Wilson County Historical Society

Talk of Wilson County TX Historic Towns

by Barbara J. Wood

DR. JOHN SUTHERLAND

John Sutherland, Jr.

Physician, Alamo Courier

SUTHERLAND, JOHN, JR. (1792–1867). John Sutherland, Jr., physician, born on May 11, 1792, near Danville, Pittsylvania County, Virginia, the son of John and Agnes Sutherland. After the family moved to Tennessee he married Diana Kennedy in Knox County on December 31, 1816. By 1824 the couple had moved to Decatur, Alabama, where Sutherland opened a store and managed a bank that failed. He then formed a partnership with his older brother George Sutherland, who moved to the Austin colony in Texas to homestead for both of them in December 1829. Mrs. Sutherland died on February 17, 1827, leaving Sutherland alone to tend a daughter and his elderly father. He attended medical school, where he studied Samuel Thomson's method of treating disease with steam and herbs. Sutherland moved to San Antonio, Texas, in December 1835; there the Alamo garrison hired his medical services. He was injured in a fall from his horse and could not fight, so Col. William B. Travis sent him to bring help from Gonzales. Sutherland returned with a contingent of men only to see the funeral pyres; among the dead was George's son, William. Sutherland next served as an attaché to David G. Burnet, president of the Republic of Texas, and aided in the Runaway Scrape.

He returned to Tuscumbia after the revolution and moved to Egypt, Texas, in 1837, after his father died. There he married Ann Bryant Lane on January 26, 1838. She bore him a son but died in 1840. He married Ann Margaret Dickson in Colorado County in 1841. She also had a son by him, but they apparently separated. A suit brought by Sutherland against George's heirs over their homestead arrangements left him richer by a league in Bexar County but embittered both parties, prompting Sutherland to sever all ties with the members of the family on the Texas coast and move inland. In 1849 he purchased the Treviño grant on Cibolo Creek at the junction of the Chihuahua and Goliad roads, twenty miles east of San Antonio. He boarded patients who came to the sulfur springs near his home and gained a reputation for curing cholera and other maladies. His house was soon a regular stop, known as Sutherland Springs, on the road to Port Lavaca from San Antonio, and in 1851 it obtained a post office. Sutherland quit farming to pursue his medical and business interests. He had the town platted and sold lots, sponsored the construction of a school and Methodist church, and served as a justice of the peace and a member of the school board. His town became the provisional seat of Wilson County in 1860. In 1860 Sutherland wrote The Fall of the Alamo, which was published in 1936. He died on April 11, 1867, and was buried in the community cemetery at Sutherland Springs.

Article from the TSHA...

https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fsu07

John Sutherland, Jr., image from...

http://www.sonsofdewittcolony.org//sthland1.htm

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Courtesy/ The Republic of Texas / History Bob Dunn

Survivor at the Alamo

Survivor at the Alamo..... posted by Ricardo Rodriguez in Alamo Legacy & Missions Assoc.

""ALSBURY, JUANA GERTRUDIS NAVARRO (1812–1888).

Juana Navarro Alsbury, among the survivors of the battle of the Alamo, one of three daughters of José Ángel Navarro and Concepción Cervantes, was born in San Antonio de Béxar in 1812 and baptized on December 28 of that year. Her father was a long-time government official of San Antonio de Béxar. Her uncle José Antonio Navarro, a loyal Tejano, signed the Texas Declaration of Independence.

After her mother's death Juana was reared by her godmother and aunt, Josefa Navarro Veramendi, and her husband Juan Martín de Veramendi in the Veramendi Palace near Main Plaza in San Antonio. As a young woman she met prominent Texans who came there. Her cousin and adopted sister Ursula Veramendi was married to James Bowie, who is thought to have brought Juana, her baby son Alejo Pérez, and her younger sister Gertrudis to the Alamo (see ALAMO NONCOMBATANTS) when Antonio López de Santa Anna captured San Antonio on February 23, 1836. Dr. Horace Alexander Alsbury, Juana's husband, left the Alamo that same day, probably with messenger *Dr. John Sutherland . He may have been looking for a safe home for his family. Juana helped nurse Bowie during his illness in the Alamo. Months later Susanna Dickinson accused Juana of being the legendary Mexican woman who carried Travis's parley message to Santa Anna on March 4 from the Alamo, as well as saying Juana left the Alamo with her father before the siege on March 6. Other sources refute these stories.

