USA > Texas > Prominent women of Texas > Part 2
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Jefferson Rusk, through a dishonest agent, lost all his hard- earned substance, and, in seeking to recover it, found fame, affluence and honor; and Texas, through this same untoward event, acquired one of the most interesting, useful, and versa- tile characters of her history. General Rusk had removed from his native State of South Carolina to Clarksville, Georgia, to practice law. He there married a daughter of General Cleveland, a prominent man in his section, and there formed business connections-among others, one with a company of miners and land speculators. In this the managers proved faithless and absconded to Texas with the funds of the corporation. He pursued the fugitives beyond the Sabine, but failed to recover any portion of his stolen property. This was in 1835, and his pursuit led him to the town of Nacogdoches. He found the country aflame with the spirit of revolution ; every man a soldier, every house an arsenal. His sympathetic nature caught the infection, and, forgetting all else, he made the cause of the patriots his own. From the ranks of agallant little company he soon advanced to its command, and from that to the leadership of the Republic's undisciplined but formidable battalions. Obeying the voice of the people, he temporarily laid down his sword to enter the memorable convention of 1836 that declared the independence of Texas. From this body he took service in the new government as its first Secretary of War, in which capacity, as director of operations in the field, he stopped Houston's retreat before Santa Anna, brought on the eventful battle of San Jacinto, and distinguished himself in that action as one of the military heroes of Texas history. Retiring from the cabinet and acting under a Brigadier Gen- eral's commission, he placed himself at the head of the troops, and followed in the retreating footsteps of the invaders; arriving at Goliad, he collected the bones of the three hundred and thirty victims of Urrea's treachery, and, before giving them honorable burial, delivered a funeral oration that, for eloquence, pathos, and patriotism, had not been excelled since Pericles pronounced his splendid eulogy to the memory of the slaughtered Greeks. In Houston's administration he
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was again called to the cabinet, but soon retired from it for a seat in the Texas Congress. In the intervals of his con- gressional service he fought the Caddos, the Cherokees, and other hostile Indians, and, on the disappearance of danger from that source, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Re- public. After brief service on the bench he resigned to resume his practice at the bar. He favored annexation to the United States, and, in 1845, was president of the con- vention that formed the constitution of the then future State of Texas. In the following year he was elected by the State's first legislature as one of her United States Senators, and he was retained in that high position till his melancholy death in 1857.
In every act inspired by the manifold zeal of this soldier, jurist and statesman, his devoted wife was always his sympa- thizer, often his counselor and sometimes his active helper, and her experiences in these turbulent times-if not as rugged or as perilous as those of her brave husband-were of a, nature to evoke the self-denial, composure, and courage that distinguished her through life.
It was in 1836 that occasion first offered to put these qualities to the test. The little army was scattered through the West, fighting the hordes from Mexico; and the hostile Indians, taking advantage of the defenseless situation of the Eastern settlements, were combining for bloody onslaught on the unprotected women and children. These latter, among whom were Mrs. Rusk and her young family, fled for safety toward the United States frontier, leaving between them and the savages only thirty men under General M'Leod, who garrisoned the little fortress at Nacogdoches. In their terror, these panic-stricken refugees threw away everything that could impede their progress, and, but for the calm and comforting assurances of Mrs. Rusk, many would have fallen by the way. "As long as the brave M'Leod or one of his men is living," she said, "we have nothing to fear." The fright of this trembling crowd was, from time to time, appallingly increased by a flying poltroon over- taking and passing them. On one occasion a dastard, of
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whom there were then fortunately but few in Texas, took time in his flight to scream out: "Hurry up or the Indians will scalp you." Mrs. Rusk, with undisturbed serenity, and with something of humor in her retort, replied to him: "You will save your scalp if your horse holds out."
Mrs. Rusk had seven children of whom the only survivor is John C. Rusk, of Ben Wheeler, Van Zandt County. Her only daughter, Helena, died young at Nacogdoches. Of the others, Thomas J. and Alonzo died in infancy, Benjamin died at Austin, Thomas D., died in Harrison County, and Cicero was killed in the Confederate army. The care of these children was the exclusive office of their mother, and their home her supreme sphere. She hallowed its precincts by the example of a useful and holy life; she brightened its hearth- stone with cheerfulness; she adorned its altars with domes- tic virtues ; and taught her children to reverence its sanctity. She dispensed its hospitality with generous but prudent hands, and she made it the refuge of the indigent, the afflicted, and the friendless. She thus became the idol of her household, and endeared herself to the people in the homes of whose descendants her memory still lingers as a sweet savor of the gentle charities of life.
