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Reference · Organization

Alamo Letter Society

The Alamo Letter Society is a Texas organization that casts bronze plaques bearing the text of the letter William Barret Travis wrote from the besieged Alamo on February 24, 1836, and presents them to county courthouses in the state.1 Its stated mission joins two aims: to teach Texans about the armed struggle of the Texas Revolution through the plaques, and to honor José Antonio Navarro and Juan Seguín, whom it calls the two leading Tejanos of that war.1

Origins

According to the society’s account, the idea arose in January 2023 during a family visit to the Alamo, where a bronze plaque of the Travis letter stands on the lawn in front of the chapel. A seventh grade student in the family asked why such plaques were not found all over Texas; the society notes that seventh grade is the year Texas students take up the history of the state.1 Her father then recruited two others to help found the organization, and its leadership list names four co founders in all.1 Rosser Newton, the Dallas author of a biography of Governor Richard Coke, is a founding member of the society and one of its co chairs, a role outlined with his other affiliations on the civic page.12

The plaques

Each plaque duplicates the bronze tablet at the Alamo, a casting the society puts at 203 pounds, and reproduces the letter in full, from the dateline at the Commandancy of the Alamo to the postscript and signature.1 The document itself, its first printings and its custody at the state archives are set out in the entry on the Victory or Death letter. The society describes the letter as 220 words long and frames each tablet as a lasting reminder to later generations of the fight for liberty in 1836.1 The work of the San Felipe printers who first set that text in type is taken up in an essay on how the letter reached print.

Dedications

The society works county by county. It recruits a single chair in each county, who is responsible for the plaque and works with the county judge, the elected officer who presides over the commissioners court.13 The county chair then organizes a dedication ceremony, and the society lists local schools, bands, military bases and the Daughters of the Republic of Texas among the participants it expects.1

All of the dedications are held at the courthouse of the county concerned.4 The society’s dedication page lists past ceremonies in order, each with its date and county chair, alongside a schedule of those still to come.4 The first entry is Ellis County, on February 23, 2024.4 Its courthouse at Waxahachie was designed by J. Riely Gordon and is counted by the Texas Historical Commission among his best known buildings; his career is covered in the James Riely Gordon entry.5 The wider history of the buildings that receive the plaques is summarized in the reference article on Texas county courthouses.

The two honorees

The society describes itself as dedicated to Navarro and Seguín, and it says both men held that a person could be a proud Mexican and a loyal Tejano at once.1 Navarro, born at San Antonio de Béxar in 1795, was one of the three Mexican signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence and later helped write the Constitution of 1845; Navarro County is named for him.6 Seguín, also a native of San Antonio, entered the Alamo with the Texan forces when the siege began but was sent out as a courier, and his company was the only Tejano unit at San Jacinto.7

Awards

The society’s national board presents three awards: the Captain Albert Martin Alamo Award, the Governor William P. Clements Alamo Award and the Navarro Garcia Alamo Award.1 The first is named for the Gonzales captain who carried the letter through the Mexican lines on February 24, 1836, and later returned to die in the Alamo’s defense.18 It takes the form of a commissioned sculpture by the Navasota artist J Payne Lara, and the society lists Governor Greg Abbott among its recipients, honored on Alamo Day, March 6, 2025.1

References

  1. Alamo Letter Society, Alamo Letter Society home page. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10 ↩11 ↩12 ↩13

  2. Rosser Newton, Texas History. ↩

  3. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, County Courthouses. ↩

  4. Alamo Letter Society, Dedication Dates. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  5. Texas Historical Commission, Ellis County Courthouse. ↩

  6. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Navarro, José Antonio. ↩

  7. Handbook of Texas Online, Texas State Historical Association, Seguín, Juan Nepomuceno. ↩

  8. Texas State Library and Archives Commission, William Barret Travis’ Letter from the Alamo, 1836. ↩