Alamo survivor's Austin home gets new life

AUSTIN - One of the homes of Alamo survivor Susanna Dickinson is coming back to life.

The downtown Austin building is little more than a shell, with dirt floors, crumbling walls and missing windows. But work is to begin this month on a $500,000 renovation that will fix those problems and add electricity to the 140-year-old stone home, the Austin American-Statesman reported in Saturday's editions.

Dickinson's first husband, Capt. Almeron Dickinson, was killed during the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. Susanna Dickinson and her infant daughter, Angelina, were spared by Mexican Gen. Santa Anna, who instructed Dickinson to carry the tale of the Alamo to Sam Houston.

Santa Anna's message was supposed to be a warning that the general would conquer Houston's men, too. Instead, Houston's troops won the Battle of San Jacinto, and Santa Anna surrendered.

The home is "symbolic of (Dickinson's) triumph," said Valerie Bennett, who will curate the museum and runs the O. Henry Museum next door. "It's a tribute to all the women pioneers who came to Texas with their courage and their spunk and made lives here."

Flood washed away the family's first home before they built and lived in the house on Fifth Street. More than a century later, it was encased in a barbecue restaurant. It was nearly demolished in 2000 after a developer bought the land for a hotel, but the developer paid to move it across the street at the request of historians and city leaders.

Friends of the O. Henry and Dickinson Museums Inc., a nonprofit group, gathered $146,000 in grants and donations to restore the home's two chimneys, redo roofing, abate lead paint and rebuild a front porch. The money for the latest renovation comes from a bond approved by voters two years ago. Plans are to turn the home into a museum detailing Dickinson's life.

The work, expected to take up to a year, "will preserve a piece of history," said Deborah Rosenquist, co-chairwoman of the Friends of O. Henry and Dickinson group. "It's one of the few connections to the Alamo that is still standing."

The O. Henry Museum chronicles the life of William Sidney Porter, who lived in Austin for 13 years and became famous as a short story writer under the pen name O. Henry.

Dickinson later moved to north Austin from the downtown home. She died in 1883.

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