USA > Texas > Prominent women of Texas > Part 13
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MRS. ANNA DIAL HEARNE .- Captain Garlington Coker Dial came from South Carolina to Texas in the early forties, and fought the Indians and Mexicans with his own company of twenty-five picked men. His daughter, Mrs. Anna Dial Hearne, is a native of Texas and has identified herself with the intellectual and social life and development of the State. She is at present the executive officer of the Pathfinders Club. This organization is the nucleus of the literary life of Austin, and is composed of students linguist women noted in the field of letters. It is justly considered one of the most useful organizations for women in the State, and Mrs. Hearne as its chief promoter has earned the position which she holds as its president, a position she adorns by her rare, social tact, and her talents as an accomplished artist, literary con- noisseur and graceful conversationalist. Her pictures have taken first prizes at numerous Texas State fairs, at the New Orleans Exposition, and the gold medal of the Van- dyke Club's exhibition in San Antonio was accorded her also.
Mrs. Hearne is of noble and distinguished English ances- try on the paternal, and of French Huguenot blood on her mother's side of the house. She is allied by her English blood with the Dials, or Doyles, who inter-married with the Hast- ings through Lady Isabel May, a daughter of the Eighth Earl of Huntingdon. Also through the Dials, or Doyles, with the Abercrombies of Clachmarmonshire, Scotland, the
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home center of the Abercrombies, to the present day. Her immediate ancestors in this country were refugees along with the Irish, Scotch, and English Jacobites, who supported the cause of "Prince Charlie"-Charles Edward Stewart, gen- erally called the Pretender,-and who, after their defeat at Cullodin, sought refuge in America from the persecutions of the House of Hanover.
CHAPTER XXV.
DRAMATIC.
MRS. JULIETTE DOWNS BLUE-MRS. W. H. CRISP-MRS. CRESTON CLARKE-MISS MARIE WAINWRIGHT.
MRS. JULIETTE DOWNS BLUE .- Mrs. Blue is a native of Mobile, Alabama, and has lived in New Orleans, in Louis- ville, and in Texas. Her father is P. T. Downs, superintend- ent of transportation of the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railroad Company, and her mother is distinguished for her talents, her courtly manners and her handsome person. Mrs. Blue was educated at Villa Maria, Montreal, Canada, and graduated with the highest honors of her class. In 1893, at the city of Chicago, she stood for the first time before the footlights in a minor character of "Americans Abroad." She was well received and encouraged in the choice of her voca- tion. Her subsequent appearances rapidly developed the latent genius that had inspired her choice and advanced her with phenomenal progress on the roll of Thespian honor. In two years she had run through the repertoire of the choicest companies, and had played with brilliant success in leading rôles of "Richard III," and "The Merchant of Venice." At the end of this time, without premonition to her manager or the public, she entered into matrimonial engagements that brought to sudden halt the course on which she had entered with such alluring promise. She was married in March, 1895, to Dr. Rupert Blue, of the United States Marine Hos-
MRS. JULIETTE DOWNS BLUE.
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pital Service, at San Francisco, where she has established her home, for which, as she expresses it, she has "relinquished all ambition in the theatrical world for the sweeter and more substantial joys of domestic life."
During her brief but bright career, Mrs. Blue so impressed the public with a sense of her devotion to the drama, and so successfully interpreted the highest ideal of histrionic art, that the announcement of her withdrawal from the stage produced, not only regret, but the profoundest surprise among those who had enjoyed her renditions and witnessed her rapid promotion in the line of her profession. The regret is not surprising when it is recalled that to her genius she united a fascinating grace and a marvelous perfection of personal beauty. These qualities now adorn the social sphere in which she moves; their power is unspeakable; through them the purest enjoyments of life may be attained, its highest purpose achieved.
MRS. W. H. CRISP .- Beneath the shadow of an old elm in one of the cemeteries of Waco is seen the grave of Mrs. W. H. Crisp, a slab of marble at the head and a block of the same at the foot, the former containing dates of birth and death and both inscribed "Eliza."
Mrs. Crisp was the mother of the distinguished congress- man from Georgia, late Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. She and her husband and her children, forming a popular dramatic combination, came to Texas in 1870 and played in many places and with uniform success, until her death, which occurred in 1873. In her last illness she requested that her body be buried in the spot where it now lies.
