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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 0:47:12 GMT -5
Craig: No, you're right, the phrase says something like "they are making provisions for its reestablishment with total brevity," or some such combination. I didn't mean to imply that it meant "rebuilding on the original foundation," or any similar interpretation. I'm roughing out the English as I get them written down.
1759: "En el interin se concluie la obra de la Yglesia, que se esta fabricando de Cal y canto, y bobedas, mui capaz, y con no poco primor de el arte Travajada -- la que se hallara en la mediania de su altura. Sirve de Yglesia la misma pieza, que consta, en las antecedentes Visitas, en ella se alla.... [description of altars and contents, similar to 1745 and 1756] ... en la Sacristia ... [description of contents out the wazoo] ... In the interim the work on the church is concluded, that is made of lime and cut stone, and vaults, very spacious, and worked with no small excellence of art – the which is in the middle of its height. Serving as the church is the same room that appeared in the previous visitas, in which is .... [This is clearly a confusing statement, since it begins by saying the church is finished, and then says it is only to half its height, and that the earlier building is still in use as the church (I suspect an idiom hiding in the phrase, and that it means something like “during the period of its being concluded”).]
1762: "La Yglecia de esta mision, aunque se acabo perfectamente con su torre, y sacristia, vino a tierra, por la mala inteligencia del artifice, y se esta fabricando otra de armoniosa arquitectura con piedra de canteria, la que aqui se halla a medias con la solidez, y perfeccion que se requiere, para su hermosura, y sostener las vovedas. Sirve de Yglecia una pieza de 35 varas de longitud [96 feet], que se fabrico con el destino de troxe, en que se halla un altar ... En otro altar ... Otro altar se halla en el coro, ..." The church of this mission, although completed perfectly with its tower and sacristy, fell to the ground because of the poor inteligence of its construction, and another is being built of harmonious architecture with cut stone, the which now is found at half [at the half-way point] with the solidity and perfection that is required for its beauty and to support the vaults. Serving as the church, a room of 35 varas length, that was built for the purpose of a granary, in which is found an altar ... On another altar ... Another altar is found in the choir loft ...
Well, my wife announced that it's time for me to go to bed, and I agree, so I'll pick up here in the morning with the 1772 statements and later stuff, and then I'll turn to sorting back through all this.
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Post by Jake on Jan 2, 2008 13:49:45 GMT -5
Finally I'm where I can reply to Covner's assault.
This is going to be difficult, people, because I'm going to quote sources at you -- but I'll include translations, so fear not.
Antonio Tello arrives in San Antonio ca. 1740. He has been hired to build churches for all four missions, and is apparently also hired to build the parish church in San Antonio, as well.
Most of his work from 1740 to 1744 is on the church at Concepcion.
The first stone of the new church was laid May 8, 1744, according to Habig, who says that this note is in the baptismal record.
Tello leaves town during the night of August 23, 1744.
1745: "Mientras se acaba la Yglesia empezada, qe es de Cal, y Canto -- sirve de Yglesia una pieza suffic[ien]te capaz, con su coro, y Sacristia ... [description of altars and contents] ... Para la torre ay quatro campanas medianas ..." While the church that is begun is being finished, that is of lime and cut stone, serving as the church is a room of sufficient space, with its choir, and sacristy ... for the tower there are four middle-sized bells.
1749: first two burials in the church under construction, November 16, 1749. The second burial was in the south transept of the church under construction.
The church collapsed soon after this, in the early 1750s. In 1750, a new master mason and fine-carver were hired, and brought to San Antonio.
1756: "La Yglesia nueba, que se estaba fabricando, se derribo toda su fabrica por haver salido poco segura; y se estan dando las providencias para su restablecim[ie]nto con toda brebedad. Entre tanto sirve la antigua, que es una pieza bastante capaz con su chorito, y Sacristia.... En el Choro [description of altar in choir loft]...." the new church, which was being built, collapsed completely because of poor construction; and provisions are quickly being made for its reconstruction. Meanwhile, the old one serves [as the church], which is a room of sufficient size with its little choir loft and sacristy ... In the choir loft .... Later, in the description of the convento: "En la escalera ai tambien su puerta p[ar]a el Choro," in the stair there is also a door to the choir loft.
Aagh -- I have to go to an appointment. I'll pick back up with the 1759 description when I get back to a computer.
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 21:52:17 GMT -5
Actually, what I was edging up to suggest is that if the original construction of the convento west wing included a 7-foot wall, it wasn't necessarily the same wall as the one visible in the 1830s and '40s. But as I type that, I'm thinking a) kind of too much of a coincidence, lacking that "ring of truth," and b) I can't think of anything that would suggest it went away sometime after construction in the 1720s and was rebuilt later, presumably for a different reason.
If we move ahead, where are we going?
