The Battle of Gonzales

Lead Up to the Battle
The Texas Revolution began with a bang, but not much of a battle. In 1831, the Mexican army had loaned the townspeople of Gonzales a cannon to protect themselves against Native Americans. It wasn’t much, just a foot long signal cannon, but the townspeople came to think of it as their own, despite agreeing to give it back if ever the Mexican army asked for it. In 1835, Northern Mexico and the Yucatan revolted against President Santa Anna, who had suspended the 1824 Constitution and declared himself president for life. Colonel Ugartechea, stationed in San Antonio de Bexár (modern San Antonio, Texas), saw the whole situation and thought that he should retrieve the cannon, just in case the townspeople decided to join in the general revolt. In September of 1835, he sent a few men to request the return of the cannon. The alcalde refused and sent the men back empty handed. Ugartechea decided stronger measures were needed and, on September 27th, 100 dragoons left San Antonio de Bexár bound for Gonzales.

The Come and Take It flag. Some variations show the star and cannon as outlines. [source]

All Over But the Shooting
The townspeople of Gonzales had buried the cannon after they had sent Ugartechea’s men packing, but as word came of the approaching dragoons, they hurriedly dug it up and mounted it on a wooden carriage. The dragoons arrived near Gonzales on the 29th, but the townspeople sent 18 men to block the nearest river crossing. They told the soldiers that the alcalde was away and they would have to wait until he returned, so the soldiers made camp on the far side of the river. Meanwhile, the townspeople called for reinforcements and were able to gather about 150 men. John Henry Moore was elected commander of the hastily assembled militia. On October 1st, a Coushatta scout told the Mexican commander, Castañeda, that the men were gathering and he decided to move his men further up the river to try to find another place to cross. That night the Texans crossed the river and headed north to the Mexican camp. On the morning of October 2nd, they fired the cannon at the Mexican soldiers, who quickly retreated. Castañeda asked for a parley and the Texans, though initially suspicious, agreed. Moore explained that they were not loyal to Santa Anna’s dictatorship, but rather to the Constitution of 1824. Castañeda expressed his sympathies for their position but, despite the Texans’ offer for him to join them, said that he was honor-bound to carry out his orders. The commanders returned to their camps as the Texans hoisted a flag bearing a star and cannon on a white background with the words “Come and Take It” underneath. The Texans again fired on the Mexican troops and Castañeda quickly retreated, telling Ugartechea, “since the orders from your Lordship were for me to withdraw without compromising the honor of Mexican arms, I did so.” The Texas Revolution, not yet a war for independence, had begun.

The cannon in the Gonzales Memorial Museum, one contender for the Come and Take It cannon. By Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 3.0, [source]

The Come and Take It Cannon
The cannon that had sparked the revolution was taken on to Goliad, and then moved with the army on its march to San Antonio de Bexár, but its fate is uncertain. One report says that the cannon’s cart couldn’t keep up with the army on the march to San Antonio and it was abandoned, buried along the banks of a creek near Gonzales. In 1936 (conveniently, during the Texas Centennial), a cannon was unearth after a flood. The Smithsonian confirmed that the cannon had been buried for an extended time and was of a type of small swivel cannon that was common in 1836. That cannon is now in a museum in Gonzales. However, other historians claim that the cannon was taken to the Alamo and captured by the Mexican army after its fall. Then, it was melted down with the other cannons when the Mexican army retreated. Though it was only fired twice at the battle of Gonzales, and its location is uncertain, the Come and Take It Cannon will continue to loom large in the Texan imagination.

HemisFair ’68

1968 Hemisfair Postcards: Tower of the Americas [source]

A Fair for the Hemisphere
Did you know that Texas hosted its own World’s Fair? Or at least, a fair for half the world. The HemisFair opened in 1968 in San Antonio, TX. The fair celebrated the 250th anniversary of San Antonio’s founding and the city’s connections to the rest of the hemisphere. Though the fair was focused on Latin America, over 30 countries would participate, including several from Europe and Asia. The San Antonio Riverwalk was extended to connect to the fair. Over the six months it was open, the fair attracted more than 6 million people to San Antonio.

Lido Theater [source];

Texas Theatre and River Court [source]

Displacement
Though the fair was largely supported by local officials, it did meet some resistance from the locals in the area where the fair was supposed to take place. The neighborhood was home to many immigrant groups and full of historic structures. Though the original HemisFair planner tried to save 120 of the homes, only about 20 remained by the end of construction. Altogether, the fair displaced over 2,000 people.

Hemisfair Park
In 1986, the site was redeveloped into Hemisfair Park. Many of the buildings are still in use. The San Antonio Conference Center occupies a large portion of the site, including the original Lila Cockrell Theater. The US Pavilion now serves as a Federal Court House. The Tower of the Americas, the show piece of the fair, is still open to tourists and provides an eagle eye view of downtown San Antonio, as well as a revolving restaurant. The State of Texas Pavilion was taken over by the University of Texas at San Antonio and is now the Institute of Texan Cultures, a museum celebrating the influence of the diverse ethnic groups that make up Texas.