Mrs. Crisp was a woman of high character, fine talents, social virtues, genial manners ; these qualities created warm friends, always from the best society in which she lived. By these her memory is kept green and on each recurring Mem- orial Day her last resting place is strewn with flowers and decorated with mementoes of imperishable friendship and of loves that survive the tomb.
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MRS. CRESTON CLARKE, known in the dramatic world as Mrs. Adelaide Prince, is an ex-Galvestonian, and is fondly remembered by those who recall the triumphs of the old Histrionics of which she was the star. Mrs. Prince was the daughter of Solomon Rubenstein, of London, England. She came to Galveston when quite young; and it was in this city that she received her early education. She made her profes- sional début in Portland, Maine, appearing in "A Possible Case," under the management of J. M. Hill. She remained with Mr. Hill's company for a season, and then joined Mr. Daly's forces, beginning in the part of Agathe in "The Great Unknown." Later she played Olivia to Mr. Clarke's Orsini in "Twelfth Night."
The "Chib" appropriately suggests that some theatrical manager engage her as a star, and adds that she is pos- sessed of remarkable talent as well as being endowed with youth, beauty, and grace.
MISS MARIE WAINWRIGHT was the attraction at the opening of the Grand Opera House in Galveston. She is a daughter of Captain J. M. Wainwright, who commanded the United States sloop of war, "Harriet Lane," one of the ships engaged in the battle of Galveston in 1863, and who lost his life when the boarding Confederate troops of the steamer "Bayou City" captured his ship.
CHAPTER XXVI.
ADELAIDE MCCORD .- In the unclouded days of her inno- cent and lovely girlhood Adelaide McCord was described by one who knew her well, as the most beautiful, accomplished and fascinating woman in the wide world.
Near the close of her brief and brilliant, though sorrow- clouded career-she died when she was only thirty-three years of age she became the morganatic wife of the King of Wurtemburg, one of the lesser crowned heads of the German Empire; but her sway over the minds of men of letters and
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art, and over the hearts of the multitude had already crowned her, in all the great capitals of the world, the queen of beauty, love, wit, poesy and dramatic art.
She was born in the old Spanish pueblo of Nacogdoches in Texas, where she was reared among school companions, boys and girls, her peers in social standing, and whose names have become distinguished in that world in which Talleyrand said there were but five hundred people-people who ranked above Col. Ward McAllister's "four hundred."
From what sources was drawn the purple tide of life that flowed through the veins of Adelaide McCord we do not know; but that her father was of Scotch extraction on one side, at least, is evident from the name. That there was a chain of Hebrew-Spanish blood in her, may as likely be surmised from the fragmentary traditions we have of her short life.
For years she held at her feet, metaphorically, and in some instances actually, in resistless enchantment, the most noted men of two continents, and was the favorite toast in bazar, club and palace in all the great cosmopolitan cities of the world.
No woman, probably ever faced a camera so often. Two hundred and fifty likenesses of her were in existence a few years ago. The wealthy owner of a palatial hotel in New York, and two theaters besides, being the possessor of the collection. . Its weight in gold, costly frames and all, would probably not tempt the collector to part with it, for he doubtless knows its historic and artistic value. It is said that he considers two of those pictures as priceless as the books of the Sibyls. They would bring any sum de- manded from either of two of the most distinguished men of letters in Europe, Algernon Charles Swinburne and the younger Dumas.
Asa literary woman Adelaide McCord was even more appre- ciated on the other side of the Atlantic than in America. Her. poems were published in both the United States and Europe in half a dozen different languages. Charles Dickens, who was a frequent guest at her dejeuners a-la-fourchette, edited those poems. Her talents as an entertainer were as
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marked as her means were unlimited in making her break- fasts, dinners and little suppers the most exquisite imag- inable. Around her festive board were often grouped D'Israeli, afterward the Earl of Beaconsfield, then a member of the British Parliament, and the most fashionable novelist of that period; Charles Reade, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Jenny Lind, George Sand, the Earl of Derby, the dukes of Wellington, Edinburgh and Hamilton, the Prince of Wales, Theirs, Gambetti, Carlyle, Fechter, Dion. Boucicault, Swin- burne, Theophile Gautier, Flaubert, the elder Dumas, and a host of others, the literary, social and political peers of those mentioned, as well as many of the lesser lights of the world of letters and art. All these were happy to be her guests, held willing captives by her wit, beauty and charming personality.
