USA > Texas > Prominent women of Texas > Part 4
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MRS. MARY E. BELL .- Among the early mothers of Texas not one stood nearer to the hearts of all whoknew her, and this included nearly every settler in Austin's and DeWitt's colonies, than Mrs. Mary E. Bell. She was born in Kentucky
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in 1799, daughter of - McKinzie, and in 1819 married Josiah W. Bell, from South Carolina. No surviving veteran of those days will gainsay this assertion : To the poor, to the noble young men of good families who came to our relief from the United States, and were of necessity discharged from the army in 1836-37 without food, money, or proper cloth- ing, she was, to the extent of her means, an angel of mercy, and in this last respect she had worthy co-laborers in the persons of her sister and brother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph M. McCormick.
Mr. and Mrs. Bell arrived in what is now Washington County, on the Brazos, early in 1822, having an infant daughter named Lucinda, who has long been the widow of Dr. J. W. Copes. Later in 1822 a son was born to her who became well known in manhood as Thadius C. Bell, a useful man of high moral principles, who died a few years after the Civil War. Two or three years after this Mr. and Mrs. Bell settled on the league of land fronting on the Brazos, in Brazoria County, in which were subsequently located the towns of East and West Columbia, first called Maion or Bell's landing, where the first Congress of Texas assembled in 1836, and where Santa Anna was confined during a por- tion of his captivity, and where Stephen F. Austin died De- cember 27,1836; Capt. John Austin, in 1833; Capt. Henry S. Brown, on July 26, 1834 and Capt. Byrd Lockhart in 1838.
Mrs. Bell's third child, James H. Bell, was born in Co- lumbia, in 1825; educated at Harvard College; became an eminent lawyer; and in 1856 was elected judge of his native district. When thirty-three years of age he was elected one of the Supreme Judges of the State. A few years since he died near Austin.
Left a widow in 1838, Mrs. Bell continued to reside at the old homestead until her death, which was caused by being thrown from her buggy, in 1856. At the burial of Mrs. James Kerr, in the wilderness, in 1825, there being no min- ister present, Mrs. Bell supplied the place of one and read the burial service.
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The influence for good exercised by this daughter of Ken- tucky for the first quarter of a century, in the life of Texas, and its ultimate effect upon the country, can never fully be known. That it was great, and blessed in its fruit, every surviving old pioneer will verify. Ever ready with hand and heart and those consolations drawn from the Bible, she was the counselor and helper of those in sorrow, and often the comforter at the portals of death. Her memory, either by knowledge or tradition, is embalmed in the hearts of the sur- viving children of her early compeers. She was an earnest worker in the earliest attempts at establishing Sunday Schools in the county, and the pioneer ministers of the Gospel in those early days ever found a welcome and a home under her roof. Brazoria has just cause to feel proud of this noble woman, and of having nurtured so many of her worthy descendants and kindred, among the latter of whom is the Hon. Andrew P. McCormick, now Circuit Judge of the United States, and a resident of Dallas.
MRS. JOHN W. MCCULLOCH .- Formerly Miss Dovey M. Robinson, the daughter of Hon. Milas Robinson, of Charlotte, North Carolina, reflected many of the sterling qualities that had paved the way to her father's political preferment. Upon reaching womanhood, she married Mr. John W. McCulloch. When she was only thirty-five years of age, the happiness of this union was destroyed, gloom shrouded her life, and a widow's weeds became the symbol of her grief. She had five children, and in forecasting the future advantages that Texas might offer her sons, this brave lady disposed of her interest in North Carolina, and with her children and slaves journeyed westward through the wilderness to Texas. Mrs. McCulloch located in Red River County, where she purchased farm lands and became one of the successful pioneer planters of the State.
At one period she had resided for a number of years in De Soto County, Mississippi, previous to the exit of the Chicka- saw Indians. This experience had fortified her courage and developed the masterful resources that were evinced by her
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daily heroism in this State. Comparatively unsettled condi- tions environed her life. At times wolves and wild animals surrounded her home, but the innumerable dangers and dis- comforts of a frontier country were met with a cheerful, hopeful spirit. Her ever-increasing faith in the prosperity of the State she was destined to realize; for, though her active career terminated with the beginning of the Civil War, she reached the advanced age of eighty years. Past the zenith of life, she neared its evening finding consolation in the faith that inspired Wesley, and the retrospection of many kindly deeds. One daughter, Mrs. Sallie Dick, of Clarksville, Texas, and a half brother, Mr. John Polk, of Corpus Christi, sur- vive her.
