Sign up for TPR Today, Texas Public Radio's newsletter that brings our top stories to your inbox each morning.
It was once used for a birdbath, but now a historic artifact from the 1836 Battle of the Alamo is being restored after it was recently acquired by the Alamo.
It was originally discovered in 1852 near the site of the Alamo. The owner, Samuel Maverick was a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
Kolby Lanham is a senior researcher and historian for the Alamo. He said most of the cannons have been accounted for.
“I was kind of skeptical, if I’m being honest,” Lanham said.
The man offering to donate the artifact did not have the last name Maverick, so Lanham wasn’t so sure the cannon was authentic.
“On his mother's side, they had taken a different last name, but he was a Maverick, a direct descendant of Samuel Maverick, who was not only present during the 12-day siege of the Battle of the Alamo. Later, he builds a home on the northwest corner of the Alamo fort line, and he finds somewhere around a dozen cannons in his front yard in the 1850s,” Lanham said.
“Yeah, I about fell over. I think you could have knocked me over with a feather. I was so excited," he said. "I wrote about that cannon in my master's thesis.”
The cannon was located on a ranch near Corpus Christi and was previously at the family’s Sunshine Ranch in northwest San Antonio, where it was used as the base of a birdbath.
“And the whole family knew about this cannon and that it was from the Battle of the Alamo, and the female line of Maverick descendants had taken it, turned it muzzle down, and filled the muzzle up with concrete, and then put a bird bath on top of it,” Lanham said.
“Putting hands on an artifact that was present at the Battle of the Alamo was surreal,” he said.
It is now the 11th battle-used cannon in the Alamo's possession.
The 3-foot-long, 90 pound cannon is being restored at the Conservation Research Laboratory at Texas A&M University.
Alamo officials hope to display it at a new visitor center in late 2027.
