Alamo Traces (38 page)
Authors: Thomas Ricks Lindley
A bounty certificate for alleged military service offers additional evidence that Rose was most likely a liar and may have been involved in a land grant fraud scheme when he gave testimony to the land board. The certificate had been issued to Louis Rose by Adjutant General James S. Gillett in February 1854 for service in the Texian army from June 22, 1836, to September 22, 1836. Rose sold the certificate to John H. Primer, who registered it with the General Land Office on June 2, 1858. The certificate was suspended the same day. The Court of Claims, which had been set up in 1858 to detect fraudulent certificates for military service, rejected the certificate on September 28, 1860.
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The Court of Claims file for the bounty certificate reads: âExamd. Genl Ld Office Register â correct in Voucher 2602
Gillett
. No other evidence. Black List.” Gillett appears to have been James S. Gillett, the Texas adjutant general. Governor E. M. Pease fired Gillett on February 4, 1854, because of a fire that destroyed the Adjutant General building and the department's military records. It was and is believed that the fire was an act of arson to destroy the military service records so the documents could not be used to detect fraudulent land grant certificates for military service. In sum, the final words on the Rose certificate, “Black List,” suggest that either Rose's name was on a roster of noncredible persons or was placed on such a roll after the submission of the fraudulent certificate.
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That Louis Rose's testimony might have been untrue and fraudulent is buttressed by the conditions that existed at the time. Texas land historian Thomas Lloyd Miller wrote:
The words “land” and “fraud” were almost synonymous in Texas. . . . It confronted the first land commissioner, John P. Borden, who served from 1837 to 1840. . . .
The members of the county boards were dealing with their friends and neighbors, and they found it hard to reject their claims. One county land board commissioner told Borden about the demands made upon the board in these words: “Now Sir please imagine to yourself a Board crowded with near 200 applicants on the first day of the opening of the land office and on subsequent days from 50 to 100. . . .”
Commissioner Borden in his report of November 7, 1839, stated that only 25 fraudulent claims had been detected but added that this resulted not from search but by accident. He
further wrote: “So great have been the facilities for manufacturing them that the individual holding less than 10 for a league and a labor [a family headright] each is considered a small operator in this line.” There is little doubt that the local land commissioners were not always told the truth, for Borden wrote: “That frauds have been practiced in procuring the certificates from the Board of Land Commissioners must be evident to all.” At least one citizen agreed with this for he declared: “But oh-i-the perjury and fraud that have been practiced. May God forgive them as individuals and us as a nation.”
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Blake did acknowledge that fraudulent claims were submitted to the land board. He, however, argued that such claims were not approved. As evidence for his view, he quoted Dr. James H. Starr, the board's president: “The office was of much responsibility, and the duties of extremely difficult performance; especially in Nacogdoches County, which embraced the most populous region of Eastern Texas, including a large number of native Mexicans. Many citizens, especially Mexicans, had already received their headright grants from the former government; but it soon became known to the board that numerous persons of this class were fraudulently presenting claims for certificates. âAmericans' (as citizens of the United States were called) were mainly the criminal instigators of these attempts, bribing the applicants to give false testimony, and agreeing to purchase their certificates when issued. By severe scouting the Nacogdoches Board met with gratifying success in detecting and defeating the attempted frauds; though on more than one occasion threatened with violence by men of mob power (some of them men of prominence) whose applications by the score or more had been rejected.”
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Blake failed to understand that Starr's statement only addressed one kind of land grant fraud; individuals who had already received a Mexican headright during the colonial period, mostly Mexicans, who were being exploited by well-to-do Anglos. The second requirement for a Texian first class grant was that the individual had to have arrived in Texas previous to March 2, 1836. The only proof a person needed to meet that requirement was the testimony of two or more witnesses. While the local board could not always check to see if an applicant already owned a Mexican headright, the General Land Office could check for a previous
headright before the Texian headright was patented at the state level. Thus, anyone obtaining a second headright in a fraudulent manner could be detected by the authorities.
