NOTES AND FRAGMENTS.

R. W. Ballentine.—For the sake of clearing up some confusion relative to the name and record of Mr. Ballentine, Mr. Richard Cocke of Houston, his grand nephew, sends the following affidavit:

The State of Texas,  County of Harris.

B. F. Highsmith, of Bandera County, Texas, being duly sworn on oath, deposeth and says, that he was well acquainted with Dick Ballentine, whose name was R. W. Ballentine, who was also known as J. J. Ballentine, whose estate was administered at Washington by P. M. Mercer in 1837, and that said Ballentine was the same person who was killed at the Alamo. That he (Highsmith) saw him there two weeks before the fall, he (the said Highsmith) having been sent with instructions from Travis to Fannin, and that said Ballentine was the only man by the name of Ballentine in the Alamo or in the army of the Republic of Texas, he being well acquainted with all the soldiers of the Republic of Texas at that time, and that the said Dick (R. W.) Ballentine are one and the same person.

his  B. F. x Highsmith.  mark.  Sworn to and subscribed before me this 22nd day of April, 1895.  Ingham S. Roberts,  Notary Public in and for Harris County, Texas.  Filed for record April 30th, 1895, 4 p. m. Recorded May 3rd, 1895, at 3.55 p. m.  Geo. M. Perry,  Co. Clerk.

The State of Texas,  County of Ochiltree.

I. Jas. H. Whippo, County Clerk in and for Ochiltree County, Texas, do hereby certify, that the foregoing is a correct copy of an affidavit, appearing in the deed records of this county, in Vol. 2, page 231.

Jas. H. Whippo, C. C. C.,  Ochiltree Co., Texas.

Concerning the Gonzales Cannon.—In the notes by Mr. Winker on the article contributed to The Quarterly for October by Sion R. Bostick, of San Saba, I find the following concerning the old cannon, the dispute over the possession of which precipitated the Texas Revolution: “Brown says it was a valuable four pounder, but Holley's and Macomb's statements that it was a brass six pounder have been adopted by Kennedy, Yoakum, and Bancroft.”

Col. Noah Smithwick says, in his book, Evolution of a State or Recollections of Old Texas Days, that the gun “was practically useless, having been spiked and the spike driven out, leaving a touch-hole the size of a man's thumb. *** The Sowells had a blacksmith shop at Gonzales, and, being a gunsmith, I set to work to help put the arms in order.” *** “We brushed [bushed] the old cannon (an iron six-pounder), scoured it out, and mounted it on old wooden trucks *** and christened it `the flying artillery.”'

That Mr. Smithwick was a skilled gunsmith and a man of veracity, there are many living witnesses to testify, and it is not an unreasonable assumption that having performed the operation above described he would be enabled to speak authoritatively on all matters relating to the description of the gun.

Mr. Smithwick further says that the trucks heated so badly that the old cannon was abandoned at Sandy Creek, on the march to San Antonio, and he had no knowledge of its reclamation; he, however, left San Antonio before the assault, and it may have been brought up in his absence.

Now, what became of the cannon in the Alamo when the Mexicans retook it? Did they carry them off to Mexico? And again, some historian, Yoakum, I think, says that when the Texans under General Houston retreated from Gonzales they “threw the cannon into the river.” What cannon was it they had at Gonzales at that time, and was it ever recovered?

It certainly seems to me that the old cannon is still in existence somewhere and could be identified by the above description.

Nanna Smithwick Donaldson,  Historian Wm. B. Travis Chapter, D. R. T.