cje
Full Member
Posts: 60
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Post by cje on Sept 1, 2012 23:41:00 GMT -5
I was wondering where Jim Bowie's In-Laws were (in San Antonio) during the Battle of the Alamo and what part they may have played during and after the battle? The Veramendi Family I believe. Thanks!
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Post by Allen Wiener on Sept 2, 2012 6:22:38 GMT -5
His wife and her parents were dead by that time, and any of Bowie's children (it's not clear to me if or how many they had). They had died in a cholera epidemic.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 2, 2012 15:19:57 GMT -5
Bowie's sisters-in-law, Juana Navarro Alsbury and teen-age Gertrudis Navarro, were in the Alamo with him. They were adopted sisters of Ursula as well as first cousins. I think there was a grandmother-in-law (if I remember correctly), but no one else. Bowie's two children have not been proven to have existed. Bowie's friend Caiaphas Kennard Ham said (in his old-age account) that the Bowies "had two beautiful children but they died young." Church death records in Monclova, Coahuila (where the family died in the Cholera epidemic of 1833) list papa and mama Veramendi, Ursula Bowie, and one or two other family members, but make no reference to any Bowie children. One school of thought suggests they died in infancy before the epidemic, as a great majority of children did in those days.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Sept 2, 2012 15:27:56 GMT -5
An interesting recent (last 20 or 30 years) historical narrative about Bowie that got historians all excited for a while listed not only two Bowie children but gave their names as well. Unfortunately, once the source was determined, it was the greatly trusted Mormon geneology data base and it pointed to the source of the information as being Paul I. Wellman's 1951 historical novel The Iron Mistress -- a total work of fiction.  |
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Post by edward on Dec 7, 2013 16:01:29 GMT -5
An interesting recent (last 20 or 30 years) historical narrative about Bowie that got historians all excited for a while listed not only two Bowie children but gave their names as well. Unfortunately, once the source was determined, it was the greatly trusted Mormon geneology data base and it pointed to the source of the information as being Paul I. Wellman's 1951 historical novel The Iron Mistress -- a total work of fiction. I have not been able to find any death or birth records of the children but from F. Chabot. J. A. Navarro wrote S.M. Williams , Sep 26, 1833 of the unexpected deaths of his brother in-law , [Juan Martin] Veramendi, his sister Josepha [Juan's wife], and Ursula Bowie and her children, asking him how to advise poor Bowie in some way of this sad news. Chabot states her two infant children died of cholera. MSA pg. 247, (from Williams Papers, Rosenberg Library). |
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 15, 2014 18:58:50 GMT -5
An interesting recent (last 20 or 30 years) historical narrative about Bowie that got historians all excited for a while listed not only two Bowie children but gave their names as well. Unfortunately, once the source was determined, it was the greatly trusted Mormon geneology data base and it pointed to the source of the information as being Paul I. Wellman's 1951 historical novel The Iron Mistress -- a total work of fiction. I have not been able to find any death or birth records of the children but from F. Chabot. J. A. Navarro wrote S.M. Williams , Sep 26, 1833 of the unexpected deaths of his brother in-law , [Juan Martin] Veramendi, his sister Josepha [Juan's wife], and Ursula Bowie and her children, asking him how to advise poor Bowie in some way of this sad news. Chabot states her two infant children died of cholera. MSA pg. 247, (from Williams Papers, Rosenberg Library). This letter to Samuel May Williams is, I believe, the one I have seen in the Bowie file in the DRT Library at the Alamo many years ago. I have a copy of it somewhere (I will look) and I am remembering that there was absolutely no mention of Bowie children. |
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 15, 2014 19:55:20 GMT -5
Speaking of Bowie's in-laws during the battle, we do know that Juana Navarro Alsbury and her teenage sister Gertrudis Navarro (Ursula's adopted sisters and actual cousins) were taken into the Alamo on February 23 by James Bowie, "their protector." According to Juana's later statement as paraphrased by John S. Ford in his Memoirs, "Mrs. Alsbury and her sister were in a building not far from where the residence of Col. Sam Maverick was afterwards erected. It was considered quite a safe locality. They saw very little of the fighting." In the following angle on my model, this would be the building with the arcade in the upper-left. It crossed what is now Houston Street. Maverick's home was built on the north side of the street just to the right of the house in this view. All that remained were two apartments, a third being in ruins and most likely used as a cannon emplacement during the battle, as depicted on the model. According to Dr. Sutherland's crude plat of the Alamo, this was originally Bowie's quarters, hence the reason his family was located there. The two remaining arches may or may not have been bricked in to provide extra living space by the displaced owner, Francisco Castaneda.  