Susannah Dickinson

1. Susannah Dickinson Susanna Wilkerson Dickinsonwill 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. By: Kaitlyn Elizabeth McKinley

2. Before The Alamo • I was born in 1814 as Susannah Wilkerson. I soon married at the age of 15 on May 24, 1829. and no less than two years later Almaron moved us to DeWitt colony in Texas in 1831. Almaron received a league of land on the bank of the San Marcos river below the Old Bexar Road. We acquired property in Gonzales town in 1834 and Almaron soon became a blacksmith. We had a daughter and named her Angelina Elizabeth Dickinson. She was the cutest baby in the world and would soon earn her name in the Alamo.

3. During And After The Revolution • The battle of Gonzales marked the beginning of the Texas revolution and we knew that. Almaron was at the Alamo and among the original 18 defenders. He was in charge of the cannon during the confrontation. He also joined a group of volunteers to help secure San Antonio for the Texans and served as an aide to General Burleson during the Siege of Bexar. I stayed back with Angelina.

4. During and After The Revolution (Cont.d) • A few weeks later our home was looted by members of an East Texas militia company. I decided to join Almaron in San Antonio. We set up residence in the Musquiz house on the southwest corner of porter street and the main plaza, but when Mexican troops arrived in san Antonio we moved to the Alamo. This is where my Daughter Angelina earned her name as “The Babe Of The Alamo,” since she was only 15 months old at the time. Colonel William Barrett Travis gave the infant a ring the was a gift from his beloved Rebecca Cummings just before he died.

5. After the Fall • After the fall of the Alamo, Santa Anna interviewed me. I was accompanied by Angelina who was still a young infant girl, and the other female survivors. He gave each of us a blanket and two dollars in silver before releasing us. Legend says I displayed my 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 me and my 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, scouted for the Texas army and found the travelers and they were taken to meet Houston in Gonzales.

6. Later Life • Without skills, illiterate and only twenty-two years old when Texas independence was won, I requested, but was denied a $500 government donation forcing me to live in poverty. In the years that followed, I suffered through several stormy marriages. I married John Williams in late 1837, but his abusiveness prompted our divorce by March 24 of the following spring. I then married Francis P. Herring who died in 1843. This marriage was followed by my union to Peter Bellows. I divorced the latter after he charged me with adultery and prostitution. The divorce petitionaccused me of taking up residence in a "house of ill fame." Indeed, before my marriage to Bellows I may well have taken up residence in the Mansion House Hotel of Pamela Mann, a known brothel. Despite these accusations, I received praise from the clergy for my worknursing cholera victims in Houston. In 1857, I married German emigrant, Joseph William Hannig . This was my fifth marriage, but a stable and happy one. The couple soon moved to Austin, where Hannig ran a successful cabinet shop and furniture store. Until my death in Austin on October 7, 1883, I was active in relating my experiences in the Alamo and commemorating its heroes wherever I could find an audience.