Episode 134: The Alamo Funeral Pyre Mystery

Added: 2026-05-31

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[00:00:35]Stories bigger than Texas, the Alamo podcast. History makes clear the bodies of the men who died defending the Alamo on March 6th, 1836, were burned in a funeral pyre. But, an enduring mystery has been, how many pyres were there?

[00:00:54]Today, we reveal how this mystery of history persists, why some eyewitness accounts have been called into question, and the prominent figures who have added [music] to the debate.

[00:01:06]I'm your host, Emily Balkam. Today, we're joined by Dr. Bruce Winders, the Alamo's former curator, and Ron Curenton from the Still Current blog. Thank you both for joining us. Well, thank you for having me.

[00:01:18]>> for inviting me. Our audience is very familiar with Dr. Winders. So, Ron, I want to introduce you because on our March 6th episode this year, titled The Alamo Defenders Fate, Dr. Winders cited your research into funeral pyres. When I heard that, I was listening to your podcast because I'm doing this series on the funeral pyres, and as much information I as I can collect. So, I'm listening, and it goes along, and it goes along, and then it comes to the end, and Dr. Winders gives me this endorsement. To be an armchair historian that I am, and trying to get everything right, to having the esteemed doctor say, "Hey, if you want to know about the funeral pyres, go to see Ron's blog."

[00:02:03]It's very humbling, very humbling. Well, tell us about your blog and how you got into the Alamo story in the first place.

[00:02:10]The Alamo story was back It started Wednesday, February 23rd, 1955.

[00:02:16]And that's when Walt Disney had Davy Crockett at the Alamo. I and all the other baby boomers at the time were just, you know, we had our coonskin caps. I had a Davy Crockett air rifle.

[00:02:26]The house that we were living in had a high fence around it, so I had my own walls of the Alamo. But what really changed me was in the early 1960s when I got a copy of Walter Lord's A Time to Stand. And when I read that, that changed my whole perception of what happened at the Alamo and started getting me to go deeper and deeper and deeper, getting more and more books on the Alamo. In fact, my prized possession, I've got a limited edition, only 300 copies were printed, of Potter's Follow the Alamo. That just got me into it. The blog started in 2013 when I retired. My daughter put together the website for it and I just started putting things in that are fun, historical, gee, I didn't know that.

[00:03:11]Like some of my blogs are the history of Jell-O. How and where did Julius Caesar get assassinated? And one of my most popular ones is the history of the 1950s TV show The Howdy Doody Show. I've published 123 posts and my passion, being the Alamo, 22 of those are just on the Alamo alone. And as I'm going through the story, you can't get away from the funeral pyres. I was doing research for one of my posts, my walkie tour around the Alamo, called Beyond the Walls, Beyond the Walls of the Alamo.

[00:03:47]And I went there on East Commerce Street and I saw for two plaques that are mounted on that wall. You know, one is marble plaque that you put up there in in 1917 and then you've got the 1997 metal one that kind of explains the the whole thing. On that 1997 one, it says that the original site was near this location. And that got me to say, "Where's near? I got to find it." And that's what started me on the funeral pyres. And a lot of what we know stems from 1911 from a historian named Charles Barnes. What did he write?

[00:04:22]>> Yeah. He was a historian and a reporter and he was known for going around and interviewing as many accounts as he could get. He's probably one of the most prolific writers of the time on Alamo history that I could find. And his research and what he presented opened up a whole different view of some of the accounts that had gone before him and mostly a lot of them dealing with with not just the history of what happened on the fort, but particularly on what happened post battle in the pyres and the and remains of the Alamo defenders.

[00:04:56]So, he found that there were two pyres, not three, but a lot of people seem to believe that there were three pyres. So, this is the mystery you were looking into. Oh, yeah. It's interesting that most of the early early accounts basically don't even give a number.

[00:05:12]They'll say the defenders remains were put into a heap or put into a pile and burned. Even Roa's the alcalde of San Antonio doesn't give a number. He just simply says we gathered up the bodies and we stacked them and cut them cut them on fire. A number isn't given to it until Juan Seguín through Juan Seguín's official report of 1837 to his commanding general General Johnson. In his report, he has a section on a funeral that he conducted for the Alamo defenders which happened on February 25th, 1837. And in that, Seguín says he found the remaining the ashes in three heaps. Now, about a week or so later, a newspaper basically copied that that report and just changed it from three heaps to three locations. Nothing else is said about the number of pyres until we get later, much later in time, with Captain Potter in his follow of the Alamo. And in that, he basically says he ties in Juan Seguín's three heaps into being three pyres. He says that after the attack, the victors collected the ashes of the defenders and stacked them in three heaps. He's the first one to tie into that. The next account came from John J. Linn back in 1883.

