Remembering the Alamo

I’ve been immersed in the Alamo. In searching for a connection to one of those hallowed Texians (James Northcross) I’ve been studying history. THE authority most often quoted by students of the Alamo is Dr. Amelia W. Williams who began with a Master’s Thesis on those slaughtered at the Shrine of Texas Liberty. At the urging of her professors in the early 1930’s she seems to have made the Alamo her life’s work. Her opus (a reprinting of her doctoral dissertation in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly) is titled “A Critical Study of the Siege of the Alamo and of the Personnel of Its Defenders.”

As a result of her extensive research in the state archives, Dr. Williams became the gatekeeper for the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. When the Daughters Alamo Committee was asked to add the name of Nathaniel Massie Kerr to the Alamo list, Williams responded: “I think Nathaniel Kerr was as true a hero as his brother.” Nathaniel Kerr died of an unknown illness in San Antonio on February 19, 1836, just days before Santa Anna’s army arrived. Nathaniel’s brother, Joseph, died in the March 6th battle and his name is enshrined in stone. The Alamo Committee was going to add Nathaniel Kerr to their list of defenders, but Williams’ words stopped them. “But according to my historical training, I am compelled to exclude his name from my roll.”

Note that in a 1941 letter to the editor of the Texas Almanac, she says of her own work: “I cannot vouch for all the names on my list being accurate. . . “ She further suggests: “In fact, it is my opinion that the entire list should be carefully and painstakingly worked through. Such a job will require a very great deal of work, a thorough knowledge of the problem, a complete verification of all former lists, or disproving certain names as belonging on the list.”

In 2003 the Republic of Texas Press published the painstaking examination done by Thomas Ricks Lindley. In Alamo Traces New Evidence and New Conclusions, Lindley affirms the contributions of Dr. Amelia Williams. But he also demonstrates her foibles. Stephen Harrigan says the work is “a methodical piece-by-piece dismantling of what we thought we knew. . . “

Walter Lord, author of A Time to Stand, claims: “in a way her [Williams’] thesis has been the worst thing that ever happened to the history of the Alamo. Not because she did so little work, but because she did so much. The sheer bulk of her research has discouraged later students from checking up on her and has led them all too often to take her statements at face value.”