They were all kinds, and they came from everywhere.  Two-thirds were recent arrivals from the States, and only a few had been in Texas as long as six years.  Their backgrounds greatly varied - not one a professional soldier.  There were as few aristocrats as there were frontier types, and most had lived ordinary lives.
John W. Thompson from North Carolina, John Purdy Reynolds from Philadelphia, and Edward F. Mitchasson from Virginia were all medical doctors.  Daniel William Cloud from Kentucky was one of several lawyers.  George Kimbell, who came with the famous thirty-two from Gonzales, had been a hatter in New York.  Almaron Dickerson, commander of the artillery, was a blacksmith from Tennessee, and red-headed, tobacco-chewing Henry Warnell an 118-pound jockey from Arkansas.  Micajah Autry from North Carolina was a poet.
When Jesse Grimes of Georgia signed the Texas Declaration of Independencd at Washington-on-the-Brazos on March 2, 1836, he didn't know that his son Albert had already sacrificed his life for that independence at the Alamo.  Nor did the Virginian Benjamin Briggs Goodrich, also a signer, know that his brother James had died there for the cause.

The Alamo ~ by Mary Ann Noonan Guerra

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