maybe the upside down flag was Chilean !

Great find. Having spent 2 years back in 1996-1997 working on the Mission Trails project I greatly enjoy learning more about the south side of San Antonio and what things were like way back then.

Guys, if any of you spend time on Facebook, you might want to join this group. It's mostly a bunch of Tejano guys who live and breathe early Texas and San Antonio history. There is one guy who is literally mapping all of the homes of early Tejano supporters of Independence.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/433620486697981/?ref=br_tf

Great link, aalan. Thanks.

It should help immensely with my "before and after" work.

P_Bubel...check out Rose #251. Would this be the exposition bldg.??

http://www-lib.ou.edu/locations/docs/westhist/Rose/sanant5.html

That's it Cen-Tex! Thanks for the great link. I'll go through it when I get home in a couple of hours.

I wish they had a larger preview for those photos.

I'm interested in maybe buying a couple of jpgs, but I'm not sure about the overall quality since the preview images are so small.

Oh well.

Great thread. Thank you!

From the SA Express 12/27/14. Before & now photos

http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/article/Before-and-now-my-how-Alamo-Plaza-has-changed-5978292.php#photo-7313429

Thanks again Cen-Tex, those were images I had not seen before.


I'm glad to hear of renewed interest to do something with the plaza, it's been a long history of reclaiming bits and pieces ever since the fall of the Alamo.

We'll see where, if anywhere, it leads. (It's going to take significant state money if they get serious - and years of legal wrangling.)

Artist Mark Lemon created a new Alamo battle painting believed to be historically accurate. Provides a fair depiction of the compound back in March 1836.
http://www.laprensasa.com/1644_headline-news/2871585_artist-brings-alamo-story-to-life.html
Some of Lemon's Alamo art is also on display at the Emily Morgan Hotel in San Antonio.

I stopped by and grabbed some pictures of the alleged final resting place of some of the defenders in an east side cemetery. Will post some pics later.

I'm curious about that story.

I assume it's up where the powder house once was up on the hill?

I believe the funeral pyre was along where commerce street is, where Rivercenter Mall is basically, so burying the remains up there would be fairly simple. Yet, I don't think that area was a working cemetery for another couple decades.

Story & historical marker at the burial site
http://www.texasescapes.com/Cemeteries/Alamo-Defenders-Mass-Grave.htm

In "The Alamo Reader: A Study In History", Charles Merritt Barnes describes two pyres, one on the north side of East Commerce St. measuring 10'x60' and another pyre 250 yds southeast of the first pyre measuring 10x80'. Discovered during the digging of a cellar.

Photo bucket link





I didn't have to much time as I was on the end of my lunch break. But, pretty interesting stuff. I am terrible at linking pictures.

Thanks great pics

Early Alamo drawing by Mary Maverick in 1838. The bell-shaped parapet you see on today's Shrine was added by the US army after 1950 when it was used as a regional quartermaster depot.

cen tex- do you mean 1850? there are plenty of pictures on this thread showing the bell shape well before 1950

Side bit to that drawing, it was probably sketched from her yard. They wound up living on the plaza for years.

quote:

---

cen tex- do you mean 1850? there are plenty of pictures on this thread showing the bell shape well before 1950

---

yes..thinking 1850 and fat-fingered 1950 Thanks

Do any of you know anything about the story that Juan Sequin supposedly gathered some of the remains and ashes from the pyres, placed them in a box with a note and hid the them under stairs in a nearby Catholic church where they were discovered 100 years later?

I think he later denied the story but I'd have to reread

Found this:
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/adp/history/1836/the_compound/ashes.html

Great photos!

quote:

---

Side bit to that drawing, it was probably sketched from her yard. They wound up living on the plaza for years.

---

I read somewhere that Sam & Mary Maverick were real nomads. They supposedly moved into 12 different homes in their 32 years of marriage.

-this is what the view would have looked like from the Maverick property. The Hotel Indigo now stands in the general location of the Maverick home. Approximate to the northwest wall of the Alamo compound. Across the street is the federal building & courthouse (north wall).


An overlay of the 1836 Alamo compound walls onto current structures around the plaza.

More old photos -

Actor/war hero Capt. Audie Murphy lays a wreath at the Alamo (Aug 17, 1955) to commemorate Davy Crockett's 169th birthday. Looks like a good crowd.

Looks like he put the wreath at the exact spot where John Wayne died after tossing that torch into the church and the powder room ;-).

quote:

---

Looks like he put the wreath at the exact spot where John Wayne died after tossing that torch into the church and the powder room ;-).

---

I just spit my drink out from laughing so hard on that one.............good stuff "78!

Rather than start a new thread, I'll just post here. Look's like there's some slow deterioration of part of the Alamo (discovered by Aggie researchers too)

http://news.yahoo.com/alamo-battle-showing-signs-decay-researchers-214050201.html

Hopefully the deterioration is not man-made.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/daily-post/brief-history-peeing-alamo