04/21/2018
On this day in history we commemorate the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836, in which Texas won independence from Mexico. A 570ft monument, dedicated on the 101st anniversary of the battle, marks the site on the banks of the San Jacinto River.
A lesser known fact is where the "last blood" took place on that day. Here with some words is Mike Murphey, President of the Crown Hill Cemetery Association and Lucy Turoff, Curator of the Pasadena Heritage Park & Museum.
"When you walk into the woods bordering Vince’s Bayou in Pasadena’s Crown Hill Cemetery,
you will probably notice a large concrete cross with a beautiful figure of Jesus Christ upon it. This monument is a variation of the “Ascension” cross designed by artist Carlo Bronti and shows Jesus ascending into Heaven. It was placed here by the members of Crown Hill Cemetery Association on April 21, 2017—181 years to the day after the “last blood” of the Battle of San Jacinto was spilled here on the banks of Vince’s Bayou on April 21, 1836.
On that bloody day over six hundred thirty soldiers of the Mexican Army under the command of General Santa Anna were killed at the Battle of San Jacinto. Only one hundred fifty or so of these men were killed at the official San Jacinto Battleground, with the remainder being slaughtered as they retreated back down Old Harrisburg Road hoping to cross Vince’s Bridge over Vince’s Bayou. However the bridge had been burned down earlier by Texan scout Deaf Smith and his men, leaving the desperate soldiers with the choice to die at the Texans’ hands or risk drowning in trying to swim across the two hundred foot wide floodwaters of Vince’s Bayou.
As L.W. Kemp wrote in his book The Battle of San Jacinto & the San Jacinto Campaign, “Some of the Mexican cavalry tried to escape over Vince’s Bridge, only to find that the bridge was gone. In desperation, some of the flying horsemen spurred their mounts down the steep bank; some dismounted and plunged into the swollen stream. The Texans came up and poured a deadly fire into the welter of Mexicans struggling with the flood. Escape was virtually impossible.” Less than a dozen men made it across to the other side and the rest made “the waters of the bayou run red with their gore.”
The bodies of these unfortunate soldiers lay along the road and on the bayou banks where they fell for many years until they were finally buried by local ranchers when their cows started chewing on the bones, which “ruined the taste of the milk and meat.” No monument or marker had ever been placed in their memory at the Battleground or anywhere else until this monument was placed at Crown Hill Cemetery on the wooded bayou bank where many of the soldiers were killed. A simple oversized clay brick at the base of the Monument states “In Memory of the Unknown Dead of the Battle of San Jacinto--April 21, 1836—Descanse En Paz.” The flowers and vigil light placed by the Monument and the large pipe wind chimes hanging in a nearby tree are a tribute in place of the funerals that never were and the church bells that were never rung over the unknown dead of San Jacinto."
