Juana Nararro Alsbury
Survivor of the Battle of the Alamo
Juana Navarro Alsbury,(1812-1888), was among the survivors
of the Battle of the Alamo, one of three daughters of Jose Angel Navarro
and Concepcion Cervantes, was born in San Antonio de Bexar in 1822 and
baptized on December 28 of that year. Her father was a long-time government
official of San Antonio de Bexar and a Mexican loyalist during the Texas
Revolution. Her uncle Jose Antonio Navarro, a loyal Tejano, signed the Texas
Declaration of Independence.
After her mother's death Juana was reared by her godmother
and aunt, Josefa Navarro Veramendi, and her husband Juan Martin de Veramendi
in the Veramendi Palace near Main Plaza in San Antonio. As a young woman
she met prominent Texans who came there. Her cousin and adopted sister Ursula
Veramendi was married to James Bowie, who is thought to have brought Juana,
her baby son Alejo Perez, and her younger sister Gertrudis to the Alamo
when Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna captured San Antonio on February 23,1836.
Dr. Horace Alexander Alsbury, Juana's husband, left the Alamo that same
day, probably with messenger Dr. John Sutherland. He may have been looking
for a safe home for his family. Juana helped nurse Bowie during his illness
in the Alamo. Months later Susanna Dickinson accused Juana of being the
legendary Mexican woman who carried Travis's parley message to Santa Anna
on March 4 from the Alamo, as well as saying Juana left the Alamo with
her father before the siege on March 6. Other sources refute these stories.
According to Juana's personal account, she remained at the Alamo throughout
the siege. On the final day she was protected by two men who were killed
by Mexican soldiers who broke into a trunk and took valuables of Juana and
her family. After the battle of the Alamo, Juana, her son, and her sister
stayed at her father's home.
Juana was first married in 1832 to Alejo Perez Ramigio,
with whom she had a son, Alejo. Some sources say that she also had a daughter
who died in infancy. Perez died in 1834, possibly in the cholera epidemic.
Juana married Horace Alexander Alsbury, by some accounts, in early January
1836. During their eleven-year marriage Alsbury was often away from San
Antonio involved in revolutionary activities in Mexico, along the Rio Grande,
and in South Texas. He did not survive his Mexican War military service
and died, presumably in Mexico sometime in 1847. Alejo Perez, Juana's son,
was a long-time local San Antonio city official whose descendants still
live in San Antonio.
When Alsbury was marched to Mexico with other San Antonio
captives of Adrian Woll’s invasion in September 1842, Juana followed the
Texan prisoners as far as Candela, Coahuila, where she waited for Alsbury's
return. He came there for her after his release from Perote prison in 1844,
and the couple again made their home in San Antonio. After Alsbury's death
Juana married Juan Perez, her first husband's cousin.
Although she probably wrote few letters, her signature
appears on numerous Bexar County land documents and in the state archives
on legal petitions to the Texas legislature. She petitioned the legislature
in 1857 and received a pension for the belongings she lost at the Alamo
and for her services there. She probably died on July 23, 1888, at her son's
Rancho de la Laguna on Salado Creek in east Bexar County. She is said to
have been buried there, although other information gives her burial place
as a Catholic cemetery in San Antonio.
Juana Navarro Alsbury was the wife of Horace Arlington Alsbury.
NB: In the narrative above it states
"Although she probably wrote few letters, her signature
appears on numerous Bexar County Land documents and in the state arfhives
on legal petitions to the Texas legislature." Tudie Alsbury writes that
"This is incorrect, I have documents to prove she signed
with an "X", and this is documented in Gail Shiffrins Book, Echoes from the
women of the Alamo".
