In the song "The Yellow Rose of Texas" who is Yellow Rose?

Question

Was she a mulatto ***** woman camp follower/slave girl

Answer 1

The song “Yellow Rose of Texas” will always be connected to the story of a young woman, Emily D. West. Emily, in the words of the early 19th century, was a free person of color who came as a servant, not a slave, to Texas in 1835 and probably was at the battle of San Jacinto.The known facts of her life rest on two brief legal documents establishing little more than her name and home, an entry in a Connecticut census record, and a 59-word note recorded years after the battle. And there’s not one piece of evidence to link Emily West in any way with the song. But no matter—she has become legend.

The power of rumor, of the temptation to build stories out of almost nothing but circumstances, is great. In fact, the temptation for many journalists and not a few historians is irresistible. Particularly since the late 1950s, Emily has been made the subject of a number of books and journalistic articles—almost all pure fiction.

The structure of her fame is what contemporary folklorists call “urban legend.” Everyone has heard the strange stories of boa constrictors in the supermarket, of AIDS- infected needles in pay phone coin slots, of gang initiates who shoot drivers who blink their lights...all false, all believed by the gullible—and by those who wish to.

And the few facts of Emily’s life can be turned into a story many people wish was true—for various reasons. Emily’s story is only a pattern of fragments.

Almost certainly, Emily D. West was a freeborn black from New Haven, Connecticut. On October 25, 1835, she signed a contract with James Morgan in New York City to work at Morgan’s entrepreneurial settlement of New Washington in Mexican Texas. Morgan was out to establish empire.

Probably enlisted as a housekeeper for the colonial hotel, Emily arrived in Texas in December of 1835 on one of Morgan’s ships also carrying Emily West de Zavala, wife of the soon-to-be first vice-president of the Republic of Texas. The similarity of names is curious.

Texas was then entering revolution. The Siege of Béxar put the Mexican army to momentary flight, and early the next year, General Antonio López de Santa Anna Pérez de Lebrón entered the state in a mood to crush rebellion. By April 1836 James Morgan was in full support of the revolutionary government and the army collected under Sam Houston. Morgan was not then at his settlement of New Washington, but in Galveston in command of Fort Travis and creating avenues of escape for Texians.

On April 16 a Mexican cavalry unit led by Col. Juan N. Almonte rode into New Washington in hot pursuit of Texas President David G. Burnet and his family—effectively the revolutionary government at the time.

The soldiers just missed capturing Burnet and occupied themselves by looting the supplies in New Washington and taking certain captives. General Santa Anna arrived the next day and allowed an extended time for rest and plunder, then ordered everything burned.

Emily, according to a slim but extant story told later, was apparently taken captive by the army to the encampment at the plain of San Jacinto. The Mexican army was well known for being accompanied by soldaderas, women who provided cooking and washing and sexual favors for the men. Captives were occasionally impressed into such service.

But Santa Anna himself was, personally, a very attractive man. Then at the height of military and political power, in his early forties, handsome and rich, the general was a desirable man, as proven by a long line of agreeable mistresses and in spite of an obvious opium habit.

Whether Emily was a rape victim of Col. Almonte’s troopers or the general himself or a willing mistress is simply not known. No evidence exists either way, although later fiction describes her variously as a rape victim, a woman who sacrificed her honor to spy for the Texians, the love of a black Texian soldier who only wanted to be reunited with her in freedom, or an unknowing pawn in a brutal, provincial war.

The most prurient version places her at the plain of Saint Hyacinth in the general’s tent on the afternoon of April 21, delaying him in a setting of champagne, chocolates, silver and crystal place settings, and few clothes—while the Texians started their charge which would end in the bloody slaughter of Santa Anna’s forces.

The champagne, chocolates, silver, and opium habit are confirmed. Major George Erath, a native Austrian on the Texian side, later mentioned strongly but with little real detail that “our victory was made much easier by Santa Anna's voluptuousness.” No woman was mentioned.

