There is a new Facebook page called Friends of Schreiner Mansion Museum in Kerrville, Texas, and as of December 1, 2011, has 25 followers. The page was made by Leadership Kerr County 2012 to revitalize “Where Kerrville’s Story Began” with a mission to restore the mansion to its original grandeur. Efforts to restore the lawns to the correct time period, clean the exterior stone, update the signage and refresh the inside paint were the original goals in phase 1. The group was charged with raising the funds to complete the project and then execute their plans in accordance to historical regulations. The building is located at 226 Earl Garrett Street, Kerrville, Texas and open Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 11:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Their website is http://library.schreiner.edu/museum/index.html
This building is now owned by Schreiner University and the website shows the following:
Charles Schreiner’s mansion is one of Kerrville’s most historic buildings, as well as being listed on the National Register of Historic Landmarks. The home was designed by San Antonio architect Alfred Giles, whose designs are seen throughout San Antonio and constructed of native stone.
The first phase of construction was begun in 1879, the second in 1895, and the third added porches and archways in 1897. Captain Charles Schreiner led the community in banking, ranching and mercantile activities.
The former home of Charles Schreiner is located in Kerrville’s downtown historical district next to the now closed Schreiner’s Department Store building at 226 Earl Garrett Street. Learn more about the Schreiner mansion
In 1923, Charles Schreiner donated 140 acres & $100,000 for a boys’ military high school & two-year college, known as Schreiner Institute. In 2000, the school formally became Schreiner University, a four-year private liberal arts college.
Mansion Re-Opening Event Photos
New Image Gallery
A variety of photos posted here of Capt. Charles Schreiner, the Schreiner Mansion and the Schreiner Department Store. See the images
Menard is the site of many historical events and famous people. One of those is a famous photographer from the 1800’s and early 1900’s; Noah Hamilton Rose, who spent his early years and began his career in Menardville.
The Rose family came to Menardville in 1884 and at the age of 14 in 1888 Noah began working as an apprentice in the office of the Menardville Monitor working for William Columbus Redman. This is where Rose began his self-taught photography career and took many early-day Menard county photos. There are many originals still being viewed today.
One original is the Rose photo of the 1937 event celebrating the rebuild of the “Old Fort San Saba” or the correct name is the Presidio de San Saba in Menard. I got this photo scanned and since 2007 you can buy a copy of this poster from the Menard County Historical Commission with funds benefiting the Menard Museum and the Presidio de San Saba Restoration Corporation.
The photo is 26″ long and 6″ wide, too big to see on this page.
Those known in the photo above; at the time of this writing, are shown below:
My husband’s mother, Laverne Bradford Wilkinson, in center with bangs and short hair, age 11. One of the many Menard Elementary School students attending.
Buddy’s father, Francis Lamar Wilkinson, photographer for Menard News
Identified are Roger and Emmie Luckenbach Landers holding hand of son, Jake Landers (hat and overalls) and baby brother Fritz Landers in baby buggy (called the Luckenbach buggy at the Menardville Museum) with sister Susanna Landers Brown and two cousins Angela Luckenbach Crawford Connor and Sandra Spiller wearing bonnets.
Frank Tillman, Menard High School Indian
Bill Wilkinson (he told me he was age four) but by his birth date closer to six and sitting on the fence
Henry Reeve, producer of the celebration
I can’t help but think how different our little town would have been if we had been able to maintain and expand the use of the Presidio after the 1937 celebration and if we could have had a Historical and Research Center in conjunction with the museum and purchased the Noah H. Rose collection!
Unfortunately, the Noah H. Rose Collection was purchased by the Western History Collections in 1969. For more information visit the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma, Room 452, Monnet Hall, 630 Parrington Oval, Norman, Oklahoma, 73019. http://libraries.ou.edu/locations/docs/westhist/Rose/intro.html
Biography:
Noah Hamilton Rose (April 9, 1874 – January 25, 1952), printer, photographer, and collector of photographs of the frontier West, was born seventy-five miles northwest of San Antonio in Kendall County on April 9, 1874, the son of Newton C. and Loutilda (White) Rose. In 1884, his father, a carpenter, moved his family to Menardville (now Menard). Rose was educated in rural schools and in 1888 at the age of 14 began working as an apprentice in the office of the Menardville Monitor. His family subsequently moved to Ballinger, where Rose worked on the local paper. In 1891, he returned to work on the Menardville Record. During this period he taught himself to take and develop photographs with a small box camera and printing supplies that he had received as a premium for selling subscriptions to the Youth’s Companion, a popular family weekly.
In 1892, he left Menardville to work at the Mason Herald. He spent the next thirty years working as an itinerant printer and photographer in Sonora, Menardville, Eagle Pass, Del Rio, and numerous small towns in West, Central, and North Texas. In addition to standard portrait work, he documented events such as the flood at Menardville in June 1899 and the 1902 land rush in Junction. While working in the Eagle Pass-Del Rio area in 1901 Rose began taking pictures of news events and developing them into lantern slides ready for projection the same day. He focused on such violent events as hangings and shoot-outs and interesting frontier figures-gunmen, sheriffs, politicians, judges. Rose began seeking out old photographs and corresponded with Emmett Dalton and other noted personalities to obtain pictures. From 1904 to 1919 he operated a photography studio in Del Rio and continued to build his collection of frontier photographs. He subsequently worked in central west Texas before settling in San Antonio in 1921. Rose’s early years there were inauspicious: he endured a long illness and thereafter suffered a fractured skull when he was hit by a car. Faced by a large debt for medical bills upon his recovery, he decided to focus his business exclusively on photographs of the old West. He made up a list of negatives that he had collected, printed a catalogue, and soon developed a booming mail-order business selling photographs to magazines, collectors, and writers.
According to Rose, pictures of such outlaws as Jesse and Frank James, Billy the Kid, Belle Starr, Jim and Bob Younger, and the Dalton gang were most in demand, followed in popularity by pictures of peace officers, Indians, Texas Rangers, and pioneers. He supplemented his stock by buying the rights to photographs owned by A. A. Brack, owner of Brack’s Studio of San Antonio, and eventually collected over 2,000 images. With his childhood friend John Marvin Hunter, Rose published an Album of Gunfighters in 1951. His collection of photographs was sold and is now in the collection of the University of Oklahoma in Norman.
Sources
- J. Marvin Hunter, “Noah Rose, A Frontier Photographer”, Frontier Times, November 1935.
- J. Marvin Hunter, “The Passing of a Life-Long Friend”, Frontier Times, February 1952.
- Oran Warder Nolen, “Noah H. Rose, Frontier Cameraman,” Old West, Spring 1968.
- Noah Hamilton Rose, A Catalog of the World Famous N. H. Rose Collection of Old Time Photographs of the Frontier (Houston: Frontier Pix, 1952).
| Here are some of Noah Rose’s originals of the Presidio de San Saba in Menard with captions from the OU Collection. Rose called it San Saba Mission as most folks in Menard still do today. | ||
 San Saba Mission ruins, 1895. Destroyed by Apaches. ROSE 294 |
San Saba Mission ruins, west side entrance, 1895. |
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 Stone at main entrance, San Saba Mission ruins, inscribed with names, 1895. ROSE 297 |
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Men at San Saba Mission ruins, 1898.
ROSE 298
Menard has been the subject of many historical papers and its centuries of history have served an important role in the Texas we all know today. This well written and detailed article by Mike Kingston, then editor of the Texas Almanac, before his death in 1994, was published posthumously in the Texas Almanac 1996-1997.
Fate of Spanish Mission Changed Face of West Texas
The town of Menard is today a quiet West Texas town with an economy that relies on ranching and oil.
The drama played out in the bottoms of the San Sabá River, and a year later on the banks of the Red River 200 miles away, had its beginnings almost two centuries before, when Spanish military might began cutting a swath across the New World, following its discovery in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. Led by Cortés, Pizarro, Quesada, Valdivia, Mendoza, Cabeza de Vaca and others, Spanish soldiers, mounted and using firearms, overcame the New World inhabitants. But in 1757, four forces converged on the area to play their distinctive roles in history: the Spanish and the French from Europe, the Apaches and the Comanches from the northern regions of what later became the United States.
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| Ruins of Presidio de San Sabá in Menard. Photo by Robert Plocheck. |
The Spanish at first blush were the most formidable of the forces coming together in 1757 in West Central Texas. Spain’s army had once been the best in Europe. In the New World, the natives could not effectively oppose the Spanish, and French forces on the North American continent at this time were no match, either. Caribs. Aztec. Inca. Maya. Chichimec. Each New World civilization fell to the firepower of Spanish muskets fired from the backs of Spanish horses.
The Indians of the Valley of Mexico were accustomed to the control of a centralized state and were relatively easy for the Spaniards to subjugate. Only occasionally did determined New World Indians, like the Maya of the Yucatan, who were decentralized and lived in city-states, or the Pueblos of New Mexico, temporarily defeat Spanish arms. Except for the Pueblos, however, the Spaniards encountered Indians with decentralized societies while moving northward from the Aztec empire. Plains Indians were the most decentralized of all, not even having permanent settlements. Against the Plains Indians of North America, the Spaniards’ luck ran out.
Goals of the Europeans in the New World varied. The French traded goods to the Indians for furs and gave them firearms so they could both hunt and defend themselves better. The Spanish goal was to convert Indians and turn them into exploitable copies of themselves. Conflict was inevitable.
Plains Indians Migrate into Texas
Neither the Comanches nor the Apaches were native Texas Indians. At the time of Coronado’s expedition of 1540, neither tribe was in the region of today’s Texas. Wichitas and Tonkawas migrated south even later. The Caddoes of East Texas, the Karankawas of the Gulf Coast and the Coahuiltecans of the Rio Grande were native. Apaches, the first great foes of the Spanish in the early 18th century, were originally Athapaskan speakers from the Pacific Northwest. A fierce and warlike people, they migrated into the Rockies and eastward at an undetermined date. At its peak, the territory of the eastern Apaches ranged from the Dismal River in Nebraska to Central Texas. Even afoot, the Apaches were potent warriors who preyed on everyone they encountered. But after they acquired the large horse herds left behind by Spanish settlers fleeing the Pueblo Indian revolt in New Mexico in 1680, they became formidable. In a short period, mounted Apaches spread across the Plains, in the pursuit of plunder and animals. Using horses, they could more easily follow the wandering bison that was the commissary of thousands of Indians. In the process, they made many enemies. As the Apaches migrated, groups separated along the way. Some, like the Navajos, became sedentary. Others, like those who finally came to Texas some time in the 17th century, became partly settled. During the summer, these Apaches camped in river bottoms to raise maize and other crops. Originally this group lived between the Red River and the Colorado plains. Apaches never developed a full horse culture. But the Apaches did use horses to increase their mobility, allowing them to hunt bison more efficiently and to attack unmounted Indians on both the east and west fringes of the Great Plains.
No group, however, adapted to the use of horses more gracefully or completely than the groups within the mountain Shoshones of the far north who became the fearsome Comanches. They found horses to be not just a useful tool, but the answer to their dreams. The horse provided them mobility, honors in war, and respect from those who previously had despised and mistreated them. The horse became the linchpin of their culture.
The Comanches were completely nomadic and relied on bison to provide not only food but also clothing, and other necessities for living. They never camped anywhere for long. Their raiding range on foot was about 100 miles. On horseback, it increased to 800 miles. Lengthy journeys for a hunt or a raid were common. On hunts, the entire band traveled.
No one knows when the Apaches drew the enmity of the Comanches. But about 1700, the Comanches moved south of the Arkansas River and began driving the Apaches from the plains. Comanches fought mounted, using firearms or short bows, and occasionally lances. The sedentary agricultural cycle of the Apaches proved to be their undoing. Comanches roamed the plains during the growing season, attacking and destroying the Apaches’ agricultural camps. Since the Apaches were not the horsemen that the Comanches were, they could not effectively pursue and fight back.
For a time, the French sold guns to the Wichitas and the Apaches, among others. The Comanches took the commerce in weapons as a personal affront. In response, they barred the French from crossing the plains, preventing the French from opening trade with the Spanish colonists on the upper Rio Grande Valley along what later became the Santa Fe Trail. After the Apaches were routed, the Comanches developed trade with the French, also allowing them to use the Comanche range. As the Comanches continued their campaign against the Apaches, which lasted several generations, they moved into the Texas Panhandle. As many as 13 bands operated in Texas during historical times. The Panhandle was the most fertile bison range on the Great Plains. For the first time, the Comanches began to defend their hunting area from other tribes.