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Horace Arlington Alsbury
Fought for Texas Independence
Horace Arlington Alsbury, (1805-1847), possibly a
native of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, came to Texas as one of Stephen F. Austin's
'Old Three Hundred'. With two of his brothers, James Harvey and Charles
Grundison Alsbury, he received title to a league and a half of land now
in Brazoria County on August 3,1824. Although he called himself a doctor,
it is not known where he studied medicine. He rode horseback across the
Rio Grande between Mexico and Texas numerous times. He wrote voluminously
to important persons in the Texas government [e.g. Amongst
the list of surviving Republic-Era Documents is
1837-09-26 Hood & Alsbury to Pres Sen (ref:INV 13396 100-1353.16)
] and volunteered for numerous military activities. In January
1834 Stephen F. Austin wrote from Monterey that he was sending by Mr. Allsbury,
probably Horace Alsbury, two portrait miniatures of himself to his Texas
kin. In late August 1835, after perhaps being at the legislature of Coahuila
and Texas in Monclova, Alsbury published a handbill in Columbia, "To The
People Of Texas," warning of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna's plans to drive
Anglo-Americans from Texas. In the siege of Bexar (November-December 1835)
he was a member of Capt. John York's Company. In early 1836 Alsbury married
Mrs. Juana Navarro Perez, daughter of Jose Angel Navarro, a Santa Anna loyalist
of Bexar. She remained in the Alamo during the siege and final assault by
Mexican forces. Alsbury rode from the Alamo as one of the messengers on
February 23, during the first hours after Santa Anna captured Bexar. On
March 1 he possibly accompanied the thirty-two Gonzales volunteers on their
way to the Alamo, and on March 3 he was in Gonzales with other Texas volunteers
after failing to contact James W. Fannin's division expected to reinforce
the Alamo.
Alsbury was a member of Henry W. Karnes's company
at San Jacinto and was one of the 154 Masons to take part in the fighting.
After the battle he joined in the surveillance of Mexican troops retreating
from San Jacinto toward La Bahia and Mexico. He returned to Bexar in May
1836 and took his wife and her young son away from the devastated town to
Calavero Ranch, on the Goliad road.
He received a military donation and bounties for his
service at San Jacinto. The Congress of the Republic of Texas allowed him
payment for service as major of the infantry and as interpreter for the
post of Bexar, 1835 and 1836. He secured a land grant south of San Antonio
near the site of present Von Ormy. In 1837 he successfully bid for office
of tax assessor for Bexar County, which he may have held for some time before
John W. Smith assumed the position. In early 1838 Alsbury and Joseph Baker,
as Indian agents of the republic, led a group of men from Bexar and met
with the Comanches on a peace mission on the Pedernales. They barely escaped
with their lives.
In late 1838 Alsbury wrote from San Antonio regarding
the favorable business in South Texas with self-proclaimed Federalist traders
from Mexico. In late 1839 and early 1840 Alsbury served as commander of
Federalist leader Antonio Canales's bodyguard along the Rio Grande during
the running battles of Mexican general Mariano Arista's forces against Canales
and Samuel W. Jordan’s movement to establish the Republic of the Rio Grande.
During desperate fighting, Alsbury and his command, fleeing for their lives,
escaped into Texas.
In 1839 Alsbury joined other San Antonio citizens
to ask for government protection of their lives and those of their families
against Indian and Mexican incursions. In early September 1842 he was among
the Texans captured by Mexican general Adrian Woll and marched to Mexico's
Perote Prison, where he remained until his release on March 24,1844.
[The DRT collection
includes as Accession Number 5201 the Nichols papers with several documents
from the period 1838-1861 relating to land, probate records, pension records
etc of James W. Nichols, for service in the Woll Campaign. William W. Alsbury
is amongst the names mentioned in the papers.] According to Juana
Alsbury her husband accompanied the American army across the Rio Grande
in 1846 during the Mexican War and was killed somewhere between Camargo
and Saltillo in June 1847.
Horace Alsbury was one of seven sons of Thomas Alsbury
of West Virginia. Of his seven sons, four, including Horace, were involved
in the fight for Texas' independence. Another of his sons, Hanson Alsbury,
would also have been in Texas during the war for independence had it not
been for his wife's illness which forced the family to return to her home
in Mississippi in 1826. They returned to Texas in 1840. Hanson's wife was
Harriett Raymond Plummer, daughter of Edward Plummer and Esther Raymond
Plummer of Richmond, Berkshire Co., MA. She was also the sister of Joseph
Raymond Plummer.