Long after the battle, Mexican officers who had survived the rout, particularly those who could be critical of their former leader, mentioned Santa Anna’s helplessness, ignorance, and even cowardice. But they mention no woman. Their stories do not even mention the general’s state of undress—as he often appears in story—when he exited his tent in great confusion and in haste to desert the battlefield.

A small number of Mexican historians did mention the general’s “quadroon mistress during the Texas campaign.”

After the battle Emily is known to have been in the service of Isaac N. Moreland, an artilleryman at San Jacinto, a later county judge at Houston, and a natural friend of Sam Houston. Moreland adds nothing to the legend, but he did attest that Emily had lost her papers certifying her freedom. Most people assumed, as a black, she had been Morgan’s slave, brought to Texas under the guise of indentured status. The name Morgan was added to her record probably by people who assumed that, as a slave, she would have logically carried her owner’s name.

Moreland noted Emily’s earlier arrival to Texas when he sponsored her application for a passport to return home. She had apparently had enough of the Republic of Texas. The application was granted, and Emily apparently left the republic in March of 1837 on board one of Morgan’s ships bound for New York. And she vanishes from record.

Again, curiously, the return ship seems to have carried the same passenger with whom Emily had arrived in Texas, Mrs. Emily West de Zavala, now a widow.

Thus, Emily exists in a work contract, a passport application, and a census record in Connecticut (although by circumstance, not by name). The rest was hearsay until 1956. In this year some of the papers of William Bollaert, an Englishman, were published for the first time. These had to do with an 1842 visit Bollaert made to Texas. He commented widely, seemingly recording everything he heard and even making a few good sketches along the way. During his life Bollaert added a few notes to his own then-unpublished manuscript. To his entry of the day when he gazed “with some interest at the battle field of San Jacinto,” he later wrote:

“The Battle of San Jacinto was probably lost to the Mexicans, owing to the influence of a Mulatto Girl (Emily) belonging to Colonel Morgan, who was closeted in the tent with General Santana, at the time the cry was made ‘the enemy! they come! they come!’ and detained Santana so long, that order could not be restored readily again.”

These words are the only source of her story. Later researchers identified Bollaert’s informant as Sam Houston, who had just visited the dying Isaac N. Moreland. The men might have reminisced and Houston could have passed on a curious story to the English visitor. One of the best guesses is that Houston heard the story from Moreland, who had probably heard something from Emily.

No one knows for sure; after 1956 Emily’s story was embroidered upon, or simply made up.

She was fictionalized as a Texian spy who deliberately kept the Napoleon of the West in bed long enough to render him helpless. Emily has been portrayed as a woman typically and brutally raped and held as a possession of conquest. She was assumed to be a willing lover looking for the best deal as others had done and certainly not even aware of what the Texians were up to. She has been mentioned as simply a chance survivor of a battlefield and a heroine loved by a faithful Texian soldier who wrote a song in her honor and only wanted to find a life of freedom with Emily.

A manuscript of a poem, not music, appeared around 1836 signed “H.B.C.” and giving honor to a lover:

There’s a yellow rose in Texas
That I am a going to see
No other darky knows her
No one only me

She cryed so when I left her
It like to broke my heart
And if I ever find her
We nevermore will part

And continues:

She’s the sweetest rose of color
This darky ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds
They sparkle like the dew

You may talk about dearest May
and sing of Rosa Lee
But the yellow rose of Texas
Beats the belles of Tennessee

Obviously, the author is black, or is pretending to be, and has left a love, or at least thinks he has, and might know something about Tennessee.

By the Civil War, the words had found music, and the “Yellow Rose of Texas” duly changed lyrics to avoid references to blacks. In 1936 a concert arrangement was offered by David W. Guion for the Texas Centennial (and dedicated to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ordered a White House performance).

In 1955 Mitch Miller recorded an arrangement for Columbia Records. The lyrics were, by then, much altered:

She’s the sweetest little rosebud,
That Texas ever knew
Her eyes are bright as diamonds,
They sparkle like the dew,

You may talk about your Clementine
and sing of Rosalee,
But The Yellow Rose of Texas
is the only girl for me!

And the next year the Bollaert book came out. In the words of James E. Crisp, “a lot of people added up 2 and 2 and got 5.”

