The Alamo and DRT celebrate Texas Independence Day

The Alamo and the DRT commemorate Texas Independence Day with a ceremony in Alamo Plaza.

On Monday, March 2, the Alamo and the DRT celebrated Texas Independence Day with a ceremony in Alamo Plaza. The ceremony, held by the Alamo Mission Chapter of the DRT, featured a speech from DRT Library Director Leslie Stapleton. Mrs. Stapleton spoke about the library’s history and collection. Specifically, Mrs. Stapleton discussed the great primary sources that the library has in its archives.

Leslie Stapleton, DRT Library Director, speaks about the library's history and collection.

Among the one-of-a-kind documents is a letter written by Alamo defender Daniel William Cloud on December 26, 1835 to his brother, John B. Cloud. A lawyer from Kentucky, Daniel William Cloud joined David Crockett’s Tennessee Volunteers to help in the fight for Texas Independence. He describes what many of these young men might have been feeling when he writes,

If we succeed, the Country is ours. It is immense in extent, and fertile in its soil, and will amply reward all our toil. If we fail, death in the cause of liberty and humanity is not cause for shuddering. Our rifles are by our side, and choice guns they are, we know what awaits us, and are prepared to meet it.

This letter was donated to the library by the Cloud family in 1979. Click here for a previous post about the Cloud letter.

Another great document in the collection is a letter written by Abishai Mercer Dickson written to his wife from New Orleans on December 29, 1835 on his way to Texas. He writes to her,

My Dear, my lips have not been wet with spirits of any description since I left you and I do hope they never will again and I think this trip will not only wean me entirely from it but will give me a new constitution.

He closes the letter by writing:

I have some hopes of making a little fortune. I feel more anxious than I ever did.

Dickson joined the Alabama Red Rovers and served under Col. Fannin at Goliad, where he was killed by the Mexican army along with more than 340 other Texan soldiers.

Lastly, another unique document in the collection is Samuel Augustus Maverick’s copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Maverick was an early Texas land baron, legislator, and leading citizen of the Republic. He lived at the corner of Alamo Plaza and Houston Street and played a large role in the Siege of Bexar in December 1835. He was chosen as one of two representatives from the Alamo to go to the independence convention on March 1, 1836 at Washington-on-the-Brazos.

Maverick left on March 2 but did not arrive at the convention until March 5. By that day, the Declaration had already been drafted and adopted. Maverick printed his name as well as the names of the other late arrivals to his broadside copy of the Declaration. Although one thousand broadside copies were originally printed, today only thirteen are known to exist. The DRT Library is fortunate to have two of these known copies. Click here for a previous post about the Maverick copy of the Declaration of Independence.

After the ceremony, Mrs. Stapleton invited all guests to visit the library, which is not usually a browsing collection, to view these and other special primary sources from the library’s collection.

Library visitors look at items on exhibit from the collection.

Texas Independence Day, March 2

On this day in 1836, the Texas Declaration of Independence was presented to the Convention of 1836 at Washington-on-the- Brazos. Like the United States Declaration of Independence, the Texas Declaration has a statement on the nature of government, a list of grievances, and a declaration of independence. For more on the content of the Declaration of Independence, go to the Handbook of Texas Online.

After signing the original document, five other copies were made that were sent to Bexar, Goliad, Nacogdoches, Brazoria, and San Felipe (the original is in the collection at the Texas State Archives). In addition to the five copies, one thousand copies of the declaration were ordered in broadside form to be distributed across Texas.

The following is Samuel A. Maverick’s copy of the broadside. Maverick, a representative from the Alamo, arrived at Washington after the order for the broadsides had already gone to the printer. Maverick appended his name, along with the names of the other late arrivals to his copy. In the turmoil that accompanied the advance of the Mexican army after the fall of the Alamo, the retreat across Texas, and the deciding battle of San Jacinto, few printed copies of the declaration survived. Maverick’s copy, which remained in the possession of his descendents, is one of about thirteen known examples. Of the thirteen known copies, the DRT Library has two. The second copy was given to the library by Hamilton and Billy Laster Fish.

Samuel A. Maverick's broadside copy of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Click on the document to see a larger size.

