Palisade wall question

[marklemon]

Pure speculation, of course, but "&c" may have included picks, shovels, wheel barrows and related earth-moving hand tools, as well as burros for hauling various loads. The inventories list a variety of such tools at the Alamo during the mission days, but these would have, for the most part, have disappeared by 1836.

[garyzaboly]

Could be, but in my mind "&c" signifies other building materials aside from "Timber"----torn up fences, commandeered jacale logs and boards, stones and various rubble---with which to fortify the Alamo and the plazas and streets of the town.

[marklemon]

I, personally, wouldn't allow myself to read anything specific into such a cryptic symbol as "&c." In doing so, we imbue ourselves with powers of perception which we, none of us, are able to have. We can certainly speculate, when doing so, must always denote our speculation as exactly that. I agree that he may have included pilfered wood in the symbol's meaning, but would never use the symbol as a strong source for that, or any given scenario. It must remain a mystery, unless otherwise elaborated upon by other, more specific sources.

[garyzaboly]

As a relevant aside, the gun platforms themselves had to be of wood, to overcome the issues of rutting and mud---and mud was a huge problem near the end of Cos' siege. We see boards and planks everywhere in 19th century batteries. So Cos' engineers needed to obtain those...and what better, ready-made source than abandoned huts and fences? That's why in my educated opinion "&c," in terms of what Maverick is saying, suggests building materials "other than" timber.

[marklemon]

I can agree that that interpretation is logical, and makes sense, as long as you, as you did, correctly use the word "suggests" and not "signifies."

[Rich Curilla]

The question of wood availability has come up several times on the other sites. While it wouldn't help with boards for cannon ramps and platforms, there were indeed woods in the neighborhood and along much of the river. Elsewhere we've discussed if it would have been cedar or something else, say, for palisades.

Would Cos not have had a double purpose in pulling down jacales and fences due to the need to clear field-of-fire for cannons and small arms? The question in my mind would be what the percentage of actual boards would be to palisade type posts. There were no sawmills west of the Brazos, to my knowledge. Jacales and fencing would have probably been verticle palisades -- or cribbing for the fences.

The question of the existance of fences around Bexar buildings came up on Alamo04, and my reccommendation was no fences but signs that they had been there and recently removed.

I wonder how much construction would have been with awled lumber. Seems like a lot of work for a jacal when cedar posts would suffice. So, my basic question is where would boards for gun platforms and ramps come from?

[Rich Curilla]

I recall Ruiz commenting on Bexarenos being sent with carts "to the neighboring forests" to gather wood for the funeral pyres. We think of the San Antonio River as looking as it did between the town and the Alamo, that is with very little timber. But the very nature of Texas streams and rivers is that timber grows profusely in the small bends, being watered from three sides. I speculate that places like "Bowen's Island," the land contained in the loop of the river downstream from La Villita, had an abundance of very fortification-worthy trees. Looking at the 1846 San Antonio map, I count no fewer than seven such inside loops within a mile of the Alamo. I think Gentilz' battle painting very accurately shows the forested area to the north. These would probably be cedar, sycamore, elm, cypress, live oak and post oak. My vote is that mucho tall lumber was easily available within a mile. By the time the U.S. Army was building in the mid-40's, this might have all changed.

[TRK]

May 14, 2009 0:57:25 GMT -5 Rich Curilla said:

There were no sawmills west of the Brazos, to my knowledge.

Not so sure about that. One of the Mexican officials traveling in Texas a few years before the Texas Revolution (Almonte or Mier y Teran) wrote that there were now sawmills virtually everywhere in Texas (the insinuation being settled Texas).

[garyzaboly]

Filisola does mention forested areas north and east of San Antonio. In 1835 Cos' men tore down anything they could use---jacales, mesquite fences, as well as chopped-down trees. (The Mexican fort at Lipantitlan was essentially an earthwork buttressed on the inside with mesquite fence posts). The two funeral pyres were pretty big: one was 80' x 10', the other 60' x 10'.' Accounts tell us that aside from the bigger logs, kindling was also distributed throughout. They were built and set afire by 5 o'clock that afternoon---pretty fast work when you think about it.

[marklemon]

May 14, 2009 6:14:50 GMT -5 TRK said:

May 14, 2009 0:57:25 GMT -5 Rich Curilla said:

There were no sawmills west of the Brazos, to my knowledge.

Not so sure about that. One of the Mexican officials traveling in Texas a few years before the Texas Revolution (Almonte or Mier y Teran) wrote that there were now sawmills virtually everywhere in Texas (the insinuation being settled Texas).

These early sawmills would have probably been primarily "saw pits" which did not depend upon water, but which were very labor-intensive. Here is a quote from "A Brief History of Portable Sawmills" (September 10, 2001) By Jim Philp, from the Oct/Nov 1997 issue of Independent Sawmill & Woodlot Magazine.

