Perhaps you’ve heard the tale. A beautiful mulatto slave named Emily Morgan was entertaining Santa Anna on that fateful afternoon in 1836 when the Texians launched a surprise attack on a napping Mexican army. Her story was so "widely known," she was the inspiration for this song.

Well . . . research shows a light-skinned, free African American servant named Emily West was taken captive by the Mexican army during a raid days prior to the Battle of San Jacinto.

Her story came to light when a footnote in an 1842 travel journal, published in 1956, suggested the Mexicans probably lost "because of a mulatto girl belonging to Colonel Morgan who was closeted in the tent with Santa Anna." By this time, Mitch Miller’s version of The Yellow Rose of Texas had hit the pop charts, prompting one journalist to note that Emily would be a "fitting candidate" for the girl in the song.

What became of Emily West? No one knows. But there’s little evidence she was Texas’ Yellow Rose.