote: “Grandmother had a wonderful memory. She could read any book and recite the gist of it from the beginning to end. I have heard her recite Shakespeare, Byron, or Milton’s Paradise Lost line for line. I have heard the Rose story many times and always told as the truth.”)
And in another letter, Williams related the opinion of Griffith’s sister as to the truth of the line story: “Mrs. Sterling [granddaughter of Susanna Dickinson, and raised by her] avowed that it was.”
Hansen found even more corroboration of the Rose story’s existence pre-1873 in Williams’s papers. She corresponded with a neighbor of the Zubers, W. T. Neblett, who wrote to her in 1935: “Now the Rose story published in 1873 was common Zuber family history and I cannot say definitely when I first heard the story but I feel sure that it was before 1873. I was born in 1857 and between 10 and 16 years old and living within 10 miles which was a neighbor distance in those days; and especially with our families friendly and intimate and my parents educated for those days I feel sure that I heard of it before 1873.” And in a subsequent letter, Mr. Neblett relayed a letter received from his sister, Mary Neblett Brown, on the subject:
“Yes, I heard the ‘Rose story’ from Pa himself. He had gotten it from the Zuber family. I heard Pa speak of it. He believed it. I see no reason to doubt it. Pa died in 1871.” [Their father, William H. Neblett, was an attorney who had lived in Texas since 1840 and had practiced law in Grimes County since about 1852.] No doubt I heard this story at the same time that my sister did which must have been 1868 or 69 as I know he had some business with J. R. Edwards, brother-in-law to Zuber, who lived close neighbor to the Zubers…. I know of my own knowledge that the older people of the community and the county talked of the Rose story and regarded it as a fact but I cannot fix on exact date prior to 1873.
Mrs. Brown is most emphatic about whom she heard it from—her father—and remembers quite clearly that “he believed it.” Her father died in 1871, before the appearance of the Zuber story in the 1873 Texas Almanac.
AS I WAS CONDUCTING THE RESEARCH for the book you hold in your hands, I found a few items that, combined with the previous information, strongly point to the truth of the story of Rose and the line.
Frank Johnson, an early Texas colonist, was one of the firebrands of the Texas Revolution, involved from the outset in the territory’s fight for independence. He knew Travis, another member of the war party, well. Johnson moved to Austin in the early 1870s, and began researching and writing a comprehensive history of Texas. Left unfinished at his death in 1884, it would be completed by Eugene C. Barker and Ernest W. Winkler and published in 1914 in five volumes as A History of Texas and Texans, a tome well respected for its accuracy, information, and insight.
Johnson’s papers, most of them his handwritten notes and transcriptions, fill several boxes in the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. In one file labeled “Historical Notes—Alamo,” there is a transcription of Zuber’s 1873 Rose story. On the next page, in Johnson’s own hand, is written the following:
The foregoing communication was read to Mrs. Dickinson, now Mrs. Hannig, the only living witness of the lamentable and sad catastrophe of the Alamo. Says that she did not know Rose personally, but recollects that a man escaped at the time mentioned; that the troops were drawn up in line and addressed by Col. Travis.
Between the time of Rose’s escape and the fall of the Alamo, she heard the men speak of the escape, but none believed that he would get away alive.
We were well acquainted with the elder Zuber, during his lifetime, and knew him as a man of strict veracity. The family is highly respectable, and any statement made by them is entitled to full credit and belief.
Johnson and Susanna Dickinson Hannig both lived in Austin when Zuber’s “An Escape from the Alamo” reached the public late in 1872. It seems likely that Johnson—an indefatigable researcher, who died in Mexico while on a research trip—read the Zuber account soon after publication and decided to hear from Mrs. Hannig directly what she thought of the story. Certainly, participants sometimes incorporate the accounts of others into their memories—but Johnson makes clear that this was her first reaction to hearing the Zuber story, not an account rendered months or years later. The extra details she adds (“she heard the men speak of the escape, but none believed that he would get away alive”) sound genuine, particularly for a woman who was not known to possess a vivid imagination. (Despite some inconsistencies in interviews, possibly inserted by reporters, there is a conspicuous absence in hers of the absurdities that populate so many other Alamo survivor accounts.)