"....The first portable sawmills were simply two men, most likely serfs, carrying a pit saw. The men took turns carrying the saw into the woods where trees were felled and a pit was dug. Once milling began, the man on top was called the "Top Man." He lifted the saw and guided it along a line scribed on the log. The man on the bottom was the "Pit Man," who pulled the saw down, supplying the energy that cut the wood. He often got sawdust in his eyes, and always in his hair and down the back of his neck. The saw cut only on the down stroke. This technology was developed by the Egyptians and was later improved upon by the Romans, who eventually adapted it to water power. The pit saw remained fairly common into the 18th century, and can still be found in some places today.
When the industrial revolution began in the mid-18th century, the concept of the water-powered pit saw was reinvented. The saw was mounted in a wooden frame that reciprocated, up and down, on wooden guides. The saw frame was connected to a water wheel by a series of wooden gears and a "pitman arm." Thus the water wheel became the pit man. Frequently the top man was replaced by a wooden spring pole that helped pull the saw frame up after the cutting stroke.
As water-powered technology advanced, the single saw was replaced by double, and then multiple, saws in the same frame. This developed into the sash-gang saw that could process a log into boards in a single pass. Such water-powered mills were distinctly not portable. They usually required a mill pond and extensive stonework for a mill foundation. The mill building, water wheel and sawmill were usually of "unitized construction" where everything was tied together. If a mill were torn down, parts of it could have been used in another location, but it was probably easier to build an entirely new mill
at the next location. "

Of course, it is possible that the comparatively complex engineering required to build such a water powered mill may have made it as far as Bexar by the 1830's. The river certainly would have supplied the motive power.
So again, we have another subject which requires much more research....
Mark

[marklemon]

This just found from "Texas Beyond History" UTSA website:
"....The first sawmill (in Texas) identified with a specific individual is an 1829 mill on Carrizo Creek in Nacogdoches County, built by entrepreneur and land speculator Peter Ellis Bean. Bean exemplifies the nature of the American frontiersmen who settled Texas. He first entered Texas in 1801, hunting horses and trading with Indians along the Brazos River, at a time when it was still under Spanish rule. He built a water-powered, sawmill (sash saw) and gristmill and also ran a lumberyard in Nacogdoches. Attracted by that success, other logging entrepreneurs began operations in Texas. "
The last sentence leads me to believe that, as Bexar was a busy, thriving town, with a fair number of immigrants from the States, there well may have been at least one sawmill in Bexar. The search continues....

[Don Allen]

I remember, when I was a kid in south Texas, watching my dad curse a mesquite tree stump that he was trying to cut out with his chainsaw. It was probably a foot in diameter and it was so hard that it ruined a new chainsaw chain.

This seems relevant in that if I were building a jacale house, and wasn't in a big hurry, I'd opt for a nice mesquite log (the stuff is almost indestructible), however, if I WERE in a hurry, or didn't have the best tools available, I'd go for something easier to work with.

That's not to say that some mesquite logs weren't "liberated" from existing structures and utilized, of course.

As to the availability of good, tall, relatively straight mesquite....I again have to go back to my childhood. My dad's side of the family had several hundred acres near Laredo, right on the Rio Grande River. Down near the river, there were many mesquites that could've provided multiple good straight logs for building. The higher ground was kept free of any opportunistic trees by cattle grazing. I can't help but think that the land would've looked similar in pre-history due to the buffalo grazing this same ground and the same mesquites and other trees existing down by the river.

San Antonio's only a short drive from Laredo, so the comparison might hold some water. (pun intended)

[garyzaboly]

Certainly Cos' men went for the bigger, straighter trees for the larger palisade and ramp works. But straight mesquite trees (no doubt those "old-time" Bexarenos and Mexicans knew how to chop down an ornery mesquite tree), and fences of mesquite, and jacales of mesquite---and of other logs and planks---were also taken down, for buttressing smaller earthworks, etc. . It is just common sense, too: why do extra work when an army is approaching, when ready-made logs are all around you?

[TRK]

We were talking about sawmills and lumber and its availability in Bexar. Here's an interesting piece of information on the commerce in lumber in Bexar before the revolution. It's from a memorial submitted by Stephen F. Austin to the central government in 1833, and abstracted in Frank W. Johnson, A History of Texas and Texans, Vol. 1 (1914), 174:

"In Gonzales there is a water-power mill on the Guadalupe River for sawing lumber and running machinery (mover maquinas), which is of much importance, since this mill supplies the towns of Gonzales and Goliad and the city of Bexar with boards (tablas)."

So perhaps planks from Gonzales wound up in the artillery platforms and other works of the Alamo...yet another contribution to the cause from that town.

[garyzaboly]

Speaking of sawmills, At Frost Thorn's sawmill in 1833-34, near Nacogdoches, Louis "Moses" Rose was emplyed as a cutter and log hauler.