Supplemental Material
IS IT TRUE?
Every Texan who fought at the Alamo perished there! Everyone knows that! A line from a poem of Walt Whitman in the opening pages of this book (“Not one escaped to tell of Alamo”) captures that popular belief. *
But a few months after the fall of the Alamo a survivor showed up at Nacogdoches, telling of his experiences fighting at the Alamo and escaping that last night. A few weeks earlier he had told the story in detail to his friends, the Zubers.
Yet, to this day, there are those who deny that Rose even existed . . . or if he once lived, he died at the Alamo . . or if he lived and survived the Alamo, the story of him and the Travis Line is unvarnished hogwash. Very disconcerting to this writer who bases this entire book upon the premise that Moses Rose very much lived, fought at the Alamo and then escaped to tell his tale.
The Rose-believers base their conviction upon three sources, all contained in the 1939 publication of the Texas Folk-Lore Society’s“In The Shadow of History” and set forth in this section as Articles (1), (2) & (3). The Rose/Travis Line story emanates from Article (1) “An Escape From The Alamo” by W. P. Zuber, who wrote (down) his parent’s recounting of their conversations with Rose soon after he departed the Alamo. After publication, young Zuber was vilified as a liar and a fraud.
That Rose had been at the Alamo, heard the Travis speech, saw the creation of the Travis Line . . . and then escaped from the Alamo, stretches a Texan’s credibility. Especially since this very man died at the Alamo. At least, according to the Telegraph and Texas Register, which, on March 24, 1836, recounted those who had fallen, as told by young John Smith, the last messenger to leave the fort. On the list was “Rose, of Nacogdoches.”
The premise that Rose was never at the Alamo (not a strongly held belief) or had died there (the popular dogma), ended in 1939 when a bombshell exploded upon Alamo scholars: R. B. Blake’s tireless research of the Nacogdoches County Courthouse archives. * *Robert Bruce Blake, born in 1877, was a court reporter and clerk of the county of Nacogdoches for many years. Devoting more than thirty years of his life, without publicity or compensation, he assembled records from Nacogdoches and Austin, translated and classified them, and then himself typed “the thirty thousand or more pages that make up these seventy- five volumes.” In Article (2), “A Vindication of Rose and His Story,” Blake documents Rose as the leading court witness in Nacogdoches – after the Alamo fell! – testifying as to who he saw at the Alamo before he left (and whose heirs were thus entitled to a bounty of land). Additionally, Blake, by other documents and interviews with an ancestor of Aaron Ferguson, wrote of Rose’s life after the Texas Republic was formed, his return to Nacogdoches, and his life there afterwards.
The fallout from the Rose-was-there-and-survived blast now centered upon the probability of the story of the Line. How could one believe that Rose (assuming he was there and escaped) passed on his story to Zuber’s parents who told it to their son – who didn’t write it down for 35 years – but remembered it . . . accurately? Nacogdoches Professor Archie P. McDonald, a major biographer of Travis, backs Rose; as does Wallace O. Chariton, who, in his Exploring The Alamo Legends, devotes two chapters to the question – and as do The Daughters of the Republic of Texas in their astute and succinct history sold at the Alamo Museum. Also agreeing is the well-regarded “Concise History of Texas.” They all come down on the side of the Travis Line, Rose’s escape and Zuber as recounting Rose’s telling of Travis’ speech substantially correct. This author joins that group.
Walter Lord, in A Time To Stand, accepts that
there’s still room to speculate, and every good Texan can follow the advice of J.K. Beretta in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly: “Is there any proof that Travis didn’t draw the line? If not, then let us believe it.”*
Lon Tinkle, in 13 Days To Glory, agrees:
Whether one is to believe it depends upon one’s willingness to listen to a single voice giving evidence no one else can verify. . . .
[But] There is a psychological factor that tends to strengthen Rose’s story. Certainly the episode [of leaving his friends] earns him no credit. . . . He could easily have lied that he had been dispatched from the fort as a scout. But what Rose did and saw had its own compulsion. Even if it damaged him personally, he had to tell it.
On the other side of the Rose Line is a highly respected historian, William C. Davis, who, in his recent work, Three Roads to the Alamo: The Lives and Fortunes of David Crockett, James Bowie, and William Barret Travis, relegates Rose to an almost out-of-book experience – footnote 99 on page 731 – where he summarily dismisses Rose, the Travis Line and Zuber:
It will be apparent to all Alamo aficionados [writes Davis] that no account has been given here of the episode of Travis supposedly drawing a line in the dirt . . . . So far as this present work is concerned, the event simply did not happen, or if it did, then something more reliable than an admittedly secondhand account written thirty-five years after the fact is necessary to establish it beyond question.
