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Post by Paul Sylvain on Feb 26, 2012 17:36:14 GMT -5
I may have heard of that Kevin fella.
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Post by pff on Nov 28, 2012 14:09:22 GMT -5
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Post by pff on Nov 28, 2012 14:23:24 GMT -5
Scanned Document San Antonio Express March 26, 1911 North and south pictures of the Alamada Sites {reference only} Attachments:
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Post by Rich Curilla on Nov 28, 2012 15:07:33 GMT -5
Very cool! I have read extracts from this (and the others you just posted) but have never seen the actual articles. The photo of the drawing of the Alameda is actually of the Herman Lungkwitz painting as it was redone for the Friedrich lithograph done in Dresden. It was one of the small images surrounding the large view of "San Antonio de Bexar" in 1852 as seen from the tower that once stood where the Crockett Hotel is today. Friedrich apparently felt that Lungkwitz' small figure of somebody walking a dog in the midst of the big trees would go unseen in his tiny thumbnail-like version, so he replaced it with a cavorting horseman. LOL.
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Post by Hiram on Nov 28, 2012 16:39:27 GMT -5
Particularly fascinated with the caption "sketch of the recognition of Travis' body" Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of CSI Bexar!
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Post by Rich Curilla on Nov 28, 2012 17:08:45 GMT -5
Particularly fascinated with the caption "sketch of the recognition of Travis' body" Stay tuned for the next exciting episode of CSI Bexar! I SAW that! More as the story unfolds???
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Post by Rich Curilla on Dec 13, 2013 20:55:39 GMT -5
Left-click on these pictures to see full size. Hermann Lungkwitz' painting "Alameda" done in 1856. [From Hermann Lungkwitz - Romantic Landscapist on the Texas Frontier by James Patrick McGuire, Texas Press, Austin, 1983.] "The first house on the right reportedly belonged to a Mr. Spahn who ran a hotel and bakery." The statement is confusing to me in that Mr. McGuire's wording suggests the jacal and stone structure at the right edge, but somehow the large 2-story with the porch on the south side seems to fit better. Charles Merritt Barnes said (probably in the article above), "At the time the Alameda was a great promenade, where people strolled, chatted and gossiped. It was not exactly a Market Place, but Mexican confetti, tamales and flowers were vended there regularly. In this same locality there is a famous, but unmarked spot. It is the place where the bodies of those slain in the Alamo were disposed of. The spot is where the premises known as the Old Post House is located." (Apparently written in 1911.) Here, from my virtual Bexar 1836 model is an angle as homage to Lungkwitz' painting and sketch. Having placed the Powder House exactly where Bruce Moses, Rick Range, Craig Covner, et. al., determined it to be (mostly due to other evidence) has rendered it perfectly with its position in the painting. Even though masked by trees in my model, you can make it out by the red flag on its pinacle. By 1856, most of the cottonwoods were gone. Lungkwitz shows four on the north side and eight on the south. In my model, I have followed the concept that the grove reached from the western Alamo acequia all the way to the Acequia Madre de Valero, 1000 feet east. Allowing the approximate distance between trees visually presented in the painting and finishing the grove, I get 62 trees (31 on each side) roughly 60 feet high. While no primary evidence supports this (thus far), I could see many of these being utilized by Cos and Neill for fortification material and by Santa Anna as fuel for the funeral pyres, two of which flanked the Alameda beyond where the carretas sit in the painting. For those familiar with modern San Antonio, the stone culvert over the Alamo acequia was just S.E. of St. Joseph's Church, which would later be built directly to our left from this vantage point. The far end of the Alameda and the similar bridge over the Acequia Madre de Valero would have been at the S.E. corner of Denny's front parking lot.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Dec 13, 2013 21:22:32 GMT -5
The Alamo, Pueblo del Alamo and Alameda from the N.W. Both from the S.E. The larger of two funeral pyres, by all accounts, was in the bottom-left corner of the picture with the smaller one across the street beyond the trees. No solid evidence has yet placed the third pyre referred to in Juan Seguin's official report of 1837. Here, we look from the one site across the other one to the Alamo.
