Dr. Amos Pollard, the Alamo doctor
Few are aware of Dr. Amos Pollard. He has an “under told” historical story, and yet lost his life when Santa Anna stormed over those walls of the Alamo March 6, 1836.
Who was Dr. Pollard? In the early 1800s it was a long trek from a small village in the upper New England states to Bexar and the Alamo. Francis J. Leazes, Jr., has a detailed article on Dr. Pollard in this April 2023 Southwest Historical Quarterly published by the Texas State Historical Association.
Dr. Pollard was born Oct. 29, 1803 in the small community of Ashburnham, Massachusetts, the son of farmer Jonas and Martha “Patti” Martin Pollard. By 1811, his father owned a small farm near Surry, Massachusetts. He grew up with younger siblings learning all things that farmers do, as well as attending one room schools in the Surry area. In 1823 he went off to study medicine at the newly formed Vermont Academy of Medicine. This young farm kid earned his medical degree by the spring of 1826.
That year his mother died, yet he was off to Boston to practice medicine. He would fall into the “temperance” reform theory that many doctors of that era entered to fight the extensive physical and social dangers of alcohol use prompted by the many taverns. He also joined with other Bostonites creating a generation of anti- slavery and abolitionist activists.
By 1828, Dr. Pollard was practicing in New York City and he married Fanny Parker, a girl he met while at the Vermont Academy. From 1828 to 1833 they lived in New York City where cholera epidemics devastated the lower East Side of Manhattan’s congested and rough and tumble neighborhoods. Dr. Pollard’s medical skills grew during those years raising his profile in New York.
Author Leazes states that In October 1832, when the Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company formed in New York City, it published stories of Texas in the local press. Despite his growing New York reform and political associations, Dr. Pollard must have seen success in Texas. Acquiring free land may have also been a drawing card.
His wife, Fannie and a two-year-old daughter born in 1830, went back to family in Vermont, as Dr. Pollard booked passage to New Orleans in 1833. From there he arrived in Brazoria, Texas, that December. Cholera had also moved west to East Texas and to the Stephen F. Austin settlements along the Brazos River. Living at Columbia, a resurgence of cholera in San Antonio (Bexar), took Dr. Pollard to that city in the summer of 1834.
By this time, his wife Fannie had died. Grandparents assumed his 5-year-old daughter’s care.
With Santa Anna consolidating Mexico’s political power, Dr. Pollard responded to the Texans call for assistance. He became a part of the Texas army organized that then besieged the Mexican garrison in San Antonio. On Oct. 23, 1835, Austin named Dr. Pollard as Surgeon of the Regiment.
Thus, serving as the Texas army doctor he struggled with the lack of food, clothing, shelter, battle wounds, and medical supplies. When the Mexican forces abandoned San Antonio in December 1835, the regiment fell apart. The meager remaining forces occupied the Alamo, with Dr. Pollard continuing his appeal for supplies.
Thus, when Santa Anna entered San Antonio on Feb. 23, 1836, Dr. Pollard was trapped with the heralded Bowie, Travis and Crockett in the Alamo for the fateful morning of March 6, 1836.
Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation. org for more info and membership.