Texas historian, J. Frank Dobie – “I think Travis made the speech” – anticipated Davis’ skepticism a half century earlier, when he wrote in Article (3) “The Line That Travis Drew”:
It is a line that nor all the piety nor wit of research will ever blot out. It is a Grand Canyon cut into the bedrock of human emotions and heroical impulses. It may be expurgated from histories,* *He refers to Pennybacker’s “History of Texas for Schools,” which went into six editions and “several hundred thousand copies were sold, chiefly for use in Texas schools.” The Rose/Travis Line version was part of this text from 1888 for a quarter of a century – when it disappeared, according to Dobie, “as if it had never appeared.” but it can no more be expunged from popular imagination than the damned spots on Lady MacBeth’s hands . . . Nobody forgets the line. It is drawn too deep and straight
Even a cartoon history book, Texas History Movies, put out jointly by the Texas State Historical Association & Texas Educational Association, backs Rose. Copied here are four cartoon panels from that work, the first panel makes up the cover:
“On March 3, Colonel Travis made a remarkable speech to his command in the Alamo, offering his men a chance to escape or certain death.” Copyright, Texas State Historical Association. All Rights Reserved
WHAT DOES THE ALAMO MEAN TO TEXANS?
J.F. Dobie, in Article (2), notes that Texans “cherish the Alamo as they cherish no other spot either in Texas or in the world beyond.” What they cherish is the valor of the dead heroes . . . who became martyrs by crossing the Travis Line . . . as revealed only by Moses Rose.
Cherished even more than that which brought independence to Texas: The victory at San Jacinto, described as the 16th most important battle in world history because, as noted in a plaque at the site:
Measured by its results San Jacinto was one of the decisive battles of the world. The freedom of Texas from Mexico won here led to annexation and to the Mexican War, resulting in the acquisition by the United States of the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, Utah, and parts of Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Almost one-third of the present area of the American nation, nearly a million square miles of territory, changed sovereignty.
Defeat at the Alamo (where its defenders lost but immortalized themselves) means more to Texans than the victory at San Jacinto; it was dying at the Alamo that was (and is) glorified.
One can measure the lure of the Alamo by the actions of one Texan, who became President of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson. During a tour of Asia, LBJ told American GI’s that he had an ancestor who, like them, fought for freedom. He added that his kin had died at the Alamo in battle for the Republic of Texas.
Not true. LBJ did not have any relative who died at the Alamo. But, he did have a great-great-uncle who was not at the Alamo only because he was signing the Declaration of Independence that created the Republic of Texas. Then, marching with Sam Houston to the Battle of San Jacinto, he participated in a heroic charge against the Mexicans, that helped win that battle and secure the new Republic.
Yet LBJ chose to disavow his famous victorious ancestor to falsely link himself with the losing Alamo defenders. The 20th Century’s most famous Texan identified with Travis in revering immortal death. * *This story is told by biographer, Ronnie Dugger, an esteemed journalist, who covered Lyndon Johnson for many years for the Texas Observer. In a chapter in his book, The Politician, which he entitles: “From the Alamo to Khe Sanh [Vietnam],” Dugger describes his amazement that the President had memorized twelve lines of a verse about the Alamo [four are used in the opening pages of this book]. “Johnson recited to me [Dugger writes] the first two stanzas of ’The Defence of the Alamo,’ by Joaquin Miller . . . . (Perhaps you can imagine my astonishment.)”
Dobie was right. It was at the Alamo that the ultimate sacrifice was made and where the ultimate heroism occurred.
More than just history, the Alamo is also a religion. In a unique work, enticingly entitled: Inherit The Alamo: Myth and Ritual at an American Shrine, author Holly Beachley Brear notes the religious and mythological significance of the battle for the Alamo:
[T]he Alamo is the cradle of this nation and source of her liberty . . . the Alamo heroes offer their lives. Through their violent deaths, the Alamo is born to a new life, “with almost every stone baptized in human blood, shed in the defence of liberty.” The mythic baptismal font flows with the blood of the Alamo heroes, the life-giving fluid from which Texas liberty is born. Their blood waters the ground where Travis has sown the seed of the new nation, and she arises, “spring forth from the flow of the martyr’s blood.”
