Once again a Texas media outlet has mangled the spelling of one of the state’s most celebrated historic figures, who partly shares my name. A story last week in The Highlander, a twice-weekly newspaper published in Marble Falls, Texas, invited the public to the dedication of a plaque commemorating the famous 1836 “Victory or Death ” letter written by William Barret Travis, commander of the Alamo.
Except that the story in several places incorrectly spelled Barret with two Ts.
The Highlander thus joined an impressive roster of prominent Texas media, politicians and organizations that over the decades have gotten the storied man’s name wrong in print–scores of times. The list includes–repeatedly and too numerous to cite individually–the state’s largest newspapers: The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and even the Alamo’s hometown San Antonio Express-News. Texas Monthly, the state’s most prominent magazine (which once declined to publish my letter of correction). Written statements from elected officials, including both of Texas’s sitting Republican U.S. senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn. Even, amazingly, the web page right now of something called the Alamo Letter Society, apparently based in the Dallas suburb of University Park, and the list of inductees into another something called the Texas Trail of Fame in Fort Worth.
Okay, I admit this is a rant. My grievance dates back to when I lived in Texas decades before becoming New To Las Vegas. I used to get asked a lot if I am kin to Travis or named for him (no and no). It was annoying because, as I will explain presently, I don’t consider Travis all that much of a role model.
But I think this repeated blunder by the powers-that-be says a lot about the shallowness of hero-worshipping in the Great State of Texas, if not elsewhere.
A native of South Carolina, Travis was the 26-year-old commander of the Alamo, the San Antonio mission inadequately defended by gringo Americans that in 1836 fell to the Mexican Army, commanded by Antonio López de Santa Anna, which killed almost everyone inside, including Travis. But the written message that Travis managed to send out–“I shall never surrender or retreat … Victory or death!”–inspired fellow gringos. Chanting “Remember the Alamo,” they defeated the Mexicans just six weeks later, creating the independent Republic of Texas that after the Mexican War in 1846 became the 28th U.S. state.
The hero-worshippers of Travis, who tend to be a right-wing crowd, leave out a lot of stuff. Travis had abandoned a wife, two children (one unborn) and a failed law practice in Alabama after likely killing a man and not paying debts. Upon his arrival in Texas in 1831 to resume playing lawyer, Travis told everyone he was single, although he wasn’t. His immigration to Texas, then part of Mexico, was totally against Mexican law.
The movement of gringos into Texas that Travis joined was part of an effort to expand and maintain slavery, which Mexico was in the process of outlawing. Travis owned slaves before and after his move to Texas, Indeed, many who sing Travis’s praises are the same folks who want a high wall and armed guards along the Rio Grande to keep out foreign nationals whose presence would be just as illegal now in Texas as his was in the 1830s.The nitty-gritty of these inconvenient truths are often missing in accounts of Travis–along with a correct spelling.
A time of particular orthographic challenge was in 2013. That’s when the “Victory or Death” letter, which has been stored at the Texas State Library in Austin since Travis’s great grandson sold it to the state for $85 (a bargain $3,200 in today’s dollars), was put on display at the Alamo amid much hubbub for the first time since Travis wrote it in 1836. The San Antonio Business Journal hailed the return of the famous letter “penned by Alamo hero William Barrett Travis.” The website of hometown TV station WOIA, the NBC affiliate, did no better: “Lt. Colonel William Barrett Travis’ famous letter returns to the Alamo this week …”
The official website of San Antonio tourism, VisitSanAntonio.com, couldn’t get it right. “One hundred and seventy-seven years ago, Alamo commander William Barrett Travis wrote an urgent letter requesting aid during the Alamo’s siege.” At Alamo’s own gift shop, the “William Barrett Travis Ring Necklace” could be yours for just $39.99. (After I wrote about this back then, the Alamo’s gift shop fixed the spelling.)
More examples: “For the first time since Lt. Col. William Barrett Travis penned the letter from the then-besieged Alamo,” began a post on the website of KTRE, the ABC TV affiliate in Lubbock. Texas. The letter was “written by William Barrett Travis,” declared a story in suburban Dallas’s Denton Record-Chronicle. “The return of Col. William Barrett Travis’ ‘Victory or Death’ letter,” proclaimed post on TexasVeteransBlog.com.
The mistakes continue periodically. In 2020 Ted Cruz issued a press release stating that on the Senate floor he was “going to read the letter from the Alamo Lieutenant Colonel William Barrett Travis wrote asking for help.” In 2022 and 2023, Cornyn issued essential identical press releases stating that he read “William Barrett Travis’s famous letter on the Senate floor.” Other Texas officeholders who have blown the spelling include ex-Houston congressman Ted Poe (four times in a one-year period) and Cruz’ predecessor, Kay Bailey Hutchison.
A 2023 story in the Corpus Christi (Tex.) Caller-Times referenced “William Barrett Travis” in a story about the naming of an Austin building for the late Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Just last month, the Corsicana Daily Sun in Texas referenced “William Barrett Travis” in an article about a different plaque installation.
The misspellings, of course, all suggest a certain deficiency in Texas core historical knowledge. To conclude my rant, if they’re not going to do more research, those who want to brag about all this Texas history should at a minimum try crossing just one T.
???
Correction: it’s the Alamo Leter Society.