According to Juana's personal account, she remained at the Alamo throughout the siege. On the final day she was protected by two men who were killed by Mexican soldiers who broke into a trunk and took valuables of Juana and her family. After the battle of the Alamo Juana, her son, and her sister stayed at her father's home.

Juana was first married in 1832 to Alejo Pérez Ramigio, with whom she had a son, Alejo. Some sources say that she also had a daughter who died in infancy. Perez died in 1834, possibly in the cholera epidemic. Juana married Horace Alexander Alsbury, by some accounts, in early January 1836. During their eleven-year marriage Alsbury was often away from San Antonio involved in revolutionary activities in Mexico, along the Rio Grande, and in South Texas. He did not survive his Mexican War military service and died, presumably in Mexico sometime in 1847. Alejo Pérez, Juana's son, was a long-time local San Antonio city official whose descendants still live in San Antonio.

When Alsbury was marched to Mexico with other San Antonio captives of Adrián Woll's invasion in September 1842, Juana followed the Texan prisoners as far as Candela, Coahuila, where she waited for Alsbury's return. He came there for her after his release from Perote prison in 1844, and the couple again made their home in San Antonio. After Alsbury's death Juana married Juan Pérez, her first husband's cousin.

Although she probably wrote few letters, her signature appears on numerous Bexar County land documents and in the state archives on legal petitions to the Texas legislature. She petitioned the legislature in 1857 and received a pension for the belongings she lost at the Alamo and for her services there. She probably died on July 23, 1888, at her son's Rancho de la Laguna on Salado Creek in east Bexar County. She is said to have been buried there, although other information gives her burial place as a Catholic cemetery in San Antonio.""

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COURTESY/Ricardo Rodriquez

*Dr. John Sutherland was the founder of Sutherland Springs in now Wilson County Texas

Dr. John Sutherland

Let us not forget our Texas Irish ... who are full of life and are no strangers to the battle field. traveled into Mexico on business and worked through dinner with Irish descendants and as well here in the US, adding we hit it off well. Ricardo Rodriguez writes, " My ancestors worked with the children of Alamo Scout Dr. John Sutherland (founder of Sutherland Springs Wilson County Texas) as they worked to build the Methodist Churches all over Texas and only praise was shared with me about his son Rev. Alejandro Sutherland. Where ever l hear drums and bagpipes playing, as with many of you, l will be there cheering them on. "

"Truth: my dna 2017 kit showed 74% European.

Spanish, French, German and as l looked twice,

yes Irish. Nothing new out there...the dna of a Texan, as we are all connected with a great story. All my ancestors did a GTT from Mexico, since it is faster. Tell the Irish ya love'um...cause they deserve it."

The Fighting Irish....

The Irish at the Alamo

In memorium

Samuel E. Burns

Andrew Duvalt

Robert Evans

Joseph M. Hawkins

William Daniel Jackson

James McGee

Robert McKinney

James Nowlan

Jackson J. Rusk

Burke Trammel

William B. Ward

Issac Ryan

Thomas Jackson

(Please comment if a Irish Defender is not listed)

"...The largest proportion of defenders were foreign immigrants from the United Kingdom."

From the 1800 Act of Union, the United Kingdom comprised: England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. Of the men that fought and died at the Alamo, 29 are known to be from the United Kingdom.

It has not been possible to trace the place of origin of 19 defenders. This suggests that they did not own land or have families in the United States, probably because they were new immigrants. I would suggest that there is more than fair chance that a high proportion, say 30%, of these 19 defenders were from the United Kingdom.

The Napoleonic Wars cost the United Kingdom dear, in 1815 unemployment and poverty were rife in Great Britain. The Treaty of Ghent in 1815 ended the War of 1812, between the United Kingdom and the United States, and opened the United States for immigration from the United Kingdom. However, the Irish potato famine did not start until, say, 1841 and did not cause mass emigration until 1845.

With this in mind, the proportion of Alamo defenders from the United Kingdom can probably be increased. Excluding: the 7 Tejanos, 2 Germans, 1 Dutchman, and John the black freedman; probably as much as 20% of the remaining 130 were new immigrants from the United Kingdom. Thus, men from the United Kingdom comprised at least 15% and may be 33%.of the defenders of the Alamo.

Submitted by Martin Smith, U.K. (Alamo Forum, November 1997)

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COURTESY / Ricardo Rodriguez " Alamo Legacy & Missions Assoc.