[00:06:38]And in his memoir, he stated almost identically what Potter said the year earlier. Added into it, instead of heaps, he said piles. There's where those two accounts by Potter and Linn are the ones that basically was the driving force for people thinking that there was actually three pyres. And of course, the not being very clear of what Seguín meant. Because I think what happened is Seguín was simply telling General Johnson that, "Oh, by the way, you know, I found the when I went there, I discovered the ashes in three heaps."

[00:07:14]Not that there was actually three different pyres or piles. Dr. Winters, what made you pay attention to Ron's research? I thought and I had read archaeological reports, but [snorts] I was impressed by how comprehensive, how much he had really actually dug into it.

[00:07:31]You know, he's mentioned he's retired and one of the odd things about the Alamo is that I read in graduate school an article on dirty history saying there were topics that academics don't like touch, gunfighters, the Alamo.

[00:07:47]You know, because it's like, oh, you know, those are pedestrian things. In the history of the Alamo or the or the historiography of the Alamo, it's really been um I don't want to say as a pejorative. I don't want to say amateurs saying, you know, well, you they're just amateurs, but people who have the love of history and apply the same techniques that academics do. You know, what's the evidence? Documentation. You don't have to have a PhD to to do that. You just have to have a love of history and to kind of follow the rules. And that's what I saw and what really impressed me.

[00:08:21]He had a you know, a number of articles.

[00:08:23]You know, one would take you up to a certain point and then you go on to another article and it would carry it on from there. He was asking the right questions. I give a lot of stock to people who who ask the right questions.

[00:08:34]Well, let's dive in, Ron. I want to know what the three eyewitnesses who Barnes quotes and what exactly they say they saw. Let's talk about locations in modern-day terms. The Lovell House was still up. That was one of the locations, the Moody and Lovell House, which were right next to each other on the north side of East Commerce Street. It already was no longer the Alameda it was at.

[00:08:58]They walked around and took Barnes and said, "Here is where the north pyre was.

[00:09:04]And here the pyre was The north pyre was 60 ft long by 10 ft high by 8 to 10 ft wide." And then they took him across the street to the Huff Building, which was fairly new at that time, and they said, "Here is the location of the south pyre, and it was the same height and width as the north pyre, but it was 80 ft long and the larger of the two." And so, this is the kind of the where it was actually really first-hand eyewitnesses, cuz those three accounts were there. Diaz was in that area and he actually saw the pyres being burned. The other young man, Esparza, he was inside the Alamo with his mother and his brothers and his sisters. His father was killed in the battle. He witnessed that. He was 8 years old. And the funny thing, they didn't even know he existed until the beginning of the 20th century. And then Diaz Zavala, she was the one that "Oh, here's an eyewitness that we didn't even know existed that was actually in the fort." So, this is the kind of stuff that came out by these witnesses that the other accounts going all the way back to 1836, they were either second hand or third hand. There wasn't any of this that said, "Oh, not only did this happen, but right there is where it happened at." Pointing out the locations, which was only two. Dr. Winders, these eyewitnesses are being quoted in 1911, some 75 years after the Battle of the Alamo. So, as a historian, does the amount of time that lapsed between the battle and their accounts give you pause? Yes, it does. It doesn't want to make me discount what they're saying, but what I find is in [snorts] the Alamo accounts, especially starting really in the 1870s, when people or reporters start going, "Yeah, I want to know what Susanna Dickinson said. I want to know, you know, it's time to start tracking people down and recording this." Sometimes it makes me wonder whose voice you're hearing. Are you hearing the witness or you're hearing the reporter who's going, "They're saying this, but I've had movie directors say this, you know, we make the story better."

[00:11:13]>> [laughter] >> Mhm. Barnes is often writing it as dialogue, as this person is saying this.

[00:11:19]He didn't have a tape recorder. So, he's sitting there and he's he's reconstructing these. But, it's invaluable information in that these people existed. Their memories may have been somewhat clouded with age. And as I said, sometimes whose voice are you hearing? Are you hearing the reporter or are you hearing the other person?

[00:11:37]>> Dr. Winders hit the nail right on the head. That makes it hard for modern historians to kind of see through it.

