I have a “thing” about Texas. I don’t know why, really. My cousin is convinced that in a prior life, I was one of the Alamo’s 200-or-so defenders who died in the predawn darkness of March 6, 1836. I doubt that, but I’ve been hooked on the Alamo and Texas ever since watching Fess Parker portray David Crockett on TV back in the early 1950s.

I do know there’s a New Hampshire connection to the Alamo. When entering the Alamo “Shrine” (it is not a “church”), you’re greeted by flags bearing ribbons with numbers on them. The numbers represent how many defenders from that state or country perished in the battle. The New Hampshire state flag is among them.

Its ribbon has a “1” on it, representing Pvt. Robert E. Cochran. Cochran was born in the Merrimack County town of Pembroke in 1810. He was only 26 years old when he died at the Alamo. It appears he left New Hampshire at some point and lived in Boston, then in New Orleans before immigrating to Texas in 1834.

At that time, Texas was “Norte Mexico.” Many Americans moved there to take advantage of land grants for small money, so long as they became Mexican citizens and converted to Catholicism. Many of the men who died at the Alamo had, in fact, become Mexican citizens.

Cochran may have lived for a while in Brazoria, Texas, but eventually joined the fight for Texas independence. He participated in the Siege of Bexar (San Antonio) in late 1835. The siege ended in December when Mexican General Martín Perfecto de Cos surrendered after retreating into the Alamo.

Cos and his men were allowed to return to Mexico, after swearing they would never take up arms in Texas again. However, Cos was Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna’s brother-in-law, making the surrender of Bexar especially embarrassing. Santa Anna amassed several thousand troops and force-marched them from Mexico City in the dead of winter, arriving in San Antonio in mid-February. Thirteen days after arriving, Santa Anna took the Alamo by storm, with only a handful of women, children and at least one slave surviving.

Cochran served and died as a member of Capt. William R. Carey’s artillery company. Santa Anna viewed these men as “pirates” not worthy of proper military protocol. When the battle was over, all but one of the 200 or so bodies of the defenders were carted off outside the Alamo’s walls and burned in three huge pyres on the night of March 6.

Cochran was only 26. He apparently never married and had no children. Cochran’s memory lives on in Cochran County, Texas, which was named for him.

I am part of a group called The Alamo Society, which, among other things, is dedicated to preserving and restoring the Alamo grounds to something more representative of what it was. Among our members is British rocker Phil Collins. I have been a part of this group for many years and enjoy attending the annual symposium during the “HHD”, or “High Holy Days”, surrounding the siege and fall of the Alamo.

While I’m not a descendent of Cochran or any other Alamo defender, I was invited by another group, the Alamo Defenders Descendants Association, to represent New Hampshire and Pvt. Cochran at its annual ceremony at the Alamo on the evening of March 6. It was a very somber and respectful event, where the names of the known defenders and their state or country of origin is read aloud. As Cochran’s name and the state of New Hampshire were read, I stood.

For a kid who grew up in Nashua and had never heard of San Antonio or the Alamo or David Crockett before Fess Parker and Disney came along, this was truly an unexpected and very humbling honor. It is the one time where descendants of Crockett, James Bowie, William Travis and more than 200 others – men who died on those grounds on that date so long ago – stand together again, to remember these men and the Alamo.

Yes, these men were rebels in an armed revolution. Santa Anna was within his right to put down the rebellion. The reasons for Texas revolution are many. In the end, these men fought for an independent Texas much as we had in the Northeast six decades earlier against the British. I’ve often wondered how many of us, outnumbered by thousands and facing certain death, would have stayed and died for what we thought we believed in?

Nashua native Paul Sylvain writes from his adopted home in Euless, Texas. He can be reached at psylvain.telegraph@yahoo.com