Accompanied by a 8.25 x 6.75 one page receipt, written in an unknown hand, which reads, in full: “We the undersigned hereby certify that the Six Hundred and Eighty two feet of Walnut Scantling mentioned in the annexed Document would be worth at least twelve and a half cents per foot amounting in the whole to $85. 25/100.” Signed at the conclusion by John N. Seguin and Antonio Menchaca, who both served on the Committee of Claims and Accounts.
In one of the most important Alamo documents not in the possession of a university library or museum, here Travis describes how the Texan Alamo defenders planned for Santa Anna’s anticipated attack and constructed the mission’s legendary defenses. The receipt, signed two days before the siege began, also sheds light on the relationship between San Antonio’s Anglo freedom fighters and Tejano merchants who revealed their sympathies to Travis and his men by provisioning them with the means necessary to defend what would become the most important symbol of Texan independence. When Travis took over as the commander of the Alamo, the garrison was essentially empty. Learning that Santa Anna was staging in Saltillo for an imminent invasion of Texas, native San Antonio merchant Eugenio Navarro sent a messenger to warn Travis. Any preparations after that took on an added urgency. While legendarily out-manned, Travis would have a considerable artillery advantage in the anticipated battle, however the mission had been gutted of any materials that could have helped him build the platforms necessary to mount his cannons. Herein is the essential significance of the document. Without Navarro’s furnishing the necessary building materials, the entire narrative of the Alamo, both of fact and of legend, might have turned out quite differently. Without wood, there would be no platforms; without platforms, Travis would not have been able to make the most of his tactical advantage. Given Santa Anna’s superiority in numbers, the Alamo might have fallen with much less resistance, depriving the inheritors of Travis’ sacrifice of the moral victory that energized the larger Revolutionary movement. In this document, we see Travis’s last-minute effort to ensure compensation for supplies that were vital to the Alamo’s defense; in so doing, he is, of course, acknowledging the tremendous risk that Navarro was taking in light of Santa Anna’s notoriety for brutally suppressing those who resisted his autocratic intentions. And while Travis acted in haste to request that Navarro be paid, the merchant wouldn’t be compensated until two years later when this note was approved by San Antonio Mayor pro tem José Antonio Menchaca and Juan Seguin who served on the Committee of Claims and Accounts. This receipt for lumber is a poignant reminder of Travis’s ultimate sacrifice in support of the Texas revolution. It was from a cannon platform that he first declared the Alamo’s defiance of Santa Anna by discharging a cannon shot in response to initial demands of the garrison’s surrender, and it was from a similar platform that he made his heroic last stand, shot through the forehead as his body tumbled down the planked battery, coined Fortin de Teran. Unquestionably one of the finest and most important Alamo documents to be offered for public sale in perhaps a generation. The Robert Davis Collection. Pre-certified John Reznikoff/PSA/DNA and RR Auction COA.
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