Joe, the slave who became an Alamo legend
By: Ron J. Jackson, Jr. and Lee Spencer White ; foreword by Phil Collins
Contributors: White, Lee Spencer, 1955- author
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 325
ISBN-13: 9780806147031
Subjects: Friends and associates; Legends; Fugitive slaves; Slaves; Siege, 1836; African Americans; Biography; History
Description: "If we do in fact 'remember the Alamo,' it is largely thanks to one person who witnessed the final assault and survived: the commanding officer's slave, a young man known simply as Joe. What Joe saw as the Alamo fell, recounted days later to the Texas Cabinet, has come down to us in records and newspaper reports. But who Joe was, where he came from, and what happened to him have all remained mysterious until now. In a remarkable feat of historical detective work, authors Ron J. Jackson, Jr., and Lee Spencer White have fully restored this pivotal yet elusive figure to his place in the American story ... Joe stood with his master, Lt. Colonel Travis, against the Mexican army in the early hours of March 6, 1836. After Travis fell, Joe watched the battle's last moments from a hiding place. He was later taken first to Bexar and questioned by Santa Anna about the Texan army, and then to the revolutionary capitol, where he gave his testimony with evident candor. With these few facts in hand, Jackson and White searched through plantation ledgers, journals, memoirs, slave narratives, ship logs, newspapers, letters, and court documents. Their decades-long effort has revealed the outline of Joe's biography, alongside some startling facts: most notably, that Joe was the younger brother of the famous escaped slave and abolitionist narrator William Wells Brown, as well as the grandson of legendary trailblazer Daniel Boone. Their book traces Joe's story from his birth in Kentucky through his life in slavery--which, in a grotesque irony, resumed after he took part in the Texans' battle for independence--to his eventual escape and disappearance into the shadows of history. Joe, the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend recovers a true American character from obscurity and expands our view of events central to the emergence of Texas"--

"Among the fifty or so Texan survivors of the siege of the Alamo was Joe, the personal slave of Lt. Col. William Barret Travis. First interrogated by Santa Anna, Joe was allowed to depart (along with Susana Dickinson) and eventually made his way to the seat of the revolutionary government at Washington-on-the-Brazos. Joe was then returned to the Travis estate in Columbia, Texas, near the coast. He escaped in 1837 and was never captured. Ron J. Jackson and Lee White have meticulously researched plantation ledgers, journals, memoirs, slave narratives, ship logs, newspapers, personal letters, and court documents to fill in the gaps of Joe's story. "Joe, the Slave Who Became an Alamo Legend" provides not only a recovered biography of an individual lost to history, but also offers a fresh vantage point from which to view the events of the Texas Revolution"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 299-311) and index.
Table of contents: title: March 5, 1836; title: Marthasville; title: Chattel; title: St. Louis; title: This Side of the Grave; title: Gone to Texas; title: Harrisburg; title: North Star; title: Another Soul Gone; title: William Barret Travis; title: Shadowing Legends; title: Dogs of War; title: Into the Unknown; title: A Passing Comet; title: The Wolf; title: Besieged; title: Fate; title: Defining Hour; title: The Hourglass; title: Between Two Worlds; title: March 6, 1836; title: From the Ashes; title: "Travis's Negro"; title: The Estate; title: Legendary Journey; title: Shadows and Ghosts; title: Afterword.