Spanish Establish East Texas Missions
As early as 1690, when the Spanish first ventured into the Piney Woods of East Texas, they antagonized the Apaches: Not only did the Spanish build two missions among the Caddoan tribes of the area, they also aided the Caddoes in battles against the Apaches. Although the Apaches later appeared to cooperate in Spanish efforts to turn them into replicas of Spanish peasants, the Apaches never forgot this early insult. When the San Antonio de Valero mission (now known as the Alamo) was established in 1718, it was time for revenge. After an Apache raid on San Antonio in 1723, the Spanish sent a punitive expedition against the marauders. Led by Capt. Nicolás Flores y Valdés, the soldiers headed north and located an Apache camp near present-day Brownwood. In an apparent violation of Spanish policy, the soldiers killed 34 warriors and captured many women and children.
Between 1726 and 1731, Apache raids diminished. The Comanches were hammering the Apaches southward, and the temporary lull may have been an Apache attempt to attract missions and the protection they afforded.
Spanish Policy Clarified
A decree outlining Spanish policy was issued by Viceroy Juan de Acuña, Marqués de Casafuerte in 1729. This decree, which bound the frontier for 40 years, forbade attacks on Indians unless attempts to make peace had been tried and had failed. The Spanish military was not to take sides in disagreements between Christianized tribes, and soldiers were not to stir up trouble with mission Indians. And finally, when any group of Indians sued for peace, the Spanish were bound to honor the request. However, in 1732 the Apaches again began to harass the San Antonio settlement. This led to another military expedition up the San Saba River to within 10 miles of present-day Menard. The expedition was led by the newly appointed governor, Don Juan Antonio Bustillo y Caballos. Bustillo engaged the Apaches in a four-hour battle Dec. 9, 1732. The 100 Spanish soldiers forced the Apaches to retreat and captured 30 women and children. Historians believe that the battle was on the San Saba River in the vicinity of the site where the San Sabá mission was later established. Bustillo is credited with discovering the river and naming it El Rio San Sabá de las Nueces, in honor of the abbot, Saint Sabbas, whose feast day it was.
Comanches First Recorded in Texas
The first documented sighting of Comanches in Texas was about 1743, when a group passed near San Antonio. The Spanish had traded with them in New Mexico, however, for many years. Missions were opened in 1748 on the San Xavier (today’s San Gabriel) River, near present-day Rockdale, Milam County. These were unsuccessful, partly because of constant Apache pressure on them.
However, beginning in the late 1740s, Apaches resumed making overtures to the Spanish government. The Apaches knew that the Spanish were so eager for religious converts that they would protect them from the Comanches, who continued to push the Apaches southward. Franciscan priests saw in these Apache overtures opportunities for converting the indigenous peoples to Christianity and making them into useful Spanish citizens. The Spanish government soon decided to establish missions in Apache territory.
By the middle of the 18th century, the Comanches had all but driven the Apaches from the plains. The Spanish seemed unaware that the Apaches had lost control of the lower plains. By this time, the Apaches could not safely hunt on the plains, and many started raiding south of the Rio Grande. The mission of San Juan Bautista, near present-day Eagle Pass on the Mexican side of the river, was a popular gathering place. The mission San Lorenzo, about 50 miles west of San Juan Bautista, was established in 1754 for Apaches. But the Indians burned the buildings and headed north within two years, complaining that the mission was too far from their homelands.
Mounted and armed with French weapons, the Wichitas, Caddoes, Tonkawas, Tawakonis, Kichais and others banded together against the Apaches. These former bully boys had raided into East and Central Texas as Comanche pressure drove them off the plains. Soon the united tribes were joined by their former foes, the Comanches, to present a formidable front to face the Apaches. The goal of these Norteños, as the Spanish called them, was to exterminate the remaining Apaches. Desperate for help, the Apaches absorbed some smaller Texas tribes, such as Coahuiltecan groups and the Jumanos of the Rio Grande area, both of which had once been bitter enemies of the Apaches. But the Apaches got little help or sympathy from anyone else on the plains except the Spanish. In 1749 the Spanish and the Apaches solemnized their peace agreement with a formal ceremony held in San Antonio, in which implements of war, including a live horse, were buried.
Almost immediately, the new relationship caused friction with the Spaniards’ other Indian friends. The treaty was considered an act of hostility against the Apaches’ enemies – the Comanches and their allies, the Norteños. It didn’t help, either, when Spanish soldiers gave Apaches protection on their hunting forays onto the plains. The Apaches’ presence around the San Gabriel missions frightened the neophytes, and many of them left. Disease epidemics also hit the San Gabriel location, and a drought dried up water supplies. Capt. Felipe Rábago y Terán, commander of the presidio, was accused of improprieties with the wives of soldiers and neophytes alike. Some of his soldiers were charged with abusing Indians. Rábago’s uncle, Pedro, replaced him as commanding officer and finally abandoned the presidio in August of 1755. The missions were moved to the San Antonio River. While the Spanish government acknowledged that missions in what is now West Central Texas were desirable, it provided no funds to pay for them.
Then Pedro Romero de Terreros, one of the wealthiest men in Mexico, offered to finance the first three years of operation of missions created to convert the Apaches. His cousin, Father Alonso Giraldo de Terreros, was to lead the missionary effort. The first of several expeditions to find a suitable site for the Apache missions in 1753 was led by Lt. Juan Galván. Fray Miguel de Aranda of the mission Concepción in San Antonio helped. After viewing sites on the Pedernales and Llano rivers, they selected a location on the San Sabá River near today’s Menard.
Lt. Galván set up a huge wooden cross on a horseshoe bluff overlooking the river to mark the spot for the presidio, and a religious service was held. Several Apaches were already in the area. It took four years and two more exploratory expeditions for the Spanish government to confirm Lt. Galván’s original decision. Pedro de Rábago y Terán was dispatched to the same area in November 1754. Finally, Col. Diego Ortiz Parrilla, who had been appointed commander of the presidio, and Father Terreros, with soldiers, missionaries, nine families of Tlaxcalan Indians and others arrived on April 17, 1757. Work began immediately on the presidio and mission buildings.
The Spanish didn’t seem to realize that the site they had chosen was in Comanche territory, not Apache.
Building of San Sabá Mission and Presidio
Within a short time after arrival on the San Saba River in April 1757, the soldiers completed the presidio stockade, and the friars constructed a mission compound. The mission was formally christened Santa Cruz (Holy Cross) de San Sabá and the presidio, Presidio de San Luis de las Amarillas, in honor of the viceroy of New Spain. (We are spelling the name of the river without an accent, since that is the way it is spelled today, but the correct Spanish spelling of “San Sabá” is used here for the mission.) Only the ruins of an attempt to rebuild the presidio in 1936 mark the site of the Real Presidio de San Sabá.
The priests wanted to prevent a recurrence of the problems experienced at the San Gabriel missions. They insisted that the mission and the presidio be on opposite sides of the river and 1.5 leagues apart (about 3.94 miles). This made defense of the mission nearly impossible.
The San Sabá mission was of standard design. Within a wooden compound were a small church, classrooms, storehouses and workshops. Herds of livestock and horses were established near the compound, and nearby fields were broken and crops planted. Although the mission was ready to begin operation, no Indians came, much to the frustration of the friars.
In June, about 3,000 Apaches camped near the facility, but they did not enter. They planned to go on their annual bison hunt and then campaign against the Norteños. After that only small groups of Apaches passed the mission, rapidly heading south. Frustration mounted during the winter of 1757-58 because the Apaches had not kept their word to enter the mission. Three disheartened friars returned to San Antonio; only three missionaries remained.
In February 1758, marauding Indians attacked a supply train bound for the presidio. Late in the month, the same group scattered the presidio’s horse herds after taking 59 animals for their own use. Spanish soldiers chased the raiders for eight days, but recovered only one horse. They reported that armed Indians were to been seen all around the area. The presidio went on alert.
By March 15, Col. Parrilla was concerned enough to send a soldier to the mission to urge the friars and their people to come to the presidio. But the missionaries declined. The commander made a personal plea in the afternoon, but the friars were adamant. Eight soldiers were left at the facility, making 35 people in all at the mission. Parrilla also provided lookouts to try to protect the mission from surprise attack. The commander was left with 59 men with which to defend the presidio.
Mission Attacked
Early on the morning of March 16, Juan Leal, a 50-year-old civilian servant for Father Terreros, went to the creek near the mission compound to cut some wood. He was surprised and captured by Indians. But he was recognized as a friend and protected from death by one of the raiders. As far as he could see were Indians armed with muskets, swords and lances and painted for war. A few boys riding with the force carried bows and arrows.
The gates of the mission stockade were closed when the mounted horde approached. But there were Tejas, Bidais and Tonkawas among the Indians, and these groups had been at the San Gabriel mission. The soldiers recognized many familiar faces and opened the gates. Many mounted Indians entered the compound, including a Comanche chief dressed in a red jacket in the style of the French. Father Terreros tried to appease the throng by distributing gifts and tobacco. Other Indians scattered throughout the compound, taking what they wanted from the storehouses. The Spanish did not interfere. All the mission’s horses were rounded up and taken by the Indians, and a chief asked for more. There were no more at the mission, Father Terreros said, but there were horses at the presidio. The chief left with a group of Indians. A short time later, he returned and said the soldiers at the presidio had fired at him. Father Terreros offered to escort the chief back to the fort. But when the priest mounted a horse and started to leave the stockade, he was shot dead. A melee erupted and the Spanish ran for cover.
Another priest, Father José de Santiesteban, was probably killed while praying before the altar of the small church. Several other people were wounded. The battle continued most of the day. The small group of Spaniards holed up in building after building, moving as the Indians set each structure on fire. They finally fled into the chapel. Leal, who had escaped from his captors, dragged a small cannon into the building, mounted it on some chests and kept the Indians at bay until the raiders became more interested in looting than in killing Spaniards. All that they could not carry away they destroyed.
That night the Norteños held a grand victory celebration that was heard at the presidio. Early in the battle, a messenger was sent from the mission to the presidio for help. He told of Indians painted for war and carrying French firearms, bullet pouches and powder horns.
A scouting party, led by Sgt. Joseph Antonio Flores, was sent to survey the situation from a hill south of the mission. From that vantage point, he saw Indians spread out for miles around the mission. The stockade was overrun. Flores’ small party also engaged a band of Indians, suffering three casualties.
After dark 28 defenders of the mission escaped, including several with serious wounds, and reached the safety of the presidio. A scouting party sent to see about the people of the mission also dispatched two soldiers to warn a nearby wagon train of the danger.
Spaniards estimated that 1,500 to 2,000 Indians had been involved in the war party. An estimated 17 Indian raiders died during the fighting at the fort and in small skirmishes. Col. Parrilla took many precautions at the presidio. Soldiers scattered around the area on various assignments were called in, and the families of the soldiers were given the protection of the fort.
Patrols sent out on the morning of March 17 found the Indians rapidly retreating to the north. Visiting the smoldering mission ruins, Parrilla found that two priests and six others had been massacred. In his reports to his superiors, Col. Parilla absolved himself of any blame for the loss of life. He emphasized that he had tried to get the missionaries to enter the presidio, but that because of the fragmented authority of the operation, he had no standing to order the religious to do anything.
To emphasize the French threat to the province of Texas, Col. Parrilla pointed out that each victim of the raid died of bullet or lance wounds; none was killed by arrows. The frontier was swept with the reports of the audacious attack by the Plains Indians. Every presidio commander on the frontier was afraid that his installation would be the next one to be attacked by the savage hordes of Norteños. The attack on the San Sabá mission marked the beginning of warfare between Comanches and white settlers – a war that continued for more than a century.
Retaliatory Expedition Planned
Col. Parrilla wanted to mount a punitive expedition against the Norteños immediately. But the Spanish had much to ponder. The attack was the first by such a large body of Indians. They were better armed and fought better than Indians in the past. No doubt there was some French influence in their weapons, clothing and tactics.
The makeup of the raiding party, too, was a new development. Comanches, Bidais, Tonkawas and Tejas, who previously had not been enemies, were among the leaders of the raiding party. The Spanish were beginning to understand the magnitude of the consequences of embracing the Apaches. Spanish colonial bureaucracy moved slowly in the best of times. When questions were raised about the wisdom of an action, the process could grind to a near halt. Compounding the usual slow pace was the fact that no one was sure where the San Saba River project fit into the colonial organization. While the Spanish pondered their next actions, the Norteños continued to raid. In 1758, they struck a camp near the presidio and killed 50 Apaches. In December 1758, 17 members of an Apache hunting party were killed. In early 1759, 20 Spanish guards were killed near the presidio and 700 horses were taken. The Indians appeared to be reveling in their new-found supremacy over the former scourges of the plains.
