Susanna Dickinson

Susanna Dickinson In February 1836, Susannah Dickinson’s husband, Captain Almaron Dickinson, was one of a group of soldiers defending the former Franciscan mission known as the Alamo, located near present-day San Antonio, Texas. Under siege from the Mexican Army under General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Alamo’s defenders held out for 13 days before they were overwhelmed by the Mexican invaders. Santa Anna spared only a small number of the fort’s inhabitants from death; these included Susannah and her infant daughter, Angelina. Road to Revolution Susannah (or Susanna) Wilkerson was born in Tennessee around 1814; she married Almaron Dickinson at the age of 15 and the young couple soon settled in the DeWitt colony in Texas, then under Mexican control. (Mexico had won its own independence from Spain in 1821.) Almaron received a plot of land on the east bank of the San Marcos River. The couple’s daughter, Angelina Elizabeth, was born in December 1834. Did You Know? General Santa Anna interviewed Susannah Dickinson personally, and reportedly offered to adopt her daughter Angelina, who would become known as "The Babe of the Alamo." The initial skirmishes in what would become the Texas Revolution began in the fall of 1835, when a small group of DeWitt colonists (including Almaron Dickinson) banded together to prevent the removal by Mexican forces of a cannon that had been given to the town of Gonzales for protection from attacks by Native Americans. Almaron joined a volunteer force that traveled to San Antonio de Bexar and secured the town for the Texans in early December, and Susannah soon joined him with Angelina. The Battle of the Alamo Located near San Antonio, the fort known as the Alamo was built in the early 1700s as a Franciscan mission. Later abandoned, the mission was occupied by Spanish troops at various times after 1800; as it stood in a cottonwood grove, the fort was called “El Alamo” after the Spanish word for that tree. In December 1835, the Texan volunteers who captured San Antonio occupied the Alamo. Though Sam Houston, the newly appointed commander of the Texan forces, argued that San Antonio should be abandoned due to the lack of sufficient troops to defend it, the Alamo’s defenders dug in nonetheless, prepared to defend the fort to the last. When Mexican troops arrived in San Antonio in February 1836, Almaron Dickinson moved his wife and daughter into the Alamo. On February 23, a Mexican force numbering somewhere between 1,800 and 6,000 men (according to various estimates) commanded by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. In the days that followed, the Alamo’s defenders received reinforcements, but still numbered less than 200 men. Commanded by Colonels James Bowie and William B. Travis, the Texans–including the famous frontiersman and folk hero Davy Crockett–held out for 13 days, but on the morning of March 6 Mexican forces broke through a breach in the outer wall of the courtyard and overpowered them. Santa Anna ordered his men to take no prisoners, and all of the defenders, including Almaron Dickinson, were killed. The Mexican forces suffered heavy casualties as well, losing between 600 and 1,600 men. In the Aftermath: Legacy of the Alamo The small handful of survivors consisted mostly of women and children, including Susannah and Angelina Dickinson. General Santa Anna sent Susannah and Angelina to the Texan camp in Gonzales, accompanied by Colonel Travis’ freed slave and another black servant and carrying a letter of warning intended for Sam Houston. For the Texans, the Battle of the Alamo became a symbol of their heroic resistance and their struggle for independence. On April 21, 1836, Houston and some 800 men defeated a numerically superior Mexican force under Santa Anna at San Jacinto, shouting “Remember the Alamo!” as they attacked. (A decade later, U.S. soldiers would use the same battle cry in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.) After Texas won its independence that fall, Susannah Dickinson applied to the new government for aid, including back pay and compensation for her husband’s land; she was refused and was left in poverty. Dickinson led a tumultuous life, marrying four more times, and was outspoken about her experiences at the Alamo; hers remains one of the most widely quoted eyewitness accounts of the historic battle. She died in 1883 in Austin, Texas. Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson will always be remembered as the sole adult Anglo survivor and the most extensively quoted eyewitness source (though not necessarily the most reliable) to the final and subsequent events surrounding the massacre at the Battle of the Alamo. Susanna was born in Williamson County, Tennessee about 1814 as Susanna Wilkerson. On 24 May 1829, at the age of only fifteen years, she married twenty- year-old Almaron Dickinson. Within two years, the young couple arrived in Texas settling in the DeWitt Colony in 1831. Almaron Dickinson received a league of land on the east bank of the San Marcos River below the Old Bexar Road in Caldwell Co acquiring property in inner Gonzales town in 1834. There he set up his blacksmith shop and went into partnership with George C. Kimble in a hat factory. The couple's only child, a daughter, Angelina Elizabeth, was born there on December 14, 1834. The Battle of Gonzales in the fall of 1835 marked the beginning of the Texas Revolution. Dickinson was among the original 18 defenders of the Gonzales cannon and was in charge of the cannon during the confrontation. Almaron joined a group of volunteers to help secure San Antonio for the Texans and served as an aide to General Edward Burleson during the Siege of Bexar . Susana stayed behind with Angelina. However, after her home was looted a few weeks later by members of an East Texas militia company, Susanna decided to join her husband in San Antonio. The family set up residence in the Musquiz house on the southwest corner of Portero Street and the Main Plaza, but when Mexican troops arrived in San Antonio on 23 Feb 1836, Dickinson moved the family into the Alamo. Because she was only 15 months old at the time of the siege, their daughter, Angelina in later years became known as the "Babe of the Alamo." Before his death, Colonel William Barret Travis gave to the infant a ring that had been a gift from his sweetheart Rebecca Cummings. After the fall of the Alamo, Santa Anna interviewed Susanna, accompanied by her infant daughter and the other female survivors. The general gave each a blanket and two dollars in silver before releasing them. Legend says Susanna displayed her husband's Masonic apron to a Mexican general in a plea for help and that Santa Anna offered to take baby Angelina to Mexico. Santa Anna sent Susanna and her daughter accompanied by Juan N. Almonte's servant, Ben, and William B. Travis's freed slave, Joe, to Sam Houston with a letter of warning dated March 7. After heading eastward from San Antonio, Deaf Smith and Henry Karnes, scouts for the Texas army found the travelers and they were taken to meet Houston in Gonzales. Without skills, illiterate and only twenty-two years old when Texas independence was won, Susanna requested but was denied a $500 government donation forcing her to live in poverty. Until her death in Austin on October 7, 1883, Susanna was active in relating her experiences in the Alamo and commemorating its heroes wherever she could find an audience. DICKINSON, SUSANNA WILKERSON Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson. Courtesy of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 DICKINSON, SUSANNA WILKERSON (ca. 1814– 1883). Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson (also spelled Dickerson), survivor of the Alamo, was born about 1814 in Tennessee, perhaps in Williamson County. Her first name has also been recorded as Susan, Susana, and Suzanna; her maiden name is sometimes given as Wilkinson. On May 24, 1829, she married Almeron Dickinson before a justice of the peace in Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tennessee. The couple remained in the vicinity through the end of 1830. The Dickinsons arrived at Gonzales, Texas, on February 20, 1831, in company with fifty-four other settlers, after a trip by schooner from New Orleans. On May 5 Dickinson received a league of land from Green DeWitt, on the San Marcos River in what became Caldwell County. He received ten more lots in and around Gonzales in 1833 and 1834. The Dickinsons lived on a lot just above the town on the San Marcos River, where Susanna took in at least one boarder. A map of Gonzales in 1836 shows a Dickinson and Kimble hat factory in Gonzales. Susanna's only child, Angelina Elizabeth Dickinson, was born on December 14, 1834. Susanna and her daughter may have joined other families hiding in the timber along the Guadalupe River in early October 1835, when Mexican troops from San Antonio demanded the return of an old cannon lent to Gonzales four years earlier. The resulting skirmish, the battle of Gonzales, was the first fight of the Texas Revolution. Susanna said goodbye to her husband on October 13 as the volunteers left for San Antonio under command of Stephen F. Austin. She remained in Gonzales through November, when newly arriving troops looted her home. She joined Dickinson in San Antonio, probably in December 1835, and lodged in Ramón Músquiz's home, where she opened her table to boarders (among them David Crockett) and did laundry.

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