TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

After considerable trouble recruiting armed men from Milam County to help support them in a fightagainst fellow Texans, Smith and Chandler’s delegation rode quietly into town on December 29, 1842. 43 Theyinitially approached William “Peg Leg” Ward, the Commissioner of the Land Office, to whom they delivered theorder from President Houston. 44 Ward had lost a leg on the first day of the Texas Revolution and also an arm in thefireworks of Austin’s first Texas Independence Day celebration on March 2, 1840. He assigned two able-bodiedclerks, Nathan Mitchell and Walter Winn, to go with the archives to protect them from the bitterly cold rain. 45Foul weather from that norther found the citizens of a sadly depopulated Austin huddled around their hearthsearly on the morning of December 30th. Many of the town’s armed men had responded to a signal of impendingIndian attack which had occurred earlier that day, and were out scouting for the war party. The remaining citizens,concerned about a dearth of armed men left to defend the town, had already gathered in the large Bullock’s Hotelat the northwest corner of Congress and Pecan (now Sixth Street), about a block east of Eberly House.46Bullock’s Hotel. Photo made available through the Portal to Texas History and the Austin History Center. 4643Haley, Houston, 251; Gray, Scrap-Book, 143; A.E. Skinner, “Mrs. Eberly and That Cannon: Myth-Making in Texas History,” AustinHist. Ctr., Angelina Eberly Vertical File, 2-3. See also A.E. Skinner, “Mrs. Eberly and the Cannon: Myth-Making in Texas History,”Texas Libraries 3, no. 4 (Winter 1981), 155-63. Some sources give December 29, 1842, as the date of the wagoneers’ entry into Austin,cf. Kerr, Seat of Empire, 184; Winfrey, Archive War, 435. However, it seems unlikely that the men would have planned to secretlytravel into town, give a written order to Land Commissioner Ward, select two archivists to come with them, remove the records, andspeed off to the north with exhausted oxen all in one early morning. Skinner quotes Captain Mark Lewis as stating in his January1, 1843 report that the removal of the archives took place early on the morning of Friday, December 30, 1842, so it is reasonable tobelieve that Houston’s men arrived late on Thursday the 29 th .44David C. Humphrey, Peg Leg: The Improbable Life of a Texas Hero: Thomas William Ward, 1807–1872 (Denton: TSHA, 2009), 87.45Skinner, “Mrs. Eberly,” 4; Kerr, “Embattled.”46http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth124480/:, accessed June 21, 2015, Univ. of N. Tex. Libs., Portal to Texas History,http://texashistory.unt.edu, crediting Austin Hist. Ctr., Austin Pub. Lib.45