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Also, the Nacogdoches land office had on file many character certificates that had been completed for the Mexican government. Such documents included the person's arrival date. Thus, verification of arrival dates for some individuals was within the scope of the land board. A person's death at the Alamo was another thing. Evidence, other than testimony from surviving Alamo couriers and surviving noncombatants, to verify such a death appears to have been limited to a list that had appeared in the March 24, 1836 issue of the
Telegraph and Texas Register
. If a witness was willing to lie about a man's death at the Alamo or lie about having been at the Alamo, a challenge was hard to present. That is, except when the alleged dead man was still among the living. The evidence was only as good as the witness's word. Louis Rose's identification of Henry Teal as an Alamo defender and the rejected 1854 bounty certificate suggest that Rose's word might not have been very good. Clearly, Blake's assumption that the Rose testimony was truthful because it was accepted by the land board is not valid.
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The certitude of Louis Rose's testimony is further compromised by other problems. For example, if Louis was “Moses Rose” and had been a member of the Alamo and left on the afternoon of March 3, it seems his testimony would have been the same for all six men, that each man was in the Alamo on March 3 when he left and that he assumed each man was killed in the fall of the Alamo. After all, his final experience with each man would have been the sameâall of them would have stood in formation listening to Travis's plea for them to remainâall the men, except Rose, would have crossed Travis's line in the dirt. Then Rose climbed a wall and deserted his comrades. Also, Louis Rose, if he was “Moses Rose,” could not have testified with confidence that any man he had left in the Alamo had died there on March 6. According to the Zuber tale, Rose was no longer in the Alamo after dark on March 3. Thus, any number of men could have departed the Alamo after Rose had left and he would not have known about it. The Louis Rose statements, however, are not consistent, when common sense says they should be if he was “Moses Rose.” Therefore, let us examine each statement that has been attributed to Louis Rose.
In the case of F. H. K. Day, Blake reported in his article that Rose said: “died with Travis at the Alamo.” A transcription of the testimony in Blake's papers identifies the witnesses as (1) William S. Blount, (2) Albert Emanuel, and (3) Louis Rose. The testimony reads: “[1] Emigrated in 1838 [probably a typing error]. (2) Single man dies with Travis in the Alamo March 1836. [3] Order of survey from G. W. Smyth.” The order of the witnesses and the data indicates that Emanuel made the Alamo death statement, not Rose, who appears to have furnished the Smyth data. It seems that Blake, because he believed Louis Rose was Moses Rose, assumed the order of the witnesses and their statements had to be an error. Thus, Blake attributed the statement that Day had died at the Alamo to Rose. Otherwise, certain facts about this evidence are important. The testimony does not identify Rose as a member of the Alamo force or put him in the Alamo during the thirteen-day siege. Even if Rose had been in the Alamo on March 3 and had testified that Day died with Travis in the Alamo, he could not have stated with any certainty that Day had died with Travis. If the escape tale is true, Rose could not have seen Day killed. Nor could Rose have seen Day's dead body. Thus Blake and others have taken a great leap of faith in assuming Louis Rose had to have been “Moses Rose” in order to have known that F. H. K. Day and the other men Louis Rose testified about died at the Alamo.
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Moreover, given the difference in what Blake reported in the article and what is found in his transcript, there is a question of what original document Blake used as his source. The only original document from the Nacogdoches land board hearings still in existence that pertains to Day reports: “106 [certificate number] M. Patton & Teal heirs of F. H. K. Day â Should be Moses L. Patton and heirs of Henry Teal ass [assignees] of F. H. K. Day (given name unknown).” It is possible that whatever Blake saw, the original document or documents may have been lost over the years as there is now no original document detailing the Day statements or the Louis Rose testimony about Henry Teal. The Day evidence, however, does not end at Nacogdoches.
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A first class headright certificate, number 117, for Day was also issued by the Gonzales County land board. This certificate and other Gonzales probate affidavits identify Day as Freeman H. K. Day, who immigrated to Texas in 1832. W. W. Smith reported: “. . . Day did not make his home in any one particular municipality. . . . Day joined the army and fell in the Alamo. . . .” Thomas L. Grubbs said Day came to San Antonio
as a member of Hayden Edwards's company and remained at Bexar after Edwards had returned home in December 1835. Gonzales resident Horace Eggleston swore that “he knew and was acquainted with F. H. K. Day and that . . . Day left Gonzales with the Gonzales Company of volunteer rangers and . . . by the order of Col. Williamson proceeded to San Antonio and that the said Eggleston believes and has good reason to believe that the said Day fell in the Alamo.” Both the Nacogdoches certificate and the Gonzales one were approved and patented by the General Land Office.
