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Post by marvelous35 on Mar 25, 2008 1:13:59 GMT -5
Someone in San Antonio told me about a doctor who went into the Alamo several months after the battle and was in the room he claimed Bowie was killed in, and that there was still blood stains on the wall. Have any of you heard anything about that. I have never read about it anywhere, or heard about it anywhere, but this one man that was at the Alamo standing outside telling stories to people, and he didnt work there, just some Alamo fan.
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Post by Greg C. on Mar 25, 2008 9:06:34 GMT -5
To tell you the truth, I don't think I've ever heard that story, atleast not from any historian I've talked to. If it was true, it wouldn't surprise me because of all the stories of how Bowie was killed. The most gruesome is that of ten Mexican solider digging their bayonets into Bowie's body and then hoisting him off his bed like a bale of hay.
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Post by neferetus on Mar 25, 2008 10:44:19 GMT -5
I too have heard of the account, but cannot cite the source at the moment. An explanation for the blood found on the walls though was brought up later. The Low Barrack was, for a time after the battle, used as a butcher shop and the carcasses of slaughtered beeves were hung inside to drain. Remember that the cocina, or kitchen adjoined the Low Barrack, so this was a logical place to hang meat that was about to be cooked. In later years, the blood of these beeves on the walls was pointed out as that of Bowie and other Alamo heroes. Indeed, even after the Low Barrack was torn down in the late 1870's, the spot was still used as a butcher's shop (Market House) where whole beeves were strung up in the days before ice was used for cold storage. Unsold meat was given to the poor after the place closed at 7:00 AM to avoid contamination.
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Rick
Junior Member
Posts: 170
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Post by Rick on Mar 25, 2008 21:10:27 GMT -5
Someone in San Antonio told me about a doctor who went into the Alamo several months after the battle and was in the room he claimed Bowie was killed in, and that there was still blood stains on the wall. Have any of you heard anything about that. I have never read about it anywhere, or heard about it anywhere, but this one man that was at the Alamo standing outside telling stories to people, and he didnt work there, just some Alamo fan. I've read different places that it was Doc Sutherland who did that. At least he tends to get credit for it.
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Post by neferetus on Mar 25, 2008 23:37:26 GMT -5
Thanks for citing Sutherland, Rick. Here is what the good Doc has to say regarding the end of Jim Bowie on page 40 of his 1860 pamphlet on the fall of the Alamo:
" So soon as the bodies of Travis and Bowie were shown by this man * they were brutally mutilated by the sword and bayonet. Colonel Bowie, being yet sick was confined to his room, indicated on the diagram ** which he had occupied from the beginning of the siege. It was there while suffering the tortures of his disease, unable to lift his head from his pillow, that he was butchered. He was shot several times through the head, his brains spattering upon the wall near his bedside."
(Doctor Sutherland then adds as a footnote:)
"Being informed of this circumstance by Mrs. Dickinson and Travis' boy, I had some curiousity to see the place and when in Bexar nearly two years after the fall, I visited the room which Colonel Bowie had occupied and in which he was killed, when upon examination, I found the stain of his brains yet upon the wall precisely as it had been represented to me by the persons mentioned. The stain remained upon the walls of the room until they were replastered. I frequently visited the place and pointed out the spot to others. The room has since been demolished, together with the walls Travis defended, and the barracks are all gone. The Vandal hand of progress has done its work. The old church alone where Dickinson fell, remains, and the wandering tourist is pointed to this room or that within it, and told that here or there is where the noble Travis, or Bowie, or Crockett fell, when in truth they fell not in the church at all, but as I have said on the ground outside, while the truck cart of traffic rumbles over the identical ground that drank in the life blood of those devoted men."
*Indicating Joe nh
** East end of Low Barrack nh
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