As an actress, her receipts for one week, at the Gaieties in Paris, reached the sum of three hundred and fifty thousand francs-seventy thousand dollars. There she played to crowded houses one hundred nights. Royalty, represented at that period of her life by the third Napoleon and the Princes Jerome and Lucien Bonaparte, applauded her per- formances. The jealousy of the beautiful Empress Eugenie was the subject of remark, jest and witty comment in all the fashionable clubs, rendezvous and reunions of Paris.
By the irony of fate, Adelaide McCord, the beautiful Texan, is only known to the world as Adah Isaacs Menken. Menken was the name of the musician who came across the disk of her planet when she was twenty-four years of age, and per- suaded her to become his most unhappy wife. From that ill-starred union she was released in the divorce courts, and after two other equally unhappy legal alliances, was freed, to become, a short time before her death, the morganatic wife of the King of Wurtemburg.
In one, or perhaps several, of the encyclopædias of this century, she is only briefly mentioned as Adah Isaacs Men- ken, and no record is found of her well-known marriage to the King of Wurtemburg. But at the time of her death in Paris, she was known as the Queen of Wurtemburg. The
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same authority claims that her birthplace was New Orleans- a very natural mistake to the writer not trained to accuracy in the investigation of facts, for it was in that city that she and her sister made their first appearance on the boards as dancers in "Fazio." At one period of her early womanhood she taught in a seminary. It is likely that one possessed of such wondrous versatility, did this well. But the stage drew her to a more brilliant rostrum. She appeared in New York in 1859; in Paris in 1860.
She is described by the journals of those days as a beauty of the medium brunette type, with fair and delicately tinted complexion, rich red lips, pearly teeth, large, lustrous brown eyes, black eyebrows and lashes, dark hair that fell in nat- ural waves around a face of classic mould, radiant with youthful happiness and innocence, united with an intelligence which was prophetic of the possibilities and probabilities of her future.
General Alford and Col. Thomas Ochiltree were among her school companions in Texas, and the former supplies the larg. est part of the data used in the preparation of this sketch. He is fond of relating, in the manner of a thoroughbred gentleman, all that he knows of the story of his lovely play- mate, who, in "after years, had kings, princes, poets, and warriors at her feet"-who, as a playmate of his own age, joined in the pastimes of the boys and girls about the old log hut they called a schoolhouse, and that, years afterwards, he met her in Paris, where she was the morganatic wife of the King of Wurtemburg; and of how, in London, she was the reigning sensation - her carriage followed by admiring throngs, and her crest, "a horse's head, surmounted by four aces," the theme of constant discussion. "I met her," said the General, "in one of my visits to Paris. Tom Ochiltree and I were sitting together in the court of the Grand Hotel. She was then the Queen of Wurtemburg, and at the zenith of her career. The King was with her when she drove in, but soon excused himself, begging her to continue her drive."
"A party of Frenchmen were admiring her and making ex- travagant wishes about having her acquaintance.
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"Tom and I exchanged smiles. He arose and slowly walked toward her carriage."
" Hello, Tom!" she cried, extending her hand, "get in and take a drive."
"Great was the surprise expressed by the Frenchmen, but greater still when the American with the ease of old ac- quaintanceship, stepped into the gorgeous vehicle, and was wheeled away to the Boulevard. The next day we both called on her and enjoyed a few hours in delightful remi- niscences of our childish pleasures in old Nacogdoches."
None of her name or kindred are now living in Texas, but dear is her memory to those who knew her as the generous, warm-hearted, lovely little companion of their childhood.
She endeared herself to the Southern heart by her warm espousal of the Confederate cause. Her rooms in Baltimore, where she was during the early days of the struggle, were profusely decorated with Confederate flags and other tokens of her intense patriotism and devotion to her own native Southland in the memorable days of the struggle against the national authority. Her defiance became so conspicu- ous, that on one occasion she was placed under arrest to quell her Southern ardor. Vain effort!
It was not long after this that she became the reigning toast in Paris and London.
Peaceful was the close of her erratic, tempest-tossed life. In 1868 she calmly met the dread King of Kings in Paris. She donned her own white bridal robes to meet her last ghostly bridegroom, and, thus attired and veiled, was borne to beautiful, peaceful Pere la Chaise. Here she reposed for three years, when her remains were claimed by the people of her adopted faith, and now they lie at rest in the Hebrew ceme- tery of Mont Parnesse. "Thou Knowest," was the legend inscribed upon her monument in Pere la Chaise; now, on the granite shaft in Mont Parnesse is carved "Infelix." "Thou Knowest" was the more fitting inscription.