No evidence links the music and an often-misidentified woman called Emily. But the link is a vague possibility and a fine temptation—and in some people’s minds, those make a fact.


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Notes, readings, and sources:

If a person is new to this subject, the first thing to read is:

Margaret Swett Henson’s entry “West, Emily D.” in The Handbook of Texas Online. The source can be reached at: www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online

Next, after this, are the comments by James E. Crisp in an entry to the “War Room” on the Alamo de Parras Web site: markw.com/yrupdate.htm This comment was “April’s Question of the Month” (April 20, 1998) and is the best summary of ongoing research.

Others:

Davis, Joe Tom. Legendary Texians, Volume III. Austin, Tex.: Eakin Press, 1956. Chapter IV of this volume, pp. 92-109, is a good overview of some of the legends of San Jacinto.

Turner, Martha Anne. “Emily Morgan: Yellow Rose of Texas,” in Francis Edward Abernethy, ed. Legendary Ladies of Texas, pp. 20-29. Dallas: Texas Folklore Society, E-Heart Press, 1981. Draws heavily on what many historians now consider unsupported legend.

Hollon, W. Eugene, and Ruth Lapham Butler, eds. William Bollaert’s Texas. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, in cooperation with The Newberry Library, Chicago, 1956. The note concerning the “Mulatto Girl” is on page 108.

“Legend of the Yellow Rose.” Texas Highways 33, no. 4 (April 1986): 58-61. This is a good summary article, pairing an excerpt from Martha Anne Turner, refuted by a long sidebar by Margaret Swett Henson.

Bunkley, Anita. Emily, The Yellow Rose. Houston: Rinard Pub., 1989. Fiction.

Many “journalistic” articles, rather naturally, exist concerning the Yellow Rose.

Here are a few examples:

Biffle, Kent. “Yellow Rose Story Loses Its Bloom” reviews Margaret Henson’s findings for The Dallas Morning News and cited in Davis’s chapter. Davis quotes Biffle as saying “Will somebody please tell Margaret that overly energetic documentation can sure wreck a good story.”

Shuffler, R. Henderson. “Who Was Emily Morgan?” for the Express-News of San Antonio (Wednesday, May 29, 1985, p. 17-A). This is surely the most sexist and sexual of the lot. It has been attacked by feminists, reviled by historians, and enjoyed by many as what “might have happened.” It was a joke that “got way out of hand” and was, in a sense, the impetus for founding the “Knights of the Yellow Rose” (called the SKYRT for “Sons of the Knights of the Yellow Rose of Texas” by Stephen Harrigan in an inspired acronym-pun...and the “tiny yellow roses pinned to their lapels” noted by Harrigan as a mark of membership really were distributed on a couple of occasions).

Harrigan, Stephen. “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” Texas Monthly, April 1984, p. 152. Not counting the illustration, a one-page summary of the story.





Stanush, Claude. “Yellow Rose Remains Alive whether in Myth or Reality,” San Antonio Light, September 8, 1984. As usual for Claude Stanush, a well-balanced summary statement pointing out the “hopelessly entangled mixture of history, mythology, and truth” in the story of Emily.

Answer 2

Here's the legend:

Emily Morgan (also sometimes called West) was reported to have been a mulatto slave belonging to a wealthy Texas land owner during the time of the Texas Revolution.

With the river at their backs cutting off any hope of escape,
the Texas army defeated the Mexican army with little effort.
Santa Anna was reported to have been in his tent "enjoying" the company of Emily Morgan.

Since the day that Emily Morgan effectively distracted Santa Anna,
she has been immortalized in legend and song

Answer 3

Yellow rose

Answer 4

the Yellow Res of Texas was a "princess of the night" that keep Santa Anna busy while Texas troops attacked.
Santa Anna actually ran out of his tent with his pants down.

Answer 5

A Ranch

Answer 6

you answered your own question she a mulatto women who a man was in love with

Answer 7

You are overthinking the lyrics...simply a catchy 'love song' that was used in Giant.

Answer 8

someones girl

Answer 9

A hot babe