Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr.

Portrait of Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr., 1907. LBJ Presidential Library. [source]

More than a Farmer
Best known as the father of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Samuel Ealy Johnson, Jr. served as an inspiration and spring board for his son’s career. Johnson was born in Buda, Texas, but moved to the Hill Country at a young age. He desperately wanted to go to school and become more than a farmer, but the schools in the Hill Country required tuition fees and his family was poor. To help pay for school, Johnson bought a barber’s chair and tools and gave hair cuts in the evenings. Even so, he had to leave school before he graduated. Even without his diploma, Johnson studied diligently and was able to pass the examination for a teacher’s certificate. He spent the next several years teaching in one room school house around the Hill Country. Eventually, finances forced him to move back to the family farm, which he took over when his father retired.

House of Representatives
In 1904, financially solvent from a few good years on the farm and with a popular reputation in the Hill Country, Johnson ran for and won a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. During his first two terms in the House, he worked to regulate business and pushed through a bill providing state funding to reimburse Clara Driscoll for the purchase of the Alamo property and provide for its preservation. Johnson met Rebekah Baines while she was working as a reporter of the legislative session and the two married in 1907. Funnily enough, Baines was the daughter of Joseph Wilson Baines, whose seat Johnson had taken over.

Sam Ealy Johnson, Jr. as a Member of the Texas House of Representatives, c. 1905, LBJ Presidential Library. [source]

Boom and Bust
In 1909, Johnson was again facing hard financial times and retired from the legislature. Though many legislators found jobs in industries or lobbying after their terms, Johnson had always steadfastly refused bribes and fought against the interests of big business, so he returned to the family farm. After many years of poverty and five kids, Johnson was slowly able to put the family back onto stable footing. He began buying real estate and then businesses around Johnson City. In 1917, a special election was held for Johnson’s old seat in the House and he ran unopposed. He would hold the seat until 1923, despite, once again, losing almost everything investing in the cotton market. This cycle of boom and bust was difficult for the family and particularly for Rebekah. She did her best to instill stability and the love of education and culture in her children, which Lyndon Johnson credited as a driving force in his life. Johnson suffered a series of heart attacks in the mid 1930s and passed away in 1937, the same year his son won a seat in the US House of Representatives.

Angelina

Angelina by Ancel Nunn

Angelina was a young woman of the Hasinai tribe of the Caddo Nation. Around 1690, a group of Spanish priests established missions among her people in East Texas. She was baptized Angelina, though her birth name has been lost, and learned Spanish. She is mentioned by several Spanish and French explorers and traders as an interpreter and guide in the early 1700s. She worked with Louis Juchereau de St. Denis to found Spanish missions with her native Caddo people in 1716 and some credit her with helping to found the mission that would become the Alamo a few years later. Many of the Europeans described her as learned and wise. The Caddo are matrilineal and she may have held a position of status in the tribe. Her story has been romanticized over the years, much like other Native women who helped Europeans.

The only county in Texas named after a woman is named after Angelina.

Susanna Dickinson

Messenger of the Alamo

Portrait of Susanna Dickinson (1814-1883), McArdle Collection, Texas State Library and Archives, [source]

Coming to Texas
Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson was born in Tennessee around 1814 and married to Almaron Dickinson when she was just 15. She came with him to Texas and they settled along the San Marcos River in what is now Caldwell County in 1831. When the Texas Revolution broke out, Almaron Dickinson went to fight for the Texans and wound up in San Antonio in the fall of 1835, where Susanna and their 2 year old daughter, Angelina, joined him.

At the Alamo
When the fighting resumed in February 1836, the Dickinsons moved into the Alamo. When the Alamo fell, Susanna became a widow. Santa Anna interviewed all the women and had Susanna identify all the important Texan men. He then sent her and her daughter to the Texan army with a letter from himself, warning the Texans to surrender, and with the famous “Victory or Death” letter from William Travis. Susanna provided one of the few eyewitness accounts of the Alamo siege and stood as witness for the heirs of those killed at the Alamo.

The Susanna Dickinson Museum, By Daderot – Own work, CC0, [source]

After the War
Susanna had a rough life after the war. She was hounded for the rest of her life to tell the story of the Alamo over and over. She married again, first to John Williams, who she divorced because he beat her, then to Francis Herring, who died of alcoholism, then to Peter Bellows, who divorced her on grounds of infidelity. In 1856, Susanna and 21 year old Angelina sold the land awarded to them for Almaron Dickinson’s service. Finally, in 1857, at 43, Susanna married Joseph Hannig, a prosperous cabinet maker and the couple moved to Austin. Susanna would remain with Hannig until her death in 1883. Hannig buried her in Oakwood Cemetery where he would join her in 1890, despite having remarried. Their house in Austin is now the Susanna Dickinson Museum.