Hanson and Harriett had three children, all born in
MS after their return from Texas. Their son, Edward Plummer Alsbury, became
an engineer and bridge builder and also an author. His novel "Guy Raymond
- A Story of Texas" relates the story of a family which became involved
in the battle for Texas' independence. No doubt this piece of "fiction"
contains more than just a little "fact" obtained from the experiences of
his four uncles .
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Young Perry Alsbury
Hero of San Jacinto
San Antonio Express newspaper,
July 15, 1934, Sunday.
SON OF SAN JACINTO HERO YET LIVES HERE.
By Fred Green.
In this day and time when historical research is being
given impetus by the proposed Texas Centennial Exposition in 1936 there
is disclosed the interesting fact that the body of one of San Jacinto's
heroes lies on the east bank of the Salado Creek near the Dittmar road.
This is the grave of Young Perry Alsbury, who did much to give Texas freedom.
Alsbury was born in Hopkinsville, Ky., in 1814, moved to Texas in the
spring of 1820 with his parents, he being the youngest of the ten children.
They settled in Brazoria on the Brazos River.
When he was a young man of 22, Alsbury joined Captain
Carnes Cavalry, better known as "Deaf Smith's spy company." There was
no question but what Deaf Smith knew more about the lay of the land in
and around the San Jacinto battle grounds, than any man in Houston's army.
So when he went to Houston and told him that unless the bridge over Vince's
Bayou was burned, the enemy could keep on getting reinforcements and in
case of defeat would cross the bridge and escape, only to await for more
reinforcements and come back.
Houston agreed with this, but how was this to be done?
"You will have to pass within 100 yards of the Mexican cavalry and they
will cut you to pieces," said General Houston. Deaf Smith told him that
if he would permit him to take six men, he would burn the bridge or perish
in the attempt.
When Deaf Smith returned to his little company of
about 35 men, he told them General Houston consented to the attempt to
burn the bridge over Vince's Bayou, and that he could take six men. No
sooner said that a voice cried out, "I'll go with you, Mr. Smith." The
company turned about to see hardly more than a youth speaking up. Not
a big broad shouldered or rough individual as one might imagine, just a
young fellow or average size, but his little black eyes told the story.
He was not afraid of the whole of Santa Anna's army. And that was Y.
P. Alsbury, first to head the list of volunteers for the dangerous mission.
It is history that Vince's bridge was burned, and
Deaf Smith did not loose a man in this adventure. Soon thereafter the
now famous Battle of San Jacinto gave Texas its liberty from the Mexican
yoke. The burning of the bridge had been a strategic move.
Shortly after the Battle of San Jacinto, Y. P. Alsbury
came to San Antonio and in 1845 he went into Mexico with General Scott.
He was wounded in the Battle of Palo Alto. After that war he came back
to San Antonio, and was married here in 1847, and early in the spring of
1848 he moved to the east bank of the Salado Creek just north of the Dittmar
road, and made this his home. His mother then moved from Brazoria and
made her home with him. He raised four children, their names were Lea
Jane, Thomas Jefferson, Y. P. 3rd, and Mary Ann. All these children are
dead except T. J. Alsbury, who is still living. Y. P. 3rd was the father
of Bill and Tex., of this city. Y. P. Alsbury died November 19, 1877,
and was buried only a few yards from the home he loved. A huge pecan tree
marks the head of his grave. To his right lies the body of his wife, and
to his left is that of his mother.
Thomas J. Alsbury, now 83 years old, and residing
at 143 Anderson Street, is one of the rarely few first generation children
of the Texas heroes of near a century ago. He was born in the old home
on the Salado Dec. 8, 1851. He recalls vividly the days of his youth where
there were thrills a plenty and which fell to the lot of the hardy pioneers.
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