[00:11:43]Poetic license, especially in the late 1800s, was something that was just common amongst reporters. They would embellish stuff. Even going into the 1911, Charles Barnes, who I said has given us so much information, he also has been accused of embellishing so the story sounds a little bit better. In fact, he did that with Eureka. He has it in one interview as being 8 years old and then a little bit later, again, these gentlemen were already in their 80s, you know, some of them pushing 90, and he had them as 12 years old at the Alamo. And then he went back to eight again in the four different interviews that he did. So, a lot of this stuff is clouded and what historians today have to do is kind of like compare one to another and sift through so that the what actually happened kind of floats to the surface. Ron, were there any other eyewitnesses you were able to uncover?

[00:12:36]Oh, well, one of my main sources was Kay Hines. She's the San Antonio archaeologist. In her report of the mystery of the Alamo funeral pyres, 185 years of searching for that hollowed ground, which was part of the study of a archival and archaeological review and reported human remains on the Alamo Plaza in Mission, San Antonio de Valero.

[00:13:00]And she calculated there are 53 accounts, both eyewitnesses and second, third-hand accounts, that deal specifically with either the burning of the bodies, the stacking of the bodies, or the ashes of what happened. And of that, there were 53 that she accounted as being good first-hand accounts of what actually happened. Francisco Ruiz, the alcalde of San Antonio, he was one of them and so was Dr. Bernard who basically was brought over from Goliad to help care for the Mexican soldiers that were killed in the and wounded in the battle. So, I put those all into the lump rather than any one particular account.

[00:13:41]>> Dr. Winders, you pointed out when we were preparing for this episode that many of the written accounts do not give locations and you were saying maybe they were considered common knowledge. I think that's one of the things that's really interesting. Well, you take something here today and you would tell somebody, you know, what happened over by the Taco Bell on such and such street and everybody knows where that is. But, at some point it stops being a Taco Bell and is something else and then it gets torn down and time passes and memories fade and I think what's so important about the funeral pyres is that they've been so neglected. You know, there's such a you know, we have to honor our heroes.

[00:14:19]We have to remember the Alamo, but these funeral pyres people just drive by them all the time. I I think I drove by them this morning and it's like, oh, there's that's where Landry's used to be. That's where, you know, the that hotel is.

[00:14:33]What's interesting is several years ago when the suggestion was about moving the cenotaph, it came at a time when monuments were coming down and the fear was it'll come down and it'll never go back up. But, the whole idea was can we move it closer to where the funeral pyres are to highlight the fact that that's what happened and that's where it happened to the Alamo defenders. So, not necessarily destroying the cenotaph, but trying to give it more context and highlight the fact this is the place where the funeral pyres are. As you're walking by going to whatever restaurant or hotel, you know, this is an important place. And as we know, the cenotaph was not moved in the end. It was preserved in place and rededicated last November on Veteran's Day. But, Dr. Winders, that's some good insight into what the arguments and debates were at the time.

[00:15:22]You know, when I'm around the office, I tell people, "Hey, I'm working on this podcast today." And our senior curator, Ernesto Rodriguez, said, "Ask about the account that a third pyre was located by the peach orchard. That would have been where the San Antonio Fire Museum is today. What do we know about that?" Back in the '90s, I have to give praise to George Nelson. His book on Illustrated History of the Alamo, I believe he mentions that. What I would want to tell listeners is that, you know, we we're talking about accounts, and we're telling you what the accounts said, but this goes back to, you know, not an academic, but I believe he worked in aerospace, but he's kind of like Ron, kind of like me, kind of like all we grew up with the Alamo, and he had an obsession, but he created something called the Alamo Reader. It's about 15 years old now, but you can get it on a place like Amazon or any of your fine booksellers. What he did was collected all the the accounts he could find on the Battle of the Alamo and the aftermath, published them with commentary. Can you believe this? What's the problem with it? How is it credible?

[00:16:25]The accounts that we're talking about, Barrera's account of interviewing Esparza and Deason, they're in there.

[00:16:32]So, you can If you're interested, you can read this stuff. And that's the thing about history, you don't have to get it from a classroom. I mean, you're free to explore and to do things on your own. Yeah, Alamo Reader is sitting right here on my desk, right in front of me.

[00:16:45]It's one of my key sources because it has the accounts right there, and then also is the commentary that he puts into it that means a lot to it. Helps define what actually happened. We talked about Juan Seguín earlier and how he factors into this mystery. Could his report have inadvertently caused the story of three pyres? Yes, I think so. I think he was the catalyst. Again, as I mentioned earlier, there is no accounting or any accounts or or that that there were three of anything until Juan Seguín's report of 1837.