Mrs. Rusk died in 1856, in the forty-seventh year of her age and the twenty-ninth of her married life, and infinitely sad were the consequences of this great bereavement. The strong, brave husband, whom no danger could appall, no calamity overwhelm, fell shattered under the stroke, and in deep despondency he languished until, heart-broken and mind-broken, his own hand finished the cruel work.
Mrs. Rusk was a devout Christian and inculcated the pre- cepts of her faith wherever she felt they might "bring forth fruits meet for repentance." Her heart was the hearth of the graces, and there they were warmed by the love that inspired her daily work, and in her daily work she was ever cheerful, genial and happy. The lines of Leigh Hunt might have been written for her.
"Death, of its sting disarmed, she knew no fear, But tasted heaven e'en while she lingered here."
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MRS. MIRABEAU B. LAMAR .- The wife of the first Vice President, and the second President, of the Republic of Texas, was the bright and beautiful Henrietta Maffitt, daughter of the celebrated Methodist minister, John Newland Maffitt, and sister of the gallant Fred. Maffitt, commodore of the Confed- erate navy. She was married in 1851 to General Lamar, who was fifty-three years of age and a widower, and who had already achieved fame in both the civil and military history of the country. He came to Texas from Georgia, his native State, in 1835; rendered splendid service as commander of cavalry at the battle of San Jacinto ; was President Burnet's Secretary of War, signalized his great ability in the presi- dential office, at the expiration of which his influence was most salutary in the councils of the nation; and fought in the Mexican War, where his reputation was augmented by brilliant conduct at the storming of Monterey. Such was the record of the brave man of Georgia who united his for- tunes with the beautiful woman of Texas.
Mrs. Lamar and her twin sister Matilda, when almost in their infancy, came to Texas with their mother, and lived in Galveston; there she was married, and there, also, was mar- ried her sister to R. D. Johnson, of that city.
So nearly had her life been passed in Texas, and so unal- terable and undivided was her devotion to the State, that Mrs. Lamar, though not to the manor born, was loath to admit any other place to that distinction; when questioned on the subject she always answered with diplomatic evasion and with Spartan brevity : "I am a Texan."
Immediately after her marriage, Mrs. Lamar moved with her husband to their plantation home near the historic town of Richmond, on the Brazos. There she became an active element in society, and gave zealous support to the Episco- pal Church, of which communion she was a member.
In 1857, General Lamar reluctantly accepted a mission to one of the American Republics. Accompanied by his wife, he went to Washington for credentials and instructions, in- tending to proceed from there to his post abroad. During their visit to the Capital, Mrs. Lamar was greatly admired
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for her charming personality, and was the recipient of many flattering attentions-including an entertainment at the White House by the courtly niece of President Buchanan. In the midst of these gaieties, and of her preparations for resi- dence in foreign countries, she was seriously attacked by a bronchial affection-so seriously, that her medical attend- ants forbade the voyage, and urged her immediate return to Texas. She obeyed the warning, and her husband was thus condemned to go alone to his distant mission. The soft cli- mate of southern Texas soon restored Mrs. Lamar to her wonted health, and she resumed her accustomed place in the social and religious circles of Richmond. Superadded to these were the responsible and onerous cares of a plantation. The duties were new, but she performed them with marvelous skill; she, moreover, fitted herself for the work she was des- tined so soon to direct and administer alone.
After two years' absence, General Lamar returned to his home, but he had hardly entered upon its enjoyment before he was fatally stricken with apoplexy.
The marriage of General and Mrs. Lamar, though marked by the proverbially inauspicious circumstance of disparity of age, was exceptionally favored by conditions not always conspicuous in the marital relation. They were united in the bonds of mutual confidence, affection and esteem. A daugh- ter, Loretta, was the issue of this marriage. She has in- herited the personal features of her mother, and unites in her character the most pronounced qualities of both parents. She is the wife of Samuel Douglas Calder, of Richmond, and the mother of two children.
Mrs. Lamar's bereavement dissolved, in a measure, the ties that bound her to society, though it strengthened her affiliations with schemes for dispensing charity, and added fervor to the faith she enjoyed in happier years.
