Dac Crossley's Western Blog

The Yellow Rose of Texas

The Yellow Rose of Texas.

“You can talk about your dearest maids
And sing of rose-a-lee.
But the Yellow Rose of Texas
Beats the belles of Tennessee.”

So went the lyrics in an old song book my grandmother Crossley read to me. Wish I had it. Those lyrics antedate the recorded country-western versions.

You may have read that a mulatto woman, Emily Morgan, entertained Mexican General Santa Ana and distracted him during the Battle of San Jacinto, where the Texicans defeated the Mexican and won Texas its freedom. She became the Yellow Rose of Texas. That’s a great legend but probably without any basis.

Emily West (not Morgan) was a free woman of color in New York. She signed a one-year contract with a Texan planter, James Morgan, to be his housekeeper. When the Mexican army destroyed Morgan’s plantation they took with them all the slaves and Emily West as well. After the battle at San Jacinto, Emily found refuge with one Isaac Moreland. That much is known.

The legend of the Yellow Rose cropped up in the 1840s and was passed along in barrooms. Years later, the Texas writer Francis X. Tolbert included the legend in his book The Day of San Jacinto but cited no references. In the 1950s a Texas Historian from A&M said Emily was the girl described in the popular Mitch Miller version of The Yellow Rose of Texas. The legend grew and grew, with increasingly fantastic tales of the beauty of Emily the Yellow Rose.

There’s no documentation anyplace that suggests that any of this is real. The reports of the Mexican officers do not mention her. The victorious Texans are silent. She did not appear any place after the Battle of San Jacinto.

The real Emily West applied for and received a passport in 1837. She returned to New York, presumably on Morgan’s schooner along with Lorenzo de Zavala’s widow.

And I STILL maintain – always have – that the Yellow Rose of Texas is the bloom of the Opuntia cactus, so beloved in my childhood.

Dac Crossley
March 20, 2018. Happy Birthday, Chris.

“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” – actor in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.

The Runaway Scrape

That’s what the Texans called it. The Spring of 1836, when they fled Santa Ana’s Mexican Army. They packed up what they could carry and burned the rest. And made a mad dash for Louisiana. The Runaway Scrape.

The Fall of the Alamo meant that nothing stood between the Texans and the killer Santa Ana and his army. The Texas army? They were right there, running away with everybody else. Why didn’t they stand and fight? The Texans demanded that of General Sam Houston.

Well, it wasn’t really an army. It was a band of men who didn’t know how to take orders, much less march in ranks. Yes, they knew how to fight. Didn’t they follow Ben Milam into San Antonio and chase the Mexicans out? Yes they did, and they disobeyed their commanders to do it.

Turn and fight, Houston! The new State of Texas demanded it. Citizens in the Runaway Scrape chided Sam Houston. He kept his own council. The army fled along with everyone else.

On an improvised anvil, a bare-chested General Houston worked on his rifle. A teenager approached him – “Mister, can you fix my musket?”

“Sure.” Houston repaired the young soldier’s weapon. That soldier didn’t know General Houston.

At a swollen creek, Sam Houston commandeered a team of oxen to pull his cannon across. The owner, a lady fleeing from the Mexican Army objected loudly. She got her team back but continued to press Houston for his rental fee.

Well, we know how it worked out. At San Jacinto, the Texans surprised Santa Ana and won their freedom. The Scrapers returned to rebuild the Republic of Texas.

For some years afterwards, sunflowers sprung up in the ruts created during the Runaway Scrape. And Texans referred to the blooms as “Sam Houstons.

Dac Crossley
March 9, 2018. Happy Birthday, Wayne Swank!

“Nothing can conduce more to the order and stability of a government than the simplicity of the laws, the proper definition of rights, and their impartial and consistent administration.” – Sam Houston.