Rosalie Hart Priour Autobiography "Adventures of a Family of Emigrants" with notes and commentary by historian Frank Wagner (indicated in green).
Chapter 17
The next day the soldiers in Laberdee sent Tom Conners [O'Connor] and John O'Brien with their oxcarts to take all the women and children from the Mission to a place of safety, as they had proof that five hundred Mexicans and Indians were going to attack the town.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Tom O'Connor (Rosalie's original handwriting gives the name as Connors) was a son of James Power's sister. He was born in Wexford in 1819 and came on the same vessel as the Hart family to Texas. A saddler by trade, he obtained the league and labor of lands due him, and obtained addition land when he married Mary Fagan. Following the Texas Revolutionary War in which he was a veteran of San Jacinto, he obtained a larger grant of land. Mary Fagan died in 1843, and thereafter he married the young daughter of Patrick Shelly, Helen, further increasing his land holdings. He died at Refugio October 16, 1887, owning one of the largest cattle ranches in Texas at the time. John O'Brien was the husband of a niece of James Power.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We were ordered to take nothing but provisions for two days and one frying pan, one coffee pot and skillet. They would not tell us where we were going for fear the women and children would speak of it, and the consequences could be fatal to us, as the Mexicans and Indians would follow us and kill every one of us. We were allowed to take a change of clothing also. Besides mother, there were three others sick, my cousin, Col. Powers, and his nephew Martin Powers, who was a cripple.
Everybody buried their valuables before leaving. Mrs. Synot [Sinnott] tied some money in a handkerchief and, putting the rest in a chest together with her tea service and other valuables, moved her bed, dug a hole and buried them under the bed, then removing as far as possible all trace of the ground having been disturbed, replaced the bed where it usually stood. She then tied up some of her husband's best clothes, her own, and some for the baby, in a bundle to take with her. But in the confusion and hurry attending our departure, she made a mistake and carried off a bundle of rags.
Everybody had to leave their homes as if they were only to be gone a couple of days, as we were told. I made a hole in the door and threw corn on the floor for my chickens to eat while we were gone. That night, the teamsters put feather beds on the wagons for the sick and the others had to walk. It was a sorrowful sight to see so many women and children driven from their homes, and not one in the crowd ever recovered anything that was left behind
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The refugees' flight is one of the most moving in Texas literature. The sick, the lame, the deserted all fled. Recollections of Annie Fagan Teal (Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. XXXIV, p 317-324, 1954) confirm in horrifying detail much of the account. Mrs. Teal said mounted men rode in crying, "Run, run for your lives; Mexicans and Indians are coming, burning and killing as they come." She recounts that "A panic ensued; men, women and children on foot, on horses, with or without saddles, fled the country. She with others and with a child on her lap, made for Sabine, riding all day over the prairie, through woods or water. Many sickened and died on the road. They were met by a small band who took their guns from them. The alarm given the settlers proved to be a plan concocted to rob and pillage the country, which was done on a magnificent scale; as of all the cattle owned by this colony, one cow only was left them, she proved to be too refractory to drive."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - As soon as we left, a man named King [Captain Amon Butler King] burned every house in the town except Scott's. That family remained and joined the Mexicans. They had acted as spies for them from the beginning of the war.
After burning the town, Mr. King accompanied by eight or ten men took possession of the church and fought from the windows until the dead Mexicans were piled nearly as high as a man's head around Scott's house, and I have been told by an eye witness that if the Mexicans had not have had that house to shelter them that King and his men would not have left one alive. Towards the close of the battle, the Mexicans place a cannon at the corner of the house in such a position that they could throw the bombs through the roof of the church. After that, King was compelled to abandon his position, and five of the brave soldiers made their escape.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - James M. Robertson reviewed the career of Captain Amon Butler King in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol. XXIX (1925-1926).
Chapter 16 - Chapter 18