On February 24, Col. Bowie collapsed "being very sick with typhoid fever. For that reason he thought it prudent to be removed from the part of the buildings occupied by Mrs. Alsbury." According to several Mexican soldier accounts of the battle, he was killed in the room in the Low Barrack to the left of the gate (upper-left in the picture) which was entered through the room east of it. This is corroborated by Alcalde Ruiz who said they located his body "in one of the rooms on the south side." The house where he left his in-laws is at the right edge of the picture.  Looking from the outside of the west wall, we see the girls' building in the middle of the picture. We know from mission inventories that there was one window facing west from each apartment. The door is conjectural based on the Sanchez-Navarro 1836 drawing. In any event, it is easy to understand Ford's report that "While the final struggle was progressing she peeped out, and saw the surging columns of Santa Anna assaulting the Alamo on every side, as she believed." A window to the west of their apartment would have provided this view, and what she witnessed quite possibly was General Cos' "right oblique" move to attack the west wall rather than the north wall.  |
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 15, 2014 20:31:15 GMT -5
Since we know Cos' column entered the compound over and through the west wall on its north end -- partly using the postern gate (behind the Pecan tree), it is easy to see that the house were the sisters were located was not as safe as claimed. It was, in fact, right in the middle of everything!  Once inside the fort, tumbling over the walls beyond the house and pouring out of the building next to the cannon ramp at the right edge of the picture (where the postern was located), the Mexican soldados would have been battling their way toward our camera position with the house first on their agenda! Ford continues, "The firing approximated where they were, and she realized the fact that, the brave Texians had been overwhelmed by numbers."  The door behind the conjectural sandbags as represented is one of the two doors possibly leading to the girls' position, the other being 20-some feet further to the left. As the Mexican assault force advanced, they would have wiped out any gun crew on this cannon, pulled the cannon back and turned it to the south or toward the doors of the Long Barrack across the plaza. According to Ford, one of the soldiers who broke into the room demanded of Juana, " 'Where is the entrance to the fort?' He made her pass out of the room over a cannon standing nearby the door. He told her to remain there..." Later, another soldier demanded to know what the girls were doing there. " 'Don't you see they are about to fire that cannon? Leave!'"  I find it very invigorating that a clear understanding of the features of the fort can so thoroughly support primary accounts such as this. |
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Post by edward on Jan 16, 2014 1:03:02 GMT -5
Juana Alsbury’s son, Alejo Perez (from her first Marriage), was under a year old at the time. He was probably that last living survivor from the Alamo when he died in 1918. He was a Confederate soldier veteran and was a police officer for the city of San Antonio. Juana’s 2nd Husband, Horatio Alsbury, was one of many captured by Adrian Woll and taken to Perote Prison in 1842. He was released in 1844 and died in 1847. Juana’s Grandfather, Angel Navarro, was the first person buried at the then new Camposanto in 1808 on the West side of San Pedro Creek. -- Ursula’s Bowie’s 2nd Great Grandmother’s (Robaina Granado) house was occupied my Ramon Musquiz. Robaina was considered the wealthiest person among the Canary Islanders when they first settled in this city. The house then was confiscated and given to Erastus Smith (1787-1837). His wife Guadalupe Ruiz Smith leased the property to C. J. Cooke in 1847. Guadalupe died in 1849.--
My conjecture on how the Granado House may have looked like. Located at the corner of Commerce and Soledad.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Jan 16, 2014 3:31:20 GMT -5
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Post by edward on Jan 16, 2014 21:01:02 GMT -5
Nice, Edward. Mine's a bit different, but we're on the same page -- at least the same corner. Not sure about the canted N.W. corner, but it is in the first photographs on what appears to be a Spanish Colonial structure which must be the original. The W.G.M. Samuel painting provides the source for the tree. However, the carreta may have been in a different spot. LOL. Nice Rich, your carreta looks great where it is and it looks to be full size compared to Samuel’s. LOL. In Samuel's painting, the Granado corner is shown to be sharp. Also, in survey done in 1850 the said corner was to be cut off by more than 5 ft at the Plaza area and 70+ ft (tapered) towards the East to widen Commerce street (SA survey 1:165). |
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