In regard to those painful passages in her life, which have, no doubt, been exaggerated and printed to feed a morbid taste for prurient literature, it is best to let them die the
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natural death which is sure to follow all such criticisms, whether they attack the morganatic queen of a king or the widowed Queen and Empress of the most powerful Kingdom and Empire on the globe.
None but an exalted and over-scrupulous nature could have dictated the beautiful and touching poem selected from her volume of verse, and containing the too open confession of a soul steeped in sorrow, her "Lament for a Life."
LAMENT FOR A LIFE.
Where is the promise of my years, Once written on my brow? Ere sorrows, agonies and fears Brought with them all that speaks in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers- Where sleeps that promise now?
Naught lingers to redeem those hours, Still, still to memory sweet, The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers Are withered all; and evil towers Supreme above the sister powers Of sorrow and deceit.
I look along the columned years And see life's riven fane, Just where it fell, amid the jeers Of scornful lips, whose mocking sneers Forever hiss within mine ears. To break the sleep of pain.
I can but own my life is vain, A desert void of peace ; I missed the goal I sought to gain, I missed the measure of the strain That lulls Fame's fever in the brain, And bids earth's tumult cease.
Myself ! Alas for theme so poor, A theme but rich in fear ! I stand a wreck on Error's shore, A spectre not within the door, A houseless shadow evermore An exile lingering here.
W. of T .- 11
CHAPTER XXVII. WIVES OF PROMINENT MEN.
MRS. JAMES S. HOGG-MRS. RICHARD COKE-MRS. JOHN H. REAGAN - MRS. GEORGE CLARK- MRS. WM. HENRY CRAIN.
MRS. JAMES S. HOGG .- The late wife of ex-Governor James S. Hogg was the daughter of J. A. Stinson and Ann West, of Georgia, in which State she was born; with her par- ents she moved to Texas in 1860, and was educated principally under the tuition of Prof. M. H. Looney, at the town of Gilmer. She was married in April, 1874, and thereafter lived successively at Quitman, Mineola and Tyler, in each of which places her husband opened a law office, establishing himself finally in the latter town, which was their home when he was elected Attorney- General of Texas in 1886. He entered upon the duties of this office in January, of the following year, and continued in it two successive terms when he was elected Governor of the State. In the latter position he also served two terms, retiring from office in January, 1895. It may be mentioned, in this connection, that to Governor Hogg belongs the peculiar distinction of being the first and only native Texan to fill either the office of Governor or Attorney-General. During his continuous public service of eight years his residence was at Austin, the capital of the State, where Mrs. Hogg, by her gentleness and Christian virtues, formed many warm attach- ments and created the wealth of resources that served to enrich her social life. On resuming the duties of a private citizen, her husband chose Austin as their future home, and there, in a peaceful atmosphere of her own creation, she dwelt among friends. Her health, always feeble, soon gave signs of alarming failure, and she was taken to Pueblo, Colo- rado, in the hope of benefit from its salubrious climate. She,
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MRS. JAMES S. HOGG.
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however, derived no advantage from the change, but rapidly declined, and died there on the 21st of September, 1895. The body was carried to Austin, where, at the request of the incum- bent Executive, solemn obsequies were held at the guberna- torial mansion, and it was thence conveyed, amid universal sorrow, to its last resting place in the city's cemetery.
Mrs. Hogg left four children ; Willie, Ima, Mike and Tom. Her father and mother and two brothers also survive her.
Mrs. Hogg was quiet in her manners, retiring in her habits, unobtrusive in social intercourse, unostentatious in her hospitality, and instinctively humane in dispensing the sweet charities of life. As long as true worth and good works are valued among men, will lives like hers be cherished as helpful memories in the direction of human conduct.
MRS. RICHARD COKE .- In every sphere of life, as gover- nor, judge, United States senator or citizen, Senator Coke has evinced his superior ability, and is prominent among the emi- nent men of Texas. He has climbed the rugged hill of politi- cal preferment : dignified the positions he has held, and it is easy to trace his voluntary retirement from public life to the sources of that ennobling affection which has contributed to the domestic harmony of his home in Waco. During recent years Mrs. Coke's health has visibly failed. To be near her, and by gentle and unremitting watchfulness to add to her content, is to gratify his ambition, and yield to her the hap- piness that the formal routine of social life could not offer.