Josephine Lucchese

American Nightingale

Josephine Lucchese as Gilda in Rigoletto in 1922, by Lumiere [source]

Josephine Lucchese was born in 1893, the daughter of famed boot maker Sam Lucchese. She studied music from a young age, including piano, mandolin, and voice from Italian Soprano, Virginia Colombati. At 18, Lucchese accompanied Colombati to New York to continue her training. In 1920, Lucchese appeared as Olympia in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann. She quickly gained fame for her coloratura roles, which require great vocal dexterity and skill, particularly as Rosina in The Barber of Seville. Lucchese toured throughout America and Europe, where she was called the “American Nightingale,” despite being one of the few opera stars without classical European opera training. She returned to Texas and taught voice at the University of Texas from 1956 to 1968. She retired to her hometown of San Antonio, where she continued to take private pupils. Josephine Lucchese passed away in 1974.

Henry B. González

An official portrait of Henry B. González, Briscoe Center for American History, Henry B. Gonzalez Collection [source]

Starting Local
Henry B. Gonzalez was born in San Antonio in 1916. Born Enrique Barbosa Prince de González, he was the third of six children of Mexican immigrants who had fled the Mexican Revolution. González worked hard at school and received a law degree in 1943. In 1950, he turned his attention to politics, unsuccessfully running for the San Antonio City Council. He ran again in 1953 and succeeded, then, just three years later, he successfully ran for the Texas State Senate. He would be the first Mexican-American members of both those bodies.

Aiming Higher
At both the city and the state level, González fought against segregation and discrimination. In 1957 he performed the longest filibuster in the Texas Senate to that time, speaking for 22 hours, and successfully killing eight of the ten bills trying to circumvent desegregation after Brown v. Board. González unsuccessfully ran for governor in 1958 and US Senator in 1961, but was able to win a seat in the US House of Representatives in a special election later in 1961.

Henry B. González in front of the Texas State Capitol. UTSA Special Collections [source]

”An Inconvenient and Unwelcome Obstacle”
Thus began his 37 year career as a US Representative. He had campaigned for John F. Kennedy and fought for Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs (despite losing to him in the 1961 Senate race). González was also outspoken and uncompromising, calling for the impeachment of three presidents, Nixon, Reagan, and Bush Sr. He was not afraid to get into literal fights, as well as political ones. He shoved a fellow rep on the House floor for calling him a slur, and punched a man in a San Antonio restaurant for calling him a communist. Despite his sometimes controversial time in the House (he would call himself “an inconvenient and unwelcome obstacle“), he was greatly beloved by the people of San Antonio and kept a sign outside his office that read “This Office Belongs to the People of Bexar County.”

In 1998, with his health failing, González retired from the House, only to die two years later. His son, Charlie González, took over his seat and served in the US House for another 14 years.

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.

Howard E Butts and H-E-B

By HEB Grocery Company, LP – http://www.hahmp.org/, Public Domain, source

Ask any Texan where they get their groceries and odds are good they’ll answer with three letters: H-E-B. These letters are the initials of founder Howard E. Butts. Born in Tennessee, Butts moved with his family to Texas when he was small. Butts grew up working in his mother’s small grocery store in Kerrville, TX and took over the store after returning from service in WWI. He shifted the model from credit-and-delivery to cash-and-carry, which was considered a risk at the time but proved wildly successful. Butts quickly began attempts to expand the store into a chain, but they failed until 1926, when he successfully opened a second store in Del Rio, TX. He would then open several more stores in the Rio Grande Valley, changing the name to Howard E Butts Grocery, and then, simply to H-E-B. The chain grew quickly and is now is ubiquitous throughout Texas and Northern Mexico. The chain is headquartered in San Antonio and offers a number of “Made in Texas” items. Today, the initials are often transformed into the chain’s slogan: “Here, Everything’s Better.”

Henry Philemon Attwater

Henry Philemon Attwater, head-and-shoulders portrait LC-USZ62-73594 (b&w film copy neg.) Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA [source]

A Texas Naturalist
Henry Philemon Attwater was born in England in 1854 and immigrated to Canada as a young man. He was interested in agriculture and apiculture and soon found a love for Natural History in general. In the 1880s, he began preparing specimens, including a trip to Bexar County, Texas to prepare specimens for an exhibition of Texas wildlife at the New Orleans World’s Fair. In the 1890s, he moved his family to San Antonio, continuing his work in Natural History. He prepared specimens for the Smithsonian Institution and contributed numerous other specimens and scholarly works to the study of Texas natural history. Attwater served as a director of the Audubon Society for about 10 years in the early 1900s. During this time he also worked for the passage of the Model Game act, which protects non-game animals, and the implementation of a hunting license program, the proceeds of which would go to protect game animals.

