Rations for volunteers

[steves]

Anyone know how volunteer units from the US sustained themselves on the march/voyage to Texas?...presumably once there,they fitted into the system of whatever force they were part of....just wondered with all the debates about clothing/weapons if there's any record of food purchases as part of "kitting-out"?
Steve

[stuart]

This is probably one of those how long is a piece of string questions. Generally speaking most of them appear to have lived hand to mouth, purchasing or receiving donations of food en route, or if coming by boat being fed all in. Off the top of my head the only purchase I can recall is something in the region of 5 gallons of brandy purchased by Shackleford’s men and that only surfaced because somebody refused to certify the cost for payment as it was for their own use.
Out on the prairie the staples appear to have been fresh-killed beef, flour (probably corn flour), coffee and sugar. It varied of course but its pretty clear that the one constant was heavily sweetened black coffee

[steves]

Not looking at bulging haversacks then.........
Steve

[TRK]

Yep, coffee was a very big deal in the revolutionary army. FYI, here's a receipt where Col. James C. Neill bought from William Newland in Gonzales 104 pounds of coffee for his troops, on March 6, 1836:

tslarc.tsl.state.tx.us/repclaims/77/07700286.pdf

Quantities and quality of rations seem to have varied according to circumstances. John C. Duval wrote that when he and the company of Kentucky riflemen he belonged to arrived at Quintana, near the mouth of the Brazos, at the end of 1835, they were "liberally supplied with rations by the patriotic firm of McKinney & Williams, and game and fish were to be had in abundance."

books.google.com/books?id=Wts0AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA20&dq=duval+rations+velasco

I'm sure that at other times, jerked beef and "coffee" brewed from scorched cornmeal were the diet.

[TRK]

About four years ago, staff at the Texas General Land Office turned up a long overlooked letter by J. C. Logan, who came to Texas in 1835 with the Louisville Volunteers. iN The letter, written from Goliad on February 27, 1836, Logan observed that "for the last two months we have been living entirely on beef" and that "there is no corn nor flour in this country." (Nothing to do with rations, but Logan also complained that the men were "all most [almost] naked" and that they were cutting up tent cloth to make pantaloons: "Every man is his own Taylor [sic] in this army."

An article on the discovery of the letter, along with the full text, is here (scroll down):

www.glo.state.tx.us/archives/pdfs/newsletters/volume3/newsletter-num1vol3.pdf