Women and the Texas Revolution

6. “Up Buck! Up Ball! Do Your Duty!”: Women and the Runaway Scrape

153 C H A P T E R 6 “Up Buck! Up Ball! Do Your Duty!” Women and the Runaway Scrape Light Townsend Cummins The Runaway Scrape during the spring of 1836 constitutes one of the most noteworthy and poignant chapters of the Texas Revolution, in large part because it touched the lives of almost all Anglo-Americans in the province whether soldier or civilian. The “Runaway Scrape” quickly became the term used by those involved to describe the flight of Texans towards Louisiana and the United States at they moved eastward during the spring of 1836. Thousands of people rolled before the movement of the Mexican armies and eventually became involved in this exodus. The military forces commanded by General Sam Houston constituted a significant part of this movement, but the largest number of people proved to be the men, women, and children of the families living in the areas from San Antonio to the Sabine River. The Runaway Scrape accordingly involved a considerable number of women who took to the roads with their families and children. Many of them experienced profound hardships and privations. Some of them lost their lives in the process. 154 women and the texas revolution The scrape first began in the areas south of San Antonio when settlers heard news of Santa Anna’s arrival in Texas. The number of people heading to the east accelerated steadily during February 1836. With the fall of the Alamo and the Goliad Massacre, the exodus quickly became a full-scale rout of the civilian population. Many of the roads running to Louisiana became choked with masses of people, some with carts and wagons hauling their possessions, all of them bound towards supposed safety. In places where the road crossed streams and rivers, the backups sometimes ran for miles as travelers anxiously waited to cross in order to continue their journey. By the time of the Battle of San Jacinto almost six weeks later, a majority of the English-speaking population of Texas had joined the flight and was on the move.1 For many Texas women, participation in the Runaway Scrape thereafter remained one of the most memorable and defining events in their lives. This certainly proved to be the case for Dilue Rose, the daughter of Dr. Pleasant W. Rose, one of the provinces’ early physicians. Born at St. Louis in 1825, Dilue Rose moved to Texas with her family in 1833. She participated in the Runaway Scrape as an eleven-year-old girl. Settling in the Houston area after the Texas Revolution, she married former Texas Ranger Ira Harris and they eventually made their home at Columbus. Prior to his death in 1869, Ira and Dilue had nine children. In 1900, during her seventy-fourth year, Mrs. Harris published her reminiscences of the Runaway Scrape in the Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, edited by University of Texas Professor George P. Garrison. Although presented to the Quarterly’s readership as Mrs. Harris’s reminiscences, Professor Garrison carefully noted that the actual narrative was based on a journal kept by Dr. Pleasant W. Rose, a document that had been lost at some earlier time. His daughter Dilue, however, had earlier access to the journal before it was lost and based her narrative on her notes from it, augmented by her own “Up Buck! Up Ball! Do Your Duty!” 155 memories as a child. She wrote her narrative in the late 1890s, in consultation with both George P. Garrison and Adele Looscan, an early twentieth-century historian of Texas. Even to this day, Dilue Rose Harris’s recounting of the Runaway Scrape constitutes the best-known and most widely read source for the Runaway Scrape, having been cited and reprinted many times.2 The Rose family lived near Stafford Point in the vicinity of the lower Brazos River, the heart of Texas’s most viable plantation belt. Prior to the outbreak of the Texas Revolution, Dr. Rose and his family had the opportunity to meet and know most of the important people in Texas, including Sam Houston, William B. Travis, Erastus Smith, and many others. The family had been following the revolution during late 1835 and early 1836 by means of reports brought by travelers. When news of the fall of the Alamo arrived in their locality, they decided to flee east. They made very quick arrangements for their departure, “hauling clothes, bedding, and...