Col R L Compton

[simon]

Does anyone have any info of the story of Colonel RL Compton?

He is supposed to have witnessed the attack on the Alamo (from the South East, albeit in the distance).

He's mentioned in Tucker's book 'Exodus from the Alamo'. He was trying to get thru from Gonzales but could get no further than Pueblo de Valera (which is/was a small hamlet to the South). I don't know if his account is fictional and I've only read of him in this book. I've had a (very) quick look on the internet and he appears to have fought at Bexar in 1835. Came from New England (Roxbury, Mass.)

His 'account' was printed in the La Mosquito Mexicano (probably spelt wrong because it's from memory) on March 22 1836.

It was apparently reprinted in the Frontiertimes Magazine in 1944 but I do not have access to that magazine.

Thanks

[cantador4u]

There is one sentence in the Alamo Reader about Col Compton. (page 499 1st Ed)
"Another reputed eyewitness was Col RL Compton, who was serving in the Texas Army and claimed to have been watching from a house in town."

I suspect you read the little snippet of Compton's account at the Frontier Times Magazine,
www.frontiertimesmagazine.com/ecomm/product/vol-21-no-10-july-1944
"The dead were heaped in wild confusion all over the place, and the gutters fairly ran with blood. In a room on the ground flour was the corpse of Colonel Bowie, who had been butchered upon his sick bed. Not far from him was found the brave and eccentric Crockett„ but the most impressive sight was in a small room in the upper story, where the gallant Travis lay, a bullet hole in his forehead, surrounded by the corpses of 15 Mexicans who had died by his hand."

It's not much to go on. Maybe Col Compton really did see the Alamo fall, but he would have been about 500 yards away and would certainly not have been able to see the detail he reported. He has Travis dying in an "upper room" rather than at the North Wall. Maybe Compton was interviewed and the reporter "fluffed up" his account just ever so slightly.

- Paul Meske