Ripped from the pages of history books, exhibits at the Bullock Texas State History Museum stand frozen in time as constant reminders of Texas’ unique history. Through a series of artifacts, first-hand accounts and video presentations, the second floor guides visitors through the tumultuous 1800s when Texas fought to gain independence from Mexico.

Texas Independence Day is celebrated on March 2 to commemorate Texas gaining independence from Mexico in 1836 after a seven-month long rebellion. In Austin, The Bullock Texas State History Museum celebrates Texas Independence Day every day, sharing information to visitors about Texas history, including key events leading up to Texas’ independence. 

At the annual Texas Independence Day Dinner gala at the museum, Joyce Spivey Aldridge, the volunteer programs manager for the Bullock Museum and a living history interpreter, will personify Susanna Dickinson, a survivor of the battle of the Alamo to honor her. 

“I am excited by the stories of Texas history that celebrate the passions of a courageous people fighting for issues in which they believed,” Aldridge said. “Particularly, I find the stories of women to be the most inspirational. I am reminded of what strength is when I study the stories of women who survived and thrived in the Texas frontier.”

Like Aldridge, Bullock Museum volunteer docent Bruce Clavey is also inspired by the events that led to and came out of the revolution. Clavey has volunteered at the Bullock Museum since October 2012. 

“Like many Texans, I enjoy a good, dramatic retelling of events leading up to the Texas Revolution,” Clavey said. “It was clearly the all-out fight for life and land and the memory of fallen countrymen and not a hastily drafted paper declaration that brought about the Republic of Texas.”

The museum has many artifacts from the rebellion, like the William Fairfax Gray Diary. Gray used the diary to document March 2, 1836, the date of the adoption of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Gray penned eleven other pocket-sized diaries, providing a firsthand account about Texas during the revolution. 

“We are so very proud to serve as a history museum for and about the people of Texas,” said Bullock Museum Interim Director Margaret Koch. “Texas Independence Day is a critical point in the history of Texas and an important one for us to study.” 

Much of the second floor of the museum is dedicated to walking visitors along the path of the revolution, from the events leading up to it and to its culmination. 

“I’ve grown to enjoy the story of Mexico’s independence from Spain on the eve of Stephen F. Austin’s arrival in Texas,” Clavey said. “Watching the needs and interests of these two parties clash in the 1830s is like watching the rise of a perfect storm.”

Though Texas Independence Day gave rise to a new sense of identity within Texans, the value of independence was within Texans from the early days of frontier living.

“Independence wasn’t just a value that popped up one day in the minds of Texans in the 1830s,” Clavey said. “It was born of the difficult years in which the resources of a new and struggling Mexico were spread thin.”

But a newfound spirit was awakened during the revolution and have ingrained themselves in generations of Texans to come. 

“Texas Independence Day is a reminder that the fierce spirit of survival that drove this province into a new nation has not subsided since then, but paid itself forward to each new generation of the peoples and cultures that proudly count themselves as Texans,” Clavey said.