MRS. PIETY LUCRETIA HADLEY, daughter of Maj. David Smith and his second wife, Obedience Fort Smith, was born in Logan County, Kentucky, April 2, 1807. Her parents moved to Mississippi about 1820, and she was sent back to Russelville, Kentucky, to attend school, graduating with first honors, and returning to her home in (or near) Jackson, Mississippi, after finishing her collegiate course. Her brother, afterwards well known in the Texas revolution, Maj. Ben Fort Smith, having been appointed Indian agent very soon after her return, took his favorite sister with him to make a home for him, which she did during his term of office. On June 14, 1831, Miss Piety Lucretia Smith was married to Mr. T. B. J. Hadley, in Jackson, Mississippi. She has five daughters, four are still living in Houston, and one in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In July, 1840, Colonel and Mrs. Hadley moved to Houston, Texas, where the former died in 1868, aged sixty- seven years, and where the latter is still living at the vener- able age of eighty-eight years, having been a member of the Baptist Church since, 1834, and one of the founders of the First Baptist Church in Houston.
Mrs. Hadley has always filled a prominent place in the religious and social circles of Houston. A woman of fine in- tellect, high moral worth, and unusual conversational powers,
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having all her life associated with men and women of culture and prominence.
MRS. JANE RICHARDSON CONNELL, the widow of the late Dr. Alva Connell, of Houston, Texas, died in that city at her home, on the 29th of November, 1892. Mrs. Connell, so widely and well known as one of the most noble of Texan women, in the organization and work of numerous charitable and church societies, was a Georgian by birth, a sister of the well-known Hon. Eli H. Baxter, once a judge on the bench of the Supreme Court of that State.
Mrs. Connell was born in Hancock County, Georgia, in 1823, and was married to Doctor Connell at Concordia, Georgia, in 1845. Doctor Connell and his wife lived in Marietta, Georgia, until 1867, at which time they removed to Houston, Texas. Here Mrs. Connell's three children : Dr. Alva Connell, Jr .; Mr. E. B. Connell, one of the editors of The Post; and Mrs. J. A. Huston were born. One, Doctor Con- nell, died in 1872, one year after his father's death. The other two survive, and of Mrs. Huston, it may be truly said, she bids fair to tread the same heaven-lighted path of duty in which her mother walked.
To say that Mrs. Connell was a grand woman does her only feeble justice. As a wife, mother, friend, and follower of the principles of Christianity, she was more than exem- plary; she was an enthusiast. For many years of her long life, she was a consistent member of the Presbyterian church; was for years the president of the Presbyterian Ladies' Aid Society ; and was also a charter member of the Woman's Exchange, of Houston, and its first president. But it was in her private, Christian character that her gentle deeds shone with brightest luster. None were too humble to receive her kindly words, and her open, liberal charities were proverbial.
MISS ANNE WHARTON CLEVELAND, was a native of Ken- tucky, but came with her father to Texas, in 1832, at the early age of nine years. Her mother contracted cholera, en- route, in passing through New Orleans, where it was epidemic,
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and died, at Velasco, Texas, leaving a family of five small children, which was a pitiable condition for the father of these little ones. Mrs. Wm. H. Wharton's tender heart was touched by their bereavement, and asked the father to give Anne to her, that she might take the place of her mother, and this charge she filled in the tenderest and most faithful manner, adopting the little orphan as her own. After the establish- ment of the independence of Texas, Col. Wm. H. Wharton was sent, as minister to the United States, from the new Republic, and, in the midst of Washington society, the child grew to womanhood. Two years after the organization of the govern- ment, she met Judge Edward T. Branch, who had taken part in the first and second sessions of the Congress of the Repub- lic of Texas in the framing of the laws for this great empire, and was distinguished by being the youngest member of these bodies. He had just been made judge of the Nacogdoches district, and the district judges formed the Supreme Court of the Republic. His marriage with Miss Anne Cleveland, took place at the plantation of Colonel Wharton, near Brazoria, and at that early time was considered a resplendent affair. The trousseau of the bride was ordered from New Orleans, the metropolis of the South, and the greater part of the supper came from the same source. The young wife entered on her new life determined to share its privations with her husband. His position was a laborious one, and compelled him to ride over a territory vast enough for a good sized State, that too, on horseback, for there were few carriages in the country, and no roads passable, even if a vehicle had been obtainable. For two years she rode over this district, sharing all the hardships of life in a frontier country, with few of the surroundings of civilization. Then she made her home in Nacogdoches, where her first child a daughter, Cornelia Branch, was born, in the home of General and Mrs. Rusk. Two years were spent there, when her hus- band decided to resign the judgeship, the pay being inade- quate to the support of a wife and child, and they left Nacog- doches, for Liberty County, where the remainder of her days were spent.
