Fall Of The Alamo, A Personal Account

[Shotgun Franklin]

I posted this for we Texans and thought ya'll might like to see it too.

I knew this existed but never had gotten to read the account.
Note that Ruiz id'ed the body oif Crockett. If Crockett was captured and executed, why the need to id him?

REMEMBER THE ALAMO!!
On this 6th day in 1836...
...the Alamo garrison fell, and the fortress that had been a mission became a shrine.
Francisco Antonio Ruiz was the Acalde (mayor) of San Antonio. He was an eyewitness to the events of that day.
Twenty-four years later, in 1860, Don Poncho (as Ruiz was known), recounted what he had seen for the Texas Almanac.
Below is his account in full.
Remember the Alamo!
Mark Pusateri
Copano Bay Press

PS - Don Poncho's father, Don Francisco Ruiz, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence four days before the Alamo fell.
Fall of the Alamo, and Massacre of Travis and His Brave Associates
by Francisco Antonio Ruiz
Translated by J. A. Quintero

On the 6th of March at 3 a.m. General Santa Anna at the head of 4000 men, advanced against the Alamo. The infantry, artillery and cavalry had formed about 1000 varas from the walls of said fortress.

The Mexican army charged and were twice repulsed by the deadly fire of Travis' artillery, which resembled a constant thunder. At the third charge the Toluca battalion commenced to scale the walls and suffered severely. Out of 800 men, only 130 were left alive.

When the Mexican army had succeeded in entering the walls, I with Political Chief (Jefe Politico) Don Ramon Musquiz, and other members of the corporation, accompanied the curate Don Refugio de la Garza, who, by Santa Anna's orders had assembled during the night, at a temporary fortification erected in Potrero Street, with the object of attending the wounded.

As soon as the storming commenced, we crossed the bridge on Commerce Street with this object in view, and about 100 yards from the same a party of Mexican dragoons fired upon us and compelled us to fall back on the river to the place occupied before.

Half an hour had elapsed when Santa Anna sent one of his aides with an order for us to come before him. He directed me to call upon some of the neighbors to come with carts to carry the dead to the cemetery, and also to accompany him, as he was desirous to have Colonels Travis, Bowie and Crockett shown to him.

On the north battery of the fortress lay the lifeless body of Colonel Travis on the gun carriage shot only in the forehead.

Toward the west in a small fort opposite the city we found the body of Colonel Crockett.

Colonel Bowie was found dead in his bed in one of the rooms of the south side.

Santa Anna, after the Mexicans were taken out, ordered wood to be brought to burn the bodies of the Texans. He sent a company of dragoons with me to bring wood and dry branches from the neighboring forests.

About 3 o'clock in the afternoon of the next day they commenced laying wood and dry branches upon which a file of dead bodies were placed, more wood was piled on them and another file brought, and in this manner all were arranged in layers. Kindling wood was distributed through the pile and at 8 o'clock it was lighted.

The dead Mexicans of Santa Anna's army were taken to the graveyard, but not having sufficient room for them, I ordered some of them to be thrown in the river, which was done on the same day. Santa Anna's loss estimated at 1600 men. These were the flower of his army.

The gallantry of the few Texans who defended the Alamo were really wondered at by the Mexican army. Even the generals were astonished at their vigorous resistance, and how dearly the victory had been bought.

The generals who, under Santa Anna, participated in the storming of the Alamo were Juan Amador, Castrillion Ramirez and Asesma Andrade.

The men burned numbered 182. I was an eye witness, for as Alcalde of San Antonio, I was with some of the neighbors collecting the dead bodies and placing them on the funeral pyre.

(Signed) Francisco Antonio Ruiz

[Texas Lawdog]

Shotgun, Thanks for sharing that with us. As a native Texan, I  am filled with pride for the sacrifices that the defenders of the Alamo.  They helped to build this great state of ours.

[Pancho Peacemaker]

Nice info in that, Shotgun.

