This column first appeared in August 2012.
I was born way too late to partake in the coonskin cap craze born of Fess Parker’s Davy Crockett TV show that caused a national sensation for a couple years in the mid-1950s. But I knew who he was and always thought of him fightin’ Indians, wrestlin’ bears and, in general, just bein’ “King of the Wild Frontier.” It wasn’t until much later in life that I realized that Crockett was a United States Congressman from Tennessee who wisely fought against Andrew Jackson’s brutal Indian removal act of 1830 and supported the rights of “squatters” who, in most cases improved the land they lived upon but were barred from buying it because, well, because they didn’t own any land. Both seemed like no-brainers to me, but that support drew the ire of Andrew Jackson and ultimately drove Davy from the state and country by costing him his job.
What floored me the most was when the revelation finally set into my grade school mind that Davy Crockett, Walt Disney’s Davy Crockett, fought and died at the Alamo in 1836. I guess I never thought of him in those terms, you know, as a real live human being. In my mind, he was a work of historical fiction in the same class as Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox. I checked out A book from the Indianapolis Public Library as a kid and read all about the battle at the Alamo. It was for years considered to be the benchmark history of this pivotal event in the fight for Texas independence. But the Alamo was a loss for Americans and I was a Vietnam War Era kid and well, my generation didn’t want to hear anymore about losing.
Well, the Alamo just got it’s hipness back. Do you know who has the largest private collection of artifacts from the battle of the Alamo? It might surprise you to learn that it’s Englishman Phil Collins — songwriter, drummer, pianist, actor and lead singer of the rock band Genesis and a successful solo artist all his own. Collins sang lead on several chart topping hits between 1975 and 2010 ranging from the drum-heavy “In the Air Tonight,” dance pop of “Sussudio,” piano-driven “Against All Odds,” to the political statements of “Another Day in Paradise.”
According to Atlantic Records, Collins’ total worldwide sales as a solo artist from 1981 to 2004 were 155 million including 30 hit singles earning him seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and two Golden Globes for his solo work. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.
While most Rock stars were burning cash on fast cars, drugs, yachts or trophy girlfriends, Phil Collins was buying up relics from the Texas Revolution and the Alamo. “It keeps me off the streets. What am I going to do? I don’t want to traipse around the world anymore,” he told a reporter. “I love it. I sit downstairs in my basement looking at and sort of drooling over what I’ve got. It was never my intention to have this huge collection, but one thing led to another and it’s my private thing.” Among his treasures are one of Davy Crockett’s rifles and his post-death receipt from the Texan Army. They share space with Jim Bowie’s knives, verbose William Barret Travis’ letters, Santa Anna items and a snuffbox that Sam Houston gave to a romantic interest. And those are just a few of the pieces from the Texas Revolution’s biggest names.
Perhaps more revealing about the depth of Collins’ obsession are the hundreds of historical bits — buttons, dice, letters, weapons and IOUs — linked to the less-celebrated defenders who died at the Alamo or the hundreds of anonymous Mexican soldiers who died with them on March 6, 1836. Collins has quietly become one of the foremost experts on the Battle of the Alamo and has just released a book about his artifact collection, entitled The Alamo and Beyond: A Collector’s Journey.
Collins’ Alamo obsession began when he as a 5-year-old boy (who had just got his first drum set) in the London suburb of Chiswick after seeing the Disney series “Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier.” “When I was five or six I started dressing up like Davy Crockett,” Collins recalled. “My sister told me a few months ago that my grandmother cut up her fur coats so I could have a coonskin hat. From there I moved on to the harder stuff, which was John Wayne’s The Alamo. ”
He first visited the Alamo in the early 1970s during a break while touring with Genesis. Then, in the late 1980s, he found himself browsing in an antiquities store in a Washington, D.C. looking for Disney animation cels with his wife during a tour with Genesis. “We came across a Davy Crockett letter (he thought it was too expensive at $60,000), and suddenly it occurred to me: My God, this stuff exists! One thinks it’s all burned, dead, buried — you know, history. So the seed was planted.”
