Without food or drink available, she was left to find the coziest spot on the floor. The historic building had been owned by a grocery company and had housed crates of milk, sugar and other goods. By the time De Zavala occupied the former convento, there was little trace of its past. The barrack was a two-story building of a Catholic mission that, centuries earlier, had been home to priests and nuns during the time of Spanish rule over Texas. She’d locked herself inside as a sheriff waited at the door with a court order. It was February 1908, and the oldest building in the Alamo complex in San Antonio was in danger of being razed. The electricity and telephone lines had been cut.īut years of effort, of obsession, had led her to this desperate stand. The first night in the dark, cold barrack of the Alamo was the hardest.Īdina De Zavala had no bed or even a chair to sleep on.
