Historical Marker
Enrique Esparza (September, 1824-December 20, 1917)
San Antonio, Bexar County · Texas
Erected 1968
Esparza told his story to the San Antonio Express in 1902, 1904 and 1907. "All the others are dead," he told the writer Charles Merritt Barnes in 1907. "I alone live of they who were within the Alamo when it fell." His account is one of the few that place other noncombatants inside, among them Juana Melton. He farmed in Atascosa County, then truck-farmed in San Antonio and carted goods to and from Indianola, a trip so hard he went first to church on returning. His daughter María Josefa became Sister Claude of the Incarnate Word in 1871.
What the plaque says
Enrique Esparza (September, 1824-December 20, 1917) Son of Alamo defender Gregorio Esparaza, 11-year old Enrique, his mother, two brothers, and sister were present at the seige by the Mexican Army (Feb. 23-Mar. 6, 1836). Hidden in a pile of hay, the youth saw his father fall and sitnessed the Heroic death of James Bowie on his sick bed. He then watched the bodies of the Texans burn in two huge pyres. Enrique Esparza's Eye-witness story later became Invaluable, for he was one of few survivors. (1968)
Where it stands
29.24107, -98.46689 · Directions
Worth the stop nearby
- Mission Espada and the Espada Aqueduct — 5.4 miThe southernmost San Antonio mission and the oldest Spanish aqueduct in the United States, still carrying river water over Sixmile Creek to the fields after nearly three centuries.
- Mission San Juan — 6.4 miThe mission near the river bend where the San Antonio got its name in 1691, with an unfinished church foundation and farm fields still watered by an eighteenth-century acequia.
- San Antonio Missions National Historical Park — 8.3 miFour working parish churches on the Mission Trail south of downtown, with the visitor center at Mission San Jose, the Queen of the Missions, and the descendants who still worship there.
- Mission Concepción — 10 miA stone church dedicated in 1755 that has never fallen into ruin, its convento ceilings still painted, and the ground where the Texas Revolution's fight for San Antonio began.