Adina De Zavala – (1861-1955)

Adina Emilia De Zavala, preservationist, eldest of six children of Augustine and Julia (Tyrrell) De Zavala and granddaughter of Lorenzo de Zavala, was born on November 28, 1861, in Harris County.

The family lived at Galveston before moving to a ranch near San Antonio about 1873. The young Adina attended Ursuline Academy at Galveston from 1871 to 1873, was enrolled at Sam Houston Normal Institute at Huntsville in 1879, from which she graduated in 1881 and later attended a school of music in Missouri. She taught school at Terrell from 1884-1886 and later in San Antonio.

Around 1889, she and other San Antonio women met to discuss Texas and its heroes; this group became one of the first societies composed of women organized for patriotic purposes in the state. In 1893, members of this society became affiliated with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.

One of Adina's greatest contributions to Texas was the preservation of a portion of the old San Antonio de Valero Mission, better known as the Alamo, which her group prevented from being razed in the early twentieth century. The state had purchased the chapel of the Alamo from the Catholic Church in 1883, but in 1886 Hugo and Schmeltzer Company, a wholesale grocery firm, bought the Alamo mission convent, also known as the monastery, long barracks, or fortress, which was the scene of the major resistance by Alamo defenders against the Mexican forces headed by Antonio López de Santa Anna in 1836. As early as 1892, before her historical group affiliated with the DRT, Adina De Zavala extracted a verbal promise from the grocery firm to give her chapter first chance at buying the property.

In 1912, she organized the Texas Historical and Landmarks Association, which placed 38 markers at historic sites in Texas. She probably did more than any other single person in stirring interest in the preservation of the Spanish Governor’s Palace in San Antonio, which was finally purchased in 1928 by the city and restored. In the 1930s, she helped establish the location near Crockett, Texas of sites of the first two missions established in Texas by the Spanish. In 1923, Gov. Pat Neffappointed her to the Texas Historical Board, and she was one of the original members of the Committee of One Hundred appointed to plan for a state centennial.

She also served on the advisory board of the Texas Centennial Committee. She was a charter member of the Texas State Historical Association and a member of the executive council of that body beginning in 1919. In 1945 she was elected an honorary life fellow of the association. Adina was a dedicated Catholic and a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Texas Folklore Society.

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