Apaches also began having second thoughts about the ability of the Spanish to protect them. Parrilla received approval for a retaliatory raid in August 1758. June was the best time to begin such a campaign because forage for the animals was available. It was decided that 500 men would be ordered on the expedition, which was expected to cost 59,000 pesos. Soldiers were to be drawn from several presidios. Tlaxcalan Indians from Mexico, along with mission Indians, would be used. The viceroy sent Parrilla final approval of his plans in May 1759. More delays followed, but the force finally left San Antonio in August. Moving north, the group crossed the Concho River near present day Paint Rock and forded the Colorado downstream from today’s Ballinger. Then it turned northeast, crossing the Clear Fork of the Brazos near present day Fort Griffin.
Near today’s Newcastle in Young County, the Spaniards attacked a Tonkawa village, killing 55 Indians and taking 149 prisoners. Plunder from the San Sabá mission was found among the villagers’ belongings. This victory made the campaign worthwhile in Col. Parrilla’s mind. But the Tonkawas offered information on the location of a large Wichita village on the Red River, still farther to the northeast. A Tonkawa guide was taken to lead the way.
On “Day Seven” (of October) by Parrilla’s accounting, the expedition reached the vicinity of the Wichita camp in present-day Montague County. Today the location is known as Spanish Fort, because early Anglo settlers were unaware that the French had been in the area. And they did not believe the Indians could have built the fortifications whose remains they found.
As the Spanish approached the village, a group of Indians ambushed them and then retreated at a run. The Spanish pursued them down a wooded road until they entered a clearing facing a stockaded village. The Indians took cover in the village and closed the gates. The village was well organized. The Spanish reported seeing herds of horses grazing nearby and corrals near the village. Crops were growing in irrigated fields along the river. Over the village flew a French flag. (Spanish critics have argued that presence of the French flag did not mean Frenchmen were present. The French often gave flags to Indians with whom they traded.)
The Spanish withdrew to regroup. But the Indians in the stockade kept a stream of fire aimed at them, cutting off the road as an escape route. Both mounted Indians and some on foot sallied forth from the fort and engaged the Spanish. The Apaches and missionary Indians with the Spanish force broke ranks, leaving Spanish flanks open to the attacking Norteños. Sixteen Spaniards died in the action along with three of their Indian allies. Parrilla claimed that 45 enemy Indians died. At dark, the Spanish retreated. At dawn, they began the long trip back to the San Saba.
The experience reaffirmed Parrilla’s initial assessment: Great changes were needed in selecting, equipping and training Spain’s military on the northern frontier. Nothing was done by the authorities. Col. Parrilla lost prestige in the expedition against the Norteños. Though he tried to paint the effort as a success because of the victory at the Tonkawa village, no other official embraced his position. The Norteños were not chastised.
After a decade of exile, Capt. Rábago was once again given command of the presidio in 1760.
Presidio Rebuilt of Stone
Apparently anxious to redeem his reputation, Rábago strengthened the fortifications in late 1761 by rebuilding the presidio of stone and renamed it the Real (Royal) Presidio de San Sabá. But much more change was needed than the officer could provide.
New Spain’s northern frontier had a serious sag in it around the Great Plains. With the Comanches in control of these plains and their enemies, the Apaches, running amok south of the plains, no short route between San Antonio and the Spanish settlements on the upper Rio Grande existed. To travel from San Antonio to the capital of the New Mexican colony, the Spaniards were forced to head south through Laredo and on to Saltillo. The route swung west through Durango province to Chihuahua City and then north up the Rio Grande Valley through El Paso to Santa Fe. That was a distance of roughly 990 miles to cover a route of about 500 miles as the crow flies. And none of the route was safe from Indian attacks.
Rábago sent out expeditions in 1761 that explored large sections of western Texas and located the Pecos River. But none ever came close to Santa Fe. An expedition sent south from near Santa Fe to San Sabá presidio a year later had no luck either.
Later Missions
With the zeal of a recent convert, Rábago pursued establishment of missions for the Apaches without prior authorization by the viceroy. In 1762, San Lorenzo de la Santa Cruz mission was opened for the Apaches on the Nueces River, with Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria del Cañón opening nearby a little later. Initially the missions attracted 400 Apaches, but for eight years, they got no support from the crown.
Together the missions were referred to as “El Cañón.” They were located about halfway between San Sabá and San Juan Bautista.
The year 1762 became a watershed year for Spain’s northern frontier. In Europe, the Seven Years War ended, with Great Britain prevailing over France. Spain joined the war late on the side of the loser and gave up claims to Florida and other territory for its trouble. France ceded the Louisiana Territory to Spain to keep it out of British hands.
With the long-standing French threat eliminated, Texas became a large buffer zone. Spain turned its attention to keeping English settlers from entering its new territory.
In 1766, an even larger change took place, as Charles III undertook to reorganize the northern frontier of New Spain. The Marqués de Rubí was sent to tour the frontier and to recommend changes. His survey would eventually cover more than 7,000 miles from California on the west to East Texas. Rubí arrived at the San Sabá presidio in July of 1767 and stayed 10 days. Apparently he was appalled by what he found. Soldiers were short of horses. Only half had pistols. Most of the equipment was shabby and in poor condition. Morale was low; the desertion rate was high.
Rubí noted in a secret report that the presidio cost 40,360 pesos a year to operate and was of no use to the kingdom. He suggested that the improvements be razed and the few settlers around the presidio be shipped to San Antonio. The military manpower could be put to better use on the Rio Grande, he said.
Indians raids had subsided for a few years before Rubí’s visit, but after his departure they began again. One raid netted the Indians the presidio’s entire herd of cattle. The marauders also kept up raids on supply trains, in an apparent attempt to starve the Spanish out.
Rábago abandoned the fort without authorization at one time in 1768, withdrawing the men to El Cañón, but he was ordered to return. Although still in his 40s, Rábago was in failing health. He began a trip to see the viceroy in 1769, but he died before reaching his destination. Later in the year, Capt. Manual Antonio de Oca was named commander of the San Sabá presidio.
Little improved under the new commander. In 1770, he, too, apparently abandoned the San Sabá presidio without authorization, again taking the soldiers to El Cañón.
Presidio Closed
King Charles III delivered the coup de grace to the foundering fort, ordering it closed in his decree of reorganization of the frontier in 1772.
Closing the presidio may have been as great a mistake as opening it: As soon as it closed, Indian raids on San Antonio increased alarmingly.
The facilities at San Sabá were never razed as Rubí recommended, and they came in handy with future Indian fighters. Gov. Juan de Ugalde of Coahuila (namesake of Uvalde County despite the difference in spelling) led a successful expedition of Spaniards allied with Comanches, Wichitas and Tonkawas against Apaches in 1789. If such an alliance had been struck 40 years earlier, the face of North America might have been changed.
As it was, the massacre at the mission on the San Saba and the subsequent Spanish defeat at the Red River marked the end to Spain’s dreams of conquest and conversion on their northern frontier in the New World.
— written by Mike Kingston, then editor of the Texas Almanac, before his death in 1994. Published posthumously in the Texas Almanac 1996–1997.
http://www.texasalmanac.com/topics/history/fate-spanish-mission-changed-face-west-texas-0
Menard is rich with history and great folks. It is wonderful to have these great photos and I wanted to share. I have posted an album on my Facebook page at the link http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.1800153522768.2097182.1207701200&type=1, you might also enjoy.
Below are some unidentified photos out of Don Wilkinson’s collection, and he has been kind to share.
If you know anyone, please let me know.
This is a large group at a Menard picnic, circa 1922. UDPATE: Jakie Landers’ grandmother is fourth from the bottom on the right, Hortense Rogers Landers (Mrs. John Brooks Landers). Photo taken at the Baptist Encampment. Menard News caption says, “Did you make this church picnic? — Those who did were C. B. Mohler, Camilla Winslow, Bertha Mears, Ed Beyer, Joe McDonald, Prof Adams, Rosco Patten, Adolph Beyer, A. L. Joplin, Jim Mears, Roger Landers, Ed Mauldin, Joe Beyer, Tillman Landers, Weldon Landers, Wyatt Beyer, Mrs. Joplin, Mr. and Mrs. B. B. Burk, Mrs. Frank Highsmith and Elmore Patten. The picture is one of C. B. Mohler’s given us by his son, R. A.”
This is a 1916 photo of children at the Menard School.
1915 Bridge across San Saba River at Menard, Texas.
The San Saba River Bridge looking north; not sure the date.
Hope you enjoyed these and I’ll share some more soon.
I have a glass negative of the Tennessee State Capitol building in Nashville, completed in 1859. It was designed by William Strickland of Philadelphia. This photo must have been taken around the same time as the other Tennessee photos in the late 1890’s. Thank you to Mark D. Cowan and the Texas Historical Commission for their identification.
Tennessee State Capitol Building c1898
Design and construction
The State Capitol was designed by renowned Philadelphia architect William Strickland, who modeled it after a Greek Ionic temple. The lantern is a copy of the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates in Athens. The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1845 and the building was completed fourteen years later during 1859.[3]
The American Society of Civil Engineers has listed the building as a civil engineering landmark in recognition of its innovative construction, which made unusually extensive use of stone and was an early example of the use of structural iron. Both the interior and exterior are built with limestone from a quarry about 1 mile (1.6km) from the site. Some interior columns were built from single pieces of stone, requiring massive wooden derricks to hoist them into place. Wrought iron, instead of wood, was used for the roof trusses to reduce the building’s vulnerability to fire.[4]
Strickland died five years before the building’s completion and was entombed in its northeast wall. His son, F. W. Strickland, supervised completion of the structure. William Strickland also designed the Egyptian Revival style Downtown Presbyterian Church, formerly known as First Presbyterian Church, Nashville.
Samuel Dold Morgan (1798-1880), chairman of the State Building Commission overseeing the construction of the Tennessee State Capitol, is entombed in the southeast corner near the south entrance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_State_Capitol
Portrait of Strickland standing before the Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia. John Neagle, 1829, Yale University Art Gallery
William Strickland (Navesink, New Jersey, November 1788 – Nashville, Tennessee, April 6, 1854), was a noted architect in nineteenth-century Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Nashville, Tennessee.
Life and career
Strickland was one of the founders of the Greek Revival movement in the United States, using the plates of The Antiquities of Athens for his inspiration.
Strickland’s design for the Second Bank of the United States in Philadelphia (1819-1824) beat out the design of his teacher, Benjamin Latrobe. Although Strickland was still copying classical prototypes at this point, the Second Bank is an ambitious building modeled on the greatest Greek design: The Parthenon of Athens. The competition had called for “chaste” Greek style: Strickland’s elegant Greek temple design is a fitting result. The architect clearly saw this building as one of his major accomplishments, as he had it included as the background of the portrait that Philadelphia society painter John Neagle did of Strickland in 1829 (Yale University Art Gallery)
Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia. (1819-24)
Comparison of the Second Bank of the U.S. with the later Merchants’ Exchange (1832-4), also in Philadelphia, reveals the growth of Strickland’s talent and confidence as an architect. With the Merchant Exchange, Strickland still had a classical example in mind (the cupola is based on the Choragic Monument of Lysicrates), but created a unique building specifically styled to fit the site. The Merchant’s Exchange was to be located on a slightly-awkward triangular plot, at the intersection of two major thoroughfares, between the waterfront and the business district. The elegant, curved east facade faces toward the waterfront, and reflects the carriage and foot traffic that would have been circulating in front of the building. This elevation is unique” Greek Revival, but modern” while a more staid and formal elevation can be found on the west side, facing Third Street. This building demonstrates Strickland’s maturity as an architect, showing that some of America’s architects were truly innovating in the Greek Revival.
Merchants’ Exchange, Philadelphia, PA (1832-34).
Another of Strickland’s buildings was the National Mechanic Bank at 22 South 3rd St. The bank’s construction began in 1836 on a narrow plot between two taller neighbors. Strickland took the narrow space, however, and used strong, square pilasters to support the portico as well as ornate stone carving at their tops to defend the building against its taller and bulkier neighbors. The building is one of Strickland’s smallest and has since gone through several changes of ownership. The building is now occupied by National Mechanics Bar and Restaurant. It was one of Strickland’s last Philadelphia buildings.
Strickland also executed works in other styles, including very early American work in the Gothic Revival style, including his Masonic Hall (1808-11, burned 1819) and his Saint Stephen’s Church (1823), both in Philadelphia. He also made use of Egyptian, Saracenic and Italianate styles. He later moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where his Egyptian-influenced design of the First Presbyterian Church (now the Downtown Presbyterian Church) was controversial but today is widely recognized as a masterpiece and an important evocation of the Egyptian Revival style.
Strickland was also a civil engineer and one of the first to advocate the use of steam locomotives on railways. In his youth he was a landscape painter, illustrator for periodicals, theatrical scene painter, engraver, and pioneer aquatintist. William Levitt (Early Railways 3, 2006) argues that Strickland’s observations made during visits to England in the 1820s were highly influential in the transfer of railway technology to the United States.[citation needed]
Strickland is buried within the walls of his final, and arguably greatest work, the Tennessee State Capitol.