A few years later, someone gave him a framed document as a gift: a receipt for a saddle belonging to John William Smith, the first mayor of San Antonio and one of the couriers Travis dispatched from the Alamo to get aid to the doomed Texans. (A clairvoyant later told Collins that he was Smith reincarnated.) “I just looked at the receipt and marvelled at how many miles this saddle must have (been) ridden. “I thought if that’s out there, then let’s see what else is out there,” he said. “And that was the beginning of my collection.”
Life and music rolled on and Phil was amassing a respectable personal collection of Alamo artifacts; picking up a piece here or there (mostly for decoration) when in 2004, Collins found himself in San Antonio again, this time on his farewell tour before retiring from music. (An operation to fix some dislocated vertebrae made the decision for him.) By now a seasoned collector, he visited the Alamo for what he thought was his last time before he focused on raising his boys at home overseas. After a private tour (what did you expect? He’s Phil Collins), he stopped in at The History Shop, a store about fifty yards from the mission, where he met the shop’s owner, Jim Guimarin, who offered to scout for artifacts for him. The two became friends, and one night (after a few margaritas) Guimarin pointed out that no one has ever dug beneath his rented storefront. So in 2007, they bought the building, rented another shop space and were soon digging beneath the floorboards.
At a depth of 40 inches, “battle level,” they found hundreds of relics, including a rusted over-and-under pistol, musket balls and grapeshot, as well as personal items like buckles, buttons and a penknife. “It was incredibly exciting. We found hundreds of horseshoes, but we found things that were in incredible condition,” Collins said, adding that he got an irate letter from an archaeologist about the dig. “She thinks we just went in there with a spade. Nope, it was very well-organized, and everything was looked over,” he said. “There were cannon handles and a flattened cannonball, lots of musket balls, personal effects of soldiers,” Collins said. They also found the remains of three fire pits, which may have been the site of the group that cleaned up after the battle, led by General Andrade.
Besides the artifacts from The History Shop, Collins’ collection, which he keeps in the basement of his house in Switzerland, includes Davy Crockett’s musket-ball pouch (complete with five musket balls and two powder horns) that Crockett supposedly gave to a Mexican officer before he was executed, the sword belt that Travis was wearing when he died. a knife belonging to James Bowie (Texan folk hero — no relation to that other British rocker David Bowie), and a sword belonging to the Mexican leader Antonio López de Santa Anna.
So why the Alamo and not, say, Gettysburg or Normandy? “Originally, I thought the story of the Alamo was all these men defending their liberty when they could have left, knowing they were going to die,” Collins said. “That’s without a doubt what appealed to me, the romance and the nobility. But, as in life, the more you dig the more you find out that things weren’t quite like that.” He brought up the fact that Davy Crockett and other Alamo heroes owned slaves, a practice that the Mexicans abhorred. “It’s not the Hollywood story I bought when I was five,” Collins said.
Collins is thrice divorced, with five kids, including two young sons still at home. He says, “The romance is infectious. I’ve got a seven year-old who watches the John Wayne and the Billy Bob Thornton versions and can name every character, and goes and dresses up as a Mexican,” he said. “It captures him the way it captured me. Now he’s moved on to Napoleon.” Thoughtful, polite and studiously serious about his passion, Collins, 61, says the Alamo story “changed my life.”
It’s no surprise that an Englishman should be captivated by the Alamo. “The fight for freedom speaks to people worldwide,” Collins said, “the fact that you have a rock star who has a love affair with it says it’s everybody’s Alamo.” After all, the San Antonio shrine draws nearly 3 million visitors every year. Collins hopes that his collection will end up in a museum someday for others to enjoy.
As for my part, if you’ve read my columns in the past, you know that I often obsess about collectors, relics and collections. Most collectors of historic memorabilia share pretty much the same dream. That dream is to save, catalog, preserve and protect the items they’ve deemed important to the field they have desired to pursue. You will find no greater advocate for collecting than me. In fact, I suggest you visit your local antique shop/show and give it a try. You never know what you might find. Heck, maybe you’ll bump into Phil Collins along the way.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