In the long run, as heroism, tinged with religious, mythological and symbolic significance, it is the Alamo, not San Jacinto (barely known by non-Texans), that is venerated.
And you better agree with exactly what happened or you will enlist in . . .
THE WAR OF THE HISTORIANS
A desire to possess and control Alamo history explains why historians, usually gracious to one another even when they vigorously disagree, show no such comraderie when the Alamo is the subject.
William Davis has written the most recent and a brilliant work about Bowie, Crockett and Travis on their way to and at the Alamo – but he is a prove-it-or-shut-up! kind of guy. He discards (but footnotes) all popular, unsubstantiated accounts. He opens his book by noting that many of his colleagues are “too enamored of the myth to want to supplant it with a reality that might be prosaic rather than lurid or heroic”– and then he proceeds to demean those he believes are “too enamored.”
Among the damned are authors of some of my favorite works, especially Virgil E. Baugh’s Rendezvous at the Alamo: Highlights in the Lives of Bowie, Crockett and Travis. This work opens with an impressive Foreword by another excellent Texas historian, Joseph Milton Vance (who wrote his own book on the same subject). Davis dismisses Baugh’s work as a “careless and inaccurate work . . . and mainly a reiteration of the tired old myths and legends . . . .” He then castigates Vance’s book as “almost equally unsatisfactory.” Be assured that those criticized (who include more than those named above) reciprocate the disdain.
Baugh writes a peoples history, quoting healthy chunks of prose from those who lived through the period, without assurance of what is fact and what is hyperbole. He is a who-will-ever-know-for-sure! kind of historian and a feeling for what it must have felt like and what occurred over a century ago creeps through all of his modest “was probably,” “supposed to have,” and even “one story has it that . . . .”
These are two different schools of history: prove it or it didn’t happen compared to most believe that. Each has its place.
I revere the books of both camps. I have relied on all these works, accepting Dobie’s premise that “not everything orally transmitted is mere legend,” added to by Dr. Francis Abernethy who understands that “legends are a part of a historical time and place . . . .” In his Legends of Texas’ Heroic Age, he comments that these tales are “not pure figments of the imagination . . . ; the degree of accuracy in these legends is often as hard to determine as the degree of fact found in documented history.
And abetted by R.B. Blake
”Tradition founded upon facts, is often of more value to the historian than is source material, for tradition is usually the composite view of many people, successive tellers adding a little here and taking away a little there, yet retaining the essence of the story from generation to generation.”
And, he might have added, the precise written word (now also the televised word) is often false: self-serving or enemy-punishing, to secure the writer’s chosen place in history. * *Can any of us today, despite memoirs, television interviews (and, often, television-as-it-happened) and congressional hearings be sure of what really occurred in connection with the assassination of John F. Kennedy, or Richard Nixon and Watergate, or what Ronald Reagan knew about Iran-Contra?
Thus the many quotes attributed to Bowie, Crockett and Travis, as well as descriptions of their deeds, are taken from Baugh and Davis (and many others) – despite their disagreements.
ROSE AND NAPOLEÓN
Young Zuber, a contemporary of Rose, wrote that Rose was ”a native of France” and ”had been a soldier in Napoleon’s army in the invasion of Russia and the retreat from Moscow.” Blake adds that Rose was ”probably born in France about 1785,” and was
an enthusiastic follower of the “Little Corporal” in his triumphant invasion of Russia; he endured the hardships of the disastrous retreat from Moscow, through the snow and intense cold of the Russian winter of 1812; and he doubtless followed the vicissitudes of Napoleon Bonaparte’s career to its disastrous termination on the field of Waterloo.* *The information about Rose’s role as a French soldier led a Texas Professor of Literature to check out the French Military Archives, find a “Louis Rose,” assumed him to be our Moses Rose – and launched a new legend as to where he was born, that he was Jewish and many other errors. But some military buffs saw the report of these findings and concluded that because that Rose was an officer and a quartermaster – both positions not available to one who was illiterate – he was not our Rose.
Owen Connelly’s excellent work on this period, French Revolution/Napoléonic Era, was heavily relied upon, along with Alistair Horne’s, How Far From Austerlitz?: Napoleon, 1805-1815 and Emil Ludwig’s Napoleon.
The experiences of the retreat from Moscow are taken from the autobiography of one who was there: Jakob Walter, in his Diary of a Napoléonic Foot Soldier.