During the four years of the Confederate War a vast field was opened around her for the exercise of the nobler qualities of human nature ; she entered with unhesitating step. South- ern soldiers and their suffering families found in her a minis- ter of comfort and in her stores an exhaustless source of
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helpful charities. Long will she be remembered for her boun- tiful goodness to the victims of the lost cause, and imperish- able in their influence are the lessons of her life. She died October 8, 1871. Unfeigned was the sorrow that followed her to the tomb, and generous as her gifts will ever be the homage offered at the shrine of virtues like hers.
MRS. JAMES W. FANNIN .- To few names in history attach so mournful an interest, so pathetic a memory, as to that of Col. James W. Fannin. He was born in Georgia, educated at West Point, married in his native State, and from there, in the autumn of 1834, removed to Texas with his wife and two little daughters, Pinckney and Minerva, respectively two and four years of age. He established his home at Velasco, one of the twin towns that sentinel the mouth of the Brazos, and he there heard from every breeze that war was in the air. Mexico was gathering her armies, and Texas was arming to meet them. He was foremost among the patriots of his sec- tion and raised from their number a troop for the relief of Gonzales, the Lexington of the Texas revolution. A month later he was further to the front, and in the first engagement on the march to San Antonio was crowned hero of the battle of Concepcion. He then led his fated expedition westward, met Urrea with a force five times greater than his own, fought valiantly, and surrendered his forceto be treated as prisoners of war. The capitulation was made to save his men from a worse captivity if not from useless slaughter, and to this humane conclusion he was even urged by the pious entreaty and soft courtesy of his wily foe. The treaty was reduced to writing and stipulated that officers should be paroled, pri- vates returned to their homes, personal property respected, besides other usual conditions of civilized warfare. This was on Sunday, March 20, 1836; one week from that day, the Christian's festival of Palm Sunday, these Christian con- querors led their beguiled captives to the bloodiest and most atrocious massacre of modern times. Urrea, the Fra Diavolo of his age, achieved by this refinement of mediæval perfidy the applause of his swashbucklers and the commendation of
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his master who was then marching to his Waterloo on the San Jacinto. The number of victims who fell under Urrea's remorseless fusilade was not less than three hundred and thirty; Fannin was reserved to give the crowning joy to this collation of blood. Knowing that he would refuse, he was offered his life on conditions that he scorned ; he only asked that his last messages of love should be conveyed to his family, that his watch should be sent to them, that he should be shot in the breast and not in the head, and that his body should be buried. His wishes were observed in the manner peculiar to his executioners; he was shot in the head, his body was left unburied, his messages were not sent, and his watch was stolen by the officer to whom it was confided.
After the foul assassination of Colonel Fannin, the bereaved family was received in the home of Col. William H. Jack, near Velasco, where Mrs. Fannin soon died comfortless and heart- broken. The eldest daughter, Pinckney, died in 1847, at the age of seventeen ; the youngest daughter, Minerva, long sur- vived her sister, but only to lead a life more pitiless than death. Born with a blighted mind, she groped in intellectual darkness from the cradle to the grave. No care and no skill could ever illumine with a single ray the long night of her clouded life. In 1862, when thirty years of age, she was en- tered as a private patient in the Asylum at Austin where, by act of the legislature, she was placed under the guardian- ship of the superintendent. She there died July 27, 1893, and her body now lies in the cemetery provided by the State for its honored dead.
Texas holds in her keeping the dust of the hero of Con- cepcion, and of all those he loved in life. It is not unrea- sonable to hope that, by some unscrutable law, she may be exalted through their afflictions, blessed through their suffering.
MRS. SIDNEY SHERMAN .- Neither the story of the tu- mults and wars of Texas nor that of her growth in the arts of peace and progress can be fully told without a mention of the fame that belongs to Sidney Sherman. He came into
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Texas and met her enemy in the crisis of her struggle, brought arms and men to her support, fought with splendid valor in her decisive battle, then, in the peaceful years that followed, helped to develop her industrial life, and thereby rear the structure of her permanent greatness.
