As you might expect, the San Jacinto Museum of History holds several items that once belonged to General Antonio López de Santa Anna - the Mexican leader who trounced the rebels at the Alamo only to be captured six weeks later at the Battle of San Jacinto and forced to recognize the Republic of Texas.

"We have a leather glove," says museum president Larry Spasic. "We have some of his silverware retrieved after the Battle of San Jacinto, a knee buckle, a china plate, and a stake that probably held his tent in place on the San Jacinto battlefield."

But it's what the LaPorte museum doesn't have that's been getting national attention.

Santa Anna's fake leg - a wood and cork affair outfitted with a leather boot - belongs to the Illinois State Military Museum in Springfield. And Spasic, in a light-hearted but public way, petitioned the White House to have it relocated to Texas.

"The history of New Spain and Mexico is the history of Texas," Spasic explains, "though we really didn't believe a president from Illinois would do anything more than say that Texas and Illinois share a wonderful history."

Some background: Santa Anna lost his left leg in Mexico two years after the Battle of San Jacinto, during the 1838 "Pastry War" with (who else?) France. Ultimately, the general had his leg buried with full military honors and got himself an artificial limb.

But in 1847, during the Mexican War at the Battle of Cerro Gordo, Santa Anna beat such a hasty retreat from the battlefield that he left that fake leg behind. Illinois soldiers came upon the general's abandoned carriage and discovered the leg, $18,000 in gold (which they turned in) and a roast chicken lunch (which they ate).

So, yes, Santa Anna lost his leg twice.

The fake leg went on tour for a time - the curious were willing to pay a bit for a peek at it - but it ended up back in Illinois, in a recreated carriage scene in the military museum.

Which brings us to the present. Hoping to draw some traffic to the San Jacinto Museum of History's new website, Spasic posted a petition on the White House web site in April to bring Santa Anna's leg back to Texas. The petition needed 100,000 signatures in 30 days to earn an official response from the government. It failed - but not before media caught wind of it.

The upshot: Santa Anna's fake leg is a big draw in Illinois and museum officials there have no intention of parting with it.

At this point, Spasic has other things he'd rather talk about, like the San Jacinto Museum's new web site and the recent purchase of 13 acres of land, running adjacent and parallel to the old battlefield. Spasic envisions new facilities there, space for classrooms, travelling exhibits and the museum's vast collection of artifacts - everything from laundry bags and musket balls to bits, bricks and locks.

"Fewer than one percent of our collection is on display at any given time," he explains.

The new web site was designed by Brand Extract, "a Houston firm that worked with us for two years and never charged us a dime," Spasic says.

Included on the site is a downloadable Texas history curriculum guide that works in tandem with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS), state standards for what students should know and be able to do.

"It's been downloaded over 6,000 times," Spasic says."

Fourth- and seventh-graders are frequent visitors to the museum because those are the years Texas students tackle state history.

Even without Santa Anna's leg, there's a lot to see.