A Continuing Legacy
In 1923, he sold his considerable collection of specimens to the Witte Museum in San Antonio, where many of them can still be seen. In honor of his contributions to science and conservation, several animals carry his name, including Attwater’s prairie chicken (Tympanuchus cupido attwateri), a bird found only on the Texas coastal prairie and the most endangered bird in North America. Attwater passed away in 1931 in Houston, Texas.

Edgewood ISD v. Kirby

Disparity in Education
While Texas does not have an income tax, it does have a property tax, which has long been used to fund local school districts. Over the years this has led to a major disparity between poor and wealthy districts, as districts with higher property values are able to build better schools, attract better teachers, and buy better supplies.

Fighting for Change
In 1984, one group of parents from Edgewood ISD in San Antonio had had enough. On May 23rd, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund filed suit against the Commissioner of Education, William Kirby, charging that the current funding system for Texas schools discriminated against students in poor districts – for example, Edgewood ISD had $38,854 property valuation per student while Alamo Heights ISD, also in San Antonio, had $570,109 per student – and violated the state constitutions, which obligated the state “to establish and make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools.”

A Landmark Court Case
Edgewood ISD v. Kirby would take five years to wind its way through the courts and would eventually include 75 school districts and numerous parents. In 1989, the Texas Supreme Court unanimously sided with Edgewood ISD and the other plaintiffs and ordered the Texas legislature to create a plan to address the inequity. The first two attempts were rejected, but the third plan is still currently in place. Created in 1993 and upheld in 1995, the plan allows for several options by wealthy districts to redistribute funding to poorer districts, including moving taxable property to the tax rolls of poorer districts, consolidating school districts, and moving students from poorer to wealthier districts.

Continuing Challenges
The system is often referred to as the Robin Hood Plan and is still very contentious in Texas. Many from wealthier districts argue that the plan goes too far while those from poorer districts argue it doesn’t go far enough. Part of the 1995 ruling declares that the state must still work to equalize education throughout the state. In 2019, Governor Abbot declared school funding an emergency item for that year’s legislative session.

Elizabeth Topperwein

By George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress) – en:Library of Congress, call number LC-B2- 2227-15, reproduction number LC-DIG-ggbain-09419; via en:Flickr) – Image cleaned up and cropped by en:User:Redvers, Public Domain, [source]

Sharpshooter
Born in 1882 in New Haven, Connecticut, Topperwein only began shooting after marrying Adolph Topperwein, an exhibition shooter for Winchester. The two settled in San Antonio, Topperwein’s home town, where Adolph began giving her shooting lessons. She earned the nickname “Plinky” after she exclaimed “I plinked it!” when she successfully shot a tin can during her training. Three weeks after her first lesson, she joined her husband’s vaudeville shooting act. They would perform together for the next forty years, including at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 and at army bases during WWII. Topperwein was also the first woman to qualify as a national marksman with a military rifle, breaking 100 straight targets trapshooting. She died at her home in San Antonio in 1945.

Pershing’s Chinese

Chinese refugees brought by John Pershing arrive at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio[source]

Chinese in Texas
The first Chinese arrived in Texas with the railroads in the mid-19th century. But when the railroad boom died down, many of them left. In 1882, the Chinese-Exclusion Act was signed, prohibiting immigration from China. Chinese immigration to Texas would be pretty much non-existent until the act’s repeal in 1943. There was, however, one notable exception.

Chinese in Mexico
In 1916 and 1917, John Pershing led an expedition across the border into Mexico after Pancho Villa. While his troops searched the desert, they were often supplied by Chinese immigrants to Mexico, who would sell them food and other essentials while the locals were often decidedly hostile. Many of these Chinese had immigrated to Mexico after the Chinese-Exclusion Act was passed and they could no longer get into the US. Parts of Mexico still have a large Chinese population to this day.

John Pershing in 1919. By Harris & Ewing – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs division under the digital ID cph.3c13824, Public Domain, [source]

Unexpected Consequences
Despite their inability to capture or kill Pancho Villa, the expedition was declared a success in 1917 and President Wilson ordered the troops to return to the US. Pershing, however, was very aware of what would happen to those who had been friendly to the American troops after they left the area. Pershing appealed to his superior officers and was allowed to bring the Chinese (as well as American Mormons and Mexican citizens) who had helped the army back to the US. Altogether, about 525 Chinese came back to New Mexico, with the condition that they would work for the army.

A New Life in Texas
When Pershing was sent to San Antonio shortly after his return, about 425 of the Chinese followed him. They assisted in clearing ground and building a new army flight training center, as well as cooking, cleaning, and doing laundry. They also threw themselves into the community life of San Antonio, organizing dinners with traditional Chinese foods to raise money for the Red Cross. In 1921, Pershing’s Chinese were granted permanent residency and, in 1943, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed, nearly all of them applied for citizenship. Many Chinese Texans in San Antonio can still trace their ancestry back to this group of Chinese refugees.