Very interesting reading, Mike. Thanks.
Ya, and that last remarkable in that there are no less than six separate eye-witness accounts of Sna. Alavez saving lives in five separate times and locations. The total at Goliad alone may be as high as eighty men or more. She must have been an absolute pistol in her day.
Another remarkable person on the scene, one John Sowers Brooks of Staunton, Va.
http://www.tamu.edu/faculty/ccbn/dewitt/goliadframe.htmTwenty-two years old at the time, came to Texas after a stint in the United States Marine Corps. Turns out the mindset ain't changed much over the last 180 years
From a letter to his sister, sent from Goliad, March 4th, 1836.
I am a soldier of fortune; and all the premonitions of my child hood early told me that I should be one. My profession, perhaps for life, be it short or long, will be that of arms. It is the only pursuit in which I could feel a throb of interest; and the cause in which I now exercise it, renders it still dearer, and more ennobling to me. It is the course of Liberty, of the oppressed against the Tyrant, of the free man against the bigoted slave, and, what recommends it more strongly to me, of the weak against the strong. If I fall, let me fall---It is one of the chances of the game I play-a casualty to which every soldier is liable.Sadly, Mr. Sowers, grievously wounded in battle, would be shot along with the rest on Palm Sunday, March 27th, 1836. A good man lost among many.
Birdwatcher
