The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 90, July 1986 - April, 1987 Page: 199

Book Reviews
NORMAN D. BROWN, Editor
Forgotten Battlefield of the First Texas Revolution: The Battle of Medina, Au-
gust 18, 1813. By Ted Schwarz. Edited and annotated by Robert H.
Thonhoff. (Austin: Eakin Press, 1985. Pp. xviii+o 2. Editor's fore-
word, author's preface, acknowledgments, illustrations, maps, pho-
tographs, endnotes, bibliography, index. $14.95.)
This fine monograph about the Spanish royalist victory on August
18, 1813, over the Gutierrez-Magee expedition, a Hispanic republican
and Anglo-American venture to aid Mexican independence, is the
result of over fifty years of study. Ted Schwarz grew up in Atascosa
County among old residents who believed that the decisive battle took
place in their county, not on the Medina River twelve miles distant in
Bexar County. Searching old records and walking the area northeast
of Poteet where pioneers had pointed out signs of early occupation
convinced Schwarz that the battle took place in a post oak thicket near
Galvan Creek.
Schwarz wrote articles about the battle for the Atascosa Monitor in
the 1930s, but further research was postponed because of career moves
until 1970. He interested Robert H. Thonhoff in the quest, and when
Schwarz died in 1977, his friend completed the work. A resident of
Fashing, in southeastern Atascosa County, where he is principal of the
local school, Thonhoff has written many historical articles and in 1976
coauthored, with Robert S. Weddle, Drama and Conflict: The Texas Saga
of x776. Thonhoff took Schwarz's old notes and spent more than two
years correlating them with maps and diaries, some unavailable to
Schwarz, and with on-site searches for artifacts. While no cannonballs
or evidence of the mass burials mentioned in original accounts have yet
been located, the archival evidence is overwhelming that la batalla del
encinal de Medina was indeed in the wooded area of northern Atascosa
County.
Besides editing and annotating the Schwarz manuscripts, Thonhoff
has added new material, making the book the best account of the battle
and the events leading up to it. An epilogue tracing what happened to