Writer’s trepidation:
After deciding to write a book featuring (according to Davis) an ”event [that] simply did not happen” – and, by extension, about a man that simply did not exist – this writer was distressed to stumble upon a convoluted plot by exiled Napoleonic veterans, of which Rose was one: FRENCHMEN, granted sanctuary by AMERICANS, to ally with MEXICANS to oust the SPANISH from Texas and Mexico, and, in return, the Mexicans would help free Napoleon from exile.
The temptation to bypass this fantastical story (and preserve some credibility) was overcome only by reading a nearly-century old account confirming that the Champ d’Asile almost-conspiracy actually occurred – Jesse S. Reeves’ stellar 1905 work: The Napoleonic Exiles in America: A Study in American Diplomatic History, 1815-1819. Supplementing this research is an up-to-the minute work, The New Handbook of Texas Online, by the General Libraries at the University of Texas at Austin and Texas State Historical Association. Their preferred manner of citing their work, this topic for example, is
”CHAMP D’ASILE.” The Handbook of Texas Online. <http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook /online/articles/view/CC/uec2.html> [Accessed Wed Jul 7 20:14:44 1999]
(In other references, I will simply cite this work as Handbook of Texas Online, followed by the subject.) All my use of the internet occurred between July and November, 1999.
THE SPANISH ROLE IN NORTH AMERICA
One cannot begin to understand colonial America without appreciating the role and control that Spain held on this continent for centuries, long before the arrival of the Pilgrims. (It would be like studying the voyage of the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria . . . but without Columbus.) Two excellent books were essential to me for that understanding: Sir Hugh Thomas’ Conquest: Montezuma, Cortes, and the Fall of Old Mexico tells of Spain conquering Central America and Mexico; David J. Weber’s The Spanish Frontier in North America takes the story into the Spanish-dominated territory that became the United States of America.
The Louisiana Purchase – of the former Spanish Louisiana Territory – that put the U.S. on the border of Texas, is well discussed from the French perspective in the various books about Napoleon already mentioned. Willard Sterne Randall’s, Thomas Jefferson: A Life, gives the American point of view of that momentous (and probably unconstitutional) bargain. In addition, each work that discusses the main players in the Alamo saga also addresses the impact of the Louisiana Purchase on them.
THE EARLY YEARS OF BOWIE, CROCKETT AND TRAVIS
The pre-Texas biographies of the three Colonels are well chronicled (though differently) in the works of Baugh and Davis, noted earlier. Add to those works the meticulous biography of Travis by Archie McDonald and their early histories are skillfully depicted.
Travis’ twenty-two years before Texas were full and are masterfully accounted for. Not so for Crockett who became a cottage industry for writers and playwrights with a flair for exaggeration, hyperbole and aggrandizement. Finally Crockett himself – who campaigned as a man ”fresh from the backwoods, half-horse, half alligator, a little touched with the snapping-turtle; who can wade the Mississippi with a steamboat on his back, leap the Ohio, ride upon a streak of lightning and whip his weight in wildcats” – joined the embellishers with his autobiography and speeches across this country. Ever since, biographers have attempted to find David Crockett among the many ”Davy Crockett’s.”
Bowie’s life before Texas was one of valor [Baugh accepted more duels than Davis, but Davis captured in his footnotes even those he disputed] and shady business practices. Alexis de Tocqueville, who met Bowie, wrote in his Democracy in America of men like him who could ”alternately display passions so strong and so similar first for their own welfare and then for liberty that one must suppose these urges to be united and mingled in some part of their being.”
A succinct source on all three lives can be found in The Handbook of Texas Online, discussed in the next section.
THE TEXAS REVOLUTION
Less than two decades encompassed the Revolutionary struggles in Texas but there is a book for every hour of that period. These works cover the Peace Party led by Stephen Austin (struggling to hold his volatile colonists in check) to the (virtually) unplanned revolts which led to the Texan’s seizing of the Alamo . . . and then losing it to Santa Anna to the massacre of Texas soldiers who surrendered at Goliad to the final victory at San Jacinto.
How many Texan defenders fought and died that last day at the Alamo excites only the most ardent Alamophiles: from Walt Whitman’s 150 to Chariton’s 185 to Davis’ new information that raises the number to 250. Yet, it mattered little against a Mexican force of 6,000 – 1,800 in the assaults, the balance in reserve.
