Locating the Battle of Rosillo: A Newly Discovered Map Indicates the Likely Site of the 1813 Battle where the First Republic of Texas Was Born

Abstract

Locating the Battle of Rosillo: A Newly Discovered Map Indicates the Likely Site of the 1813 Battle where the First Republic of Texas Was Born Robert P. Marshall (bio) The importance of the Battle of Medina—the bloodiest in Texas history—has become more widely recognized in recent years. On August 18, 1813, Spanish royalist commander Joaquín de Arredondo routed a multinational republican army originally organized by José Bernardo Gutiérrez de Lara and Augustus W. Magee, effectively destroying armed resistance to colonial rule in Texas until the independence of Mexico in 1821. Still overlooked, though, is the Battle of Rosillo, the March 29, 1813, victory for the rebels that led to the first, albeit short-lived, Republic of Texas. This neglect even extends to the misplacement of the monument commemorating the battle, but a new discovery makes knowing the likely location possible. The present author has found a color-coded original of a December 1876 map of the Goliad Road by surveyor W. H. Owen in a stack of maps awaiting cataloging and filing in the Bexar County Spanish Archives. The newly discovered 1876 map (frontispiece) shows the routes of both the “New” and the “Old” roads between San Antonio de Béxar and Goliad. Even the existence of the 1876 map is extremely fortuitous, for Owen’s survey of the Old Goliad Road was an accident of history. As he noted on his original map, Owen had been hired by the Bexar County commissioners in 1876 to survey the New Goliad Road, which they had established in 1853 as a cut-off of the Old Goliad Road. Mistakenly thinking he was on the New Goliad Road route, Owen surveyed most of the Old Goliad Road route before noticing his error. Spanish Texas Governor Manuel [End Page 395] María de Salcedo’s 1809 La Bahía Road crossing Salado Creek and the Old Goliad Road crossing of Salado Creek recognized by the Texas Historical Commission are both the same as the Old Goliad Road crossing of Salado Creek as surveyed by Owen in 1876.1 Therefore, it seems logical to deduce that the newly discovered 1876 map shows the Spanish colonial route of the La Bahía Road astride which, according to participants in the Battle of Rosillo, the royalist leaders, Governor Salcedo and Colonel Simón de Herrera, set an ambush that led to the fight on March 29, 1813. W. H. Owen noted on his map an “Old Road” branching west off of the Old Goliad (La Bahía) Road at a location just west of Rosillo Creek and east of Salado Creek, about eight miles from San Antonio’s main plaza. Its relationship to local terrain features corresponds well with battle participant commentaries in archival records. The Rosillo battleground was reported to be eight miles from San Antonio de Béxar, just north of a westward fork off the La Bahía Road toward the lower Spanish missions, near Rosillo Creek, east of Salado Creek and within nine miles of Bexar.2 Early in the history of San Antonio de Béxar there probably were at least two routes exiting the town, which joined before crossing Calaveras Creek and continued along the left bank of the San Antonio River to the presidio at La Bahía (see Figure 2). The old Goliad Road mapped by Owen in 1876 apparently came to be disused, probably because a more southerly route required one less creek crossing. The more southerly route came to be commonly known as the Goliad Road by the 1840s. In fact, an 1845 deed including the Rosillo battleground showed the La Bahía Road crossing of Salado Creek to be just south of its confluence with Rosillo creek, about five miles south of Governor Salcedo’s 1809 crossing.3 In September 1843, while traveling from Gonzales to San Antonio, William Bollaert wrote that he was “four miles from the battleground where [Samuel] Kemper and his brave associates fought the Spanish royalists” at a location just east of Salado Creek.4 The distance from Bollaert’s location to the Salado’s confluence with Rosillo Creek is about six miles. His account...