Click here for a full citation of documents and images included in this entry.

Telegraph and Texas Register, Early Texas Newspaper

The top of the first page of the Telegraph and Texas Register from January 6, 1837. Much of the paper on that date was dedicated to reprinting an act "organizing the inferior Courts," the first part of which is seen here.

The DRT Library has an extensive collection of newspapers dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. While this collection contains some papers published in cities around the United States and even Mexico, the majority were printed in Texas towns and cities. Included in this collection are some of the earliest newspapers available in the state.

According to Marilyn McAdams Sibley in her work Lone Stars and State Gazettes (1983), in the nearly fifty years between the first attempt to print a newspaper in Texas in 1813 and the Civil War, “more than four hundred newspapers appeared.” Notably, argues Sibley, while “in style and format those papers represented an extension of the Anglo-American frontier press,” they also “peculiarly reflected the course of history in Texas” (3).

Several short-lived newspapers were printing prior to 1830, but it was not until the eve of the Texas Revolution that Texans established sustainable enterprises for publishing. First was the Texas Gazette, which was published between 1829 and 1832; according to the Handbook of Texas, it was the “first enduring Texas newspaper” and the “earliest Texas newspaper of which more than one issue is now extant.” Second, the Telegraph and Texas Register, first printed in October 1835, was “the first newspaper in Texas to achieve a degree of permanence.”

Detail of page three of the Telegraph and Texas Register from January 11, 1837.

The DRT Library has almost one hundred volumes of the Telegraph and Texas Register dating from October 1835 to April 1838. Initially, the newspaper was published by Gail Borden, Jr., Thomas H. Borden, and Joseph Baker; by the spring of 1837, ownership passed to Francis Moore, Jr., and Jacob W. Cruger. Originally printed approximately once each week and measuring 19.5 inches tall by 12.5 inches wide, each volume was four pages in length (two pages front and back) and each page contained three columns of text.

Primarily, the newspaper covered activities of the government of the Republic of Texas by printing acts and laws, proclamations, election information, government reports, and minutes from legislative sessions. For example, the March 12, 1836 edition reprinted William Barret Travis’s famous letter written nine days previously at the Alamo in which he described the dire situation at the old mission, requested reinforcements and other supplies, and ended with the defiant declaration “Victory or Death!!”. Likewise, the Telegraph printed the Texas Declaration of Independence on March 12 and the Constitution on August 2. In addition to informing readers of governmental matters, the newspaper also included stories reprinted from American newspapers; descriptions of towns written to attract new residents; and letters, editorials, or other pieces submitted by readers. Finally, the Telegraph also contained notices or advertisements about a variety of subjects such as recent births, marriages, and deaths; goods and services available; land available for purchase or rent; lost items; and arrivals of steamboats.

Detail of page four of the Telegraph and Texas Register from January 11, 1837.

According to Sibley, this relative lack of local news was characteristic of Texas newspapers at this time. Editors considered much local news to be “unprintable” for several reasons. First, “most of the papers appeared weekly in towns of a few hundred population.” In towns of that size, newspaper editors had little need to print “sensational local news and important news from afar” because this information had already “circulated by word of mouth before the newspaper appeared.” Moreover, “prudence dictated that [an editor] handle local items with care. By merely noticing certain events, he could antagonize advertisers and subscribers or possibly involve himself in personal vendettas not his own” (7). As a result of these circumstances, argues Sibley, the average newspaper editor “seldom went in search of [news], and instead waited in his office for acceptable news to come to him.” Editors received news for their publications from several sources, including letters that were “sometimes addressed to him and sometimes [written] to local citizens who shared their news with him. Travelers from distant points stopped at the press office to inform him of happenings at their point of departure or along their route.” Most importantly, however, “fellow editors in other towns sent him exchange papers, from which he clipped enough items to fill his pages” (7-8).

For further reading about the history of the Telegraph and Texas Register and other early Texas newspapers, please see:

Imagining Texas: Pre-Revolutionary Texas Newspapers, 1829-1836 by Carol Lea Clark

Lone Stars and State Gazettes: Texas Newspapers before the Civil War by Marilyn McAdams Sibley

Click here for a full citation of the documents and images included in this entry.