Philadelphia buildings
- Masonic Hall, Philadelphia (1808-11, burned 3 March 1819).
- Second Bank of the United States, Philadelphia (1819-24).
- St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia (1822-23).
- Musical Fund Hall, The Musical Fund Society, Philadelphia (1824, substantially altered).
- Holy Trinity Romanian Orthodox Church, Philadelphia.
- Second Congregation Mikveh Israel Synagogue, Philadelphia (1825, demolished).
- United States Naval Asylum, Philadelphia (1826-33, now condominiums).
- Restoration of the tower of Independence Hall, Philadelphia (1828).
- First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, (1828)
- University of Pennsylvania (9th Street buildings), Philadelphia (1829).
- United States Mint, Philadelphia (1829-33, demolished 1902).
- Merchants’ Exchange, Philadelphia (1832-34).
Buildings elsewhere
- College of Charleston, Main Building (now Randolph Hall), Charleston, South Carolina (1828, extensively altered 1850).
- U.S. Branch Mint, Charlotte, North Carolina (1835, moved to new location 1930s). Now Mint Museum of Art.
- U.S. Branch Mint, Dahlonega, Georgia (1835, burned 1878).
- U.S. Branch Mint, New Orleans, Louisiana (1835-38).
- Providence Athenaeum, Providence, Rhode Island (1837-38).
- Grace Church, Keswick, Virginia (1848-55).
Tennessee
- St. Mary’s Catholic Church, Nashville, Tennessee (1845-47).
- Tennessee State Capitol, Nashville, Tennessee (1845-59).
- Second Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee (1846, demolished 1979).
- Wilson County Courthouse, Lebanon, Tennessee (1848, burned 1881).
- First Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee (1848-49).
- Belmont Mansion, Nashville, Tennessee (1849-53). Formerly Acklen Hall during Ward-Belmont College years, Belmont University.
Tennessee State Capitol, Nashville, TN (1845-59). Strickland is buried in a crypt within the Capitol.
“Strickland, William (1788-1854)” Philadelphia Architects And Buildings. Available: http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25248
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Strickland_%28architect%29
References
- Gilchrist, Agnes Addison (1950). William Strickland: Architect and Engineer, 1788-1854. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
- “Strickland, William (1788-1854)” Philadelphia Architects And Buildings. Available: <http://www.philadelphiabuildings.org/pab/app/ar_display.cfm/25248
Another glass negative identified! This is the Auditorium Building at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897. It must have been a long trip from Texas to Tennessee in the late 1890’s by this photographer. Still don’t know who took the photos but thanks to help from Mark D. Cowan at the Texas Historical Commission I now know where this big building is located and the photo was taken before the opening of the Exposition in 1897. Sadly this building was torn down. Within two years, all but three of the Exposition buildings were torn down.
Photographer: Calvert Bros. & Taylor
#27166, THS 193, Box 13, Folder 6, http://tnsos.org/tsla/imagesearch/index.php?resultpage=4&find=exposition
Organizers of Nashville’s 1897 exposition envisioned the event as a way to lift the city and state out of the economic doldrums that remained from the 1893 depression. In addition, the event promoted the city’s potential as a leader for an educational and commercial revival in the New South, while paying homage to the memory of the Old South. The exposition buildings, monuments, sham battles, parades, and special days blended old and new to promote the city and state’s noble past and promising future.
The Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition was an exposition staged between May 1 and October 31 of 1897 in Nashville. It celebrated the 100th anniversary of Tennessee‘s entry into the union in 1796, although it was a year late.
Many cities and organizations built buildings and exhibit halls on the Exposition grounds, conveniently located on the streetcar line on the western fringe of the city. Among the most prominent were those of Nashville itself, and its nearby rival, Memphis. Nashville designed its pavilion after the Parthenon in Greece due to the city’s nickname as The Athens of the South. Memphis’s exhibit, in honor of its Egyptian name, was a large pyramid. These structures no longer exist, but they have their echoes in both cities today. Nashville’s temporary Parthenon was reconstructed in permanent materials in a project lasting from 1920 to 1931 and still stands today as an art gallery on the original exposition grounds, which became Centennial Park. In the 1990s, Memphis built a new sports arena, the Pyramid Arena, in the shape of a large pyramid, by the Mississippi River.
Other attractions on the grounds were the Negro Pavilion, the gondolas on Lake Watauga (which is still a feature of the park today) and the Egyptian Pavilion with its belly dancers. The Centennial Exposition was a great success and is still considered one of the most notable events ever to be held in the state. Unlike most World’s Fairs, it did not lose money, although the final accounting showed a direct profit of less than $50.
The bird’s-eye view chromolithograph above by The Henderson Litho. Co., Cincinnati, 1896. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Tennessee_Centennial_Exposition_1897_%28LOC_ppmsca.03354%29.jpg
More photos: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/95501846/
Within two years of the close of the Centennial Exposition, all of the buildings had been torn down with the exception of three, The Parthenon, The Alabama Building and the Knights of Pythias building, which was later removed and became a private residence in Franklin Tennessee. When it came time to remove the Parthenon, there was such a revolt in Nashville, that the demolition was halted. The Parthenon replica built with its temporary materials lasted for 23 years. In 1920 because of the popularity of the structure, the city of Nashville, over the next 11 years replaced the plaster, wood and brick building using permanent materials, and that version still stands today.
Today, the Parthenon (rebuilt in 1931 as a permanent structure) and Lake Watauga are the only remaining evidence of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897. Over 100 years ago, visitors strolling the grounds of today’s Centennial Park marveled at grand structures, played in Vanity Fair, stood awe-struck by the sight of the Parthenon, and gasped in amazement at the nightly display of gleaming white buildings outlined against the sky by thousands of electric lights.
Trains and trolleys brought visitors to the park and deposited riders at terminals on the north and southeast entrances. Visitors entering the main gates on the south (near the present-day entrance to the park) passed Lake Katherine. Three additional lakes dotted the landscape: Lake Watauga offered gondola rides and could be crossed by a copy of the exotic Rialto Bridge; Lily Lake (now the site of the park’s sunken flower garden northwest of the Parthenon); and Lake Sevier (to the east, behind the present-day Centennial Sportsplex). In addition, shade arbors, statues (including a large statue of Athena outside the east entrance of the Parthenon), and fountains graced the park grounds.
More than a dozen major exhibit buildings comprised the core of what was nicknamed the “White City” (recollecting the famous White City of the Chicago World’s Fair a few years previous). The buildings located in the center of the park were devoted to civic pride. These buildings included the U.S. Government Building, the History Building, the Auditorium, and the two most impressive structures: the Nashville Parthenon which served as the Art Pavilion and the Shelby County Pyramid.
Buildings located along the eastern flank of the central grounds included Minerals and Forestry, the Negro Building, and the Machinery Building. The large Agriculture Building fronted by cotton and tobacco fields marked the northern boundary of the central park area. Continuing south along the western flank of the central grounds, visitors saw buildings devoted to Transportation, Education and Hygiene, and to Commerce, as well as the Children’s Building, the Woman’s Building and a club house for gentlemen.
Exhibition buildings were also provided by states (including New York, Texas, and Alabama), cities, such as Knoxville, and fraternal organizations such as Woodsmen of the World, Knights of Pythias, and the Red Men (housed in an elaborate wigwam). A number of popular restaurants also dotted the grounds. The tents of military personnel and fields for athletic events and battle reenactments lined the eastern edge of the park, at the site of today’s Centennial Sportsplex.
A section of the park called Vanity Fair (west of Lily Lake) was the most popular area for children. Loaded with attractions and rides, this part of the exposition grounds included the mysteries of the Moorish Palace, a Cuban Village, and the Streets of Cairo. Visitors could view silent motion pictures at the Edison Mirage, visit a gold mine, see an animal show, or relive the Civil War at the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg. Children of all ages enjoyed the carousel and other rides from the camels in Cairo to water rides, and a giant see-saw that lifted riders high above the Exposition grounds.
Imagine the excitement of visitors, most from rural areas, who experienced for the first time the thrill of electric lights, the novelty of foreign lands, and the pride of state and national accomplishments.
The Nashville and Memphis pavilions at night, seen over Watauga Lake, with the Commerce Building at rear. A rare sight.
Sources:
1. The Official History of the Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville 1897, Herman Justi, editor (Nashville, TN: Centennial Committee on Publications, 1898).
2. John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992): 27-33.
3. Don Doyle, Nashville In the New South, 1880-1930 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1985): 3, 143-149.
4. Michael Kammen, Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (New York: Vintage Books, 1993).
I just found another glass negative! Thanks again to Mark D. Cowan from Texas Historical Commission for finding another one! This is the old Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee.
Old State Penitentiary in Nashville, Tennessee c 1898
My glass negative photo above shows the Gothic-inspired administration building and walls of the Tennessee State Penitentiary taken after completion of the prison in 1898, by unidentified photographer. See the people in front of the building for prospective.
As stated on the site;
http://www.abandonedonline.net/2011/06/13/endangered-2011-tennessee-state-penitentiary/ it states that this building and location is not listed on any historic register, national or local. And it cannot be used as another prison or jail due to the court’s ruling [from a 1983 class action lawsuit]. While not in any danger of being demolished, the buildings will continue to deteriorate. Heat and humidity take their toll after only just a few years of closure, and this prison has been sealed since 1992. With its location close to downtown Nashville, reuse of the building should be a more pressing matter although it’s very specific design and construction doesn’t aid in its ability to be renovated into other purposes.
A historic postcard image:
http://historicnashville.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/tennessee-state-prison/
Tennessee State Prison
Tennessee State Prison is a prison in Nashville that has been closed since 1989. The Green Mile, The Last Castle, Pillar‘s “Bring Me Down” video were also filmed there. Most recently VH1‘s Celebrity Paranormal Project filmed there for the third episode of the series called The Warden.
The proposed prison design called for the construction of a fortress-like structure patterned after the penitentiary at Auburn, New York, made famous for the lockstep marching, striped prisoner uniforms, nighttime solitary confinement, and daytime congregate work under strictly enforced silence. The new Tennessee prison contained 800 small cells, each designed to house a single inmate. In addition, an administration building and other smaller buildings for offices, warehouses, and factories were built within the twenty-foot (6.15m) high, three-foot (1m) thick rock walls. The plan also provided for a working farm outside the walls and mandated a separate system for younger offenders to isolate them from older, hardened criminals.
Construction costs for this second Tennessee State Penitentiary exceeded US$500,000 (US$12.3 million in 2007 dollars), not including the price of the land. The prison’s 800 cells opened to receive prisoners on February 12, 1898, and that day admitted 1,403 prisoners, creating immediate overcrowding. To a greater or lesser extent, overcrowding persisted throughout the next century. The original Tennessee State Penitentiary on Church Street was demolished later that year, and salvageable materials were used in the construction of outbuildings at the new facility, creating a physical link from 1830 to the present.
Every convict was expected to defray a portion of the cost of incarceration by performing physical labor. Within two years, inmates worked up to sixteen hours per day for meager rations and unheated, ventilated sleeping quarters. The State also contracted with private companies to operate factories inside the prison walls using convict labor.
The Tennessee State Penitentiary had its share of problems. In 1902, seventeen prisoners blew out the end of one wing of the prison, killing one inmate and allowing the escape of two others who were never recaptured. Later, a group of inmates seized control of the segregated white wing and held it for eighteen hours before surrendering. In 1907 several convicts commandeered a switch engine and drove it through a prison gate. In 1938 inmates staged a mass escape. Several serious fires ignited at the penitentiary, including one that destroyed the main dining room. Riots occurred in 1975 and 1985. Wikipedia
Above information at the link: http://historicnashville.wordpress.com/2009/02/17/tennessee-state-prison/
Thank you to Mark D. Cowan from the Texas Historical Commission for his identification from their image collection of my photo of the Southwestern Insane Asylum; as it was originally called when it began operations in 1892.
It was located on 640 acres among pecan trees with its tree-lined main entrance on South Presa Street, on the southeastern edge of San Antonio. An excerpt from the state website says this facility offered “asylum” in the truest sense of the word. The asylum was a self-contained living environment. Crops and livestock were raised on the grounds, which at the time included the land across South Presa. A large lake provided fishing and recreational activities for the patients. All staff members lived on the grounds and had to obtain permission to leave. The hospital grounds also included a cemetery where patients were buried when other arrangements were not possible. It was not until 1925 that the words “lunatic” and “asylum” were removed from the titles of mental institutions and replaced by “state hospital.”
Below is a postcard I found during a web search.
