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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 15, 2010 18:17:27 GMT -5
Or-the establishment moved from Main Plaza between 1846 and the 1853 date. From the precinct report, it sounds like it may have been located more to the east of Main Plaza. Don't know about the plate of Mexican eggs, but you have to figure that a place run by Murphy is going to have Irish Stew. Yes-the on line digital makes things so much nicer! My San Antonio geography and interpretation of Chamberlain's Main Plaza painting might be wrong, but here's the way I see things. Recalling the plaza years later and not being a very good draftsman Chamberlain tried to depict what he thought were the two most important plaza features, San Fernando Cathedral and his favorite saloon. It seems to me that the artist's eye is looking east from Military Plaza or North Flores Street with the Bexar Exchange on the left and San Fernando on the right. That block building w/ three windows on the distant hill also reminds me of the old Powder House, but I don't know if it would be visible from Main Plaza. So far as your theory, maybe the American became the Bexar Exchange. I'm not sure any of this really matters since Chamberlain's tale of the Glanton fight is pretty different from the newspaper account. Chamberlain and Glanton are hard fellows to pin down with facts. |
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Post by Kevin Young on Jul 16, 2010 17:08:57 GMT -5
Just to refresh my mind, I pulled out Goetzmann's edition of My Confession. A footnote on pg 350 notes an 1851 San Antonio Ledger for 16 October which has an ad for the Bexar Exchange as a "New Establishment" with bar and billard room on Main Street in new building adjoining Masonic Lodge. The billard room in on the 3rd story and it is owned by LaCoste and Denmarn.
Goetzmann felt that based on what Sam was slowing, the Bexar Exchange was located on the SE corner of Main Plaza, where the present courthouse stands.
So, who knows? I feel that Sam based his watercolors on later images. If you look at the watercolor he did for the title page of the Alton Guards Munity (Goetzmann, pg 51) it is almost a complete copy of the engraving called Drilling Recruits that is in Frost's Pictorial History (1848) which can also be seen in Winders' Mr. Polk's Army on pg.96.
Sam also shows what appears to be the Powder House in his watercolor of Mission "Conception" (Goetzmann, pg.58).
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 18, 2010 19:19:58 GMT -5
Well, I did not know there was an advertisement in that newspaper for the Bexar Exchange. That probably proves that this saloon was on South Main Street in '51, but "New establishment and building" makes it seem like the Bexar didn't even exist when Glanton got into his '48 affray. The title of Chamberlain's painting (Military and Main Plazas, see link) and an apparent depiction of the Old San Fernando tower (demolished) still lead me to think that the painter (Chamberlain) was looking east toward the American Exchange on North Main Street, which existed in the year of Glanton's '48 bar room brawl. Interesting information from Goetzman and Windser's books. With your insightful posts and my crazy theory, I'm beginning to think that Chamberlain was really confused. He seems to have been painting things out of time or out of place with reality. www.tshaonline.org/supsites/chamber/story/life.htm |
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 25, 2010 17:07:09 GMT -5
I once thought Blood Meridian character David Brown was based on Glanton gang member Charles O. Brown, but I've since
discovered reference to a Glanton man named David Brown. He survived the massacre only to hang in California.
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Post by TRK on Jul 25, 2010 17:21:02 GMT -5
Just deserts, lol. How long after the Yuma Crossing massacre was David Brown's necktie party, RR?
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 25, 2010 22:21:35 GMT -5
Just deserts, lol. How long after the Yuma Crossing massacre was David Brown's necktie party, RR? I think they hung Dave Brown in short measure, but I'll have to look it up in my growing Glanton file when I get home. Charles Brown and Marcus Webster lived into old age. |
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Post by TRK on Jul 26, 2010 7:31:05 GMT -5
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Post by sloanrodgers on Jul 26, 2010 20:55:09 GMT -5
I was a little mixed up yesterday in writing that Marcus Webster lived into old age. I actually don't know what happened
to this Glanton fellow. I meant to write that William Dana Carr made it to advanced age. Carr was Living in poverty in Los
Angelos and departed sometime after a March 8, 1909 newspaper article. I also can't find that reference to David Brown,
and hope I didn't lose it forever.
Holy Gow! That thesis is fantastic from what I read, although the author seems to really over-analyze Blood Meridian and
McCarthy in the lengthy 220 pages of literary dissection. Thanks for posting the link, but now my printer hates you.
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