He was a lineal decendant of Roger Sherman, of whom Jefferson declared that he "never said a foolish thing in his life." The offspring inherited much of the wisdom imputed to his great ancestor. He was born in 1805, in Massachu- setts, moved when quite a youth to Cincinnati, and thence to Newport, Kentucky, where he engaged in business. On the 27th of April, 1835, he was married at Frankfort to Catherine Isabella Cox. She was born April 27, 1815, in Franklin County, Kentucky, in which State her grandfather, Cornelius Fennick, was one of the earliest pioneers from Maryland. Through him she was decended from the first Lord Baltimore, grantee of the fair land destined to be the cradle of the family in America. After this marriage Sidney Sherman and his bride moved into the home at Newport prepared by the provident bridegroom. There, after a few months, the cry of the distressed Texans reached them from the far West, and both were aroused to what they conceived the supreme duty of the hour. Encouraged by his wife, even assisted by her in the work of recruiting men, he raised and equipped a company fifty strong, and, on the last day of 1835, embarked with them for the scene of their future ex- ploits. Mrs. Sherman accompanied the expedition as far as Natchez ; from there she returned to her parents in Frankfort, and Captain Sherman pursued his march to Texas. He ar- rived on the Brazos in February, 1836, and at once hastened westward to relieve Travis, who was besieged in the Alamo. Finding relief impossible with his small force, he fell back to the Brazos, where a regiment was organized and he elected its Colonel. Still receding before the enemy, in pursuance of the Texan policy, he led his regiment to the last stand of the Texans on the San Jacinto. There on the 20th of April- the day preceding the famous battle he dashed into the enemy's lines with a reconnoitering force of eighty-five men
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and fought in gallant style the skirmish that was destined to be the harbinger of the country's glorious triumph. On the memorable 21st he opened the battle, and his war cry, like that of the brilliant Navarre at Ivry, added fury to the fire of the patriots, and carried terror into the ranks of their enemy. "Remember the Alamo!" was the avenging message of the martyrs, and it was borne on the clarion notes of a thousand echoes to the trembling legions of the tyrant. The furious charge, the frenzied rush, the deadly onslaught, gave to these legions the wings of terror. In less than twenty minutes, retribution had done her effectual work, and the independence of Texas was won.
After participating in this splendid achievement of the Texan army, Colonel Sherman followed it to the western frontier, but finding, after several months, that no new invasion was imminent, tendered his resignation, and asked permission of the government to return to Kentucky. Pres- ident Burnet, in lieu of his acceptance of the resignation, issued to him a Colonel's commission in the regular army, with orders to raise a regiment in the United States. The Secretary of War, "as a testimonial of his gallant conduct," presented to Mrs. Sherman, through an official note, the stand of colors he had brought to Texas. This flag she had her- self, in the name of the ladies of Newport, presented to her husband's company on its departure for Texas ; both it and the Secretary's note are still preserved in the family as very precious relics.
After many delays occasioned by sickness, Colonel Sher- man joined his wife at Frankfort, and from there they pro- ceeded to their home at Newport. He enlisted new recruits under his commission and sent them to Texas, and he also collected and forwarded the much-needed apparel for the men in the field. In December, 1837, he again set out for Texas taking with him his wife and her young brother, Cor- nelius Cox, and also his own brother, Dana Sherman; after a month's travel the party reached the eventful battle ground of San Jacinto, and there camped one night. The following day Colonel Sherman and his wife paid a visit to
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ex-President Burnet, at whose instance they bought a home on San Jacinto bay. There they lived several years. His brother Dana settled near them, and within a year, and on the same day, both he and his wife died, leaving their infant daughter to Mrs. Sherman, who cared for the orphan until seven years of age, then gave her in charge to Colonel Sher- man's sister.
In 1842 Colonel Sherman was elected to Congress from his district, and several years later he was elected by popular vote Major-General of the Texan army, and this position he held till Texas was annexed to the United States. He then removed to the site of Harrisburg, burned by Santa Anna eleven years before; this move was made for the purpose of rebuilding the once promising town, and of developing the fertile country that lay around it. Directing his wonted en- ergies into these new channels of enterprise, he overcame a world of obstacles and achieved for Texas her first triumph in the era of her new life. He rebuilt Harrisburg; and he constructed the first railway in Texas, the road from Har- risburg on Buffalo Bayou to Richmond on the Brazos. Only one road, and that only a few months before, had preceded his west of the Mississippi, so that he was not only the father of railroads in Texas but one of the "early fathers" of the entire system from the Great Valley to the Pacific.
