Surely those were government cannon, like the Come and get cannon archy posted. :>)
Well, the Gonzales gun was indeed a former [Mexican] Central Governmental piece, and you could argue that it became a part of the common property of the citizens of Gonzales, though mostly of the blacksmith who repaired it:
"On October 1 John Sowell, Jacob Darst and Richard Chisholm exhumed the Peach Orchard Cannon and mounted it on the axle of Eli Mitchell's cotton wagon. Darst unspiked the touchhole leaving it somewhat oversized, about that of a man's thumb."He further describes his view of the fate of the cannon after the confrontation:
"The following day, October 3, 1835, Noah Smithwick, a skilled blacksmith and gunsmith arrived at Gonzales and received reports of the battle and noted how the wallowed-out touchhole had backfired smoke and powder during the battle. He took the rusty iron cannon back to Sowell's blacksmith shop to repair the touch-hole. He heated the weapon and poured molten metal in the oversized touch-hole. Hardening it with water, a crude nail bit was used to bore a new hole in the molten plug. That threw the ignition fire too far to the rear of the breech, so he spiked the new touch-hole with more molten metal. A second new touch-hole was then bored ahead of the first, but it was too small to sustain the fire powder with enough oxygen to discharge the cannon. The second touch-hole was plugged with molten metal and with plow-shearing and the point of a file, he center-punched the adjacent breech metal and the original spiked touch-hole. About fifteen degrees from the spike he bored a new and efficient touch-hole, brushed the cannon and mounted it on wooden trucks (wheels) cut from trunks of cottonwood trees found near the river bottom. To further magnify the cannon, a limber was attached to the trail of the cannon and the new carriage and limber were christened the 'Flying Artillery' it bounced out of Gonzales on October 12 enroute to Bejar."
"According to Smithwick, about a day's march out of Gonzales, the axle and wheels began to smoke because of friction in spite of pouring water on it and using tallow as an axle lubricant. Two pair of longhorn steers had to be prodded with forty homemade file-pikes, which had been made by Chisholm and attached to cane poles. The file-pikes were the first and only uniform accouterments of the First Voluntary Army and their purpose was for use against the Mexican Cavalry. After the 'army' crossed Sandies Creek and went about one and one-half miles west they camped in a circular fashion around a mound on the west bank of the Sandies. On the morning of October 14, General Stephen F. Austin and Colonel Ben Milam inspected the broken carriage of the Flying Artillery, realized the ineffectiveness of the runty cannon and decided to abandon it. So, the cannon was buried in a shallow, sandy grave below its carriage which was set on fire to give the appearance of an Indian campfire. Creed Taylor reported that he last saw the cannon flag alongside a sapling near the cannon's grave."
[From Rx, Take One Cannon: The Gonzales Come & Take It Cannon. The cannon obtained by Dr. Wagner as he contends that the DeWitt colonists received it, with no trunnions, oversize cascabel, and reinforcement around the breech.]In July, 1936 a flood unearthed a 21.5 inch long, 69 pound pitted and rusty iron cannon on the west side of Sandies Creek about 1.5 miles from where the old Gonzales-Bexar road crosses Sandies Creek on one of Byrd Lockhart's grants given for service as surveyor for the DeWitt Colony in western GonzalesCo. This location was consistent with where the volunteer army from Gonzales could have been when the cannon was abandoned as described by Smithwick and Taylor. The outer diameter of the muzzle was 3 7/16 inches, that of a six-pounder cannon of the period, but the inner bore was much too small. Wagner says "the 'Come and Take It Cannon' from its 101 year old resting place was spotted by rescue worker, Lowell Cooper. It was hot and he was standing knee-deep in mud at the time he spotted the cannon. He placed the cannon on higher ground near the road where a mail carrier saw it and took it to the old Gonzales Post Office. There it rested for about thirty two years. When the new Gonzales Post Office was built the unimpressive pipe-like tube was salvaged, taken to a gun exhibit in Houston where a Mexican gun collector [Henry Guerra] accepted it in a side trade for Indian artifacts. He had recognized it as a Mexican cannon of' early 19th century vintage. After keeping it in the gun room of his home in Reynosa for five years, he shipped it to the National Rifle