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 12:07:24 GMT -5
Hey, come on, guys, I said sure, the wall was higher than I claimed at first, so you won, so you don't have to keep trying to win some more.
OK, Craig, so that was a little deceitful ... thing is, and what I actually meant, was that from my viewpoint about the sequence of construction of the churches, there was nothing down there for the wall to connect to, and no way to know where the cemetery was -- and a 6-7 foot wall is way much to enclose a cemetery anyway; they wanted a delimiter, not a prison wall -- nobody was leaving. So cemeteries usually get 4 feet at best.
In 1727, the ground floor rooms of the convento had been finished, presumably carrying us above the level of the quoins. The temporary church in 1727 was a jacal structure, "very spacious, with a good door," but we don't know where it was. End result: yes, the change in structure of the corner tells us something, but we can't say what yet.
Certainly if there had been a wall here 7 feet high, built as part of the convento and then removed, what we're seeing is the repaired corner after that removal. But then it would have been built, most likely, as part of the original construction in 1724-27, and when removed? And what was it for, with that height and no more?
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Post by Jake on Jan 3, 2008 10:41:13 GMT -5
Yes -- for example, that would suggest that the wall from the convento south to the south gate structure was built at the same time as the first floor of the convento west wing -- but that doesn't make sense, because that south gate structure wasn't there then. So instead, it would seem to be evidence that at first the building was not constructed using the quoins -- which in turn means the presence and absence of the quoins tells us nothing about the height of the wall.
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Post by Jake on Jan 2, 2008 23:05:21 GMT -5
Mark Ok, the drawings you mention clearly show a wall trace at the height you are arguing for. It looks like that wall was indeed higher than 3.5 to 4 feet in its 1836 condition.
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Post by Jake on Dec 30, 2007 9:32:37 GMT -5
I can accept that the evidence suggests that the "low wall" was higher than Maverick showed it. However, the history of use of the area makes it likely, in my mind, that the wall was never more than four feet high, and it seems to me that a higher wall of seven or eight feet is speculation. San Antonio missions all had their cemeteries in front of (although sometimes wrapped around the sides of) their churches, and a cemetery wall is usually 3.5 to 4 feet high. Same sort of thing in New Mexico. So what reason would you offer for why this wall was seven or eight feet tall?
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Post by Jake on Dec 24, 2007 15:50:23 GMT -5
The earliest depiction we have of this wall, in the early 1840s (I think Mary Maverick's drawing about 1841 -- I can't find my home copy of Nelson's "Illustrated") shows it only a foot or two high. For it to have been any use as a wall when it was built, it would have to have been at least three feet high, but there's nothing to indicate a wall any higher than three to four feet, far as I know. So if you want a higher wall here, it's going to be speculation.
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Post by Jake on Jan 9, 2008 13:02:59 GMT -5
For those of you who have remarked on this, the stone channels were a late addition to the paths of the major acequia lines, mostly built by German immigrants, mostly starting in the early 1850s. Much smaller water flow in those things by that time, so the ditches were much smaller in cross section.
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Post by Jake on Jan 6, 2008 2:11:08 GMT -5
Bruce: That one about Concepcion is, I think we decided from the details included, a description of finding the inlet channel and stone funnel for Concepcion's grist mill on the edge of the river northwest of Concepcion's church. I marked the mill on the map in the Concepcion report, and included something on it in the appendices.
The other one, I think Waynne and I decided it was like the guy says, a description of the stone-lined channels of the Alamo ditch.
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Post by Jake on Jan 12, 2008 14:34:36 GMT -5
As of Jan. 18, Neill still had the men divided between San Antonio and the Alamo, 40 at each and 34 non-effectives sitting somewhere. I think the town defenses continued in place and "in use," in the sense that they were sort of manned, until everyone was moved into the Alamo on the 19th. Whether they expended any manpower to dismantle the town defenses when they saw no real threat is open to question, though. That would have been a lot of work.
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Post by Jake on Jan 8, 2008 11:28:30 GMT -5
Darn, Tom, you got to it quicker than I did -- had to go eat breakfast. We were snowed in here yesterday, and this morning I have to go down to the bottom of our entrance road and dig my car out where it's hung on the two-foot-high berm left by the snow-plow.
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Post by Jake on Jan 8, 2008 11:06:45 GMT -5
Sanchez drew two versions of his map. One is inside the cover of one of the two volumes of his journal/record book that he kept through the whole war (front cover, I think, and he laid out the pencil marks for a plan of Fannin's fort at La Bahia in the back cover, but never finished it). The other he drew onto a larger map of the huge family ranch that took up most of Coahuila. Both of these have detailed indices giving a narrative of the progress of the battle, and what various bits were for. I published a concordence of these indices in AJ, “Viva la Patria es nuestro el Alamo! The Text and Translation of the José Juan Sánchez Navarro Narratives of the Battle of the Alamo, March 6, 1836,” _The Alamo Journal_ 123 (December, 2001):13-21. Both plans seem to have been drawn years later, after he left San Antonio.