In 1853 occurred a series of conflagrations of which Gen- eral Sherman was most singularly the victim. His sawmill, a valuable one, was burned; his dwelling at Harrisburg, handsome and costly, was burned; the railroad office to which he had removed his family was burned; and in the several fires was consumed much personal property and many historical papers of priceless value to the country. None of these losses were covered by insurance, and they embraced all the earnings of a life of diligent and saga- cious toil.
Following these calamities Mrs. Sherman visited her par- ents in Kentucky for the first time since leaving them seven- teen years before. On her return to Texas the family moved to Galveston, where General Sherman sought to retrieve
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his fortunes in the hotel business, which he conducted until 1862. At this time the Confederate war was surging toward Galveston. He had previously sent his three eldest daugh- ters, Caroline, Belle and Sue, to their grandparents in Ken- tucky. He now removed his wife and their three remaining children to the less exposed position of their first home on the bay of San Jacinto. While there, the tide of war swept the Island City, and among its defenders fell young Lieut. Sidney Sherman, the General's eldest son, only nineteen years of age. Six months later the parents were called to mourn the death of their youngest child and only remaining son, little David Burnet Sherman. These crushing blows, added to the memory of the death of their little Cornelius at Harrisburg, so wrecked the mother's heart that she quickly passed beyond the hope of human cure. General Sherman, trusting to the recuperation that rural life might bring, bought a farm on the Brazos, near Richmond, to which the beloved invalid was removed. While on a visitfrom there to her sister, Mrs. Morgan, at Houston, she died January 20, 1865. The body was taken to Galveston and there laid by the side of her deeply mourned son. There the sorrowing husband, near the ashes he revered, fixed his new home, and gathered about him the five children that remained to him of the eight born in his happy marriage. Of these five chil- dren, three are now living : Mrs. J. M. O. Menard, of Galves- ton, and Mrs.W. E. Kendall and Mrs. L. W. Craig, both of Houston. General Sherman died in 1873. During the eight years he survived his wife, his daily walk bore the marks of his irreparable sorrow.
Mrs. Sherman's life is singularly instructive in the rela- tion that proclaims the fellowship of man. With a heart overflowing with sympathy, and a mind strong in its intui- tions of right, she was moved by every cause that appealed to her gentleness and her judgment. The current of loving kindness that flowed through her nature was fed from foun- tains that gave to it the vigor and freshness of a perennial grace, and to these fountains she ascribed the best inspira- tions of her life. A firm believer in the creed of the Catholic
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Church, and a devout worshipper at its altar, she sought to exemplify its teachings in her daily acts, and to appropriate its consolations in the hours of her distress and bereavement. Its trinity of graces, its faith and hope and love, were to her the unfailing sources of comfort in affliction, of confidence in the improvement of her fellow man, and of compassion for all the miseries that afflict his daily life.
MRS. WM. H. WHARTON .- Mrs. Wharton's maiden name was Sarah A. Groce, and she was the daughter of Jared E. Groce, who came to Texas in 1821, and located on the Brazos near the present town of Hempstead, where he opened a farm known to all old Texans as "Groce's Retreat." He brought with him seed corn and cotton seed, the latter being the first introduced in Texas ; he also built the first cotton gin erected in the country. His daughter, at an early age, married Wil- liam H. Wharton, a brilliant young lawyer who was born in Virginia, and came to Texas from Nashville, Tennessee, in 1829. Richly endowed with inherent powers, and possessed of a zeal adequate to put them in motion, he soon became a prominent figure in the Republic. He was president of the convention of 1833, called for the purpose of dissolving the bond that united Texas to Coahuila in Mexican statehood ; two years later he was in the Texan army at San Antonio, from which he was summoned by the general consultation to proceed to the United States as one of the three commis- sioners appointed for that purpose; and, in the year follow- ing, he was sent to that government as the accredited min- ister from the Republic of Texas. On his return from this service, he was elected to the Senate of the Republic, in which body he achieved distinction. In 1839, he met with an acci- dent that terminated his honorable and useful life. His brief but brilliant career forms a bright page in Texas history. When he came to Texas in 1829 he was accompanied by his brother, Col. John A. Wharton, no less talented than himself, and who rendered splendid service in the field, the cabinet, and the congress of the country. He was never married, and when he died in 1838, President Burnet, in pronouncing the
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