San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Lone Star flag’s ties to area rancher’s brand?
A family member I visited recently explained that she believes the star on the Texas flag came into being from the branding-iron symbol of one of the early families that ranched in the San Antonio area. I’m wondering if there’s any truth to this. If you can give me any further information, I would appreciate it.
“The Fathers of Texas deemed a national flag for the Republic of Texas so important that on March 3, 1836, the day after the adoption of the Declaration of Texas Independence, a committee was appointed to draft a national flag,” according to Adina De Zavala in an article on “The Lone Star Flag of Texas” published in Frontier
Times, September 1948. “On March 11, the committee reported that the national flag of the Republic of Texas was born.”
De Zavala, a San Antonio historic preservationist in her own right, was the granddaughter of Lorenzo de Zavala, a member of that committee, signer of the Texas declaration and the first vice president of the Republic of Texas. She goes on to explain that the flag “was apparently forgotten for a time with the invasion (by) Santa Anna and numerous other unhappy vicissitudes” but was reintroduced a few years later.
So the Lone Star flag, adopted in 1839 by the Congress of the Republic of Texas, was a national flag before it continued as the state flag.
Besides a horizontal white stripe over a red stripe to the right of a vertical blue stripe, its other essential motif is “a white, regular five-pointed star in the center of the blue stripe, oriented so that one point faces upward, and of such a size that the diameter of a circle passing through the five points of the star is equal to three-fourths the width of the blue stripe,” according to a 1933 flag law quoted in the Handbook of Texas Flags of Texas entry.
A couple of earlier designs, proposed by early colonist Stephen F. Austin (discussed here June 10) and Lorenzo de Zavala incorporated single white stars, and a previous national flag recommended by interim President David G. Burnet had one golden star in the center. Their flags, however, are otherwise markedly different from the one we know.
“The actual designer of the Lone Star Flag is unknown, but it could have been (William H.) Wharton,” the senator who introduced the 1838 bill that specified its design, said Charles A. Spain, author of the Handbook entry.
In her article. Adina De Zavala describes the Lone Star’s meaning: “The single star, with one point pointing straight up, says to us, ‘Look up! Onward and upward!’ Its five points tell of the five characteristics of a good citizen … first, courage, moral and mental as well as physical; second, loyalty; third, righteousness (moral integrity); fourth, prudence; and fifth, broadmindedness.”
She doesn’t mention a cattle brand, and neither does a current authority.
“This is a new one for me,” said Spain, senior fellow and director of the Houston-based Flag Research Center and a former officer of the Vexillological Association of the State of Texas.
Asked about the cattle-brand origin story, Spain said, “I think this is highly, highly unlikely, as Texas in 1838 was not cattle country as it became later in the 19th century.”
While early Spanish settlers branded their cattle with artistic-looking pictograms, registration of brands was not required at the time of the Texas Revolution. The first Anglo American cattle brand is thought to have been Richard H. Chisholm’s (H C Bar mark — two capital letters with a short horizontal line), which was first recorded in 1832.
Then and later, most symbols made by branding irons were simple enough to be easily wrought and read, and were often two or three initials connected to form a single symbol, such as San Antonian Samuel Maverick’s MK mashup. Other common motifs were combinations of circles, lines and other shapes.
Best guess on the cattle brand your relative might have been thinking of is the one used by Asa Mitchell (17951865), one of Austin’s “Old Three Hundred” colonists who fought in the Battle of San Jacinto and took part in the drafting of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Mitchell bought land south of San Antonio and moved here in 1840, establishing himself as a rancher and merchant.
Mitchell’s cattle brand was re-registered 125 years later by his great-grandson, San Antonio
Mayor Gus B. Mauermann, in compliance with a 1943 state law, as reported by the San Antonio Express, Oct. 21, 1945.
It was one of four registered by the mayor — “a star used by
Asa Mitchell, the mayor’s great-grandfather; a 7 under a double arc, used by Hiram Mitchell, his grandfather; an MB used by Bernard Mauermann, his father; and the
bar-M brand used by the mayor.”
Mayor Mauermann told the Express that he intended to operate both the Mitchell
Ranch off Pleasanton Road as well as another family property on Lake Travis outside Austin, “following his retirement from public life.” He said he was interested in raising beef cattle and planned to name the old Mitchell spread “the Lone Star Ranch.”
As Mitchell was connected with “the Fathers of Texas” through his Texian Army service under Sam Houston and his involvement with the Texas declaration, he might have suggested a star on the new flag. But if so, his role doesn’t seem to have been documented.
Mauermann, a member of a prominent local family with a politician’s platform, may have voiced a connection between the Mitchell star and the Lone Star flag that has passed into legend — again, not found.
Texas state law requires that brands be re-registered every 10 years. The Asa Mitchell brand, registered in Bexar County, does not show up in a search on the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, www.tscrabrands.com, which does not include a star in its menu of motifs.