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Mrs. Branch was a woman of remarkable mind, well stored with knowledge of a kind not often found in women of her time, thoroughly posted in the political history of the Re- public of Texas, and of the United States, into which the Republic was adopted. She died at the close of the Civil War, between the North and the South, and will be remem- bered for her kindness to the soldiers of the Confederacy, for whom she spent all of her available means. She left four daughters and a son: Cornelia Branch, Elizabeth Wortley Branch, Wharton Branch, Olive Branch, and Judith Anne Branch.
MRS. WILLARD RICHARDSON .- On the 6th of June, 1849, near Stateburg, South Carolina, Louisa Blanche Murrell was married to Willard Richardson, editor and proprietor of the Galveston News. The bride's father was James Wil- liam Murrell, and her mother, Louisa Sumter, the grand- daughter of Gen. Thomas Sumter, of Revolutionary fame.
Mrs. Richardson was thus a lineal descendant, in the maternal line, of one of the brilliant heroes of American his- tory. Her mother was a woman of vigorous energy, attrac- tive personality, and broad culture in the learning of her day. These qualities so essential in a leader, seem to have inspired the course and the duties of her life. She became a teacher of the young of her sex, combining in her curriculum, letters, science, domestic economy, and social ethics. In this voca- tion, pursued during several generations, she achieved results whose benefits can never cease to be felt in the cultured circles of her native section.
In this school was Mrs. Richardson educated, and thus, through both inherited and acquired powers, was she pre- pared for the life work, whatever it might be, to which she was destined.
Immediately after her marriage, as above related, she embarked with her husband for their future home in Gal- veston.
Willard Richardson was, for many years, editor and pro- prietor of the Galveston News, a newspaper, then as now,
MRS. WILLARD RICHARDSON.
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of commanding influence in the social and political affairs of the State. The press of Texas had, up to that time, strug- gled along, pari passu, with the patriots and pioneers of early days. The first printing office was established at Nacogdoches in 1819, by the Supreme Council of the provi- sional government, created by Gen. James Long, and his followers. The first permanent newspaper was the Tele- graph, founded at San Felipe in 1835; it retreated with the Texan army to Harrisburg, where its material was destroyed by the enemy ; it reappeared at Columbia; in the vicissitudes that followed, it made other moves, yet in all its peregrina- tions rendered valiant service in the cause of the people. In 1840 newspapers were published in nearly a dozen towns, and, at the date of which we are writing, the press had become a factor of no small power in the direction of public affairs in Texas.
Mr. Richardson also compiled and published annually, from 1857 to 1873, the Texas Almanac, a compendium of general information vastly more important than might be inferred from its modest title; it was also, in the days of its publication, the vade-mecum of the average Texas inquirer and, apart from some unavoidable historical inaccuracies, was the repository of much that was valuable and nowhere else to be found.
Mr. Richardson's associations were largely with the lit- erary men and women of the country, and Mrs. Richardson, with the strong bias of her culture, naturally drifted into this current of her husband's life, and throughout its course gave constant, efficient and graceful help. As a helpmeet she was also conspicuous for the orderly and economical management of her domestic affairs. She thus, both as housewife and scholar, contributed to the building of the castle of her new home in the distant West.
Mrs. Richardson has always been quiet in her manners, retiring in her habits, calm, but impressive in conversation, and deeply religious in thought, utterance and act. She is united with the Episcopal Church, and, in the duties enjoined by that communion, finds ample employment for the exer-
W. of T .- 4
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cise of the best faculties of her nature. Her life has been singularly free from the noisy casualties that happen in almost every human experience; serene, unruffled and full of quiet work, it has given its most effective years to the cultivation of the highest virtues, and it is passing away to be remembered, with tenderness and love, for the richness and value of its fruit.
