The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 37, July 1933 - April, 1934 Page: 180
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
In the mission days of the Alamo, the south end of the main
building-then the tower-had guarded the entrance to the mis-
sion, and from this tower the flag had floated. In 1887 Juan
Sanchez Estrada made a rough sketch of the Alamo. In that
picture the Coahuila-Texas flag is conspicuous. It floats from
this same southwest corner of the main building.4R In Estrada's
sketch the church is scarcely noticeable; it is merely a square
block in the background. We must remember that since 1763
the church of the Alamo had been in a ruined condition, the
roof and twin towers having fallen in during that year. We
must remember, also, that the irregular fagade of the church,
with which we are so familiar today, is a form given to the old
building for the first time in 1848, when the old ruin was re-
paired by the authority of the United States government. At
the time of the siege in 1836, the church was roofless except for
flat covers over the small anterooms at the west entrance and on
the north side. The towers were gone, the roof was gone, and
the walls of the church were lower than were the flat roof of the
main building only 50 feet away. The south end of this main
building, as has been previously stated, served, on its first floor,
as the armory of the fort, while its second floor was the hos-
pital. It seems, then, far more reasonable to think that the flag
4'Appendix III of the thesis of which these chapters are a part shows
nine pictures of the Alamo. The second picture of that collection is the
Estrada drawing. It was sketched from the roof of the Verramendi house.
The original sketch is in the Wagner Gollection of Materials for South-
western and Memican History, and is now the property of Yale University.
The Star-Telegram (Fort Worth) of November 12, 1933, prints an article,
written by B. C. Utecht (Staff Correspondent), under the title, Flag that
Waved Over Alamo's 180 Defenders Is Discovered by a Texan in a Meiican
Museum. This article is about two columns in length, and carries a picture
of the so-called discovery. It also states that the discovery of this flag,
and the materials relative to it, collected by the former Attorney Gen-
eral W. A. Keeling, has opened a new chapter in Texas history.
The entire article makes it clear to any student of Texas history-espe-
cially of the history of the Alamo episode-that the newly discovered flag
in the Mexican museum is not the flag that floated from the Alamo's
fortress tower in 1836, but is merely a company flag of the first company
of New Orleans Grays. There is little doubt that the Mexicans did
acquire that flag, they now have in their museum, when they took
possession of the Alamo after the massacre of its defenders on March 6,
1836, but historical facts almost certainly prove that it could not have
been the flag used by Travis as the general flag of his fort.
Some of these conclusive historical facts are: (1) There were two
well-organized companies of New Orleans Grays. The flag, pictured in the
Telegram was presented to the first company of New Orleans Grays as it
left Nacogdoches in November, 1835. Both these companies of troops,180
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Texas State Historical Association & Barker, Eugene C. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 37, July 1933 - April, 1934, periodical, 1934; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101094/m1/199/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.