After years of searching, two periods of intensive fieldwork and 13 Finding Medina podcast episodes — and much disagreement among historians — local history podcaster Brandon Seale is confident that the Battle of Medina site has finally been found.
Seale said he and the Finding Medina Project team have “found a conflict site consistent with the textual evidence for the battlefield of Medina.” He chose Thursday, April 6, for the announcement to coincide with the 210th anniversary of the signing of the first Texas Declaration of Independence.
The 1813 battle near the Medina River, called the “bloodiest battle ever fought on Texas soil” by the Texas State Historical Association, set the stage for later, more famous battles including the 1836 Alamo siege and the decisive Battle of San Jacinto. More than 1,000 combatants are thought to have died in the running battle, which took place southwest of San Antonio, about 20 minutes from downtown.
If accurate, the findings would render moot at least two competing plaques that stake claims on the Medina battlefield site, one at the intersection of Martinez Losoya Road and U.S. Highway 281, and another at Old Applewhite and Bruce roads. The location identified by the Finding Medina Project is in southern Bexar County.
To protect the interests of the private property owners on whose land the artifacts were found, Seale is not disclosing the exact location. He said years of research will continue before there can be any thoughts of erecting a new plaque to mark the site.
“That would be the logical end of many more years of work and confirmation,” he said, including defining the full range of the battlefield and whether further corroborating evidence can be found.
The new findings hinge on 26 munitions Seale and a group of military veterans found during fieldwork conducted in February and October 2022. Two of the artifacts are thought to be case shot used in close-range cannon fire, which is consistent with what historians know about munitions used in the battle. The other munitions also match arms used in the colonial era.
Lab work provided by the Center for Archaeological Research at the UTSA and X-ray fluorescence analysis by archaeologists at Texas State University helped in the effort to prove a connection between the artifacts and the formative battle by matching the metallurgy of the case shot with a lead ball found in 2009 among human remains of a fighter from the era.
Kay Hindes, a former San Antonio city archaeologist who has worked on the Finding Medina project, said that given the evidence, she is “convinced 100% they have a component of that main battle site.”
Like Seale, however, archaeologist Stephen Humphreys of American Veterans Archaeological Recovery (AVAR) is more circumspect about the evidence.
“We’ve got a great archaeological footprint in this concentration of musket balls and case shot, and that fits the textual evidence for this battle,” Humphreys said, referring to documents including writings of the time that refer to the battle and maps drawn by Stephen F. Austin.
Humphreys is CEO of the nonprofit AVAR, leading the archaeological investigation with a group of military veterans. More work is to be done, he said, to establish the full parameters of the battle site and figure out the role the current site played in the battle. “Is this the red-hot infantry engagement center of the battle?” he said. “Not yet. But is this part of the battle? I think probably so.”
Seale and company plan to present the artifacts and their findings at the Witte Museum in the upcoming weeks and will expound on their work for the April 17 episode of the new “big city small town” podcast created by San Antonio co-founder and columnist Robert Rivard.
For Hindes’ part, though, the long search is over. She has been looking for the site for four decades, she said, including earlier searches throughout the area.
“So many of us have looked for so long,” she said, admitting she’d given up hope of definitively locating the battlefield during her lifetime.
Hindes praised Seale’s passion for the cause and Humphreys’ meticulous planning for finally locating what she believes is a portion of the Medina battlefield.
“I’m so proud of the work they’ve done,” Hindes said. “My hat is off to them.”
This article has been updated to correct the county in which the battle site has been identified.