Mrs. Richardson has had but one child, a daughter, who is the wife of Dr. H. P. Cooke. With them she lives; to their home she brings the culture and contentment, and to their fireside the cheerfulness, that blessed and adorned her own.
MRS. VIRGINIA HUNT DICKENS .- The women who have achieved the largest measure of greatness have been those whose lives were dedicated to human progress, and the wo- men in history whose memories are most precious are those through whose abounding knowledge of the divine testimo- nies, the world has been made better and its spiritual life ex- alted above the selfishness inherent in the human heart. Whether these messengers of gladness come, like Huldah, to reveal the law to priests and prophets and scribes, or, like the humbler workers, to labor with the toilers in the moral vineyard; whether their lessons are taught through inspired precept or through the holier inspiration of example; they are all and equally the anointed teachers commissioned by the Father to His children. Of such was Mrs. Virginia Hunt Dickens.
In an obituary published at the time of her death in January, 1894, the writer said of her: "If love and justice and duty; if tenderness and compassion; if humility and patience and forbearance; if the unrestrained love of God and man and truth; and the faithful practice of holy pre- cepts under all conditions; if these constitute the ideal of the Christian's life, then she lived it in its absolute perfec- tion." Such a tribute conveys infinitely more than it expres- ses; it awakens in the mind of the thoughtful a train of inference that leads from the tree to its fruit, from the body in the tomb to its resurrected virtue in the lives of the living.
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Mrs. Dickens was the daughter of Wilkins Jones Hunt and Lucy Howel Avery. She was born in Virginia, February 23, 1826, and at the age of sixteen was married to Samuel Dickens, of Tennessee. On the occasion of this marriage the same ceremony united a sister of the bride with a brother of the bridegroom, and it is further remarkable that these two families of Hunt and Dickens were afterwards still more closely united by the marriage of two other sisters with two other brothers. Mrs. Dickens' grandfather, Col. William Avery, was an officer in the revolutionary army under Washington; was taken prisoner and carried to England where he was paroled, and, pending arrangements for his exchange and return to America, he married. From him is descended a lineage as proud as any that adorns the ranks of America's democratic peerage.
After her marriage, Mrs. Dickens removed with her hus- band to Arkansas. During the Civil War they sought tempo- rary refuge in Texas, from which they returned to their home where they continued to live until the death of Mr. Dickens, in 1867. The children born in this marriage were four sons, who died in infancy, and one daughter, Lizzie, who still survives. After her bereavement, Mrs. Dickens moved to Mississippi, where her daughter married Thomas W. Johnson of Paris, Texas. To that city she went with her daughter and son-in-law, and with them made her home until her death, January 4, 1894.
Mrs. Dickens transmitted to her daughter the noble instincts that distinguished her through life, and, by cease- less care, she unfolded and enriched her priceless gifts. Thus endowed and thus trained, the daughter reflects the mother's life in her own; temperance, relief, charity, reform, are the themes of her daily thought, the objects of her con- stant toil; and especially in the field of prison work assigned her by the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, she reveals the high purpose that directs and inspires her sleepless energy. In speaking of her mother as a potent influence in her life, she says, that what the mother of Frances E. Willard was to the great temperance reformer, her mother was to
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her in the choice and direction of her life work. Not only did Mrs. Dickens thus inspire her daughter with the zeal of a reformer, but, as long as she lived, was a co-worker with her in achieving the reformation. No toil, no exposure, no discomfort could obstruct her path to scenes of distress, and no desire of personal ease or worldly gain could abate a farthing from the tenth of her revenue that she yearly gave to the poor. She fed the hungry, clothed the naked, nursed the sick, visited the prisons, comforted the afflicted, encour- aged the hopeless, and pleaded with the weak and the fallen wherever they could be found ; and thus she passed her years in the midst of the wrecks and ruins of human life.
In her religious beliefs, Mrs. Dickens was as broad and gen- erous as in her charities. Herself a member of the Baptist Church, she recognized in every other communion the same endeavor to attain the truth, the same spirit of reverence toward God, and the same compassionate love for all His human creatures. Such universal philanthropy, and such sublime faith in the efficacy of good works are, as the word of the law, a lamp unto the feet, and a light unto the path to those who come after her.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. WM. B. JAQUES-MRS. GEO. W. FULTON, SR .- MRS. RICH- ARDSON SCURRY-MRS. SOPHRONIA ELLIS CONE-MRS.
