The Alamo

2 March 1908: The Alamo is to Texans as Fort Sumter is to Southern Confederate Americans, or the Liberty Bell at the Philadelphia Independence Hall is to Americans in general.  The Alamo was founded in 1718 as Mission San Antonio de Valero, a Spanish mission and fort in San Antonio, Texas. At the time of the Battle of the Alamo the mission was already more than 112 years old, the oldest structure on Texas soil. In the Battle of the Alamo approximately 200 Texan defenders, including William B. Travis, Jim Bowie, and Davy Crockett, held out for 13 days. ¨Remember the Alamo!" became the battle cry for the war to win independence for Texas. 1. Hugo, Schmeltzer & Co., wholesale grocers, dealers in fine wines, importers, liquors, tobacco, cigars, 320 Alamo Plaza; 2. The Alamo, 316 Alamo Plaza. 

12 November 2025: Little has changed at The Alamo in the 117 years since the postcard was sent. Visitors to the Alamo still include Texans making a pilgrimage to a holy shrine, as well as Americans remembering the John Wayne movie of 1960, or its 2004 update produced by Ron Howard, or foreign visitors wanting a peek at an American icon, a group poignantly including Mexicans disguising a tinge of shame. 

Postmarked:    2 Mar 1908; Laredo, TX
Rec´d: 4 Mar 1908; Bay St Louis, [not legible]

Stamp:    1c Green Benjamin Franklin #300

To:    Mrs. W. J. Urquhart
    Bay St. Louis
    Mississippi

Message:    En Route
    Dearie. Drawing close to Mexico  due there in half an hour  Weather hot. Topography of country slightly rolling  Mesquite & Cactus plentiful. The former is just leafing out  Flowers were quite profuse near San Antonio but none here  too dry. We enter Mexico at Laredo  Your  Will

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Mrs. W. J. Urquhart was Jenny Jennings Urquhart, step-mother of the author of the postcard, Will Urquhart. She and Will’s father, Scottish immigrant William Smith Urquhart were residents of San Antonio, TX so just what drew her to Bay Saint Louis, MS is unclear. Perhaps she went to the Gulf Coast for health reasons, many were drawn there for the fresh marine breezes. She lived only four more years after receiving the postcard, and when she died on 15 August 1912 in San Antonio, her body was brought back to Denison where they had lived in 1900  for burial in Oakwood Cemetery.

Will Urquhart was 28 years old as he took the trip out of San Antonio to Laredo and on into Mexico. At the time he was living with his father and stepmother, who normally was found in San Antonio. Will was very alert to the floral changes on the route, sounding a bit like a naturalist, which was somewhat of a surprise for a worker on the Southern Pacific Railroad. What drew him on this international trip is no clearer than what drew his stepmother to Mississippi.

Will Urquhart’s natural mother was Scottish born Jane Sangster who immigrated with his father, William Smith Urquhart, in 1870 from Aberdeenshire, Scotland to St. Louis, Mo. Jennie and W. S. Urquhart began to raise a family in America, first Jemima in St. Louis (1870), then in Bowling Green, Pike County, MO: John Sangster (1872); Charles (1874); George S. (1877); William S. Urquhart (our postcard author, born 24 Mar 1879); Elsie Ellen (1883). As well as these 7 children who survived to adulthood, two died young: James (5 months in 1880) and Jennie (10 months in 1885).

When Will was six years old, his mother died, leaving a widowed father and eight children to weep over her grave at Antioch Cemetery in Cyrene, MO. The oldest was not quite 15 years and the youngest just 4 months, but this infant would die that Christmas Eve at 10 months of age. His father re-married 2 years later to his second wife, Jennie Jennings by whom he had 3 more children: Anna (1889) in Missouri, then after the family moved to Denison, TX, Mary (1894-5, who lived just 15 days) and Richard (1897).

His trip to Mexico was a brief one, and just 18 days after mailing the postcard in Laredo, Will married Elvira Rios on 20 March 1908, in Bexar County, TX. Elvira had three children with Will Urguhart: Elsie (1908), Josephine (1910), and Eva (1911). The marriage did not last and by 1920 Elvira had brought her children and moved back in with her parents, Encarnaciòn Rios, who had immigrated from Piedras Negras across the Rio Grande from Eagle Pass to San Antonio in 1898, and Adriana Lopez, one of 7 daughters of Nepomesano and Josefa Lopez, immigrants from Mexico who had lived in Eagle Pass in 1880.

Wills second marriage was to Ozella ¨Stella¨ Duncan (1878-1962), the widow of Thomas Hogue who died in 1931. She and Tom were the parents of five children, all adult by the time of her marriage. By 1940 Will and Stella were living in Fair Park Hotel at 3703½ Parry in Dallas, a hotel adjacent to the Fair Grounds of the State Fair of Texas, an amusement park established there in 1886. Living with them in 1940 was Joe Allan Hogue, Stella’s 32-year-old widowed son. Another son, Rubin Leonard Hogue, died in 1947 in Hotel Romanos in Nuevo Laredo of morphine poisoning at the age of 45. By 1950 Stella and Will had moved to 4325 Metropolitan a few blocks southeast of the fair grounds.
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Will may have become disabled before 1950 when he is listed as ¨unable to work.¨ He died of a stroke on 29 July 1955 at the age of 75 and was buried at Oakland Cemetery in Dallas. Stella died of cerebral anoxia in 1962 at the age of 83, and was buried beside him.