Day to remember

On March 2, 1836, the territory of Tejas, province of Mexico, formally declared its independence:

http://www.lsjunction.com/docs/tdoi.htm

Six and a half weeks after the declaration, om April 21, Sam Houston would defeat Santa Anna at San Jacinto in a battle that lasted 17 minutes, and Texas would officially become an independent republic, the only state in the US to have ever been a country in its own right.

Most of my relatives had not yet arrived in Texas. One distant cousin, Joshua Smith (first cousin to Nathaniel Brown, husband of Alice Anglin Brown, whose namesake was her niece, Alice "Ailcy" Foster Richardson, m ggg-grandmother) , was not able to sign the declaration, because he was holed up just outside the city of San Antonio de Bexar, at Mission de San Antonio de Valero, which had recently been turned into a fort which was more commonly known as the Alamo. He was still there four days later, on March 6, when Santa Anna overtook the fort and had all survivors killed.

Isn't Alice a fine name?

One of the signers of that declaration was Samuel Maverick, who unwittingly provided Daniel Redstone with a herd of cattle during the late 1840's, and was one of the men who fired on the Comanche chiefs, who had come under a white flag to discuss terms for a treaty, at the Council House in San Antonio in 1840. Daniel, who in 1836 was only 15, and was yet to learn that his own father was Comanche, did not become terribly fond of Mr. Maverick.

Ann

Ann,

No wonder you like to look into your ancestory. Yours is exciting.

Very interesting Ann. You whet my appetite.

What an interesting history.
I have such a soft spot for the American west.

Abe F. March wrote:

Very interesting Ann. You whet my appetite.

Abe, it is so much easier to write this stuff when your major characters are fictional. I do not know why I fought so hard for so long against doing so. I can still honor my own ancestors and am not trapped by the personal details of their own lives.

Alice, every family has a heroic story to tell. You just whetted us with your own very heroic childhood.

David, If you, or anyone is interested in reading a book by someone who, much like our Carol, succeeded where I failed, there is a marvelous book out by Janice Woods Windle called True Women:

http://www.amazon.com/True-Women-Janice-Woods-Windle/dp/0804113084

Or, since it is pretty thick, you might consider the Hallmark Channel mini-series based on the book. One of its stars was a very young and unknown Angelina Jolie:

http://www.amazon.com/True-Women-Dana-Delany/dp/B000274TJ4/ref=ed_oe_dvd

I was so excited when I first learned about it. It gave me hope that a major publisher might pick up my own story.

I was a bit disillusioned to learn that the Annabeth Gish character in the mini-series (yes, she was Lillian's granddaughter), who married a King in the story, actually married into THE King family of Texas, founders of the King Ranch, one of the largest in the state, and that Ms. Windle, the author, was a close friend of Lyndon and Lady Bird, a couple of other somewhat well-known Hill Country natives.

But it is still an amazing story, and true.