S. L. WEATHERFORD-MRS. G. B. CLEVELAND.
MRS. WM. B. JAQUES, nee Miss Catherine L. Bowne, was a granddaughter of Gen. James Morgan, of the Revolu- tion, and a great granddaughter of General Provost (Ready Money). In 1836 Mr. and Mrs. Jaques were residents of the City of Mexico. At that period Stephen F. Austin, who had gone to Mexico with a memorial to the federal govern- ment, had been released from his long confinement and be- came the guest of Mr. and Mrs. Jaques, remaining with them until the former took him in disguise to Texas. Through this association and influence Mr. Jaques eventually moved
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his family to San Antonio, where they endured many changes and trials incident to the unsettled condition of the State. Their home was burned by Vasquez, in 1842, and again when Woll invested the city Mr. Jaques was placed under guard and would have been shot but for the intervention of Colonel Carasco, of General Woll's staff. On account of favors pre- viously rendered, Colonel Carasco entertained kindly feelings for him. When the Santa Fe prisoners were taken Mrs. Jaques wrote notes which she secreted in waiters containing food which she prepared and sent to the prisoners, and in this way they were informed as to the movements of the enemy. In the Indian conflict of 1839 she rendered all the aid possible. During the Confederate war her house was kept open for the reception of soldiers who were in need, for though she had many ties in the North, she was free from sectional narrowness. Mrs. Jaques was a devoted Christian, greatly beloved and frequently called the mother of the poor.
The anxieties concerning her husband's probable fate and the trials endured left their record on her luxuriant hair, which in one night changed from black to silvery white. The blanched locks were not suited to her youthful face but she wore them as a veteran wears his sacred scars, until the close of her life in 1866. Her death was the immediate result of her untiring efforts in behalf of those who suffered from the cholera epidemic. One daughter, Mrs. Laura L. Cupples, of San Antonio, survives her.
MRS. GEO. W. FULTON, SR .- The honor which encircled the name of Gov. Henry Smith received added luster from his second wife, whose maiden name was Elizabeth Gillette. It is said that many of the traits for which she was distin- guished were transmitted to her accomplished daughter, Mrs. Geo. W. Fulton. Governor Smith was descended from one of the old and patriotic families of Virginia. They were noted for courage, and the many thrilling Indian experiences through which they passed have been made the theme of song and story. Mrs. Fulton, nee Miss Harriett Gillette Smith, was born in Missouri in 1822, and from this State
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Governor Smith moved his family to a country home in the jurisdiction of Brazoria, where he maintained a high and honorable position, giving valuable aid in building up the new State. Here Harriett's early days were passed in a fron- tier country, though her father's house was a favorite resort with the patriots, who met to consult as to the future, to re- view their condition, to consider their resources. Among others, Col. Geo. W. Fulton came from Vincennes, Indiana, in 1836, commanding a splendid company of volunteers and remaining in the service until the final disbandment of the army. In 1840, this scholarly gentleman married the daughter of Governor Smith. She was noted for her taste, culture and executive ability. Prosperity was the result of their intelligent efforts, and having acquired large landed in- terests in southwestern Texas, they permanently located on Aransas Bay. The mistress of a palatial residence, Mrs. Fulton still performs the graceful duties of her home in a manner becoming the dignity of the State to whose fortunes she has been devoted. Colonel Fulton's demise occurred in 1893. He had reached an advanced age. The death of the eldest son, Hon. Geo. W. Fulton, Jr., in 1895, terminated a brief and brilliant career. He was a graduate of Harvard University, and had occupied many positions of trust. The surviving sons and daughters are Mrs. Eldridge G. Holden, James C. Fulton, Mrs. Charles M. Holden.
MRS. RICHARDSON SCURRY, nee Miss Evantha Foster, came with her parents and other relatives to Texas in 1832. She spent the greater part of her life here and in the early days experienced the vicissitudes and adventures of the pio- neer settlers. The Fosters were kinsmen of the Waller, Wharton, Groce and Lipscomb families, being closely related to Judge Abner Lipscomb, and others well known as impor- tant factors in the making of the Texas of to-day.
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