That Johnson talked directly to Mrs. Hannig, and believed Zuber’s story of Rose’s escape—at least in its essentials—once he heard her corroborate it, is clear from a December 26, 1875, story in the Galveston Daily News. Entitled “Heroes of the Alamo” (and sloppily edited and proofread, with a strikingly large number of misspelled names), it is chiefly concerned with the ongoing attempt by adjutant general William Steele to ascertain a correct roster of Alamo defender names. Steele had enlisted the help of Johnson, and a list is included in the article. On it is “Moses Ross,” obviously “Rose” misspelled. And immediately following the list is this: “Col. Johnson says Moses Ross escaped before the assault…. This list Colonel J. regards as full and complete as any that can be made at this distance of time.” The article continues:
The child who survived [Susanna Dickinson], and is now living in Austin, remembers a circumstance which might account for one of the absentees and reduce the number to that extent. The captain of
one of the companies, the company being in line, called upon all his men willing to remain and fight to the last to step forward. All responded but one, and he was permitted to go. Whether this was the man sent with dispatches or the one who is reported to have escaped before the assault, or a third person who has never been heard from since, we can not tell. If living even, it is not likely he would at this time step forward to explain.
The reporter obviously talked to or communicated with Johnson, who told him the story of Rose and the line; then he somehow failed to include Travis’s name as “the captain of one of the companies” in his retelling. (The possibility exists that the reporter got the line details directly from Mrs. Hannig—“The child who survives, and is now living in Austin, remembers a circumstance”—but this seems unlikely given the context of the article and the lack of any mention of an interview with her.) Johnson, it is apparent, believed the story after talking to Mrs. Hannig.
Finally, there is this. In the September 9, 1901, edition of the Gonzales Inquirer there ran a story entitled “The Fall of the Alamo” detailing an interview with David S. H. Darst, a Gonzales resident “who was one of the participants of the struggle for Texas independence. Darst, a former mayor of Gonzales, and one of the founders of the Inquirer in 1851, had called at the Inquirer office the previous day to deny certain untrue stories and give the true facts.” (He was also the son of Jacob Darst, one of the “Gonzales 32,” those members of the Gonzales Ranging Company of Mounted Volunteers who had reinforced the Alamo on March 1 and died there five days later. The younger Darst had expressed a desire to go with his father, but had been denied permission.) As related by the reporter:
Mr. Darst was well-acquainted with Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson before the fall of the Alamo and with Mrs. Dickinson after the fall of the Alamo. He also knew the man referred to as a servant called Rose. Mr. Darst says he saw the man Rose in the year 1840. That he was a Frenchman and was in the Alamo before the fall and the Frenchman gave this version: When the Alamo was besieged by the Mexicans and no help near, Travis drew a line and asked all who would stay with him to come over on his side. All crossed over except himself (Rose) and he decided to try and escape during the night. He made his escape by going down the ditch referred to in the above extract [Zuber’s account]. He did not come to Gonzales, the nearest station, but went to east Texas and Mr. Darst did not see him until 1840. This is what Mr. Rose told him.
This article serves as further corroboration of the Rose story by a respected individual, who received it directly from the Frenchman himself.
FINALLY, from a larger perspective, Travis’s speech, and the line, make sense. After the arrival of a large Mexican reinforcement on March 3, it must have been increasingly clear that an assault was imminent—and that, despite repeated assurances of Texian reinforcements, none were forthcoming. There are also details that support this knowledge, from Travis giving his ring to Angelina Dickinson and Crockett mentioning his desire to die in his best clothes to the proximity of the Mexican batteries and the knowledge that ladders were being built. And, as Dobie points out, “For Travis to have drawn the line would have been entirely natural…. Travis certainly thought that he was acting a part that the light of centuries to come would illumine.” As is abundantly evident from his actions and his dispatches—and his readings, from Porter’s The Scottish Chiefs to Scott’s Waverley novels—he possessed a taste for the romantic and a flair for the eloquently dramatic. The speech and the line would have been entirely in character—and not without precedent in history, from Francisco Pizarro to Ben Milam, who either drew a line in the dirt or asked his men to step across a line or path already there.
As for Moses Rose, he did himself no favors with his story, since he knew others would view his actions as cowardly. It would have made much more sense to either keep his existence in the Alamo quiet or to claim that he had been sent out from the fort as a scout or courier. Instead, he told the truth, and branded himself forever as “the coward of the Alamo”—an unfair legacy for a man who proved his courage many times throughout his life.
