August 9th, 1809, within four miles of Red Bank Church. He was
the son of Mark Travis, Sr., who was a brother of Rev. Alexander
Travis. The family moved to Conecuh in 1818.
Young Travis was as well educated as the times and country could
afford. At maturity he studied for the bar at Claiborne, under the
Honorable James Dellett. Quite early in the year 1835 he bade
farewell to his quiet home in South Alabama and removed to Texas.
Travis was a complicated man. When he moved to Texas, he had professed to convert to Catholicism (a requirement of Mexican citizenship) and declared himself single, though he had left behind a son and pregnant wife in Alabama. Legend has it that Travis, convinced of his wife's infidelity, killed the man he suspected to be the father of her unborn child. His wife claimed desertion and was granted a divorce in early 1835. Meanwhile, Travis kept written documentation of his extramarital conquests and made plans to marry someone else.
And yet William Travis was considered a fair man, and well disciplined. Along with Bowie, he argued that the Alamo was the only thing keeping Santa Anna from invading the vulnerable settlements of East Texas.
The province was then in a state of seething excitement. Santa Anna
was Governor, President or Dictator of the Republic of Mexico,
