Remembering the Alamo turns into life passion

INSPIRED by her own family ties to the Alamo, Lee Spencer-White has researched and uncovered numerous forgotten fighters from the historic battle. She also has organized a group for the descendants.

SAN ANTONIO — She carries a shoulder bag with the name of the Alamo printed across it, and on the front of her bright red dress she wears a pin in the shape of that immediately identifiable shrine of Texas independence.

Sitting at a table in the historic Menger Bar (Teddy Roosevelt recruited Rough Riders here, and the bar top bears gouges left by the ax of anti-saloon crusader Carrie Nation), Lee Spencer-White sips a glass of water and talks about what she calls "my passion."

The story of the Alamo, White says, isn't just Davy Crockett and William Barret Travis and Jim Bowie. It's also George Andrews, Samuel Edwards, Pelitiah Gordon and other Alamo defenders who have been largely forgotten — in some cases, never even acknowledged — since they died in the historic battle 166 years ago.

White, an independent oil driller and sculptor from Freer, Texas, has devoted much of the last seven years to documenting the lives of the men who died at the Alamo, a former Spanish mission that was taken over by Texans seeking independence from Mexico. And on this warm afternoon at the Menger, just a few hundred feet from the site of the 1836 battle, she's explaining why.

Looking beyond the mythology

Outside, commercial development has crept up almost to the lot line of the Alamo, which is far more modest in size than you expect — only one large room and a couple of small side rooms. Just across Alamo Street from the historic building is Ripley's Haunted Adventure — complete with ghouls on stilts springing out of the entrance to surprise unsuspecting pedestrians. And near the site at any given time of day, snowcone vendors compete with pigeons for visitors' attention.

Says White of the fighters who died there: "My job is to put a face on these men — their occupations, the clothes they wore, who their families were. I saw John Wayne's 'Alamo,' but I still said, 'Who were these people? Did they have senses of humor? Jobs? What kind of people were they?' I had a lot of questions."

To answer them, she has dug through the old records of 13 counties in four states and Mexico, uncovering details of the fallen defenders' lives and painting a more complete picture of the men. But maybe even more interesting, she has documented at least eight men — perhaps as many as 24 — who died at the Alamo but whose names have never been recorded on the "official" list, which numbers 189.

And in Texas, where kids hear the story of the Alamo even before they've had their first bite of chicken-fried steak, uncovering the names of previously unknown defenders is news.

"The mythology of the Alamo is really all-pervasive and all-powerful," explains Stephen Harrigan, author of the 2000 best seller "The Gates of the Alamo" (Knopf), from his home in Austin, Texas.

"In reality, this was just a minor battle in a minor war. It was a kind of separatist war, and the battle of the Alamo was a passing chapter in which the Mexicans decisively won. But somehow, someway, through serious spin control, the battle of the Alamo was turned into a shining emblem of victory through defeat."

That legend took root on Feb. 23, 1836, when a group of Texans who had occupied the Alamo as a makeshift fort came under siege from Mexican Gen. Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. The defenders — perhaps as many as 250 of them — managed to fend off between 2,000 and 5,000 attacking troops (accounts vary) until March 6, when the final assault began. The Mexicans eventually overran the fort, captured the few survivors and executed them. The defenders' bodies were burned at a spot now occupied by a department store, White points out after leaving the Menger, a fact that the Alamo's 2.5 million annual visitors don't get on the standard Alamo tour.

Just six weeks later, Texas won its independence from Mexico at the Battle of San Jacinto. But, Harrigan says, it's "the epic lost causes" that capture people's imaginations.

"The idea of fighting and dying to the last man is so complete ... it sort of moves the event into the realm of mythology. And I think that's what happened to the Alamo."

Like most Texans, White was enthralled with the legend at an early age.

"I visited when I was 8," she says. "My mother pointed out a name (on a monument in front of the Alamo). It was Gordon C. Jennings. I wondered if I was related (Jennings is a family name) and what it would be like to be related to one of the defenders."

She found out 24 years later, when an aunt who had been doing family research called and told her that she was, indeed, the great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Jennings, who manned the cannons during the battle.

"It was a dream come true," she says. "I thought I'd join an organization for descendants. But there wasn't one. The Daughters of the Republic of Texas (who maintain the Alamo) is for descendants of colonists who predate statehood.

"So I decided to start an organization for direct descendants."

That was in 1995. Since then, the Alamo Defenders Descendants has grown to nearly 200 members, whose goal is to promote and preserve the memory of the defenders and to preserve and mark Alamo-related sites. The group is also the vehicle for White's research.

Following the money trail

Her work is done in courthouses, where she digs into a variety of old documents. Land records, probate records, bills of sale — all can provide tidbits of information. "I started with the money trail. That always seems to be a good place to start, then or now," White says. "And it's true, the money trail is very clear."

Some days she'll look over 700 old documents, usually stored away in some dusty corner or high atop the shelves of a courthouse.

And just getting into the records can be a hassle.

"You call ahead, and the girls tell you, 'Oh, the courthouse burned and all the records are gone.' They don't think anything existed before 1985. You tell them you want something from 1837, and it's, 'Duh.' "

Sometimes her searching pays off in a big way, such as the time she found a forgotten document signed by Travis, the Alamo commander. Mostly, though, she's unearthing smaller pieces of information that can be just as fascinating.

"The probates blew up everything I had thought," White says. "You think of the defenders, you think of buckskins. We're finding silk scarves, red shirts, top hats, imported French wine, mirrors.

She has also found other documents — letters and sworn affidavits, for example — that are helping her complete the picture of the defenders.

"Their occupations surprised me," she said. "I thought they were all farmers — my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was a farmer — but the majority were lawyers and doctors. The rest had varied backgrounds. There were house plasterers, shoemakers, clerks."

Some defenders lost forever

Travis was no stranger to Alamo scholars. Others, though, are.

Andrews, Edwards and Gordon, for example, are among the eight men White says died at the Alamo, but who have never been recognized before. She has come across their names on muster rolls or in probate documents, listed as men who died in the battle.

There are a couple of reasons why the men were forgotten. Early on, having died at the Alamo didn't carry the cachet it does today, so some of the defenders simply faded into history. Also, some of them were young men who had come to join Texas' fight against Mexico by themselves; after they died, their families back home never learned of their sons' fate. They had left home and simply never returned. Many left no records. But some, such as Gordon, did — his name was mentioned in a probate document in Kentucky by a person applying to be administrator of his estate — and it was hidden away until White dug it out.

In addition to Gordon, Andrews, Edwards and five more she's sure of, White has 16 others whom she believes may have died at the battle; she's searching for corroborating evidence. And she still hears from people who have family stories about relatives who died at the Alamo but who aren't among the official 189.

White doesn't expect to ever have a definitive list of defenders. However, she'll continue digging up information on the fallen, spending two or three months a year copying documents, cross-referencing them and filing them in boxes — she has 20 so far — in a guest bedroom in her home.

"We're collecting all these little nuggets, hoping when we collect enough boxes, we'll see the Alamo in a different light," White says. "There's more unknown about the Alamo than is known.

"The Alamo, to tell the truth, is a small story as far as military battles. The human story is the big story for me. ... I think the defenders definitely deserved the right to be remembered."