Postcard of Southwestern Insane Asylum in San Antonio, Texas
SAN ANTONIO STATE HOSPITAL. In 1889 the Texas legislature passed a bill establishing a state mental institution to serve Southwest Texas. The new facility was to occupy at least 640 acres and be capable of housing 500 patients. It was to be known as the Southwestern Insane Asylum (not the Southwestern Lunatic Asylum, as it has sometimes been called). A site was selected just south of San Antonio, and the new facility began operation on April 6, 1892. In 1925 the word “hospital” was substituted for “asylum” in state asylums, and such adjectives as “insane” and “lunatic” were dropped from their names; the Southwestern Insane Asylum then became the San Antonio State Hospital. In the first eight months of operation the patient population grew to 142. By August 23, 1894, there were 225 patients. Provisions for 300 more patients were authorized when $70,000 was appropriated in 1898, and in 1910, $100,000 was voted for expansion. By 1912 the facilities could accommodate 1,140, and improvements were valued at $500,000. By 1915 the hospital’s capacity was 1,800. In 1917 a training school for nurses in psychiatry was begun. This school, the only one of its kind in the state system, continued with a three-year course until 1942. In 1926 the average number of inmates stood at 2,103; the superintendent reported the hospital full and emphasized the need for additional facilities. A social service department was added in 1926, and occupational therapy was expanded. By 1932 the population had increased to 2,308, and crowded conditions were again reported in 1934. Five new buildings were completed by 1939; together with a nurses’ home they enabled the hospital to provide complete modern treatment for patients. By 1940 the population was 2,854, and the hospital was crowded to capacity. Patients had to be refused admission for lack of bed space, and a waiting list of over 700 occupied the jails of the state. The onset of World War II blocked a construction program, but the Board of Control was able to get all patients hospitalized by June 1943. The average daily population of the hospital in 1945 was 2,732; employees numbered 450. Only white patients were admitted. Through the years the hospital grew at a steady pace, so that by 1960 the patient population was several thousand. By then the hospital was not only badly overcrowded but faced with the problems of low budgets, antiquated buildings, and an unacceptable staff-to-patient ratio. Some of the elderly patients were maintained in private nursing homes on a furlough basis. Daily census of hospital patients in 1967 averaged 2,700. Finally, as the result of a class-action suit originally filed against Terrell State Hospital, SASH came under federal court orders to reduce the patient population and increase the staff-to-patient ratio.
Racial desegregation at the hospital began in 1964 with the admission of the first black patient. The first black professional staff person was Helen Cloud Austin, who was unable to get a job at SASH in 1962 because of race but persisted in her efforts and became a case worker in 1964, opening the way for other black professionals. In 1970 San Antonio State Hospital was accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals. The hospital also qualified for Medicare and Medicaid benefits from the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare by adding to the nursing staff. The average daily census was 1,836, and outreach clinics operated in Eagle Pass, Sinton, Beeville, and Bay City. SASH established a separate unit to treat drug addicts and expanded the alcohol treatment program. In the 1970s SASH was greatly improved by an extensive building program. The antiquated old main building and its adjoining wards were replaced by a modern administration building and a number of new ward buildings. Other improvements, which included new dining facilities and a media center, were funded partly by the state and partly by private individuals. Perhaps the most notable was the Transitional Living Unit, which was largely funded by the family of Mrs. Patric Sexton Dennis. Another was the All Faiths Chapel, which was financed by private funds and was strongly supported by Mrs. Enrico Liberto.
By 1990 the average number of patients had been reduced to 531 and the staff increased to 1,350. In 1992, 489 patients were served by 1,600 staff members. Centennial celebration events were held throughout April 1992. One of the highlights was the meeting of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology on April 6 to give board examinations to ninety-six psychiatrists, a significant honor for the institution. Dr. Steven B. Schnee, the superintendent in 1994, arrived in 1987. During his tenure the Texas legislature made a $2 million appropriation for SASH to establish a clinical research unit to seek new methods of diagnosis and treatment for chronically mentally ill persons. The program was a joint effort with the psychiatry and pharmacology departments of the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the School of Pharmacy of the University of Texas at Austin. In the 1990s San Antonio State Hospital also operated acute care, extended care, multiple disability, psychiatric intensive care, adolescent, bicultural, geriatric care, and chemical dependency units.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Kenneth D. Gaver, “Mental Illness and Mental Retardation: The History of State Care in Texas,” Impact, July-August 1975. San Antonio Express, August 31, 1966, October 14, 1967. San Antonio Light, December 29, 1987.
William R. Geise and James W. Markham, “SAN ANTONIO STATE HOSPITAL,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/sbs04), accessed October 02, 2011. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
“Brief History” (http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/mhhospitals/SanAntonioSH/SASH_About.shtm) accessed October 2, 2011.
Another site with a good photo.
Back in June 2011, I posted two different blog posts about my glass negative photos. In those posts I explained that I have three boxes of glass negatives found in an old home being torn down near Kerrville in the late 1960’s. These were given to my mother and we never knew what house. I finally found a scanner that could handle the 3-1/2″ X 3-1/2″ glass negative size and made a frame to hold them and revealed an unbelievable treasure!!
Between each negative is scrap paper printed in German from a magazine or newspaper, all were taken in the Hill Country of Texas, one of the Alamo, a downtown Austin, Texas view and some unidentified homes and people and stores. It has been a challenge to find out who and where these pictures were taken. I don’t know the photographer, but thought someone might know. Would love to see if anyone can help me!
I have researched the web for photographers that could have been my photographer. My photographer was in the San Antonio Plaza and photographed the Alamo, and turned to the left and photographed the Post Office, as well as other stores and the river coming into downtown San Antonio.
During my research I made this reference document on the Alamo and its photographic history along with looking at other San Antonio photographers. Thought you might like to read and see if it triggers anyone’s memory. Thanks for reading, Jan
Alamo pre-1900’s – left side is the Hugo and Schmeltzer Building.
Above photo: Federal Courthouse and Post Office at Alamo Plaza in San Antonio, built from 1886-1889 designed by architect James Riely Gordon (1863-1937). Worked in San Antonio from 1884 to 1900. This building was razed. Gordon is remembered for his courthouses, he designed eighteen for Texas.
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I have taken the liberty to publish this research for informational purposes only.
The Alamo and Hugo and Schmeltzer Building, ca. 1890.
UT Institute of Texan Cultures
Grenet’s Alamo Store 1880-82
Hugo Grenet’s Alamo store located in the converted convent building, seen here in an etching made between 1880 and 1882 and reprinted in Adina de Zavala’s History and Legends of the Alamo, 1917.
From Adina De Zavala, History and Legends of the Alamo, 1917
The Alamo.
Souvenir Postcard, ca. 1900
Collection of Wilkinson Ranch
Alamo Plaza, ca. 1900, showing one of the nearby saloons.
DRT Library at the Alamo, San Antonio
Alamo grounds, ca. 1912-13, showing surviving convent walls.
DRT Library at the Alamo, San Antonio
http://www.knowsouthernhistory.net/Articles/Places/celebrate_the_alamo.html
We Didn’t Always Celebrate the Alamo
By Derek Alger
8 March 2002
The names of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, Travis and Santa Anna are forever linked to the final storming of the Alamo in the predawn hours of March 6, 1836 when the Mexican forces wiped out the garrison of hopelessly outnumbered defenders to a man. But how did the legend of the Alamo, the mythic visions of romanticized glory, pass down from one generation to the next?
How did the cry of “Remember the Alamo” a month later at the Battle of San Jacinto when Sam Houston’s forces defeated a Mexican army and captured Santa Anna spread from heroic lore in the Lone Star State to a political symbol of American individualism and freedom during the Cold War and on through today?
The book A Line In the Sand: The Alamo In Blood and Memory by historians Randy Roberts and James S. Olson tackles those questions; first, by recounting a well-documented retelling of the 13 day siege and the climactic assault on the Alamo, but second, and perhaps, more interesting in many respects, they detail the story of the survival of the actual Alamo itself and then go on to show how a television show un-expectedly gripped the country and moved the Alamo from a symbol of Texas to one of heroic stature on a national level.
The Alamo may have been considered sacred by many but the actual mission was not treated as such. True, it was the site of a heroic battle, one in which fellow Texans and others gave their lives fighting for the independence of Texas from Mexico. Even Santa Anna contributed to the aura of myth by not allowing proper burial of the Alamo defenders, but instead, burning their corpses and never disclosing the location.
As Roberts and Olson state, in referring to the inhabitants of San Antonio de Bexar, who had witnessed the assault on the Alamo and its aftermath, “Many concluded that the spirits of the dead Texans, denied eternal access to their own bodies, had no place to go, neither to heaven nor to hell, and remained on the battlefield, angels of righteousness charged with defending the Alamo against future enemies.”
Similar to the site where the World Trade Center stood, people scooped up relics from the Alamo, gathering rocks or stones, some for themselves as a tribute to Lone Star history, and others for profit, to sell such items as part of preserved history to future generations. In fact, as noted in A Line in the Sand, the town council even allowed citizens to haul away stones from the Alamo, as early as 1840, for a fee of $5 a wagon load.
Future occupation of the Alamo also took a toll on the mission. Soldiers of the Republic of Texas returned to occupy what was left of the Alamo in December of 1836, all walls having been destroyed before the Mexicans had departed, and returned to occupy it again in 1839. And it was also occupied by Mexican troops, first in March of 1841 and again in September of 1842.
After Texas received statehood in 1845, followed by the Mexican-American War, the Alamo was rented by the U.S. Army in 1849 from the Catholic Church for $150 a month to be used as a quartermasters’ depot.
It was during this period that the first work was really performed to rebuild and restore the Alamo. In fact, under the direction of Major E. B. Babbitt, the now famous Campanulate, or bell-shaped facade, atop the front wall of the chapel, was erected. That facade, of course, is the image that immediately comes to mind for most when thinking of the Alamo, and it’s difficult to accept that it never existed while Crockett and Bowie and company lived and died within the walls of the Alamo.
The U.S. Army departed from the Alamo in 1876 for another fort and the Catholic Church sold the mission to Honore Grenet, a businessman who constructed a two-story wooden building on the site and operated a grocery store there until he died in 1882.
The Catholic Church, which had retained ownership of the famous chapel, sold it to the State of Texas for $20,000 in 1883, while the actual Alamo mission was purchased by the mercantile firm of Hugo & Schmeltzer.
Two women, Adina De Zavala and Clara Driscoll, were responsible for saving the Alamo during the early turn of the past century when the sacred fortress faced the very real possibility of being razed and replaced with a hotel.
De Zavala came on the stage first in 1889, when she organized other women in San Antonio who were dedicated to the preservation of the memory of the early heroes of Texas. In 1892, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT) was founded, and the following year the De Zavala Chapter of the DRT was started in San Antonio.
In an effort to preserve an American history, monuments and commemoration events were taking place across the land as the country began to come of age. Roberts and Olson note: “By 1900, more than two hundred thousand tourists visited Gettysburg each year.” Yet, in San Antonio, the 50th anniversary of the Alamo was ignored, and, in 1903, there were no ceremonies at the site, the Texas flag flapping at half mast the only sign of tribute. That same year, Hugo & Schmeltzer announced its decision to sell the property to a buyer who planned to demolish the building and replace it with a hotel.
De Zavala went into action, first convincing Gustav Schmeltzer to give the DRT first option to buy the property. A school teacher, she knew she couldn’t hope to match the $75,000 asking price but fortune was on her side when she ran into Driscoll, who was also appalled at the current state of the Alamo. More important, Driscoll was the heir to an oil, railroad and cattle fortune, and perhaps equally as important, both her grandfathers had fought at the Battle of San Jacinto.
A letter by Driscoll, published in the San Antonio Express in 1901, quoted in A Line in the Sand, shows exactly where Driscoll stood on the matter. In part, the letter stated, “There does not stand in the world today a building or monument which can recall such a deed of heroism and bravery, as that of the brave men who fought and fell inside those historic walls.”
At De Zavala’s urging, Driscoll joined the DRT and the two women promptly received a concession from Hugo & Schmeltzer; that for $500 the DRT would have 30 days in which to come up with another $4,500 and the option to buy would be extended for a year. After that, the DRT would be required to pay $20,000, followed by $10,000 installments for next five years.
Driscoll put up the initial $500 out of her own pocket and the De Zavala Chapter’s Alamo fund-raising committee set out to drum up the required money to save the Alamo. The effort fell short, raising only a little over a thousands dollars, but once again, Driscoll stepped in, making up the difference with her own funds to reach the necessary $4,500.
De Zavala and Driscoll also lobbied to convince the state legislature to purchase the Hugo & Schmeltzer building for $5,000 but were rebuffed when Governor Samuel W.T. Lanham vetoed the bill, arguing that it was not justified and a waste of taxpayer dollars.
As the deadline of February 10, 1904 approached, when the payment of the $20,000 was due, the San Antonio DRT had only raised $5,666.23. Once again, Driscoll stepped in and purchased the Hugo & Schmeltzer building herself, also agreeing to pay the additional $50,000 in five future installments of $10,000 each.
