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Lost and Found—The Rediscovery of Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá
A spring, the river, and Harris Hollow (pictured) served as the three sources of water.
Dr. Kathleen Gilmore was able to determine from Spanish records that the mission was 1.5 leagues from the presidio. It was near a place where the San Saba River took a sharp turn to the north. There was a lot of arable land around the mission, and it had three sources of water nearby. The site we found met all of these requirements. At 3.95 miles from the presidio, the distance between this site and the presidio was exactly a league-and-a-half. A spring, the river, and Harris Hollow (pictured) served as the three sources of water. The river takes a bend to the north right by the site, and there are two river fords in the vicinity. Broad flood plains on the south side of the river provided the rich farmland sought out by the priests when they selected a site for the mission.
The team that rediscovered the location of Mission San Saba: historian and historical archeologist Kay Hindes, archeologist Grant Hall, and architect Mark Wolf, whose interest in his genealogy sparked the discovery.
The team that rediscovered the location of Mission San Saba: historian and historical archeologist Kay Hindes, archeologist Grant Hall, and architect Mark Wolf, whose interest in his genealogy sparked the discovery. Photo by Mark Mamawal, Texas Tech University.
Noted historian Robert S. Weddle. Like John Warren Hunter before him, Weddle was once the editor of the newspaper in Menard. He became deeply interested in the Spanish history of the Menard area and would later write a popular book—The San Saba Mission, Spanish Pivot in Texas—the complete story of the presidio and mission.
Noted historian Robert S. Weddle. Like John Warren Hunter before him, Weddle was once the editor of the newspaper in Menard. He became deeply interested in the Spanish history of the Menard area and would later write a popular book—The San Saba Mission, Spanish Pivot in Texas—the complete story of the presidio and mission. Photo by Mark Mamawal, Texas Tech University.
Judge Otis Lyckman, Kay Hindes, and Mark Wolf.
Judge Otis Lyckman, Kay Hindes, and Mark Wolf. County judge for 25 years, Lyckman has a strong interest in historic preservation in Menard County. He led efforts to preserve and restore the presidio. Judge Lyckman and his wife, Dionitia, gave their permission for excavations to proceed once the mission was found on their property east of Menard. Their close cooperation was critical to the successful investigation of the mission site. Judge Lyckman was particularly fascinated by the fired daub marking the mission. He said that he had noticed these baked clay lumps in the past as he plowed his alfalfa field. They seemed out of place, and not a natural thing to be occurring in his field. He wondered what they were, but never dreamed that they were evidence of the mission buildings that burned on his land in 1758.

Historians and archeologists began trying to relocate Mission San Sabá in the mid-1960s with the work of Kathleen Gilmore and Dessamae Lorrain. Continued efforts into the early 1990s had no better luck. A few years later things took a different turn when a San Antonio architect, Mark Wolf, began tracing his genealogy. Much to his surprise, he learned he was a direct descendant of Juan Leal, a Spanish soldier who had been stationed at the ill-fated mission to assist the priests. When the Indians attacked the mission in 1758, Leal organized the defense of the survivors holding out in the church at the mission. He set up a small cannon on some boxes and periodically fired it out the door to keep the Indians at bay. When night fell, Leal and the other survivors were able to sneak out of the burning mission and make their way to the safety of the presidio four miles to the west. Leal later moved to San Antonio, where he lived out the rest of his life as a prominent citizen in that community.

Intrigued by his connection to the story, Wolf asked Kay Hindes, historian and archeologist from Jourdanton, if she would take him out to Menard and show him the mission. She told him that the location of the mission was unknown despite repeated attempts to find it. Undaunted, Wolf enlisted Hindes' help to find the mission. They started with a survey report authored by Shawn Carlson, a Texas A&M archeologist who had led the last effort to find Mission San Saba. Carlson, following the research of Kathleen Gilmore, had narrowed the search to an area along the south side of the San Saba River east of Menard. Carlson recommended that future searches for the mission incorporate remote sensing techniques such as aerial photography.

Wolf persuaded a friend who owned a small plane to help out. They flew over the San Saba River valley east of Menard and took photographs with different types of film (color, black-and-white, and infrared). Mark Wolf got his photos developed and began looking them over for any sign of the mission. He noticed a couple of promising outlines on the ground, linear soil discolorations that he thought could be the remnants of the outer wall or stockade of the mission.