[00:17:18]And that report, the one that everybody keeps quoting uh talking about the funeral that he conducted for the Alamo defenders, is only part of the actual whole report that he was giving to the General Johnson. And I don't think he was actually saying that there was three pyres that were the heaps, but you know, I we went there and oh by the way, there was um I found the uh ashes laying in three heaps. And that from that, as I mentioned earlier, it went to Potter, and then it went up to John Linn. And I think that's exactly that the catalyst was, I believe, was Seguin's report of 1837. Another person who plays a role in this mystery that you mentioned earlier, Adina Zavala, the Daughter of the Republic of Texas, who is famous for saving the lawn barrack. What did she say about the funeral pyres? Early, you know, like in the just at the beginning of 1901, I think she made a comment, and again, it's in the Alamo Reader, where she said that the first pyre was lit inside the Alamo itself, and that there were three other pyres that she gives descriptions where they were, but I don't know if Dr. Winders can figure out exactly where it is, but So, she's saying that there were four.

[00:18:30]Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, they said by that time it's four. But after that is when she started interviewing the other eyewitnesses, by 1917, when she was installing the markers on the sites pyres, she only did two, the north pyre and the south pyre. I think one of the questions that listeners might have is why did they take the bodies out of the Alamo? You know, why not just burn them where they are?

[00:18:54]There's a very famous painting in Alamo collection, Jose Arpa. It's on the second floor of the Alamo exhibit, and it's in every Texas history textbook.

[00:19:01]Yeah, it's in Cavalry Courtyard, flames coming up, funeral pyre, but it goes to the fact that San Antonio is an important place. Santa Anna planned to leave a garrison at the Alamo and so you don't burn bodies where you're going to house your troops. So that's why they're taking out away from the Alamo. And while they're were taking out, he also saying and he had another purpose because the other question has been is why did he drag them, you know, 400 yards to the Alameda and build his pyres there? And he was the type of person history shows that says, "If you cross me, this is what's going to happen to you." So he needed to have the most traveled area to put those reminders of what he will do to you if you cross them and that was the Alameda which was actually part of the Gonzales which was the main entrance into San Antonio. Yeah, it was and that's like the door. So that's where he burned them but you hit it right, doctor. He would not burn on the inside. He did have keep about a thousand troops, most of them the wounded ones from the battle there to rebuild the fortification of the Alamo. It wasn't until after Santa Anna sento, he sent word back and all that rebuilding that you did, tear it apart.

[00:20:15]>> [laughter] >> Tear it down. One of the questions that I have about the siege is where did all this wood come from? Because you had to have wood for cook fires, for heating.

[00:20:23]San Antonio had been occupied for three months by different armies. Where's this wood coming from? Now in the 1829 town ordinances, it talks about an area north of San Antonio, north of the bend being a forested area where you could gather wood. Probably where like Olmos Park is today. Yeah, you know, how far out were they having to go to get wood? You know, we talk about the environment. War is hell on in the environment and so where did all this wood come from and how much wood would you have to have to burn nearly 200 bodies? Yeah, when Ron was giving the dimensions earlier, what was it? 40 feet wide by 10 feet high? That's a lot of wood. Yeah, and in some cases, they actually say that they were enormous. They told Barnes that the two pyres were enormous in size. And considering they put a layer of wood, a layer of bodies, a layer of wood, a layer of bodies, and stacking up to about 10 ft in height, and doing that twice. Actually, there is a article that basically said in one of the accounts, Pablo Diaz, he says, "I saw them build one giant pyre, but there could have been one on the other side that I didn't see cuz, you know, they separated the federalists from the constitutionalists, and they could have done it at different times. So, it's possible that what I was thinking before is they built both pyres at the same time. It's possible that they built one and then lit that one and then brought the bodies over as they built the second one." I think your timeline bears some truth to it because we look at it and go, "Funeral pyres, they must have prepared them and then lit them at the same time." And that's what drives people crazy when it comes to the Alamo, is we really don't know what's happening. And so, part of the history of the Alamo is trying to figure out what happened. Trying to piece everything together is quite challenging. Obviously, there's been a lot of modern-day development on this part of East Commerce, Rivercenter Mall, the Riverwalk, various buildings. Was there ever a conversation about preserving the funeral pyre locations from development? I know we have those historic markers, but just saying we're going to leave this be. Sadly, no. I mean, you take it all the way back to 1836, the pyres were burned, and the bodies lay there for a year before Seguin buried them. And then, in the time of Captain Potter, he went to the pyre sites. They knew where it was. They knew where the orchard was. With Seguin, actually, there's some suggestion that he took Potter there and said, "Yeah, this is where I buried the defenders remains." And that they had a crude marker that was there. And then when Potter came back later, they hadn't built up over the area, but they had taken the marker was gone. And then when he after the Civil War, he went back again, this would be in the 1870s, and it was already built over. So, then you got the Vasalia put up the two markers, the two buildings, and then in the 1950s, they started tearing them down and they put up a Sears Auto Center on the north side of the north pyre, and then finally the mall. And on the south side, until 1968, they still had the marker there in the Huff building. And then they wanted to build the Riverwalk [clears throat] for HemisFair '68 and leveled everything. There was a movement to save historic buildings. They saved in that area where HemisFair was going to be, just on the the south side of E Commerce Street, and they were able to save four historic buildings in that area of 92 acres, but the Huff building was a one of them. That says a lot right there about what they thought about the site of the funeral pyres. What I've seen in research is that, you know, starting back in the 1850s, there's a newspaper editorial lamenting the fact that there's nothing to really mark the Alamo or certainly the funeral pyres. As time goes on, people who were contemporaries are still saying, you know, it's such a shame that, you know, nothing is done to to mark this important area. You know, that's one of the big questions is why not?

