| By T.A. Badger | |
| Associated Press | |
| Web Posted : 07/13/2003 12:00 AM | |
| A rare signature by Alamo hero James Bowie has been found on what amounts to a prenuptial agreement filed with Mexican authorities five years before Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna's troops killed him.
The scarcity of Bowie signatures would make this John Hancock worth at least $50,000, according to several historians. Not that the owner — Bexar County — has any plans to test its value in the open market. "It's a one-of-a-kind," County Clerk Gerry Rickhoff said. "It needs to be preserved so people 100 or 200 years from now can see this document." Bowie, raised in Louisiana, came to San Antonio as a land speculator in 1828 when Mexico still controlled Texas. He later joined the Texas independence fight and was among the most prominent of those killed in the Battle of the Alamo in March 1836. The prenup recently was dug out of Bowie's probate file, which for more than 160 years had been buried in the county's extensive archives of Spanish-language papers. The April 22, 1831, marriage contract was penned in Spanish in an ornate hand and is full of legalese. In its four pages, Bowie — famed knife fighter and entrepreneur — claims sufficient assets to provide a dowry of 15,000 pesos to Maria Ursula de Veramendi, 19-year-old daughter of the Mexican provincial governor. "That would be a fair sum of money," Alamo curator Bruce Winders said. By comparison, he said, a typical horse sold for about 40 pesos in those days. Bowie's rough-handed signature, in fading brown ink, is near the bottom of the fourth page, and is underscored by a series of horizontal swirls that resemble a tornado sketch — wide at the top and tapering down. In the document, Bowie claims assets worth nearly 150,000 pesos, the vast majority being money owed to him by the U.S. government and various business partners. He also listed 50,000 acres of land in Arkansas. The couple were wed within days of the signing, but the union didn't last long — in 1833, while Bowie was away on business, Ursula and their two young children died in a cholera outbreak. Jim Guimarin, who runs a downtown store specializing in historic maps and documents, is restoring the Bowie marriage contract for the county. The cotton-based paper has tattered edges, and aging tape has left behind dark, oily stains along its folds. Guimarin has no doubts the signature is authentic, even though it's the first one he's seen in the more than 25 years he's been in business. "It looks like Bowie signatures that I've seen in books," he said. "The paper is from that era, and it is from his probate file."
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| 07/13/2003 |
Jim Guimarin examines an 1831 prenuptial agreement containing a rare signature by Battle of the Alamo hero James Bowie. 