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Post by edward on Dec 23, 2013 22:52:10 GMT -5
Left-click on these pictures to see full size. Hermann Lungkwitz' painting "Alameda" done in 1856. [From Hermann Lungkwitz - Romantic Landscapist on the Texas Frontier by James Patrick McGuire, Texas Press, Austin, 1983.] "The first house on the right reportedly belonged to a Mr. Spahn who ran a hotel and bakery." The statement is confusing to me in that Mr. McGuire's wording suggests the jacal and stone structure at the right edge, but somehow the large 2-story with the porch on the south side seems to fit better. Mr. Spahn did not acquire the property (shown as stone house and Jacal) until the mid or late 1870's (Bexar archives). It belonged to Alex Vidal and before him to Joseph La Baume. Chabot states the House was a double stone home in 1808.
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Post by edward on Dec 29, 2013 18:50:58 GMT -5
Circa 1835, Alameda with St. Joseph's Church (1872) and The Tower of the Americas (1968) thrown in for reference.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 4, 2014 14:20:11 GMT -5
Circa 1835, Alameda with St. Joseph's Church (1872) and The Tower of the Americas (1968) thrown in for reference.
View Attachment Nice, Edward. Do you have documentation that the Alameda stretched beyond the Acequia Madre de Valero on the east? I've held this as a possibility -- that maybe the trees went all the way to the Gonzales Road turnoff roughly 450 feet farther east -- but have never seen any solid evidence. The wider portion of Alameda St. does continue a bit beyond the acequia, but not all the way -- and this might be the clue.
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Post by edward on Jan 4, 2014 19:26:27 GMT -5
Circa 1835, Alameda with St. Joseph's Church (1872) and The Tower of the Americas (1968) thrown in for reference.
Nice, Edward. Do you have documentation that the Alameda stretched beyond the Acequia Madre de Valero on the east? I've held this as a possibility -- that maybe the trees went all the way to the Gonzales Road turnoff roughly 450 feet farther east -- but have never seen any solid evidence. The wider portion of Alameda St. does continue a bit beyond the acequia, but not all the way -- and this might be the clue. The survey done for Eloa in 1848 uses the Cottonwood tree labeled ‘1’ to locate the property. The ‘old Cottonwood’ is located 100 vrs east of the Ditch and 200 vrs from the east line of Eloa’s property. The Cottonwood tree labeled ‘2’ is just east of the ditch and it is noted as a Cottonwood stump in the De Los Reyes Survey in 1854.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 4, 2014 23:14:20 GMT -5
Marvelous! Is there any question you can't answer? Don't answer that. lol.
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Post by rayjr on Jan 7, 2014 19:31:06 GMT -5
Howdy, You guys certainly are the experts here. This might be obvious, but have you seen a copy of the map from from John D. Rullman showing San Antonio in 1837? I have attached a ppt that I used to overlay onto a modern map of San Antonio, I had to crop it significantly to reduce the file size. 1837SanAntonio5.pptx (976.33 KB) If you are aware of the 1837 map - do you have confidence in it? I am interested because just south and east of the Jose de la Baume property is a property of my ancestor Ramon Fuentes. Seems to be located under the Hemisphere Tower Best Ray
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 8, 2014 0:13:26 GMT -5
Wish I could open it, Ray. I don't have PowerPoint.
I am very familiar with Rullman's San Antonio map. Rullman had been city enginer and surveyor and was retired in 1912 when he did the map. He had been studying San Antonio since he moved there in 1866. My call, after depending on it for several years in my own mapping/modeling efforts, is that it is 90 percent accurate and 10 percent his conjectures and educated abstractions based on his findings. That's pretty good.
A few easily identifiable inaccuracies exist, like the east-west depth of his San Fernando Church block between the plazas being literally half of the true scale distance. Likewise, his Campo Santo is gargantuan in size in relationship to the original Bexareno Campo Santo as it existed immediately after the war. He identifies the Camino de Nacagdoches as having been on Nacogdoches Street (now Bonham) behind the Alamo -- and this has been the assumption throughout the last century. However, no primary 1830's information that I have thus far seen supports this. I believe it quickly became the main drag to Nacogdoches during the Republic period, but the Camino Real de Nacogdoches in Spanish Colonial days was N. Flores Street and circumvented San Pedro Springs and then San Antonio Springs. An early map by William Grattan (possibly 1836) clearly shows this, and lists the road behind the Alamo simply as "Road to the head of the river." Thus, while I have little doubt that all the suertes are accurately transferred from original archival documents, some of his features are less than accurate for 1835-36. In any event, it is still one of the best sources for early Bexar.
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