THE MISTRESS OF FORT HOUSTON .- Mrs. John H. Rea- gan, nee Miss Mollie Ford Taylor, is a conspicuous figure among the notable and prominent women of Texas.
"My marriage to Mr. Reagan was the first thing that ever happened to me," was the laughing remark of Mrs. Reagan. That it was a happy happening may well be inferred from the further statement of both parties that "it was a verita- ble love match."
It was in 1875 that Mrs. Reagan accompanied her hus- band to the federal capital, where he went to take his seat
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for his third term in the United States House of Representa- tives.
Her social successes, almost triumphs, began with her first introduction into the most exclusive, distinguished, and in- tellectual circles of the capital. Her receptions were noted for their brilliancy, while their lovely leader commanded the highest respect and esteem as the secretary of her distin- guished husband, a post she really held many years before she received the government appointment as such. She has always taken a thorough and intelligent interest in her hus- band's work and career. Mrs. Reagan's home in Texas, Fort Houston, near Palestine, is noted far and wide for its stately old-style beauty, and the graceful hospitalities dispensed by its accomplished mistress.
MRS. GEORGE CLARK, of Waco, was reared in an atmos- phere of cultivation. Her father, Major Clement Read Johns, enjoyed the confidence and esteem of people in every part of the State. His military career began in 1836, and in 1840 he was elected and served as a member of the Fifth Congress of the Republic of Texas. He will be remembered as the author of the famous bill passed at that session of Congress to quiet titles to lands of the Republic. Judge Clark is one of the most prominent jurists and politicians in the State, and surrounded by the environments that pros- perous fortune confers, his wife maintains the position she is called to occupy with signal grace.
MRS. WILLIAM HENRY CRAIN can be justly termed a daughter of Texas. Her father, Capt. Isaac N. Mitchell, was a successful planter, and often a soldier from 1838 to his death, in 1853. Her mother, Mrs. Mary A. Mitchell, was the daughter of Maj. James Kerr, a gentleman thoroughly identified with southwestern Texas from his arrival in Febru- ary, 1825, to his death in December, 1850, he having been the first settler at Gonzales, and long surveyor of both the colonies of De Witt and De Leon. Her mother, Mrs. Angeline Kerr, died in a camp on the San Bernard shortly after landing
MRS. GEORGE CLARK.
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at the mouth of the Brazos, soon followed by her two little sons, and was buried in the wilderness by a few men with only two ladies present, one of whom, Mrs. Mary E. Bell, a devoted Christian, read the burial service at the grave. Mrs. Kerr left an only child, Mary, to reach womanhood, and become the mother of Mrs. Crain. Major Kerr was married a second time, in 1833, to Miss Sarah G. Fulton, of Victoria, formerly of New York. Together they watched over Mary from early girlhood until her marriage. After the Mexican invasion, in 1836, her education was continued at St. Mary's Seminary, first at "The Barrens," and then at Cape Girar- deau, Missouri. Returning home, in 1839, she long ranked as one of the most accomplished and amiable young ladies in that portion of Texas. In July, 1843, she married Cap- tain Mitchell. Some years after his death she married Mr. Sheldon, and died at Halletsville in 18 -. Her daughter, Angeline Mitchell, the subject of this sketch, was born in Laraca County, thoroughly educated in the convents at Galveston and New Orleans, becoming an accomplished young woman, enjoying the love of a large circle of kindred, including several brothers and sisters, and a large circle of friends, until her marriage to William Henry Crain, a brilliant young lawyer, who was for about ten years, a widely known member of Congress from southwest Texas, resid- ing in Cuero, De Witt County. Mrs. Crain passed several winters with her husband in Washington, but for some years has preferred to remain at home, watching over the training and welfare of her children. She has ever been patriotic, lov- ing Texas with a devotion worthy of a true daughter, proving that she is a worthy descendant of her grand-parents, Major and Mrs. Kerr, both of whom descended from approved Revo- lutionary stock. Major Kerr, through both his father and mother (James Kerr, Sr., and his wife Patience Wells), who were the children of conspicuous Revolutionary soldiers from Maryland in the war of 1776, while Mrs. Kerr was a scion of the noted Caldwell family of Kentucky, her father, Gen. James Caldwell, having been speaker of the House of Representa- tives in both Kentucky and the Territory of Missouri.
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