Political pressure mounted after word of Driscoll, known as the Savior of the Alamo, and her generous actions spread throughout the state. In response, the state finally acted, appropriating the funds to reimburse Driscoll in January 1905, and Driscoll, in turn, subsequently transferred the title of the Hugo & Schmeltzer building to the State of Texas on September 5, 1905.
As pointed out in A Line in the Sand, “The bill, largely drafted by Adina De Zavala and sponsored by Samuel Ealy Johnson, also guaranteed that once Driscoll transferred title to the state, the DRT would be named custodian of the Alamo.”
Johnson was the grandfather of Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the future president, while a congressman, was one of the honorary pallbearers at Driscoll’s funeral in July of 1945. Other such honorary pallbearers included Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn, former secretary of state Cordell Hull and former vice-president John Nance Garner.
Driscoll had preserved the Alamo as a monument to Texas but it took Walt Disney and a television show to bring the saga of the Alamo into living rooms across America. Six days before De Zavala died at the age of ninety-three on March 1, 1955, ABC broadcast “the final episode in its Davy Crockett trilogy, in which Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett died in Clara Driscoll’s Alamo.”
The Second Battle of the Alamo
by C. F. ECKHARDT
http://www.texianlegacy.com/eckhardt.html
Educated back East at Miss Peebles and Thompson’s School in New York, and later at a French convention the outskirts of Paris, Clara Driscoll returned to Texas with a sense of style and a knack for politics. She donated Laguna Gloria to the Texas Fine Arts Association, and established a children’s hospital in Corpus Christi, and saved the Alamo from ruin.
I don’t like to write about the Alamo. It’s not that I don’t understand and admire its significance, the great symbol it is for Texans – I can’t read Travis’s letter on the wall there without my eyes blurring, and I know what a firstwater (expletive deleted) he was in his personal life. Still, everybody has written about the Battle of the Alamo. I’ve read the stories and the research histories – the two best I’ve ever found are Walter Lord’s A Time To Stand and John Myers’ The Alamo, neither of which, incidentally was written by a native Texan. I’ve read the best Alamo novel ever – Lon Tinkle’s Thirteen Days To Glory, which was the basis for the John Wayne movie, The Alamo. One, called The Blazing Dawn, was written by a native Texan, James Wakefield Burke. The other, W. 0. Stoddard’s The Gold Of The Montezumas, A Tale of the Alamo, written early in this century, is the apparent source book for those who insist there is a great horde of gold hidden somewhere around Alamo Plaza.
But what about the Alamo? Not the symbol or the fight, but the building itself? What’s happened to the physical basis of the Shrine of Texas Liberty in the last 161 years? I’m going to write about the Alamo – not the battle, but that stone building in downtown San Antonio – and how we treated it at first, how we almost lost it forever, who saved it and how, why we still have it, and who we have to thank for that.
What we see today in downtown San Antonio is not the Mission San Antonio de Valero, but merely the mission’s chapel and a portion of another structure, which we now call ‘the Long Barracks’. All the walls around the Alamo, all the pathways, the gift shop, the library – all are 19th or 20th century constructions. The original mission’s plaza took in most of the land surrounding the site. The west wall of the mission’s compound was located where the back walls of the business buildings across Alamo Plaza are now. James Bowie died in a small room built into the now-destroyed south wall, near where the gazebo in Alamo Plaza now stands. Travis apparently died somewhere near the Cenotaph. The ground in front of the Alamo chapel – that structure we call the Alamo – is soaked with the blood of the men who died in that battle, both Texicans and Mexicans.
On the morning of March 7, 1836, the Alamo mission’s chapel and compound were a gutted, smoking ruin. The chapel itself was roofless, its bell-towers were gone, its walls had gaping holes from Mexican artillery. Santa Anna, not wishing a shrine to the 240 odd men who died there, ordered the ruin razed – not a single stone to be left atop another.
The ruin was not razed. In spite of direct orders from Santa Anna, the walls of the Alamo chapel were left standing. Not that there was much there – the facade was badly damaged and crumbling, the walls in many places were no more than head high on a tall man. Still, Santa Anna gave a direct order, ‘Knock down the walls!’ and it wasn’t done. Why not?
Nowhere in records, Texan or Mexican, will you find that Santa Anna rescinded the order to knock down the walls. Nowhere will you find any explanation for why the order was ignored. Still, when Santa Anna’s troops marched out of San Antonio in pursuit of the rabble Sam Houston was trying to turn into a fighting force, the battered walls of the Alamo chapel were still standing.
Where we do not have records we have stories. The stories – from Mexican sources as well as from San Antonio – say Santa Anna’s engineers and sappers went to the chapel to carry out the orders and turned tail and ran. According to those stories they saw something – perhaps several somethings – standing guard over the walls. What they saw, they described as ‘glowing men with flaming swords’.
Maybe it’s just an old ghost story somebody made up. Maybe the guys who were sent to tear down the walls went to the cantina instead, and after too much mescal and what was left of the powerful gringo whiskey, they couldn’t tear the walls down. Maybe so. But look at the description of what they said they saw. ‘Glowing men with flaming swords.’ Where have you seen that before? Isn’t it a pretty close approximation of the description of guardian or avenging angels in both Christian and Jewish lore? Maybe they weren’t seeing things, after all.
Guardian angels may have protected the Alamo’s walls from Santa Anna’s engineers, but they seem to have been sent off on other assignments shortly afterwards or perhaps they felt the Alamo’s walls shouldn’t need protection from the physical and spiritual heirs of the men who died defending them. During the ten years of the Texas Republic, the Shrine of Texas Liberty was not treated with reverence. The mission was built of cut limestone – already cut and just lying around, and nobody was using it. Much of that stone was cannibalized to build other buildings in San Antonio. The outer walls of the compound disappeared entirely, as did the gate and gateposts. Jim Bowie’s death room was carried away piece by piece, and no one today can say where the stones that took his blood are sited. Eventually the two mostly intact buildings, the ‘long barracks’, and the chapel itself, began to disappear piece by piece.
By the time Texas was annexed to the US, the facade of the chapel was a total shambles and the rest of the walls were perhaps waist-high on a grown man. Then the US Army came to San Antonio, which became the headquarters of the Department of Texas. Uncle Sam wanted a storehouse – a warehouse – in which to store grain and supplies, and there wasn’t one available. There was, however, right north of the main part of town, that old ruin which, with work could be restored and used. The army took over the ruin of the chapel and rebuilt the walls, then reroofed it. The present facade of the Alamo – the step and arch profile that’s recognized the world over – is not the one that was there in 1836. At that time the chapel had a flat top and a bell tower at each of the two west-side corners. What we recognize as ‘the Alamo’ was built by the US Corps of engineers in the 1840’s. That distinctive shape that has graced and identified, among other things, the Alamo motel in North Augusta, South Carolina to a lonely Texas kid, Charley Eckhardt, back in 1961 while he was assigned for training to Fort Gordon, just outside Augusta, Georgia, across the state line from North Augusta and it made that lonely Texan a long way from home, whose fiancée had just dear-johnned him, feel a little more comfortable – was entirely unknown to Buck Travis and Jim Bowie.
By the 1870’s the Army had pretty much outgrown its downtown headquarters and was moving operations to the newly-established Fort Sam Houston, far to the north along the New Braunfels road, entirely outside San Antonio itself. It no longer needed its storehouse with the peculiar roof line. At that point controversy enters the story, because nobody knew, for sure, who owned the chapel, which continued in use as a warehouse by a local merchant. By the 1890’s it was being to some extent exploited as a tourist attraction – “Yeah, folks, that fight went on right there in my warehouse” – but tourism was not big business. A frame retail store adjoined the stone building, and there certainly was no reverential treatment of what some called ‘an eyesore of an old pile of rocks’. The army occupied the old chapel as its warehouse until the opening of Fort Sam Houston in 1876. At the time there was some question as to the ownership of the chapel. Both the city of San Antonio and the Roman Catholic Church’s Archdiocese of Texas claimed it. There was considerable litigation over title to the old chapel, and eventually courts decided in favor of the Catholic Church. The state of Texas bought the chapel itself and the ground it stood on -but no more – from the Archdiocese of Texas. All the rest of the land surrounding the Alamo chapel – the land on which the battle was actually fought – passed into private hands.
Texas didn’t do much with the chapel – there was no restoration, no effort even to preserve the rumbling walls. It was just there, Texas owned it, that was it. Title to much of the land north of the chapel, where the old convento (now called the Long Barracks) stood, was held, in the 1890’s, by Hugo & Schmeltzer, a firm of wholesale merchants. They had a huge frame warehouse and salesroom built adjacent to the Alamo chapel, and at least some of their offices were located in the old convento.
In 1903 Hugo & Schmeltzer was closing down for good and selling off its assets – and one of the assets up for sale was the land to the north of the Alamo chapel. About three years earlier a young woman named Clara Driscoll, whose grandfather, Daniel Driscoll, was a San Jacinto veteran, returned to Texas after having spent seven years in school in Europe. Clara, in Europe, was impressed with the way Europeans preserved and protected their historical sites, and when she saw the condition of the Alamo chapel and the land on which the Alamo battle was fought, she was furious. She began a letter writing campaign to newspapers around the state, the stated objective being the preservation of the Alamo and as much of its grounds as possible. She joined the DeZavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in San Antonio and immediately began campaigning to acquire the Hugo & Schmeltzer property to add to the Alamo chapel, in order to begin the proper preservation of the Shrine of Texas Liberty.
Now, Clara was a salty ol’ gal, there’s more than rumor that she liked her nip – or several of them. She lived much of her later life in and around Corpus Christi, and at one time – now demolished – there was a luxurious hotel called the White Plaza ‘on the bluff’ in Corpus Christi, overlooking the bay. Clara and several cohorts tried to check into the White Plaza one night and were refused registration because they were, quite frankly, stewed to the ears and the management thought they’d disturb the other guests.
“By God,” said Clara, “I’ll build a hotel right next to your hotel, an’ it’ll be bigger an’ finer ‘n your hotel, an’ when I get it finished I’ll spit on your damn hotel.” (For the record, she didn’t say ‘spit’, but that’s what the tour guides have to say she said.) She built the hotel, incidentally – the Driscoll – right next door to the White Plaza. At the top of the Driscoll, attached to the old penthouse, was a projection that overhung the roof of the White Plaza. It was from that projection, they say, that Clara did what she said she’d do on the White Plaza and she didn’t say ‘spit’.
That was a long time later – in 1903 Clara Driscoll was simply a wide-eyed young lady, crusading for the preservation of what has become the single most widely-visited historical site in Texas and one of the most widely-visited in the US. She and members of the DeZavala, DRT, approached Hugo & Schmeltzer about selling the property adjacent to and directly north of the Alamo chapel.
“Sure,” said Hugo & Schmeltzer. “You got seventy-five thousand bucks?”
The DeZavala Chapter of the DRT didn’t have $75,000, and Hugo & Schmeltzer was demanding $5,000 for a one-year option on the property, with an additional $20,000 to be paid when the option expired and five annual installments of $10,000 at 6% interest would be paid over the next five years. The DeZavala Chapter – and the DRT – immediately set about to raise the option money.
Almost immediately a new player entered the game. An eastern syndicate wanted to buy the Hugo & Schmeltzer property for a hotel, and it was offering better than $5,000 for a year’s option. Clara, together with Judge James B. Wells of Brownsville and Floyd McGown of San Antonio went directly to Charles Hugo, the surviving partner of Hugo & Schmeltzer, to try to preserve the property for Texas. Hugo agreed to give a 30 day option on the property for $500, cash on the barrel right then, and an additional $4,500 to be paid in about 11 months. Clara reached in her purse, pulled out her checkbook, and wrote the $500 check that ultimately preserved the grounds of the Alamo as they are today.
The DeZavala Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas immediately called for a statewide appeal to raise the needed $4,500 by April 17, 1903 – the date the 30 day option expired. Though the legislature was in session, it declined to appropriate the money to pick up the option. The DRT sent a delegation to the legislature – Clara Driscoll headed it – and an amendment was placed on an appropriations bill to provide the $5,000 to pick up the option and reimburse Clara her $500.
Before the appropriations bill could pass the time ran out on the 30 day option. Rather than lose the property to the eastern syndicate, Clara pulled out her trusty checkbook again and put up the remaining $4,500. The property was safe for a year, and the ladies waited for the legislature to act. The bill passed – but Governor S. W T. Lanham vetoed it. Clara was out $5,000 and there was no guarantee the Daughters could raise the $20,000 that would be due in a year, much less the $10,000 a year for the next five years – plus interest – to complete the purchase.