Last year my daughter did a living history project with her 4th grade class. Each class member assumed the persona of a significant person from Texas history.  She chose Suzanna Dickinson.  The class had to dress in (as best an attempt) period attire.  They assembled at stations  in the gym and for one hour teachers and guests approached each student to learn about  their chosen historical persona.   They were graded on their presentation and their knowledge of their persons history.  I helped her do some research. We found this great article from the San Antonio Express News from  1881.  Susanna had remarried with a new name of  Hannig in 1881.

The Survivor of The Alamo.

San Antonio Express newspaper, April 28, 1881, Thursday.

The Express representative yesterday enjoyed a most pleasant visit to the Alamo. It was not his first visit there by any means. The grey walls of the old structure have been familiar to him for many years, but the visit yesterday was rendered the more enjoyable from the fact that the party with whom the reporter made this visit was quite a noted one. It consisted of Mrs. Susan J. Hannig, of Austin, the only survivor of the massacre at the fall of the Alamo; Mrs. Rebecca Black, the grand-niece of Deaf Smith, the famous Texas spy; Col. H. B. Andrews, vice-president of the G.H. & S.A. railway, and lady; Bishop Quintard, of Tennessee; Dean Richardson, of St. Mark's cathedral, and two little nieces of Mrs. Hannig.

An erroneous impression exists, which is that the Alamo had no survivor. Thermopylae's field of blood left one man to tell the story of the terrible struggle, how Spartan courage met the hordes of Xerxes, and it is said that the Alamo left no one to tell the story of her fall. This is correct, as far as manly courage goes, but there was a brave woman left to give to the present the details of its horrors. Her name is Mrs. Hannig. Some have doubted that this was true, that Mrs. Hannig was really at the Alamo during that immortal contest when Travis, Crockett and Bowie fell, and that name of the Alamo became perpetuated to all ages. But those who are skeptical on this point would doubt no more should they accompany the aged lady to the scene, and hear her tell of the bloody struggle that marked the experience of her presence there in 1836.

After a long absence indeed, after the lapse of forty-five years, Mrs. Hannig yesterday returned to the old scene. She is a Tennessean by birth, is now sixty-six years of age, and when the Alamo fell lost her husband, Captain Dickinson. Just before the Mexicans arrived, headed by Santa Anna, she was, together with her child, at the Musquiz house, near Main Plaza. The enemy appeared first in swarms early in the morning in the southwestern suburbs of the city. Their forces were from ten to thirteen thousand strong. As soon as they were announced to be coming, her husband rode up to the door of her abode and called to her to seize her child and take refuge in the Alamo. She mounted the bare back of the horse he rode, behind his saddle, and holding her child between her left arm and breast, soon reached the old church. An apartment was assigned her, while her husband turned away, after an embrace and a kiss, and an eternal adieu, to meet his obligation to his fellowmen and his country. By this time the Mexican bugles were sounding the charge of battle, and the cannon's roar was heard to reverberate throughout the valley of the San Antonio. But about one hundred and sixty sound persons were in the Alamo, and when the enemy appeared, overwhelmingly, upon the environs of the city to the west, and about where the International depot now stands, the Noble Travis called up his men, drew a line with his sword and said: " My soldier, I am going to meet the fate that becomes me. Those who will stand by me, let them remain, but those who desire to go, let them go and who crosses the line that I have drawn, shall go!" The scene is represented by Mrs. Hannig to have been grand, in that its location was above the results and influences of ordinary sentiment and patriotism, and bore the plain tinge of that divinity of principle which characterizes the acts of the truly noble and the brave.