The San Antonio Missions

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  Mission Espada

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  Mission San Jose

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  Mission Concepción

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  Mission San Juan

You may remember the Alamo, but it was only one of a string of missions built along the San Antonio River in the 1700s. The other four, Mission Espada, Mission San Jose, Mission San Juan, and Mission Concepción, are now part of the San Antonio Missions National Historic Park and are all part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site

The Missions were an attempt to convert and “civilize” local Native tribes through prayer, discipline, and hard labor. Many Natives accepted the Missions’ strict discipline in return for protection from their now mobile enemies, the Comanche and Lipan Apache. Though the Missions were largely able to provide that protection, they also became epicenters for diseases which decimated the Native populations. Nearly all of the Native cultures in the area were destroyed by a combination of population loss, conversion by the Missions, and intermarriage with Europeans.

All pictures by me.

Adina de Zavala

Adina De Zavala, c. 1910, photo courtesy of the Center for American History at the University of North Texas. [source]

Early Life
Adina De Zavala was the granddaughter of Lorenzo de Zavala, the writer of the Texas Declaration of Independence and the first Texas Constitution. Adina de Zavala grew up in Galveston and graduated from the Sam Houston Normal Institute in Huntsville in 1881. She traveled to Missouri to study music before returning to Texas to teach. She eventually settled near her family, which had moved to San Antonio.

Preserving the Alamo
Around 1889, she began meeting with other women in San Antonio to talk about Texas history and particularly about Texas heroes. Being in San Antonio, the Alamo was very present in their discussions. The State of Texas had bought the chapel of the Alamo in 1883, but much of the rest of the mission had slowly been destroyed. One of the few remaining structures was the long barracks and, in 1892, Zavala got a promise from the owners, a wholesale and grocery business, that her group would have the first right to buy the property if it went up for sale. Zavala’s group later joined with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and, in 1903, Clara Driscoll, an heiress and member of the DRT bought the property. 

The Hugo & Schmelzter Mercantile, c. 1895. Much of what is visible was added by the mercantile, but it covered the two story long barracks structure, the second floor of which was subsequently removed by the DRT. [source]

Division
Quickly, it became apparent that Zavala’s group and Driscoll’s group had very different ideas about what to do with the structure. Zavala thought it should be preserved as it was while Driscoll (mistakenly) thought it was a later addition that should be torn down so as not to distract from the “real” Alamo. The battle wound up in the courts and they sided with Driscoll. The second floor of the structure was destroyed, but Zavala fought hard to save what she could, even barricading herself in the structure for three days in protest. Time would eventually vindicate Zavala and the long barracks are now interpreted as the scene of some of the heaviest fighting at the Alamo.

Later Work
When Zavala split from the DRT, many went with her, forming the Texas Historical and Landmarks Association, which worked to get historical markers put up all over Texas. She helped to save the Spanish Governor’s Palace, convincing the city of San Antonio to buy the property, as well as numerous other important historical structures. She was appointed to the committee planning the Texas Centennial celebrations and a founding member of the Texas State Historical Association, which continues to study and publish on Texas history. Zavala died in 1955 and laid in state in the Alamo chapel. In 1994, she was honored with her own historical marker in the Alamo plaza.

The Travis Letter

On the second day of the siege of the Alamo, February 24th, 1836, Travis sent out a call for volunteers. Albert Martin escaped through the siege with the letter. No volunteers would make it through the Mexican siege, but the letter would be reprinted in newspapers across Texas and the United States, bringing hundreds of volunteers to fight for Texas.

Fall of the Alamo by Theodore Gentilz, c. 1840-1845. [source]

Commandancy of the The Alamo

Bejar, Feby. 24th. 1836

To the People of Texas & All Americans in the World-

Fellow Citizens & compatriots-

I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna – I have sustained a continual Bombardment & cannonade for 24 hours & have not lost a man – The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion, otherwise, the garrison are to be put to the sword, if the fort is taken – I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, & our flag still waves proudly from the walls – I shall never surrender or retreat.  Then, I call on you in the name of Liberty, of patriotism & everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch – The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily & will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days.  If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible & die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor & that of his country – Victory or Death.

William Barret Travis.

Lt. Col.comdt.

P. S.  The Lord is on our side – When the enemy appeared in sight we had not three bushels of corn – We have since found in deserted houses 80 or 90 bushels and got into the walls 20 or 30 head of Beeves.

Travis