The makeup of the Alamo forces (and many other insights) is compiled from Paul D. Lack’s comprehensive critique of The Texas Revolutionary Experience: A Political and Social History, 1835-1836. Another well-done and compact history (mentioned earlier) by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas [DRT] combines the work of many scholars with extraordinary paintings. The Alamo Long Barrack Museum, provides names, home states and other personal data of the defenders, as well as a synopsis of the overall history. This writer is also grateful to the DRT for their encouragement, hospitality and the use of their all-inclusive Alamo library in San Antonio.
In addition to sources discussed earlier, there is a treasure trove of historical riches available on the internet from the 23,000 entries in The Handbook of Texas Online (www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online). A few of many that I studied include: Alamo, Battle of the; Alamo Noncombatants; Austin, Stephen Fuller; Anahuac Disturbances; Bexar, Siege of; Bowie, James; Bowie Knife; Concepcion, Battle of; Cos, Martin Perfecto de; Crockett, David; Champ d’Asile; Fannin, James Walker, Jr.; Goliad Campaign of 1836; Houston, Samuel; Laffite, Jean; Matamoros Expedition of 1835-6; Nacogdoches, Battle of; Nacogdoches, Texas; Rose, Louis; Runaway Scrape; Revolutionary Army; San Jacinto, Battle of; Santa Anna, Antonio Lopez de; Seguin, Juan Neopomuceno; Seguin, Juan Jose Maria Erasmo; Smith, Erastus (Deaf); Travis, William Barret; and Zuber, Abraham.
Other online sources include:
www.historynet.com/wildwest/ “The Alamo, 13 Days of Glory” by Lee Paul;
www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/ “The Runaway Scrape” by Steve Goodson; and
www.nationalcenter.org/Alamo/ “The Fall of The Alamo” by Capt. R.M. Porter. Porter’s second-hand entry, written in 1860, transports you into the battle itself.
This new power to wonder about an issue and, with slight movement of an internet ”mouse,” find an answer, or, at least, someone’s answer – will forever change research as we have known it.
Other valuable works include the apt-titled ”Concise History of Texas,” prepared by Mike Kingston, editor of the Texas Almanac. In 213 pages this book covers the period from ”Prehistoric Texas” through ”Post-War [World War II] Texas” – and creates an overview that would be extraordinary for a book ten times its size.
Another unique work, Wallace Chariton’s ”Exploring the Alamo Legends,” adds stimulating opinion related to the persons and events of the Texas Revolution. In a second book by the same author, ”100 Days in Texas,” he sets out letters and documents of the period leading to (and following) the fall of the Alamo. These letters, especially, are the voice of this book.
RELYING UPON THE KINDNESS OF STRANGERS
Encouraging and assisting this former New Yorker and present Californian meander through this history were two Texas historians from Rose’s home town of Nacogdoches: Professor Archie P. McDonald of Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches (and biographer of Travis), and Dr. Francis Abernethy of the Texas Folk-Lore Society.
Professor McDonald gave me the benefit of his insight into the enigmatic Travis and answered many unanswered questions (at least to me) about the Revolutionary period. As I was leaving our meeting he created a perception about Travis not easily forgotten: ”Remember,” he said, ”Travis was only 27 when he commanded the Alamo.” (The analysis of Travis in this book is nonetheless my responsibility.)
Professor Abernathy tutored me on the line between history, tradition and folk lore. He encouraged me to stay with my project to view this famous period through the perspective of the elusive Moses Rose – the one who didn’t stay. He told me that when he thinks of Rose, he always pictures the cartoon drawing he gave me. (On page §)
MOSES ROSE AFTER TEXAS
While researching at the Alamo Library, I had come upon a news clipping about a Louisiana resident who had found the grave of Moses Rose. After visiting Professors McDonald and Abernathy, I made an appointment to meet the grave-finder. Having already driven the route that Rose had walked from San Antonio to Nacagdoches, I next drove the rest of the way that he rode on horseback after he was banished – crossing to the other side of the former international border, crossing the Sabine River and entering Louisiana.
In Mansfield, La – a few miles from Logansport – I pulled up at the Powell Real Estate Appraisal Service and met Raymond Powell, formerly of Logansport and a member of the DeSoto Parish Historical Society. Powell had spent two years searching for the grave of the most famous resident of that area. When he finally located the Aaron Ferguson family cemetery and discovered one grave with a Texas Yucca cactus plant (”native to South Texas, had to be brought into Louisiana”), he was sure he had found Rose’s resting place.
We met, he closed down his business for the day and drove me to the locale, where we walked through thorny vines and poison ivy until we reached a long-neglected graveyard.
