My posting on the Alamo Society Facebook page--is it known that a great many of the Defenders were kin to each other?

Hershel Parker
Today at 7:19am
I see from the postings here on the Alamo Society Facebook page that many descendants or other relatives of the defenders of the Alamo post here. I am an old Melville scholar who has become interested in early American history and contributes to the webzine JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. I recently realized that Jim Bowie is a Pottenger cousin (apparently 2 ways) and did a little checking. I have Hopewelll Lord, Davis, Donovan, and THE ALAMO READER and see (characteristics of the defenders such as Lord saying who the Gonzales Rangers were (p. 173) in general terms. I am struck by how many of them have close or more remote connections to me, besides Bowie. A few are kin to both my parents. I notice that some of the Gonzales Rangers have common ancestors (with themselves and me) not very many generations back. Baker has a Costner-Rudisill connection (my mother was a Costner) as do Cummings, Floyd, Davis. Then Darst and Martin have Sparks connections (on my father's side). Jackson is a Hill connection. (my paternal side). There are several (more remote) Knox connections. I have checked the list of the original defenders and find a large number of Costner-Rudisill, Bell, Ewart ancestors, and Sparks and other connections of mine. There is a large bunch of older Knox connections (from Ireland) which I am not paying much attention to because I want to focus on something that may be overlooked. A great many of those who died at the Alamo were related to each other in a small number of ways. I think it perfectly possible that they did not ever talk genealogy and discover that they were kin. On the other hand, when so many of them had connections, for instance, near Charlotte, North Carolina, someone might naturally have said, "I used to have folks from that area," and compared notes. I don't want to suggest something extreme (and my reading is so slight that this topic may be known already), but you might almost say that the Gonzales Rangers were partly composed by a Band of Cousins, and the same to some extent (if you go back to Knox connections in Ireland, before immigration) could be said about a great many of the dead at the Alamo. As I say, I was just intrigued at first on tracking down the Bowie connection (not having known James Bowie was from the great Maryland family) and then just poking a finger in here and there. If the relationships of many of the defenders to each other is already well known, I apologize for intruding here.