Association display in San Antonio, Texas in May, 1979." There a Shiner gun collector, Wagner, spotted the unimpressive cannon, acquired it and with the help of two fellow researchers, Douglas Kubicek and Allan Ondrusek, spent two years researching the cannon and its history. Wagner argued that such a small cannon, pipe if you will, with some characteristics (outer diameter and oversize cascabel about the size of a 6# ball) of a conventional six-pounder which weighs much more would only take a few men to transport it, bury it, dig it up, be quickly mounted, transported quickly across creeks and rivers by non-professional volunteers as described for the Gonzales cannon. He cites stories from Gonzales families, Kellogg and Dikes, that have been passed down through the generations. One story refers to "the little black cannon" and another tells stories of the repeated submersion of the piece in the river to cool it off between firings. Ben Highsmith as told to author A. J. Sowell and published in Early Settlers and Indian Fighters of Southwest Texas in 1900 said "the cannon in question was a small affair, had never been used by the settlers against an enemy and they had no balls to fit it..." His description seems to describe a cannon with a small or odd bore. He says "John Sowell, a gunsmith of Gonzales, hammered out a ball on his anvil to fit the cannon, and it was loaded at his shop." Highsmith refers to slugs prepared in Sowell's shop used at the battle and says the cannon was fired five times.
[Photo: View of Wagner's cannon from the muzzle. He believes the depressions and two hatched marks at the bottom may be Smithwick's attempt to date his efforts as O 11 or Oct. 11]The story of Dr. Wagner's efforts and research to prove the cannon recovered in 1936 was the cannon used in the battle which now resides in the Gonzales County Museum is related in detail in the publication by Jane Bradfield, Rx, Take One Cannon: The Gonzales Come & Take It Cannon. P.J. Wagner, Research & Publishing Co., Shiner, TX, 1981. By the use of cannonoscopy as Wagner calls it, medical instruments for remote viewing were employed to examine and photograph down the bore. He contends that it revealed the spiking described by Noah Smithwick, the gunsmith. Later the bushings were found via x-rays. He says that for all practical purposes, Smithwick's signature and proofmark were recognized from his memoirs published in 1899 in the Evolution of a State or Early Times in Texas. Dr. Wagner concluded from the analysis that "moulten metal was poured into the first big hole (the wallowed out touchhole). When it cooled and hardened the blacksmith tried to redrill the touchhole to the correct size. This failed and he moved forward to drill a second touchhole which also failed. Both of these holes were plugged with a mixture of moulten metals which suggested that the smithy didn't have enough of the original metal left. Then a completely new touchhole was drilled."
Wagner listed what he felt that the x-ray examination had revealed:
1. They confirmed what he saw on the cannonoscopy. It had been a spiked cannon.
2. They revealed the presence of not only one, but two bushings, confirming the two little black spots of the cannonoscopy.
3. They revealed the bushings themselves had been plugged.
4. They showed that the breech of the cannon was reinforced. (In one of Ramon Músquiz's letters to Green DeWitt he told DeWitt not to worry about the cannon; it was 'reforzado.')
5. They revealed that the cannon was bi-metallic. The cannon had a poorly refined brass alloy core and iron plowshared around it as the outer shell. The cannon was both brass and iron.
6. The spiked touchhole was funnel shaped, going from thumbsize smaller.
[Photo above: The opening at left is the touchhole and the right circled region is proposed by Wagner to be the spiked and bushed touchhole with center punch holes and plowsharing. He points out that the large course flaky pitting on this view was consistent with exposure to heating relative to the other side which exhibited a much finer rust oxidation. This may have occurred in the Gonzales blacksmith shops and/or exposure of the top side to the fire built over its burial place as described by Taylor. The lesser degree of oxidation relative to cannons described by Darst below that were in the Guadalupe River a much shorter time was consistent with the burial of the above cannon in the earth, rather than a waterway.]Patrick concluded that "the amnestic cannon had its identity recalled and the long lost Gonzales Come and Take It Cannon of October 2, 1835 was returned to its rightful place in Texas history."
