WEST, EMILY D. (?-?). Emily D. West, erroneously
called Emily Morgan by those who presumed
her a slave of James Morganqv and the "Yellow
Rose of Texas" by twentieth-century
myth-makers, was born a free black in New
Haven, Connecticut. She signed a contract
with agent James Morgan in New York City
on October 25, 1835, to work a year as housekeeper
at the New Washington Association'sqv hotel,
Morgan's Point, Texas. Morgan was to pay
her $100 a year and provide her transportation
to Galveston Bay on board the company's schooner,
scheduled to leave with thirteen artisans
and laborers in November. She arrived in
Texas in December on board the same vessel
as Emily de Zavalaqv and her children. On
April 16, 1836, while James Morgan was absent
in Galveston in command of Fort Travis, Mexican
cavalrymen under command of Col. Juan N.
Almonteqv arrived at New Washington to seize
President David G. Burnet,qv who was embarking
on a schooner for Galveston Island. As the
president and his family sailed away, the
troops seized Emily and other black servants
at Morgan's warehouse, along with a number
of white residents and workmen. Gen. Antonio
López de Santa Annaqv arrived at New Washington
the following day, and after three days of
resting and looting the warehouses, he ordered
the buildings set afire and departed to challenge
Sam Houston'sqv army, which was encamped
about ten miles away on Buffalo Bayou. Emily
was forced to accompany the Mexican army,
doubtless already a rape victim. With regard
to the Yellow Rose legend, she may have been
in Santa Anna's tent when the Texans charged
the Mexican camp on April 21, but it was
not by choice. She could not have known Houston's
plans, nor could she have intentionally delayed
Santa Anna. Moreover, in their official reports
after returning to Mexico, none of his disaffected
officers mentioned the presence of a woman
or even that el presidente was in a state
of undress. After the battle Emily found
refuge with Isaac N. Moreland,qv an artillery
officer, who later made his home in Houston
and served as county judge. Strangers assumed
Emily was James Morgan's slave because she
was black.
A story was told around campfires and
in
barrooms that Emily had helped defeat
the
Mexican army by a dalliance with Santa
Anna.
The only discovered documentation for
this
in the nineteenth century was a chance
conversation
in 1842 between a visiting Englishman
and
a veteran on board a steamer from Galveston
to Houston. William Bollaertqv recorded
in
his journal, "The battle of San
Jacinto
was probably lost to the Mexicans,
owing
to the influence of a Mulatta Girl
(Emily)
belonging to Col. Morgan who was closeted
in the tent with G'l Santana."
Bollaert
does not identify the veteran or say
Emily
was Morgan's slave. The edited diary,
published
in 1956, included that notation as
a footnote
with Bollaert's name attached, a fact
that
led readers to believe the note was
a footnote
in the original manuscript. The editor's
1956 footnote launched prurient interest
on the part of two amateur historians
who
concocted the modern fiction. Francis
X.
Tolbert,qv a prolific journalist, says
in
his The Day of San Jacinto (1959) that
Emily
was a "decorative long-haired
mulatto
girl...Latin looking woman of about
twenty."
No footnote documents this description
or
the author's statement that she was
in Santa
Anna's tent. Tolbert also presumptively
identified
Morgan as the informant. Henderson
Shuffler,qv
also a journalist, became a publicist
for
Texas A&M University in the 1950s,
wrote
historical articles for the Southwestern
Historical Quarterly,qv and made speeches
while working at the Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Centerqv at the University
of Texas
in the 1960s. On one occasion he said
Emily
was "the M'latta Houri" of
the
Texas Revolution,qv a "winsome,
light-skinned...slave
of James Morgan." He added that
she
was a fitting candidate for the identity
of the girl in the then-popular Mitch
Miller
version of "The Yellow Rose of
Texas."
Shuffler credited Tolbert for bringing
Emily's
story out into the open and then manufactured
more fantasies, including the whim
that "her
deliberately provocative amble down
the street
[in New Washington was] the most exciting
event in town." He added that
her story
was "widely known and often retold...in
the 1840s." In closing, he suggested
that a stone might be placed at the
San Jacinto
battleground "In Honor of Emily
Who
Gave Her All for Texas Piece by Piece."
In 1976 a professor of English at Sam
Houston
State University, Martha Anne Turner,
published
a small book, The Yellow Rose of Texas:
Her
Saga and Her Song, an outgrowth of
a paper
she delivered in 1969 at the American
Studies
Association of Texas. She credits Shuffler's
speech and adds even more undocumented
details
before tracing the roots of the song.
Thus
the story was full-blown for the journalistic
frenzy of the Texas Sesquicentennial
in 1986.
The real Emily D. West remained in
Texas
until early 1837, when she asked for
and
received a passport allowing her to
return
home. Isaac Moreland wrote a note to
the
secretary of state saying that he had
met
Emily in April 1836, that she was a
thirty-six-year-old
free woman who had lost her "free"
papers at the battleground. She stated
that
she came from New York in September
1835
with Colonel Morgan and was anxious
to return
home. Although there is no date on
the application
housed in the Texas State Archives,
Mrs.
Lorenzo de Zavala, by then a widow,
was planning
to return to New York on board Morgan's
schooner
in March, and it seems possible that
Morgan
arranged passage aboard for Emily.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: James M. Day, comp.,
Texas
Almanac, 1857-1873: A Compendium of
Texas
History (Waco: Texian Press, 1967).
W. Eugene
Hollon and Ruth L. Butler, eds., William
Bollaert's Texas (Norman: University
of Oklahoma
Press, 1956). Antonio López de Santa
Anna
et al., The Mexican Side of the Texan
Revolution,
trans. Carlos E. Castañeda (Dallas:
Turner,
1928; 2d ed., Austin: Graphic Ideas,
1970).
Frank X. Tolbert, The Day of San Jacinto
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959; 2d ed.,
Austin:
Pemberton Press, 1969). Martha Anne
Turner,
The Yellow Rose of Texas: Her Saga
and Her
Song (Austin: Shoal Creek Publishers,
1976).
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