[00:24:29]>> Here is an interesting quote that I'm going to read from one of Charles Barnes' interviews with Pablo Diaz. And and this is in 1906 and it basically says, "It is a great shame to be forced to admit that neither the state nor the United States has erected a monument. It is to be hoped that a suitable and imposing one be placed on the Alameda to mark the place where the bodies of those heroes were burned. And I hope we'll remember that spot and endeavor to get someone so to market. That's what Pablo Diaz said back in 1906. Well, whether there were two pyres or three or even four, the result is the same. The people who died in the Battle of the Alamo, their bodies were unceremoniously burned. So, why is it important to solve this mystery once and for all? For me, it it it's a couple of reasons. First of all, just to get history right or at least come up with something that is a little different story than what is commonly believed. But, the other thing that is trying to find out where that is, right after I finished writing my two posts on the North Pyre and the South Pyre, I was contacted by a descendant of David Crockett. She wanted to know if I could tell her what pyre, the North or the South Pyre, her ancestor was burned on. I couldn't do that. So, I hear a lot of people that they're looking for a place to go, especially the the descendants, so they could pay their respects. Did that kind of hurt your heart that you couldn't answer that question for her? Yeah.

[00:26:05]Yeah. And so, I'm hoping, one of the things I'd like to do is that that what I write and what go on will inspire the state, the Alamo Foundation, or something to put something on, you know, a markers at least on the North and where the South Pyres were. And the best thing is on the South Pyre, right where I'm pretty sure that Seguin buried the ashes. Put something there so people could actually come and reflect and sit and think about uh the sacrifice that their ancestors had made. Yeah, I think that's a good um a good answer. What I would add to it is that when I first came to the Alamo, if you said, "Point to the Alamo," people would point to the church. And what we've been successful in doing is to go, "It's the Church of the Alamo, but actually Alamo Plaza, that's the heart of what you want to call the Alamo. And expanding the battlefield, entire towns, downtown's the battlefield. Like Ron said, have people come to the church, remember the Alamo, but also to go to where the bodies were actually burned. And for it to be a place of reverence instead of uh neglect. The first time I went to the Alamo was during the the 150th anniversary of the fall. I was in the in the church and I was standing there and I actually heard a young man who was there with his sister and his mother and father say to his dad, "Daddy, is this all there is?" And to me, what you're doing now with the Alamo Foundation and bringing things back is just phenomenal so that young people now know what the truth is, where the battle was. This is the battlefield, that's the church. And and tying that in with a spot that they say now, you know, part of this story is what Santa Anna did to the bodies and now over here is where that site is and you can go and pay your respects. Dr. Bruce Winders and Ron Current, thank you so much for joining us. Well, thank you for having us.

[00:28:02]>> Thank you so much. You should have check out the podcast notes. We'll be linking to the Still Current blogs. You can go through Ron's research on the funeral pyres and of course many other topics.

[00:28:13]You've been listening to >> [music] >> Stories Bigger Than Texas, the Alamo podcast.