Felipe Rodriguez, a student at the University of Mexico's school of veterinary medicine, recently posted a message on the Fort Bend Museum's Facebook page. He wondered if we knew the story of 'Old Whip,' a horse made famous in the Runaway Scrape and Battle of San Jacinto. I had to admit that I'd never heard his story and would research it. I found several sources, including contemporaneous accounts of the Runaway Scrape, and boiled down them down to this abbreviated version.
William Vince was one of Austin's Old 300 colonists. His 3 brothers were also colonists. Their land grants were in Harris County south of Buffalo Bayou and east of Harrisburg -- roughly where South Houston & Pasadena are now located. William also possessed a smaller farm near Arcola. I haven't located it precisely, but he was a neighbor of Francis Marion Fenn, so it was somewhere in the Fresno-Arcola-Rosharon area.
William Vince had a black, high-spirited, fast horse he kept on the farm. Vince called him Old Whip possibly because he could whip all other local horses in a race. Horse racing was a big past-time among the colonists. Churchill Fulshear and (later) Frank Terry were big horse-racing enthusiasts, so fast horses were renown.
I've provided a map that shows the the paths of the various Mexican armies and the Texian army. The map is missing some details, but it will do for the purposes of this story.
William Vince was one of Austin's Old 300 colonists. His 3 brothers were also colonists. Their land grants were in Harris County south of Buffalo Bayou and east of Harrisburg -- roughly where South Houston & Pasadena are now located. William also possessed a smaller farm near Arcola. I haven't located it precisely, but he was a neighbor of Francis Marion Fenn, so it was somewhere in the Fresno-Arcola-Rosharon area.
William Vince had a black, high-spirited, fast horse he kept on the farm. Vince called him Old Whip possibly because he could whip all other local horses in a race. Horse racing was a big past-time among the colonists. Churchill Fulshear and (later) Frank Terry were big horse-racing enthusiasts, so fast horses were renown.
I've provided a map that shows the the paths of the various Mexican armies and the Texian army. The map is missing some details, but it will do for the purposes of this story.
You can see the path of Santa Anna's corps as it moved from Richmond to Stafford's Point. From there he moved northeastward to Harrisburg to capture the rebel government. As they made this leg of the journey, Santa Anna passed by Vince's farm and 'requisitioned' Old Whip and Vince's $300 saddle. The situation was chaotic -- fleeing colonists took what they could and left what they couldn't carry or herd before them. Vince may have been preoccupied with other things, or maybe he was seeing to his main plantation near present-day South Houston -- for whatever the reason, he left Old Whip and his saddle for Santa Anna to plunder.
At this point Santa Anna pranced around on Old Whip and felt pretty good about defeating the rebels even though the provisional government had left Harrisburg before he arrived there. Santa Anna believed the government had fled further eastward to New Washington, so he pranced toward Galveston Bay in pursuit.
Although it doesn't appear on this map, Sims Bayou was a long and relatively wide tributary flowing into Buffalo Bayou from the south. I believe it meets Buffalo Bayou in Pasadena or Deer Park. The point is that it was deep and wide and required a bridge to cross. In fact, William Vince had built a bridge where Sims Bayou bisected his property.
Santa Anna crossed William Vince's Bridge while Sam Houston trailed his army on the north bank of Buffalo Bayou. Eventually, Houston committed his army and crossed Buffalo Bayou to the south bank and turned eastward also crossing Vince's Bridge, but he ordered Deaf Smith and his scouts burn the bridge once they were all across the Bayou. When Houston moved his army to the north end of the San Jacinto Battle Ground, he had actually hemmed Santa Anna's army in a trap. The route west was blocked because Vince's Bridge was destroyed. The route north (Lynch's Ferry over the San Jacinto River) was blocked by Houston's army.
You know what happened on the 21st of April. When Santa Anna finally woke up from his nap, he hopped on Old Whip and galloped west, thinking he could get over the bridge and ride to Richmond where a large contingent of his army was camped in reserve. Well, he found the bridge burned and tried to ride across on Old Whip, but the horse got mired in the muck and couldn't get out. Some accounts say Old Whip knew where home was and plunged into the Bayou with Santa Anna hanging on for dear life. Regardless, Santa Anna jumped off Old Whip and ran into the weeds where he hid for a day or so.
As we all know, he was taken prisoner and ended up visiting Washington before repatriation to Mexico. Old Whip was pulled out of the mud, cleaned up and celebrated throughout the colony. Jesse Ziegler says in his book, "Wave of the Gulf," that Old Whip lived a long and happy life.
Felipe suggests we honor him with a statue somewhere in Fort Bend County.