While I stared at one of the few unaltered, century-old locations that I encountered on my trip, Powell told me of his conversations with descendants of Ferguson who discussed how Aaron Ferguson had taken in Rose to live with him and his family. When I asked Powell about inviting an-almost stranger to live in ones home, he told me that he would take me in — right now – to live in his home. But, he laughed: ”You wouldn’t invite me into your home to live.” I didn’t answer but it was true – though I could not imagine a more charming guest.
Powell smiled at my non-answer and proceeded to talk about an unfriendly article he had written about Rose, entitled ”The Traitor of the Alamo” (North Louisiana Historical Association, Summer, 1973, Vol 4, No. 4). We debated the man he described as ”despised as a traitor.”
After viewing the grave, I walked around the area, asking residents if they knew the location of the Ferguson house where Rose had lived. (Long ago it had burned to the ground.) About a mile-and-a-half from the cemetery I met Philip Blue of Logansport, who now lived on a portion of the former Ferguson land. When I asked about the Ferguson home, Blue answered with a question: ”Are you looking for where the ’Man from Alamo’ had lived?” Startled, I said that I was and he responded: ”I can show you where Rose lived . . . and I can prove it. I have evidence.”
He laughed at my astonishment and we walked to his nearby home where, in a cigar-shaped wooden box, he produced a silver coin, minted 1813 with a replica of Napoléon and the inscription: ”NAPOLEONE IMPERATORE E RE” (Napoléon Emperor and King). He had found it on Ferguson’s land with a metal detector he used to search for historical artifacts. A photocopy of which is shown below.
After much animated discussion on this last day of my trip, we agreed I would return the following year so that Blue could introduce me to descendants of Aaron Ferguson – the man who had given Rose a job and a home when he was down on his luck.
The next year I was back, the guest of Philip Blue and his wife Tommie. They greeted me, fed me and made me feel like a member of their family. Blue, 50, told me that he had spent 14 years working in an oil field, ending as a supervisor of a production crew. Having purchased this portion of the Ferguson land in 1976, he pointed out where Ferguson’s main house and the Potato Shack had been, and where Castoff Creek still flows – all right near where we were drinking our iced tea on a 95 degree Louisiana summer day.
One of the rewards of this second visit was meeting Lavada Curry Bryant and Ruby Wells, both in their 80’s, descendants of the Ferguson clan. Mrs. Wells lived in the Ferguson house where Rose had once lived; Mrs. Bryant lived nearby and her relatives are buried in the Ferguson cemetary. They graciously passed on stories they had heard from their parents, grandparents and others about Rose, the Ferguson family and the Ferguson home. Filling in some of the blanks, Blue – and Powell who I visited again – added conversations they had had with other ”now passed” Ferguson descendants over the years.
Careful not to ”get under foot,” I stayed only a week and returned to California to begin to write this book.
WRITING WITH A LOT OF HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
Back home in California, I was the recipient of help from an engineer, a photographer, a legal assistant, a neurologist, a classicist, a draftsman, a muralist and others.
Mike Breslin, the engineer, who, like me, was first ”hooked” on the Alamo from watching Disney’s 1955 TV series, ”Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier,” read many of the books in my bibliography. We argued regularly about the nuances of what really happened from the incomplete (and contradictory) accounts. His good counsel resulted in good judgments – except when I disagreed.
Jane Scherr, the photographer (and my wife) put up with my decade-long obsession with Moses Rose and the Alamo, accompanied me on my first research trip to Texas, and ended up doing research for me in the libraries of the excellent University of California at Berkeley.
Cary Sanders, a legal assistant in my law firm, read this manuscript again and again and again – searching for inconsistencies, the need for restructuring and simply bad writing – and supplied alternatives for me.
Robert Herrick, M.D., considered Rose his historical patient for the treatment of cactus poisoning and diagnosed and prognosed for him. No doubt he would have cured the Frenchman given the chance.
Pamela Vaughn of the S.F. State Classics Department gave me insight into the greek tragedy-nature of Rose’s life and demise.
Riley English, an engineering draftsman, used his skill at Computer Aided Drafting (CAD) software to create the map of the period and a detailed drawing of the Alamo itself.
Stefan, a well-regarded Berkeley artist and muralist, created the beautiful cover art that adorns this book.
Melanie Strickland, an artist and multimedia designer, designed the cover.
Tom Hunt, a Berkeley computer expert, designed, and converted with TEX, the contents of this book into a publication format .
Despite this generous help from friends in California, Louisiana and Texas, all errors are mine.