Mack
Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
The Soldiers’
Chapel
You
could spend a day at Presidio La Bahia outside Goliad and never come across the
fine old Irish name of O’Conner, and that’s pretty much how the O’Conner family
wants it. And yet if not for Kathryn
O’Connor there wouldn’t be much to see.
Presidio
La Bahia was established by Spain along the Gulf Coast in 1721, and after two
removes was permanently located in 1749 on a hill along the Rio San Antonio near
present-day Goliad.
The
Presidio was a royal fortress and administrative center. Its chapel, Nuestra Senora de Loreto de la
Bahia, served the soldiers and administration, their families, and the town. The Franciscan mission to the First Nations
peoples, Espiritu Sancto, was situated down the road and across the river
because, although church parade was mandatory, soldiers were still considered a
bad influence.
The
chapel was the first structure built, and except for five years in the early
Republic has served the faithful as a church since 1749.
The
fortress, although miles from the Gulf, was the center of coastal defense
against the French. Later, when Spain
was one of the first friends of the USA, soldiers from La Bahia went into
action against the British.
Economically,
La Bahia was the beginning of the Texas cattle industry. Mission herds and private herds were rounded
up here for cattle drives to other settlements, guarded by soldiers of the
local command.
According
to the pamphlet, La Bahia was involved in six revolutions and many raids, and
has been a fortress for the armies of Spain, Mexico, and Texas.
La
Bahia is, unfortunately, most famous for the mass murder of Colonel James
Fannin and some 350 of his men on Palm Sunday, 1836 on the orders of a
particularly nasty little man. What is
less known is that many of the Mexican soldiers and their wives, including
Francisca Alvarez, a true mother of Texas, managed to conceal some of the
Texians, and saved others by listing them, apparently some falsely, as doctors
and medical attendants so that they would be spared take care of the many
Mexican wounded from both the Alamo and Coleto Creek battles.
With
independence, La Bahia was no longer an economic and administrative center, and
although the chapel was still in use the little fortress became a source of
building materials, and by the 1960s little was left.
Then
came Mrs. Kathryn O’Connor, who inspired and funded a historically accurate
restoration of the fort through the research and work of San Augustine architect
Raiford Stripling and using mostly local labor and artists.
A
correspondent who once worked for the family remarks on their generosity and
industry. Each generation of young
O’Connors begins in the family businesses with a broom and a mop, not an
attitude, and while their contributions to numerous causes and charities are
great, of modesty they do not put their name on things.
La
Bahia and the area around it include the fortress and its chapel, the excellent
state reconstruction of Mission Espiritu Sancto, the site of the Battle of
Coleto Creek, the mass grave and memorial to the murdered soldiers, the
birthplace of General Ignacio Zaragoza, who defeated the French at the Battle
of Puebla on 5 May (hence Cinco de Mayo)1862, and the eminently shoppable town
of Goliad centered on its beautiful courthouse.
The three murder sites are all on private property, and perhaps that
peaceful isolation is best.
The
docents on site are very welcoming, and one of them, Jeremy, allowed an old man
to help raise the Goliad Flag one morning.
At
the State of Texas Parks sites the staffs are equally helpful, and the
springtime beauty of the woods and fields around the mission are a naturalist’s
happiest dream.
Useful
sites:
The
wars and raids have passed, and governments come and go, but on every Sunday a
priest of the Diocese of Victoria still offers Mass under the same roof raised
for the purpose in 1749.
A small red flame…relit before the…doors of
a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs, which they
saw put out; that flame burns again…It could not have been lit but for the
builders and the tragedians, and there I found it this morning, burning anew
among the old stones.
-Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
-30-
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