Notes and Documents

Fannin's Men: Some Additions to Earlier Rosters

THOMAS L. MILLER

The horrible massacre of Colonel James W. Fannin and his men at Goliad on March 27, 1836, by order of General Antonio López de Santa Anna is well known to students of history. Not known to this day, however, is the exact number of the men who perished that day nor the number of those who escaped. In the same year of the massacre, a Texas newspaper, the Telegraph and Texas Register, published an incomplete list of the men of Fannin's command who were killed, escaped, or absent on that Sunday in March, 1836. This same list was copied and published in the Texas Almanac of 1860.

The most thorough study of Fannin's men was made by Judge Harbert Davenport. The result of his study, "The Men of Goliad," was published in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, XLIII, July, 1939. At the conclusion of the article, in the bibliographic notes, Judge Davenport wrote: "The necessarily slow and tedious examination of the Headright, Bounty, and Donation Files, without which no roll of Fannin's men could be made even approximately correct, was done by Honorable L. W. Kemp, who kindly supplied the writer with abstracts of those files relating to Fannin's men."

This writer has just concluded a study of military land grants in Texas in which the Bounty and Donation Files of the General Land Office of Texas were examined. While the purpose of this study was not to compile rolls for the battles of the Texas Revolution, information on the military service and battle engagements of those who received military land grants was obtained. With the information thus obtained a new list of Fannin's men was com-