Remember The Alamo: Women In The Texas Revolution

When you hear “Remember the Alamo” you always think of that pivotal moment in the Texas Revolution. The drawing the line in the dirt story that Travis “drew” for those to either stay and fight or go as they chose. Well, this is about the women that decided to stay after that line was drawn. There is a lot of controversy on who were the actual survivors of the Alamo. As history is told after the battle of the Alamo, General Santa Anna spared the women, children and Travis’ slave named Joe. Of the seven women spared six were Hispanic women also known as Bexareña women and the other one was an Anglo woman. Their names were Concepción Charlé Gortari Losoya, Andrea Castañon de Villanueva also known as Madam Candelaria, Juana Navarro Pérez Alsbury, Gertrudis Navarro, Ana Salazar Castro Esparza, Juana Fransisca Losoya Melton and Susanna Wilkerson. All of these women either had a son, brother, brother-in-law, or husband fighting for the Texas side of the Texas Revolution. The women marched out of the Alamo at gunpoint into the sea of blood and dead bodies. Apparently, after this, they were questioned and Santa Anna showing compassion had given “two silver pesos and a blanket” (129) only after the pledge an oath of allegiance to Mexico and were told return home.

Historians say that the women were barricaded in the southwest corner of the mission. There is contradicting evidence that whether or not one of these women, in particular, Madame Candelaria, had actually nursed the sick and wounded, which one of them happened to be David Bowie. Although later the Texas legislature on April 13, 1891, they awarded her $120 per year as pension for her nursing services rendered to the sick and wounded during the battle of the Alamo, therefore putting to rest any doubt that she was actually there at the