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Its also worth looking at William Fairfax Gray's description of Emily De Zavala:

"Wednesday, March 23, 1836 Mrs. Zavala is a fine, beautiful woman, of tall, dignified person and ladylike manners, black eyes, twenty-seven years old, a native of the State of New York; maiden name West. She is the second wife of the Vice-President; the first was a lady of Yucatan, and the mother of young Lorenzo, who is now ----- years of age. The Vice-President is forty-seven. They have three little children, Augustin, Emalie and Ricardo, the youngest just beginning to crawl. Sweet children, mild, gentle, well bred. Oh! how they made me think of my own dear ones. Mrs. Zavala spent one year in the City of Mexico after her marriage, and speaks the Spanish language fluently. She and her husband always converse in Spanish when alone. She was also in Paris with her husband when he was minister of the Mexican Republic at that court. She has but one house servant, an Irish girl, the same that accompanied her to Paris, who is chambermaid and nurse, one black woman in the kitchen, who is cook, etc."

Now, given that Gray was a Virginia slave-owner I think he could fairly be expected to recognise a colored woman when he met her, and to distinguish between "a native of the State of New York" and the New Orleans quadroon claimed by Ms McVea

No, Harris didn't get it wrong at all. The mistake doesn't come from his diary but from a later SHQ article by his editor, Looscan, who says he arrived at Galveston on the same day as the news of San Jacinto, but cites his diary as the source. Yet as you've seen for yourself, the diary is clear and unambiguous about his arriving at Galveston on April 21 and meeting Mrs De Zavala there, and then several days later, comes the news of San Jacinto. No confusion at all.