In the spring of 1993, Wolf and Hindes contacted me (Grant Hall). They asked if I would bring my Texas Tech archeology field school students over to Menard that summer to test one of the locations that looked promising in the aerial photographs. My students and I were joined by Kathleen Gilmore and Shawn Carlson, both of whom still had a keen interest in helping locate the site. Unfortunately, the anomalies in the photographs we investigated during the summer of 1993 all turned out to be false leads.

While Wolf was looking at aerial photos and we were testing sites, Kay Hindes had been doing research at the Center for American History at UT Austin. There she found a pamphlet entitled "The Rise and Fall of Mission San Saba. " It was written by John Warren Hunter, editor of the Menard newspaper and was published in 1905. Historians had dismissed the Hunter account as a fanciful and indiscriminate "tacky little pamphlet." But Hindes read it anyway and noticed that Hunter stated the mission was on "the old Hockensmith place," and that you could still go out there and pick up lots of relics. Following up on this lead, Hindes went to the deed records in Menard and found that there had been only one Hockensmith family living in Menard County back in 1905. The "old Hockensmith place" had been out east of Menard along the San Saba River. Hindes traced the deed records and learned that this land was now owned by Otis and Dionitia Lyckman of Menard.

Over Labor Day Weekend in 1993, Kay Hindes, Mark and Kim Wolf , and I were in Menard to test another location that Mark had seen in his aerial photos. On the way out to this location we passed the Lyckman's land. We noticed that Menard County Judge Lyckman had just plowed the alfalfa field right by the highway. Kay remarked: "That's where John Warren Hunter says the mission is located." I replied: "Well, since Judge Lyckman has just plowed that field, we ought to go in there and take a look. The ground visibility will never be better than it is now." Kay got Lyckman's permission for us to enter his land.

Soon we were walking across the freshly plowed field, which would normally have been densely blanketed with alfalfa. As we approached what we now know is the actual mission location, I started seeing some fired clay daub. I remarked that this was what we would expect to find as a result of the burning that occurred when the mission was destroyed. Shortly after that, Kay Hindes picked up an artifact. She looked at it for a second and said: "This is what we are looking for!" She had found a piece of Spanish pottery—a thick fragment of a green-glazed olive jar. Looking over this area of the field more carefully, we quickly found about 30 more pieces of pottery and quite a bit of burned bone. We were elated and reasonably certain we had found the mission. But we also knew we needed more definitive proof.
Sherds of Spanish olive jar and green-glazed wares. These broken pieces of pottery represent types that are diagnostic of the Spanish colonial era in Texas. One of the large green-colored sherds is the one that Kay Hindes found the day the site was discovered in 1993.
Sherds of Spanish olive jar and green-glazed wares. These broken pieces of pottery represent types that are diagnostic of the Spanish colonial era in Texas. One of the large green-colored sherds is the one that Kay Hindes found the day the site was discovered in 1993.
This brass bell, privately owned, was found in a field near the mission. It likely was one of the items taken from the mission by the Indians after the attack.
This brass bell, privately owned, was found in a field near the mission. It likely was one of the items taken from the mission by the Indians after the attack.
The alfalfa field where the mission was once located, fall 1993. Pink flags mark metal artifacts found with metal detectors. About a quarter of the metal artifacts were from the eighteenth century, things like musket balls, wrought iron nails, and brass objects. Most of the metal was modern: barbed wire staples, ring pulls, bottle caps, farm machinery parts, and ear tags from Judge Lyckman's goats, labeled "O. Lyckman."
The alfalfa field where the mission was once located, Fall 1993. Pink flags mark metal artifacts found with metal detectors. About a quarter of the metal artifacts were from the eighteenth century, things like musket balls, wrought iron nails, and brass objects. Most of the metal was modern: barbed wire staples, ring pulls, bottle caps, farm machinery parts, and ear tags from Judge Lyckman's goats, labeled "O. Lyckman."
This is one of many pieces of fired daub that were found at the mission site.
This is one of many pieces of fired daub that were found at the mission site. The temporary buildings erected at the mission in 1757 were made of wattle and daub, the walls being wooden poles stuck into the ground. The chinks between the poles were filled by pressing daub (mud) into them. The daub was strengthened by the addition of grass. When the mission was set on fire, the wood burned, but the fire-hardened daub survived. This daub specimen preserves impressions of the grass that was mixed in to strengthen it.