By David Taylor / Managing Editor
LA PORTE — Musket fire cracked across the grounds near the San Jacinto Monument on Saturday as cannons boomed and reenactors surged through drifting smoke, shouting “Remember the Alamo!” and “Remember La Bahía!” Thousands of visitors watched the annual Battle of San Jacinto reenactment, a two-day event presented by the San Jacinto Museum and the Texas Historical Commission to mark the decisive clash that helped secure Texas’ independence.
Beyond the battlefield spectacle, organizers and volunteers said the weekend is meant to function as a living-history classroom. Families and school groups moved between campsites where reenactors demonstrated period tools, clothing and daily routines, helping visitors understand the weeks leading up to April 21, 1836, when Gen. Sam Houston’s outnumbered army surprised Mexican forces near present-day La Porte.
Among those returning year after year is John Luna, a retired reenactor originally from San Antonio who now lives in Arlington. Luna said he has made the drive annually since 2015.
For much of the past decade, Luna has portrayed Juan Seguín, the Tejano leader and soldier who fought alongside Anglo Texians during the revolution. During reenactment vignettes, Luna said, fellow participants often enlist him to assist Andy Anderson, who plays Houston, during a scene depicting the capture of Mexican President Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna.
“He wants me to be the translator at the capture of General Santa Ana,” Luna said.
In the reenactment, Houston—injured during the brief campaign and propped against a tree—receives the captured Santa Anna as Seguín interprets. The scene underscores how quickly the revolution turned after San Jacinto: Houston’s forces won in roughly 18 minutes, and Santa Anna’s capture soon led to agreements that recognized Texas’ independence.
Seguín’s legacy, reenactors said, is also a reminder that Tejanos were not a footnote to the revolution but active participants.
Seguín led the Tejano Volunteer Company, a unit that recruited and commanded Tejano fighters for the Texian Army.
Longtime participant Juan Gonzales, also from San Antonio, said he has taken part in the battle reenactment and living-history camps for two decades. For him, the weekend is equal parts camaraderie and community education.
At San Jacinto, Gonzales said, Tejano soldiers in Houston’s army used a simple method to reduce the risk of friendly fire during the chaos of combat: they placed playing cards or pieces of cardboard in their hatbands so fellow Texians could distinguish them from Mexican soldiers at a glance, since uniforms and appearances could be similar.
The tactic mattered in a fight that unfolded quickly and at close range, he said—one that ended in a decisive victory that reshaped Texas’ future.
For many reenactors, participation is also personal—tied to family, loss and the desire to keep history tangible for the next generation.
Heidie Hardin said this is her third year participating, motivated in part by her own young children—ages 3 and 1—and a desire to preserve Texas history through hands-on storytelling.
Last year’s reenactment, she said, was especially difficult. Her father, who had played Houston in the San Jacinto reenactment, was hospitalized during the event and later died of heart issues.
Hardin now participates in a “Runaway Scrape” vignette alongside her sister and their children, portraying families fleeing Mexican troops as panic spread across settlements in 1836.
“My daddy made the cart we use in the reenactment completely from scratch except for the wheels,” Hardin said.
Hardin added that many artifacts displayed in the camps are owned by the reenactors themselves, collected or crafted to reflect the era and to invite conversation with visitors.
That sense of continuity—handing down skills, stories and objects—also shapes the experience for Leslie Sproat, whose family has become deeply involved in reenactments across Texas.
Sproat said she was responsible for drawing her father, Mark Hegman, into the “reenactment clan.” The spark came while she was in college, she said, when she took part in a hands-on historic preservation project that her father witnessed.
“He said he had always wanted to do something like that and the next year he participated,” Sproat said. Her father later portrayed Johann Friedrich Ernst, often described as the first German immigrant to Texas and later as Gen. Sam Houston.
She added that her family has deep Texas roots, including a connection to Albert Hamilton Latimer, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence from the Red River District.
For Michael Sproat, her husband and the curator at the Sam Houston Memorial Museum and Republic of Texas Presidential Library in Huntsville, reenacting at San Jacinto is both public history and family history. He said he is also descended from an early Republic-era ancestor—a French explorer who traveled widely across what is now Texas and Louisiana in the 1700s.
Sproat said reenactments can help audiences understand the broader sweep of the era, including Santa Ana’s campaigns against regions that resisted centralized rule.
“He did it at Zacatancas, Tamaulipas, at the Yucatan, and he did it here in Texas at Goliad, and the Alamo,” Sproat said. “He would have done it here at San Jacinto except Texas won.”
During the weekend, Sproat portrayed a doctor who tends to Houston’s injuries and described a moment reenactors use to illustrate Houston’s decision-making after the battle—particularly the decision to keep Santa Anna alive despite widespread anger among Texian troops.
“There was more than 30 people behind Sam Houston, each of them with a knife, rope, or a gun ready to kill Santa Ana,” Sproat said. “But Sam Houston knew if they were going to be their own nation, they needed Santa Ana, so he spared his life. Later, Santa Ana would sign all the treaties that legitimized Texas’s independence.”
Leave a Comment: