Susanna Dickinson

Susanna Wilkerson Dickinson (1814 – October 7, 1883) and her infant daughter Angelina were among the few American survivors of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo during the Texas Revolution. Her husband, Captain Almaron Dickinson, and 182 other Texian defenders were killed by the Mexican Army.

Little is known of her early life, other than that Susanna Dickinson was born in 1814 in the U.S. state of Tennessee and never learned to read nor write. On May 24, 1829, when she was 15, Justice of the Peace Joseph W. McKean married Susanna to Almaron Dickinson. Two years later, the couple became DeWitt Colonists, obtaining property on the San Marcos River, where they opened a blacksmith shop and also invested in a hat factory run by fellow colonist George Kimbell in Gonzales.

As the Mexican government increasingly abandoned its federalist structure in favor of a more centralized government, Almaron Dickinson became one of the early proponents of war. Almaron Dickinson would later join with other volunteers during the Battle of Gonzales, becoming one of the "Old Gonzales 18" in the battle which launched the Texas Revolution on October 2, 1835. By the end of the year, the Texian army had driven all Mexican soldiers from the territory. Soon after, Susanna joined her husband at the former Alamo Mission in San Antonio de Bexar (now San Antonio, Texas) shortly after his assignment to the garrison there. The Dickinson family lived outside the Alamo, boarding with the Ruiz family.

In early 1836, Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna led troops into Texas, which arrived in San Antonio on February 23 and immediately besieged the Alamo. The unprepared garrison did not even have food stocked inside the mission to withstand the siege. The men thus quickly herded cattle into the Alamo and scrounged for food in the recently abandoned houses outside the fortress. Susanna Dickinson and her daughter Angelina were among the families of garrison members who were brought inside the Alamo for safety.

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