By February 10, 1904, the DRT had managed to raise $5,666.23. The option was expiring and the eastern syndicate was sitting in the wings with the money to buy the property for cash. Out came Clara’s checkbook again, and she wrote a check for $14,333.77 to cinch the sale. She also signed, in her own name, five notes for $10,000 each at 6% per annum to complete the payment. She was now obligated for another $50,000 plus interest, in addition to taxes and insurance on the property – all for ‘an unsightly old pile of rocks’. The deed of transfer included the words “this property is purchased by Clara Driscoll for the use and benefit of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, to be used by them for the purpose of making a park about the Alamo, and for no other purpose.”
There’s something peculiar about Texans – we love a fighter. Our history – and our legends – are full of one man – and one woman – fights for what the fighter thought was right. Clara’s fight to preserve the land around the old chapel in San Antonio brought an immediate outpouring from the state. Money rolled in – and so did sympathy. By August of 1904 the Democratic state convention made the purchase of the Alamo property a plank in the party’s platform. On January 26, 1905, the 29th legislature appropriated $65,000 to complete the purchase of the Alamo property, and Governor Lanham signed the bill. The bill also provided that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas should be custodians of the property. Clara formally transferred the property to the State of Texas, and Governor Lanham conveyed custody of the property to the DRT. Just in case you consider the funds don’t quite add up, the DRT had already raised $10,000, which it kicked in – and yes, Clara got her $19,333.77 back, but without interest.
The initial purchases that would ultimately expand the Alamo property into the park we know in downtown San Antonio today had been made, but at a terrific cost. The DRT as an organization, was very nearly broke, and Clara Driscoll’s magic checkbook had taken a terrific beating. The very last thing the DRT needed in connection with the Alamo was an internal squabble – the sort of thing that would cause the doomsayers of Texas, of which the state has never had a dearth, to say things like ‘see, those derned ol’ women can’t even get ‘long amongst themselves. How’re they gonna run the Alamo?’ Unfortunately, that’s just what they got.
Probably the single most tireless worker for the preservation of the Alamo’s old convent, today known as ‘The Long Barracks’ – outside of Clara Driscoll and her magic checkbook – was Adina de Zavala of San Antonio. Adina de Zavala was the president of the De Zavala Chapter of the DRT, one of the earliest DRT chapters organized, and it was named for her direct ancestor, Lorenzo de Zavala, the first vice president of the Republic of Texas and the man who could, without much exaggeration, be called the father of public education in Texas. She worked at least as hard if not harder than Clara Driscoll, persuading and lobbying, to get the Alamo’s grounds and surviving structures preserved, but she simply didn’t command the one thing the DRT desperately needed – and Clara had. In spite of all other efforts, if Clara Driscoll hadn’t come up with the money at the time it was needed, there would be no Alamo park today.
Adina de Zavala’s contribution to the saving of the Alamo should never be belittled, for she did much. Unfortunately, she also assumed much. Somehow she became obsessed with the idea that the Alamo park and its management were the prerogative of the De Zavala Chapter, DRT, and not of the organization as a whole, and in particular that Adina de Zavala possessed – in her own words – the “divine right” to manage the Alamo. The result was a comedy that, like all great comedies, held within it the elements of tragedy.
On October 4, 1905, Governor Lanham, by official letter, formally transferred possession of the Alamo and the grounds to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, “To be maintained by them in good order and repair, without charge to the state, as a sacred memorial to the heroes who immolated themselves upon that hallowed ground; and by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas to be maintained or remodeled upon plans adopted by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, approved by the Governor of Texas; provided that no changes or alterations shall be made in the Alamo Church property as it now stands, except such as are necessary for its preservation… ” Upon receipt of this letter the President General of the organization, Mrs. Anson Jones, widow of the Republic’s last president, and the chairwoman of the DRT’s executive committee, appointed Clara Driscoll temporary local custodian of the Alamo church and surrounding property. Adina de Zavala promptly went ballistic.
Immediately she went to the mayor of San Antonio and represented herself as the duly-appointed custodian of the property. The mayor, not knowing she wasn’t gave her the keys to the Alamo church – which she promptly locked to keep Clara Driscoll or her associates from entering it. During the fight to preserve the Alamo property a lot of relics had surfaced across Texas – and the US – that were associated with Alamo defenders. Most of these had been sent to the DRT in care of the De Zavala Chapter because, at the time, the De Zavala Chapter was the unofficial but only practical custodian of them. Adina de Zavala proceeded to strip the Alamo chapel of almost all the donated or loaned relics, claiming them to be the property of the De Zavala Chapter and not of the DRT as a whole.
Clara was the appointed custodian, but Adina had the keys – and the relics. The state conveyed the property to t DRT as of October 4, 1905, but it wasn’t until the DRT filed a civil action against Adina that she surrendered the keys to Clara on November 13, Now Clara had the chapel, but Hugo & Schmeltzer still had the old Convento. Over the next two years Adina de Zavala made life miserable for everyone concerned with the Alamo project, so thoroughly disrupting the 1907 convention of the organization that it was forced to adjourn sine die without accomplishing anything at all. Clara Driscoll, who was a member of the De Zavala Chapter herself, became so disgusted with the whole mess that she resigned from the organization.
In the meantime factions formed, as they will in any dispute, and charges began to fly. One of the charges leveled by Adina’s faction was that the DRT as a whole planned not on tearing down the frame Hugo & Schmeltzer building at all, but on opening it as a saloon and vaudeville house, including – horror above horrors – women dancing in short skirts with their legs bare. This, the rumor-mill insisted, would never happen if the rightful custodians’ of the Alamo, Adina de Zavala, and the De Zavala Chapter, were in charge. The thing finally reached such an absurd level that, on April 20, 1907, the attorney general of Texas, R. V. Davidson, was compelled to issue a three-paragraph opinion stating that the duly-elected executive committee of the DRT – not Adina de Zavala’s rump-convention executive committee – was the only body authorized by the Legislature to “demand and receive and receipt for rents and profits of the (Alamo) property.” The opinion went on the state that the Legislative act “places the care, control and custody of this property in the hands of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, as a State organization, and not in the care, control and custody of any one of the chapters of the organization.” Even the attorney general’s opinion didn’t stop Adina’s monomaniac attempts to seize control of the Alamo, and finally, on July 20, the main body of the DRT managed to get an injunction to get her out and get the relics back.
Adina wasn’t quite finished. In February of 1908 the Hugo & Schmeltzer building was at last being vacated. Without the knowledge of Hugo & Schmeltzer, Adina de Zavala managed to get into the building. With the help from someone – still unnamed – she changed all the locks and literally barricaded herself in the building. At midnight on February 10/11 the possession passed legally to the DRT, and at that time Miss Emma K. Burleson, the DRT’s appointed representative, two other DRT members, Judge J. E. Webb, the DRT’s attorney’ and the Bexar County Sheriff all went to the old frame structure to take legal possession. The doors were locked and barred from the inside, and a man inside refused to open them.
Apparently Judge Webb had been expecting this, because he came prepared – with an ax. In the presence of the three ladies and the county sheriff he applied it to the door, and the party entered just in time to see the man disappear up the stairs. They chased him and caught him on the second floor. He was asked who was in the building with him, and replied “No one.”
Lots of people knew Adina de Zavala had gone in the building but nobody saw her leave, so Sheriff Tobin had a look around. He found her on her hands and knees, hiding under a desk. He took out a copy of the injunction to read aloud in her presence, at which point Miss Burleson’s report says “she put her fingers in her ears and refused to listen.” Adina refused to leave as well, and the sheriff declared he had to have a court order to eject her forcibly.
As soon as the standoff became public knowledge the newspapers, of course, had a field day. In a masterful demonstration of the accuracy of news reporting, one Texas paper reported that Adina de Zavala had barricaded herself “in the very room where James Bowie died” – which had been torn down and lost nearly fifty years before. Newspaper reports fueled by Adina herself and her associates – told of her “parched lips” and “starving countenance”, and alleged that she was only allowed to sip coffee through an aperture in a door, the cup being held outside the door by whatever the early 20th century newspaper epithet for ‘member of a goon squad’ happened to be.
In fact, the ‘goon squad’ was made up of two Bexar County deputy sheriffs, W T. Ingle and Nat Harlan. Those two unfortunates were the target for every calumny a headline seeker could pile on them, and all they were trying to do was maintain an official presence in the building and see to it that nobody went nuts and torched the place. They guarded the Hugo & Schmeltzer building – not “the Alamo”, as the news reports stated – from midnight Monday, February 10/11, until the final disposition of the situation on Thursday, February 15. In a letter to Miss Burleson, who was somewhat concerned that there might be some truth in the newspaper reports – Bexar County’s deputy sheriffs were not known for gentle and understanding natures – they recounted the situation somewhat differently. “(W)e treated her with every possible consideration and respect, and during that time she had plenty to eat, and as far as we know, was as comfortable as she desired to be.
“She did not drink coffee through an aperture in the door, as stated by the papers-, in fact, she stated that she did not drink coffee, and on one occasion refused coffee offered to her. She was not a prisoner in the building, but was at liberty to go at any time she chose. She had the use of a telephone and electric light. “The newspaper reports regarding Miss de Zavala’s ‘parched lips’ and suffering, from our observation, have no foundation in fact. The building is filthy and unfit for occupancy, and was full of rubbish and trash. During the daytime we brought her all the water she wanted, made fires for her, and were in every way respectful. We also answered phone calls for her, and would answer calls at the door and notify her that parties desired to speak to her at the door. Respectfully, W T Ingle/Nat Harlan. ”
Adina de Zavala was finally ejected from the old building on February 15, the necessary court order having arrived, but she – and the De Zavala Chapter of the DRT – promptly filed a civil suit to try and recover control of the property. Control of the property was placed directly in the hands of the Governor of Texas, to be held by him until the litigation was settled. On March 10, 1910, all appeals on the part of Adina de Zavala and the De Zavala Chapter having been exhausted, the Alamo property was formally released to the DRT as a whole. The courts decided that Adina de Zavala and the twelve members of the De Zavala Chapter who had pursued the suit no longer had any claim to membership in the DRT, nor could they use the DRT’s name or symbols in connection with their activities. This effectively dissolved the De Zavala Chapter. Former members of that chapter who had long before resigned in disgust at Adina de Zavala’s actions formed a new chapter in San Antonio for the express purpose, under the auspices of the DRT’s state organization, managing the affairs of the Alamo. That chapter, still in existence, is called The Alamo Mission Chapter, DRT.
Well, the Daughters had the Alamo and what we today call the Long Barracks, but they also had an unsightly monstrosity of a frame, building built over and around the Long Barracks, and they were very nearly broke from all the litigation. There wasn’t much they could do until they raised some more money. First on the list of improvements, though, was the demolition of the frame structure built on the Long Barracks.
This raised a controversy. The original Convento had been two story, but how much of the original second story remained was questionable. In addition, the Hugo & Schmeltzer structure had been around a while, and there were people who actually believed it was part of the original structure. One of those seems to have been Governor Colquitt, who insisted that he, and he alone, could control what was demolished or built on the Alamo grounds. The Daughters were required to go back to court once more, and finally, in 1912, the Legislature settled the problem with an act that gave the Daughters control of the grounds and structures. Controversy has raged ever since as to whether or not there was enough of the second story of the old Convento to salvage, and both sides insist they arc right to this day. The winners, at least, insisted there wasn’t and that what there was-which wasn’t salvageable – should be removed so that the view of the chapel from the northwest wouldn’t be obstructed.
During 1920, ’21 and ’22 the old 1849 roof on the chapel began to collapse. Working entirely from donations and organizational fund raising projects, and with a gift from the San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, which had belatedly come to realize that ‘the old pile of rocks’ was a great civic asset, the DRT reroofed the Alamo. Not one cent of taxpayer money was involved.
In 1925 the Daughters and the City of San Antonio came to an agreement whereby the property to the immediate north of the chapel-including a large stone building which served as a city fire house-was transferred to the Alamo park. That old San Antonio fire house today is the Alamo Hall-the souvenir shop for the, chapel. That fulfilled a long DRT dream to get all commercial activity out of the Alamo chapel and to make it a true shrine.
During all this time the floor of the Alamo chapel was the original floor – Dirt. Alamo steady influx of tourists, plus dampness, often churned this into mud. In 1935-’36-again working entirely with Daughters of the Republic of Texas raised and privately donated funds-the stone floor still in the chapel was laid. At the same time the State, private donations, and the DRT’s fund raising efforts commissioned the art deco cenotaph to commemorate the Alamo dead that stands in Alamo Plaza today. At least four previous efforts to raise funds for an ‘Alamo monument’ had failed.