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Post by Jake on Jan 6, 2008 0:30:16 GMT -5
Glen: This was my assessment of the Alamo mapping problem in one of my writings: "In spite of the innumerable drawings and paintings of the Battle of the Alamo, its plan and appearance in 1835-1836 are, at best, poorly known. The Grand Old Man of Alamo architectural studies, Alamo artist and historian Craig Covner, at one time said that the disagreement between the various depictions of the Alamo buildings and plans “precludes any coherent visual chronology of the mission-fortress from being realized.” Gary Zaboly, an eminent artist whose illustrations of the Alamo are considered among the best that can be achieved today, has said that the “deficiencies of pictorial evidence” have made it very difficult for artists to reconstruct the historical appearance of the buildings. Art historian Susan Schoelwer has made it clear that the list of problems needing answer include virtually every aspect of the history of the site – there are large uncertainties about the plan and construction of the church and convento during the colonial period, and “the mission complex, of less permanent construction than the two main buildings, is even more difficult to locate and describe.” In the period after the secularization of the mission, [she added,] the “physical appearance of the early nineteenth-century Alamo remains as problematical as that of the eighteenth century mission.”[Craig R. Covner, “Before 1850: A New Look at the Alamo Through Art and Imagery,” _The Alamo Journal_, 70(March, 1990):3-10; Gary Zaboly in Alan C. Huffines, _Blood of Noble Men_, p. xiii; Susan Prendergast Schoelwer, “The Artist’s Alamo: A Reappraisal of Pictorial Evidence, 1836-1850,” _Southwestern Historical Quarterly_, 91(April, 1988)4:403; Susan Prendergast Schoelwer and Tom W. Gläser, _Alamo Images: Changing Perceptions of a Texas Experience_ (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1985), pp. 23, 26.]"
"Although a number of plans of the Alamo exist, they disagree in so many details, and even in major elements, that no one of them has been considered a dependable map. Rod Timanus, in his article “Mapping the Alamo,” said that “many of the various map efforts produced to date are at odds with each other visually (who could expect less where the mysterious Alamo is concerned?).” The historian Albert Nofi echoed this position: “the precise dimensions and plan of the Alamo in 1835-1836 are not known with any certainty. No two plans or sketches of the place known from contemporary sources are in more than general agreement.” Alamo artist and historian George Nelson summed up the problem: “the contradictions in maps of this period . . . make it difficult to accurately reconstruct the Alamo at the time of the battle of 1836.”[Rod Timanus, “Mapping the Alamo,” _The Alamo Journal_, 108(March, 1998):6; Albert A. Nofi, _The Alamo and the Texas War for Independence_ (New York: Da Capo Press, 1994), p. 70; George Nelson, _The Alamo: An Illustrated History_, (Dry Frio Canyon, Texas: Aldine Press, 1998), p. 23.]"
My conclusions in the Archaeological Evidence for the Defenses of the Alamo paper: "What [all the archaeological information] looks like is the Ignacio Labastida plan. In fact, only the Labastida plan shows all the trenches on our archaeological plan of the Alamo, and does not show ditches where we found none. As a result of the archaeology, then, we can say that the Alamo defenses followed the standard military field fortification practices of the 1830s, and that they were fairly accurately recorded by the Labastida plan, but not on any other known map."
"Finally, we can say that one specific plan is a good representation of the defenses of the Alamo, which gives us a standard against which to measure other maps."
I've been trying to get us out of the state of anarchy things were in before, and into something where we have things we can trust.
There's nothing wrong with differing with Labastida's picture of the Alamo defenses, or proposing changes after the date he prepared it (don't forget it says "March, 1836" on the plan), so long as you say what your evidence is, and expect others to tell you that evidence is as crappy as the source you're depending on (for example, any detail on any Sutherland or Potter map, I wouldn't trust unless it was also on a map I did trust, and there's only one of those so far) -- or you offer reasoned, "informed opinion," and you make it clear that's what it is. As various of us have said, the evidence is limited, and we have to use speculation, theory, hypothesis to go beyond it, but we have to label such stuff clearly. And we have to know what we can trust to start with.
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Post by Jake on Jan 4, 2008 23:03:48 GMT -5
On the Jameson map, I came to the conclusion that the original has been missing since at least the first years of the 20th c., if not longer. Zavala apparently reconstructed the plan in conversation with whats-her-name who remembered seeing it, and plotted out this remembered version onto a copy of the Giraud plan of the Alamo. I found in Zavala's papers what could be the actual sketch plan that was this attempt at recollection, drawn onto two sheets of paper that overlapped. Todd Hansen has some of that story in his discussion of the Jameson map.
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