THERE ARE HISTORIANS who will complain that much of this evidence is hearsay, or circumstantial, or that post-1873 journalists may have inserted such details into their “interviews,” especially with Mrs. Hannig and Enrique Esparza. They will say that there is no direct evidence that Moses Rose escaped from the Alamo, or that he was even there, or that he was even the same individual, if he ever existed, as the Louis/Lewis Rose abundantly documented in the Nacogdoches records—and that there is even less documentation for the story of the line that Travis drew. Those historians would be technically correct.
But much of what we know as accepted history, as perceived truth—particularly involving events before the advent of recording devices in the late nineteenth century—is derived from similar, or even weaker, sources. Whole swaths of history as we know it derive from similarly limited documentation. Historians have often cited hearsay evidence, though of course after applying tests of bias, objectivity, accuracy, and witness proximity.
An important point to bear in mind is this: there is not a single event associated with the siege and fall of the Alamo that has been related in so many independent versions by so many different individuals attesting to its fundamental truth. Furthermore, not a single one of these people had an ulterior motive, e.g., for money or for personal aggrandizement, in supporting Zuber and his 1873 account. There now exists enough reliable evidence to consider the existence of Moses Rose, his escape from the Alamo, and the line drawn by Travis to be acceptable, factual history.
PHOTOS
Stephen F. Austin, the first and most successful of the Texas empresarios.
Ben Milam, the Kentucky adventurer and failed empresario who rallied the Texian rebels at San Antonio de Béxar.
Edward Burleson, Bastrop colonist and seasoned Indian fighter. He was elected commander of the Texian forces surrounding Béxar after Austin’s departure.
Erastus “Deaf” Smith, the legendary scout whom William Travis called “the Bravest of the Brave.”
Juan Seguín, scion of one of Béxar’s most prominent Tejano families. He was a staunch federalist and ally of the Texian rebels.
William Barret Travis, in a sketch by Wylie Martin, a San Felipe friend and neighbor. Though the drawing’s attribution is disputed, this is the only known likeness of the Alamo commander.
General Martín Perfecto de Cós, commander of the defeated Mexican army forces at Béxar. He broke his parole and returned to Texas with Santa Anna.
James Bowie, the most dangerous knife fighter in the West: six feet of solid muscle, with eyes that “resembled a tiger’s” when he was angered. (Courtesy of Joseph Musso)
The lovely Ursula Bowie, who died of cholera in 1833. (Courtesy of Joseph Musso)
David Crockett (as he always signed his name), three-time congressman from Tennessee: “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.”
Dr. Amos Pollard, an abolitionist from Massachusetts, served as the Alamo garrison’s surgeon.
Despite his injured leg, Dr. John Sutherland carried the first word of the Mexican army’s arrival at Béxar to the east, reaching the town of Gonzales the next day.
There is no known likeness of James Bonham, but the nephew pictured in this photograph, also named James Bonham (shown here at age twenty-eight, the same age as his uncle at the time of the Alamo battle), was said to be “in appearance almost a double of his famous uncle.”
Antonio López de Santa Anna: “If I were God, I would wish to be more.”
The brave and respected Lieutenant Colonel José Vicente Miñón, hero of the Mexican Revolution. He was often assigned command of the cazadores, the army’s marksmen.
Colonel Juan Almonte, trusted adviser to Santa Anna. New Orleans–educated and fluent in English, he had gained respect for the colonists during an 1834 fact-finding journey through Texas.
General Vicente Filisola, the Italian-born second commander in chief of San
ta Anna’s Army of Operations. He was past his prime as a fighting man but more than capable as an administrator, his primary duty.
General Pedro de Ampudia, artillery commander, was Cuban-born and reputed to be skilled and ruthless.
Lieutenant Colonel José Mariano de Salas, commander of the Jimenez Permanente Battalion.
Lieutenant Colonel Rómulo Díaz de la Vega of the Zapadores Battalion.
General José Urrea, commander of the 600-man brigade that swept up the coast, conquering every Texian force it met.
This 1893 German illustration provides a reasonably accurate depiction of Mexican soldiers and officers at the time of the Texas Revolution. (Courtesy of Joseph Musso)
The Blood of Heroes: The 13-Day Struggle for the Alamo--and the Sacrifice That Forged a Nation Page 33