For ninety-two years the Alamo and its grounds have been in the charge of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. During that time not one cent of State money has been spent in the reconstruction, renovation, or conservation of the Shrine of Texas Liberty. With the exception of the money that went into purchase of the actual ground, not a cent of taxpayer money has been spent. All operating expenses for the Alamo shrine, including the salaries of the management personnel and grounds people, have been paid for through that little donation box inside the chapel, or through the sale of souvenirs of the Alamo.
At the same time, no one-neither Texan nor tourist has ever been charged a single cent to walk through the most sanctified structure in Texas. Nowhere else in the United states-and quite possibly in the world-is that true. Every other park or shrine has an admission fee of some sort, whether state-run, federally or, outside the US, nationally operated, or privately maintained and operated, operates on admission fees. At the Alamo, though, any schoolchild can walk were Jim Bowie and David Crockett walked-and it won’t cost a cent.
The Alamo is unique-not just in being the Shrine of Texas Liberty, but in being the only major tourist attraction in the United States and perhaps in the world that has been efficiently managed for nearly a century without becoming-even during the Great Depression of the 1930’s-a burden to the taxpayer. In the meantime, what has happened to the rest of the parks and shrines in Texas?
If you’ve tried to enter most state historical parks, you’ve found that there’s an admission fee of some sort. You’ve also found that they are pretty much in a state of dilapidation. The San Jacinto monument had to be closed a few years back because its maintenance had been so sorely neglected for so long that the monument itself was unsafe. It cost you, the taxpayers of Texas, a bundle to fix it. The forts of a later era on what was once the Texas Frontier, are for the most part, preserved in a state of ‘arrested decay’. That means they were falling apart, so the state went in and put some cement in strategic places so they won’t fall apart any worse.
What about in other states? Texas has perhaps the lowest park-use fees in the lower forty-eight. When my wife and I lived in Kentucky, we tried to visit some of the more famous spots there – among them Andy Jackson’s home, The Hermitage; Fort Boonesboro State Park, Federal Hill Plantation House, which is the original ‘Old Kentucky Home’ about which Stephen Foster wrote the song; and the Shaker settlement in Kentucky. Admission fees-in the mid sixties-were $5 per person and up, just to tour the houses.
Have you tried a National Park recently? In 1994, when we visited my wife’s relatives in Washington State, it cost us nearly $20 per car to get into Mount Ranier National Park. We understand the fees are substantially higher at other National Parks.
Yet here in Texas, to visit the most famous site in the state-one that’s known the world over-it doesn’t cost you a cent. Now, why is that?
The Daughters of the Republic of Texas-the ‘li’l ol bluehaired ladies’-made that possible. By efficient management and volunteer help, they’ve made it free, for nearly a century, to visit our greatest shrine. Now some people in Austin want to take the Alamo away from them. We might be moved to ask why. As a fact, the Alamo is the single most widely visited historical site in Texas. If it were run by, say, the Parks and Wildlife Department, with-suppose-a $2 entry fee for adults, 500 for children, it would furnish a sizeable part of the Parks side of Parks and Wildlife’s budget every year. That, perhaps, would be beneficial; but it would also mean that the revenue from the Alamo would be going to support other state parks and historical sites, and it’s entirely possible that the Alamo and the grounds around it wouldn’t be anywhere as well maintained as they are today.
For ninety-two years the Daughters of the Republic of Texas have made the Alamo the best-run, most efficiently managed tourist attraction in Texas and probably in the United States. Instead of thinking about taking it away from them, we might suggest that the state of Texas make the Daughters custodians of all our historic sites. From all indications, they’d do a better job than has been done to date.
I tip my hat-be it Panama or John B-to the ladies of the DRT. Ladies, you have done a magnificent job of preserving and protecting one of the most significant historical sites in the world. You’ve made it where any schoolchild can enter the Alamo and walk where Travis, Bowie and Crockett fought and died-and it won’t cost them the price of an Alamo Plaza raspa to do it. About no other site in Texas-nor in the US and probably not in the world can that be said. You haven’t cost the taxpayers of Texas a cent in the process. May your shadows on Alamo Plaza never diminish.
Reprinted from Enchanted Rock Magazine, Vol. 4, No.8 November/December, 1997 with corrections by the Author. Subscriptions to Enchanted Rock Magazine are available, for $25 per year, by contacting them at P.O. Box 355, Llano, Texas 78643, (915)247-3708 or by emailing the Editor, Ira Kennedy. (I would encourage everyone interested in Texas history to subscribe. ED.)
C. F. Eckhardt is the consummate Texas story teller and historian. This article originally appeared in Charley Eckhardt’s Texas, a newspaper column which runs in the Seguin Gazette-Enterprise. The Texian Legacy Association is grateful to Mr. Eckhardt’s for his permission to reprint this article. Charley Eckhardt has also written: Texas Tales Your Teacher Never Told You, Published in 1991 and The Lost San Saba Mines, Published 1982. Both will be found in any good collection of Texas history.
For more information on Clara Driscoll and Adina de Zavala, be sure to visit these two pages on the Alamo de Parras Web Site.
Clara Driscoll, Savior of the Alamo
Adina de Zavala, Alamo Crusader
AND a special “Thanks” to Randell Tarin for providing the photograph of Ms. Driscoll.
1903 UDB Hugo Schmeltzer Building Alamo San Antonio TX
Sold Date: 05/01/2009
Channel: Online Auction
Source: eBay
Category: Advertising
1903 UDB Hugo Schmeltzer Building Alamo San Antonio TX
An undivided back card with a black and white view of Alamo Plaza, San Antonio, Texas. The Alamo itself can be seen to the right. In the middle of the shot is the Hugo Schmeltzer Building, with the Post Office behind it. Nice details. The image is marked “7 Nic Tengg” in the lower right corner. T is no further publishing information. This card was sent from San Antonio to East Saint Louis, IL in 1903.
Nic Tengg
See more about Mr Tengg at my blog post: https://blog.wilkinsonranch.com/2014/08/05/nic-tengg/
He was born in Austria Dec. 6, 1847. His family moved to San Antonio in 1852 by way of Indianola. He went to German-English School and then to St. Mary’s College. He worked for Julius Berends, a bookseller and stationer. In 1874 Behrend returned to Germany and Nic bought his business and operated it the rest of his life. It was located on the same block for over a half century on the south side of West Commerce, just east of Oppenheimer Bank. At one time Nic served as Secretary of the old German-English school and he was first secretary of San Antonio’s Turnverein.
On July 19, 1927, at his home on 326 East Crockett Street he died from a cold that developed into Bronchitis. He was buried in a family plot in the City Cemetery # 1 at the far west end. He left behind 9 children, 5 sons and 4 daughters. One son was named Julius in honor of Julius Berends.
Bibliography:
Cecilia Steinfeldt, San Antonio Was
Paula Allen: Viewbook a keepsake of early San AntonioPaula Allen – Paula Allen Web Posted: 02/14/2010 12:00 CST
A photo of the San Antonio post office from a viewbook published by bookseller Nic Tengg in 1907. PHOTO COURTESY OF NIC TENGG I found a book of very sharp, clear photos of San Antonio in a shed behind my house with some of my parents’ belongings and wonder what it might be worth. The publisher is Nic Tengg; on the same page, it says Albertype, Brooklyn. The first page has a picture of the Alamo. The rest are photos of the (Spanish colonial) missions, courthouse, post office, Sunset Depot, San Pedro Park and other places around San Antonio, attached to the pages like in a scrapbook. There is an introduction that refers to San Antonio as “the largest and oldest city in Texas” and gives the population as 53,321 from the 1900 census. Can you find out anything about this book? Norbert Bustos Known as souvenir viewbooks, albums like this were published from the late 19th through early 20th centuries. For tourists who didn’t have cameras, they provided an elegant alternative to carrying home a sheaf of postcards. The publisher of your book was Austrian-born local bookseller/stationer Nic Tengg (1847-1927), who also published postcards and maps, printed brochures and letterhead stationery, and sold other paper goods and books in his shop at 220 W. Commerce St. Its printer was the Albertype Co., which operated from 1890 to 1952 in Brooklyn, N.Y., as a postcard and viewbook publishing company, says the introduction to a finding aid for a collection of photos held by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, www.hsp.org. Founded by Adolph and Herman L. Witteman as Witteman Bros., the company changed its name to emphasize its process — “the technological innovation of the collotype or albertype to photomechanically reproduce images.” According to this document, Adolph Witteman and other photographers took photographs in cities and towns all over the United States, producing more than 25,000 collotypes of these images, which were “distributed across the United States in the form of postcards and viewbooks.” Books of this kind “are sometimes rare, depending on the title,” says Ron Tyler, Ph.D., director of the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. “The (highest) value, of course, would be placed on books that are complete and in good condition.” Your book, according to comparisons with similar volumes in local libraries, is one of many different versions Tengg published. The San Antonio Conservation Society has the 1905 edition, which does not include an introduction. “Many of the pictures were the same, although not always in the same order,” says Beth Standifird, Conservation Society librarian, who examined your copy. “A few pictures differed in the angle or place from which they were taken, (but) the scrapbook-style format was the same.” The Texana/Genealogy Room at the central San Antonio Public Library also has a copy, cataloged as “San Antonio,” by Nic Tengg, published in 1907 by Tengg. Texana Manager Frank Faulkner saw your copy and says it’s from the 1907 edition, which has the introduction you quote. Both your book and Texana’s have green paper covers, about the weight of construction paper; both fasten on the left side with a string threaded through holes punched in the paper. “However, the ‘San Antonio’ (title) on a good copy is indented with white paint in the letters,” says Faulkner. The white coloring is missing from your copy, as are two of the 23 pictures. At the DRT Library, archivist Caitlin Donnelly and librarian Martha Utterback would like to see your copy, which sounds similar to the “San Antonio Album,” an undated book in the library’s collection that seems to match your book in some respects. The sequence of photos in both books is similar, although the Album doesn’t have an introduction and has hard, red covers. Another book there, “Picturesque San Antonio Texas,” has paper covers like yours, but its photo of the post office is not labeled in the lower right-hand corner as yours is. Donnelly suggests you visit the library on the Alamo grounds to compare the two books and to pick up a copy of the DRT Library’s list of appraisers. This list does not constitute any endorsement by the DRT, but could help you get started on finding the value of your book. You may also stop by the History Shop, 713 E. Houston St., where Jim Guimarin has handled San Antonio photo books at prices ranging from $25 to $400. “Normally, anything less than original makes it half or more (of the possible top value),” he says. At the time of this writing, a Washington, D.C., bookseller was offering a copy of “Picturesque San Antonio, Texas, Photo-Gravures,” published in 1904 by Tengg, with “original green wrappers (faded and soiled), ties lacking, spine very worn,” for $165 at Advanced Book Exchange, www.abebooks.com. P.S. on Peter Bros.: Reader Betty Ludwig wrote with more on Peter Bros., a family-owned brewery, saloon and later lunchroom, covered here Feb. 7. Cofounder Gus Peter was her grandfather, one of three brothers who emigrated from Alsace-Lorraine, where their father was a winemaker. Though Fred Sinclair, who sent a question about the establishment, remembers being served beer at age 12 with his father’s permission, “We didn’t all drink beer,” says Ludwig, “for Grandpa used to take us little ones to an ice-cream parlor a couple of doors down for an ice-cream cone.” After his death in 1936, there was no more free lunch of cold cuts, bread and mustard, served on a platter on the bar. Gus Peter’s son Edward kept the business going until 1943, when the building needed extensive repairs. “It was war time and a hard time,” says Ludwig, so the family closed Peter Bros. and sold the building. “It eventually was razed, and La Quinta built a hotel on the land,” she says. “Now that has been razed, and all that exists (there) is a parking lot.” E-mail questions to Paula Allen at history [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/sahistorycolumn. |
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On 25th of August, 1883, as a big part of the new life started in America by Alexander Kennedy Auld, the 30 year old took an oath of citizenship at the Kerr County District Clerk, A. McFarland’s office.
As sworn by Alex, it states that it is his bona fide intention to become a Citizen of the United States, and renounce forever all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign Prince, Potentate, State or Sovereignty whatsoever, and particularly any and all allegiance to the Kingdom of Great Britain, and that he will bear true allegiance to the United States and support the Constitution of the same.
The very next month, Alex and his wife, Susanna registered their brands in Bandera County, for their livestock on their ranch on the Divide.
This family consisted of 7-year old Dollie, born 4 Aug 1878, and their little daughter, Maggie Mae Auld, born 21 Jun 1882, who was named after Alex’s sister in Scotland. The remaining children were Annie Lee, born 10 Jun 1885, John Shelby, born 23 May 1888, William, born 5 Jun 1891, Archie, born 20 Jun 1894, Alexander Daniel, born 2 Aug 1896 and Joe Marcus, born 16 Mar 1899. The Aulds were very proud of their family and Alex becoming a citizen of the United States.
See more in the blog post Auld wedding – 130 years ago.