Historian Goes Out on a Limb to Show Inaccuracy
From Times Wire Reports
Despite a famous painting and at least three biographies depicting Gen. Sam Houston as having been shot in the right ankle, the man who led the battle of San Jacinto 166 years ago today seems to have a leg up on historians.
Richard Rice of the Sam Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, Texas, recently found proof of the mistake in a letter Houston wrote to his wife, Margaret, on Jan. 11, 1853, that he was wounded in the left leg.
The seemingly trivial revelation casts a shadow on one of the most famous paintings in Texas history, William Henry Huddle’s 1886 depiction of Santa Anna’s surrender, which hangs in the state Capitol. In it, Houston lies beneath an oak, his right ankle wounded.