The State of Texas put an old woman in San Antonio on a pension for the rest of her life because of what she said she had done inside the Alamo.
Her name was Maria Andrea Castanon Villanueva, though hardly anyone called her that. She was Madam Candelaria. The baptismal record has her born on the first of December, 1803, at Presidio del Rio Grande, and she spent the long back half of her life in San Antonio, a small figure in a shawl who had become one of the most photographed people in Texas. In March of 1888, a man named William Corner sat down with her and asked her straight out whether she had been inside the Alamo's fortifications during the fight. She said she had. She said that when the end came she was in the old church, nursing Colonel James Bowie, who was sick in his bed and could not rise from it.
Three years later the Texas Legislature took a vote on her. The House went 72 to 5. The Senate went 21 to 9. What the lawmakers recorded was that she had nursed the sick during the ...