Brandon Seale has spent years rediscovering the Battle of Medina, a mysterious a part of Texas historical past that has been misplaced for greater than 100 years.
Seale, a San Antonio-based power entrepreneur and historian, has at all times had an curiosity in Texas historical past.
“You may’t develop up in San Antonio and never be slightly bit surrounded by Texas historical past,” Seale stated on the newest episode of the bigcitysmalltown podcast.
Whereas working in northern Mexico between 2015 and 2018, Seale encountered historic connections between Mexico and South Texas, and “one thing opened up” in regards to the story of the place he was from.
This curiosity within the historical past of Texas led to his personal podcast “A New Historical past of Previous Texas”, the place he detailed his seek for the misplaced website of the Battle of Medina. It’s a battle not as broadly generally known as different conflicts just like the Battle of the Alamo or the Battle of Goliad.
Seale joined Robert Rivard on the bigcitysmalltown podcast, the place he shared current developments in his seek for the battle website and mentioned theories as to why the essential occasion is just not largely remembered.
“After we began this search, there have been 4 historic markers that had been positioned out in southern Bexar and Atascosa County,” Seale stated, with one other 5 or 6 websites being potential areas.
Initially, Seale pinpointed the battle website to someplace close to Poteet, a small city south of San Antonio — a idea he admitted he received fallacious within the first season of his podcast.
By looking “dozens of web sites and tons of of acres” and gathering artifacts like musketballs, buckles and buttons, 4 battle websites have now been confirmed.
The American Veterans Archeological Restoration Undertaking and the Atascosa County Historic Fee have been important to the analysis and by no means letting “the battle die.”
A brand new 44-minute documentary produced by Seale will air on KLRN on Sept 29 at 9 p.m. The movie is a fruits of years of analysis, strolling the viewers by way of the logic of how Seale and his workforce related these websites.
“I believe what we appear to be discovering in these little clusters suggests that there have been a bunch of fights. There have been a bunch of fights, and half the boys had been mounted within the battle,” Seale stated. “It may be disappointing if we had been guided on this by considering that we had been going to have the ability to ever put, , one spot on a map and say like, ‘This was it, this was the Battle of Medina.’ However I believe what it’s forcing us to do is simply interact extra deeply with the sources and notice what sort of battle it actually was.”
Steel detecting was key in figuring out sure artifacts and confirming battle websites in Atascosa and Bexar Counties. Lots of the artifacts discovered are on show on the Witte Museum.