The heroes defied the Mexican, thought the former were but a handful and the aztec horde came on like the swoop of a whirlwind. Organized into divisions, they came in the form of a semi-circle that extended from northeast to southwest, but the strongest attack was from about where the Military plaza is and from a division that marched up from the direction of the Villita. Three times they were repulsed, and the two cannon, planted high upon the ramparts, carried dismay with their belches of fire and lead. There was indeed a resolution to battle till the end. And that fated end came, and brought with it horrors of which even the vivid conception of Crockett could not have dreamed. Mrs. Hannig says there was no second story to the Alamo at that time, it was all one floor. She can give but little of the struggle, as she was in a little dark room in the rear of the building. The party yesterday entered this apartment, and even with a candle could scarcely see each other's faces. The old lady recognized almost every stone, however, and the arch overhead and the corners she said, with tears in her eyes, came back as vividly to memory as though her experiences of yore had been but yesterday. She showed the reporter where her couch had stood, and the window through which she peeped to see the blood of noble men seeping into the ground, and the bodies of heroes lying cold in death. It was to this room that she saw and he was a man named Walker, who had often fired the cannon at the enemy. Wounded, he rushed into the room and took refuge in a corner opposite her own. By this time the Alamo had fallen and the hordes of Santa Anna were pouring over its ramparts, through its trenches and its vaults. The barbarcue horde followed the fated Walker, and, as Mrs. Hannig describes that scene, "they shot him first, and then they stuck their bayonets into his body and raised him up like the farmer does a bundle of fodder with his pitchfork when he loads his wagon." Then she says they dropped the body. They were all bloody, and crimson springs coursed the yard. The old lady says she doesn't know how it all happened, yet tells a great deal. What became of her husband, Almaron Dickinson, she cannot tell, but saw him last when he went from her presence with gun in hand to die for his country. She says that for a while she feared her own fate, but soon was assured by an English colonel in the Mexican army that the Mexicans were not come to kill women but to fight men. Through the intervention of Almonte she was permitted to leave the city on a horse and carry her child with her. Before she left, however, she was conveyed back to the Musquiz place, her home before the time that she was a widow, and the terrible fate which met the followers of Travis, Bowie and Crockett came on. After leaving on the horse, she proceeded a short distance beyond the Salado, when she met with Travis' servant, who had escaped from the guard and was lurking in the brush. The servant recognized her and followed after her. It may be here remarked, incidentally, that there were in the Alamo at its fall about seventy-five men who had been wounded in the fight with Cos, and they were all killed, outright, in spite of their pleadings. The servant of Travis followed her for some time, and when about fifteen miles distant three men were observed approaching. The heart of the woman did not quail, but the servant feared Indians. Said she, under these circumstances: "This is a bold prairie, and if it is an enemy we must meet them face to face." But the apprehensions of the party were assuaged when it was discovered that the dreaded forms were Deaf Smith, Robert E. Handy and Captain Karnes, sent out by General Sam Houston to ascertain the condition of the garrison of the Alamo. It was a meeting of friends, and soon Mrs. Dickinson, now Mrs. Hannig, reached Gonzales. Her subsequent history would require too much space to be given.

The review of the Alamo was truly interesting, and the reporter could not keep pace with her recitals of experiences there in the long ago. It was asked whether the men who defended the Alamo were drunk, as some have published, when the fight came on, severely to defeat the effect of the noblest of human contests for liberty, Mrs. Hannig declared that any such assertion would be no insult in common patriotism, and condemned it. She had never seen either Travis, Crockett or Bowie under liquored influence, and deprecated any impression of such nature as might come abroad. As the time of the fatal rencounter, all were ready for the fray, and all prepared to die for the nationality of the republic of Texas.

True womanly courage is exemplified by the conduct of Mrs. Hannig. She loved her own, and that was the child she hugged to her bosom. Her life had been endangered, and they wanted to take her child away from her, but she would not concede, and so she subjected herself to trials, looking consequences squarely in the face, and knowing that firmness would be bound to bring about her ultimate vindication.

A few pleasant moments were spend by the party after the old Alamo had been inspected, and its scenes revived by the only present survivor, when Mr. Grenet's best was produced, not his best beer, but his best of Mumm's celebrated wine. And then the little party dissolved, it was with more than one regret, and will never be forgotten.

[Bugscuffle]

Thanks for the posting. It is especially true of the stories about the alamo that there are many and varied accounts of actions. The Alamo has been romanticized and the stories "enhanced" to the point that it is difficult to determine what is fact and what is fiction. An eye witness account from a crditable witness goes a long way in settleing the questions of what is the truth. Thanks again.