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If Louis Rose and the other Nacogdoches witnesses were lying about having known Day, they could have obtained their information from other sources. Day's Alamo death could have been an assumption based on the list of Alamo defenders that appeared in the March 24, 1836
Telegraph and Texas Register
. There was some kind of Alamo victims list available in Nacogdoches. In the case of Alamo defender William Charles M. Baker's first class application, J. M. White said: “Knew him in the fall of 1835 was a soldier in the army at the battle of San Antonio, was killed in the Alamo (says report.).” All the data contained in the Nacogdoches testimony, except for the statement that Day died with Travis, could have been obtained from Day's Mexican land grant application. The fact that Day remained in Bexar could have been obtained from Edwards, a Nacogdoches resident. In sum, Louis Rose would not have had to be in the Alamo to have known that Day had died with Travis. But then Rose never said such a thing. As previously stated, in the case of F. H. K. Day, it appears that Albert Emanuel claimed that Day had died at the Alamo. And there is no evidence that Emanuel was at the Alamo or escaped over the wall with Moses Rose.
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The second Alamo victim application in which Rose gave testimony was the Henry Teal submission. As previously shown, Teal was not an Alamo soldier and did not die at the fall of the Alamo. Rose might have been mistaken about Teal. Still, such a mistake is hard to understand as Teal was nowhere near the Alamo during the siege and storming of the fortress. Teal was in Nacogdoches until March 5, 1836, the day before the Alamo fell and did not join Houston's army until March 23. Therefore, it appears that Rose gave false testimony in that case.
The third case in which Blake claimed Rose testified was the application submitted by “John Forbes Admr. [administrator] of M. B. Clark, decd.”
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Blake's transcription reads:
M. B. CLARK â I. W. Burton knew applicant the summer of 1835. Left this place for San Antonio, thinks he is since dead. Absalom Gibson states [Clark] left here for the army, in the Alamo. Stephen Rose states he saw him a few days before the fall of the Alamo, a single man.
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Part of the original document that contained the Rose testimony appears to have been lost. One page of that original record survives, and it reports Burton's statement about Clark to read: “I. W. Burton states that he knew of [Clark] during the summer of 1835 that he left for San Antonio has never [been] heard of since is of [the] opinion that he died.” The differences between Blake's version and the original show that Blake's transcription is not an exact copy, which shows that Blake was not very attentive in transcribing documents.
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There are other problems with the Blake transcription of the Clark application. First, the “Rose” witness was Stephen Rose, not Louis Rose. Second, the Stephen Rose testimony does not locate Clark, Louis Rose, or Stephen Rose in the Alamo. Nor does Stephen identify himself or Louis Rose as a member of the Alamo garrison. This testimony is a good example of how the Moses Rose story completely biased Blake's analysis of the evidence. Blake, because he appears to have believed the Zuber story about Moses Rose, made two assumptions. He assumed, without any evidence to prove it, that Stephen Rose was Louis Rose, and that Louis Rose was Moses Rose. Therefore, the only way Stephen Rose could have seen Clark “a few days before the fall of the Alamo” was if Clark and Moses/Louis/Stephen Rose were in the Alamo on March 3, 1836. Nice theory, but where is the evidence to support it?
Blake, without proof, said that “Moses” was a nickname. Also, he offered no explanation as to why the land board would have known Louis Rose as Stephen Rose. A mistaken board identification of Louis Rose does not make sense. There were other Rose families in the Nacogdoches area of which Stephen could have been a member. In fact, he may have been Louis Rose's son. Blake never mentioned it, but Louis Rose had a family when he entered Texas. Also, each witness that appeared before the land board had to take an oath before giving testimony. The oath procedure probably required that the witness state his or her name. Therefore, in the absence of valid evidence, one cannot assume that Stephen Rose and Louis Rose were the same person.
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