Indians, the military adventurers known as filibusters, and revolutionaries. When Mexico became independent of Spain in 1821, they shifted their allegiance to the new nation. And when they skirmished with Anglo-American revolutionaries near the town of Gonzales on October 2, 1835, the Texas Revolution began.
Texian forces counterattacked toward the end of that month and laid siege to San Antonio. Then, on December 5, they attacked the town directly and, after fighting the Mexican troops toe-to-toe in brutal street fighting for five days, forced the military authorities to surrender. Thus it was that the Texians took control of the city. When General Antonio López de Santa Anna arrived at the head of a Mexican army on February 23, 1836, the Texians withdrew to the east bank of the San Antonio River and occupied the Alamo. Santa Anna raised the red flag of no quarter over San Fernando church, and a siege of the mission began.
On March 6, Santa Anna launched his final attack on the Alamo and, after a fierce 90-minute battle, captured it and slew all 189 of its defenders, at a cost of about 600 killed and wounded among his own men. Commanders William Barret Travis, James Bowie, and David Crockett were among those who fell in battle. Santa Anna ordered all the bodies burned on at least two common pyres and left to smolder for days (although that of one defender, Tejano Gregorio Esparza, whose brother was one of the Mexican officers, received a proper burial).
Six weeks later, on April 21, Texian forces led by Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna and the Mexican army in the Battle of San Jacinto, about 200 miles to the east. The following month, the Mexican garrison in San Antonio was ordered to destroy the Alamo and then withdraw. They did manage to tear down some of the outer walls, and their commander, Juan José Andrade, sent a detachment of men to blow up the church where the defenders had made their final stand. These men were reportedly prevented from doing so, however, by a party of what they identified as diablos. They were described by paranormal researcher Docia Schultz Williams in her book Spirits of San Antonio and South Texas as “six ghostly forms standing in a semicircle holding swords, not of steel but of fire, blocking their entry to the building.”
“They were terrified and fearful of the consequences if they should destroy the building, they reported back to their commander,” Williams continues. “It is said General Andrade went himself to the place and was also confronted by the same figures. And so it was that the building was left intact as the Mexican army marched out of San Antonio.”
Apparitions were reported again at the site in 1871—which at that point was being used as a police station—when the city tore down part of the surviving mission complex, a pair of rooms that had been located to either side of the main gate in the south wall. Guests at the Menger Hotel across the street were among those who claimed to see spectral soldiers marching along the perimeter of the old mission compound as if trying to defend it from further desecration.
Many people, too, have striven to protect the legacy of the Alamo. In the 1930s, as the centennial of the Battle of the Alamo approached, the entire complex was renovated, expanded, and converted into a parklike memorial, and a Centennial Museum was built behind the church (and currently serves as the gift shop for the site). Then, in 1968, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas opened a new museum in the convento, or “long barrack,” finally putting the oldest building on the mission grounds back into use.
MISSION SAN JOSÉ
MISSION SAN JOSÉ Y SAN MIGUEL DE AGUAYO, more commonly known simply as Mission San José, was founded on February 23, 1720, because Mission San Antonio de Valero (the Alamo) had, soon after its establishment, become overcrowded with refugees from missions shut down in East Texas. Franciscan priest Antonio Margil received permission from the Marquis de San Miguel de Aguayo, the governor of Coahuila y Texas, to build a new mission 5 miles south of the presidio of San Antonio de Bexar. Like a number of other missions in the area, it ministered to the local Coahuiltecan Indians.
Initially made of brush, straw, and mud, Mission San José’s first buildings were soon replaced by large stone structures that included offices, a dining room, a pantry, and guest rooms. The main portion of the compound was enclosed in a thick outer wall that had built into it rooms for 350 native residents. Its impressive limestone church—which stands to this day and was distinguished by a dome, two towers, and an elaborately carved facade—was completed in 1768. The remarkable complex reached its full extent by 1782. It was the largest and most elaborate of the San Antonio religious communities, dubbed “Queen of the Missions.”
“It is, in truth, the first mission in America,” friar Juan Agustín Morfí wrote in his journal. “In point of beauty, plan, and strength … there is not a presidio along the entire frontier line that can compare with it.” Two soldiers from the nearby presidio of San Antonio de Bexar helped provide security for the complex and trained its residents in the use of firearms and artillery.
Like the other local missions, Mission San José turned over its lands to its resident Indians in 1794, and religious activities at the site were officially ended in 1824. In the years that followed, the mission fell into disrepair and its buildings were variously abandoned or occupied by soldiers, vagabonds, and bandits. It was restored in the 1920s and 1930s, much of it by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration; declared a State Historical Site in 1941; and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
On the night of July 31–August 1, 2000, thieves stole three Spanish Colonial–era statues that sat at the altar of the church at Mission San José. These painted, carved wooden statues, each of which stood 3 and 4 feet in height, are considered priceless because of their age and profound historical and religious significance, but their fate remains unknown.
MISSION ESPADA
MISSION ESPADA WAS ESTABLISHED on a spot near the San Antonio River in 1731, having been moved from its original location in what is now Augusta, Texas—about 150 miles north of present-day Houston—where it had enjoyed a tumultuous and bloody history since 1690. Its Franciscan founders built a friary in 1745 and completed the church in 1756.
Missionaries at the site converted the resident Coahuiltecan Indians to Christianity and instructed them in the principles of architecture and masonry, blacksmithing, brick and tile making, farming and ranching, and spinning and weaving.
By the time secularization of the San Antonio missions began in 1794, Mission Espada was impoverished, had declined badly, and had just 15 families still associated with it, each of which was granted a parcel of land. It functioned communally for a time, with the residents sharing supplies and equipment. Misfortune befell the community in 1826, first when a band of Comanches raided the cornfields and slaughtered all the livestock, and later when a kitchen fire destroyed most of its buildings.
During the period 1858–1907, a Claretian priest named Francis Bouchu resided at the mission and restored many of the collapsing buildings inside the compound, but progress slowed when he departed and the church was temporarily closed for repairs. It was reopened in 1915 by priests from the Diocese of San Antonio, and a school was established inside the compound by nuns from the Order of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. They ran the school for more than five decades until 1967, when it was shut down and the Franciscans once again took charge of Mission Espada.
Today, visitors to the mission can see the best-preserved example of a historic Spanish Colonial acequia, which includes the still-working Espada aqueduct and dam. Its main ditch continues to carry water to the mission and its former farmlands and is still used by residents of the local area.
MISSION
