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MRS. SHAPLEY P. Ross .- Among the remarkable women who have helped to lay the foundations of Texas, none have rendered more enduring service, or bequeathed to it a sturdier race of sons and daughters than Mrs. Shapley P. Ross. Her maiden name was Catharine Fulkerson, and she was born September 27, 1812, in St. Charles County, Missouri, where, at the age of seventeen, she was married to Capt. Shapley P. Ross. Soon after marriage the young couple moved to Iowa, then not yet admitted to Statehood, from which they emigrated to the Republic of Texas in 1840, and nine years later located in Waco, McLennan County, though, at that time, neither county nor town had been legally incor- porated. In these primitive wilds they first dwelt in tents, where they suffered the privations and were exposed to the perils that are the usual incidents of the pioneer's life. Other immigrants arrived and the little community was strength- ened and houses were built, where, in comfort and security, all could enjoy the scene of their brave enterprise till they should reclaim from desolation and savage hordes the broad and fertile lands in which they had cast their lot. There Mrs. Ross was ever vigilant in the nurture of the little ones born to her charge, there she implanted in their tender minds the qualities that adorn the world's most vigorous States, and there she reared a race of more than Roman virtue. After these labors were over and after nearly half a century of earnest, noble work, it was there that in Septem- ber, 1886, the faithful mother and public benefactor passed away to the reward she had earned.
Of the nine children she had borne, eight were living at the time of her death: Mrs. George Barnard, Mrs. Margaret Harris, Mrs. Kate Padgitt, Mrs. Pat. Fitzwilliams, Col. P. F. Ross, Gen. (afterwards Governor) L. S. Ross, Capt. R. S. Ross, and Mr. W. H. Ross, all of Waco, except Mrs. Fitz- williams, who then resided at Los Angeles, California. For these children their venerated mother felt as lofty a pride as did the historic mother for the Gracchi she had given to her country. In their advancement she rejoiced with a joy known only to the maternal heart that is stirred with the
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rich recompense of successful work, of well requited toil. It is a pleasant reflection that she lived to realize that her son, Lawrence Sullivan Ross, was to be honored by his people with the highest office in their gift; it is pathetic to reflect that the hand of death could not have been stayed till with her mortal eyes she could have witnessed the crowning scene of his promotion.
MRS. JOHN J. LINN, one of the pure and noble women of colonial Texas, was married in 1834 and began keeping house in Victoria, where, fifty years later, she closed her eventful and useful life. She was ever a devoted patriot and greatly beloved for her many excellent characteristics, her refinement and rare intelligence. She was justly the recipient of the almost idolatrous devotion of her children, and there are many veterans who yet survive to bless her memory. Her oldest son, Capt. Charles C. Linn, served with distinc- tion throughout the Civil War, and John Joseph Linn, Jr., died while stationed with Colonel Buchell's regiment at Brownsville. One daughter, Miss Annie, and a son, Hon. Edward D. Linn, live at Victoria. Mr. W. F. Linn resides at Wharton.
MRS. JACOB C. DARST, nee Margaret Hughes, was born in East Tennessee. She subsequently moved to Missouri and in 1831 came with her family to Texas and located on the Guadalupe River, eighteen miles above Gonzales. She died in Gonzales in 1846 and is remembered for her great kind- ness of heart and the remarkable courage she exhibited during the dark days preceding the battle of San Jacinto and the subsequent Indian raids. Her husband was killed at the Alamo and her stepdaughter, Mrs. Crosby, whom she had cared for from infancy, was killed by the Indians in the Plum Creek Battle. Mr. Crosby reached the side of his wife just in time to soothe with endearing offices her last moments. Their infant had been previously killed near Linnville and thrown on the roadside. Mrs. Crosby's brother, Mr. D. S. H. Darst, of Gonzales, was one of
MRS. REBECCA J. FISHER.
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the captives and was forced to witness the tragic fate of his sister, though powerless to prevent or avenge her death.
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CHAPTER VIII.
INDIAN EXPERIENCES.
MRS. ORCENETH FISHER-MRS. BABB-MRS. EDWARD SHEGOG -MRS. DANIEL MENASCO.
ANY account of the prominent women of Texas would be incomplete if in it we did not find tradition, sometimes linking the names of some of those now occupying prominent positions, who, as little children, suffered in the stormy days of the border warfare, waged upon the frontiersmen by the Indians, Comanches, Apaches and Kiowas.
The massacres in which the parents of those little ones were martyred were perpetrated by the very Indians who were fed, blanketed and armed by the United States Govern- ment, and given homes protected by United States troops in the Indian reservation territory of a paternal government, which in its sentimentality over its "poor Indian" citizens, neglected its duties to its own blood and race. For if the Indians were citizens, the early settlers of Texas were almost entirely immigrants of whites from the United States.
This is the view which the Texas press of those days, and also of a later date, took of the tragic events, of which a few are related in this chapter.
A child survivor of those days of blood and cruelty, a heroine who came near being a little martyr, is now one of the prominent women of Texas.
MRS. ORCENETH FISHER .- The name of Mrs. Orceneth Fisher is intimately connected with that of her husband, the Rev. Orceneth Fisher, D.D., in "The History of Methodism on the Pacific Coast," as an active cooperator in church and benevolent work. She was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs.
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Johnston Gilleland, who were murdered by the Comanche Indians in Refugio County, in 1840.
On both the paternal and maternal side, Rebecca J. Gille- land-Mrs. Fisher-is of noble and distinguished ancestry ; and nobly have she and her brother, the late William Mc- Calla Gilleland, the Texas poet, sustained the time honored traditions of their families.
A correspondent of the Galveston News, in a late issue, relates substantially the circumstances of the tragic fate of Mr. and Mrs. Gilleland, the capture of their children, and their rescue.
Just as the sun was setting, the Gilleland family, who were then living at the Mexican village, Don Carlos ranch, were startled by the war whoop of Indians. Before any at- tempt could be made for defense, the savages rushed into the house and killed both Mr. and Mrs. Gilleland, leaving them weltering in their blood. They tore the children from the agonized grasp of their dying mother, whose last prayer was for the safety of her little ones.
When the Indians had completed their bloody work they mounted their horses and fled, taking the children with them. One of the band took little William on his horse; an Indian woman, supposed to be the wife of the chief, took charge of the little girl. The men threatened the children that they would kill them by cutting off their hands and feet if they did not stop crying. The chief's wife rebuked them, and pressing the little Rebecca to her bosom silenced the men; but she could not avert their murderousintentions. As they fled, they were hotly pursued, and finding the children an in- cumbrance they attempted to kill them as soon as they reached the timber land. They pierced the little boy through the side of his body with a lance or a long knife, and striking the little girl a heavy blow on the head, left them both for dead in the dark, dense forest.
As soon as the children recovered and realized what had happened, little Rebecca, then only seven years old, knelt down and prayed their Heavenly Father to take care of them and guide them to safety. She then took her little
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brother in her arms and carried him as best she could, stop- ping every few moments to rest. Praying still, these poor little babes in the forest wandered on, and soon reached the edge of the prairie. Here a new terror assailed them for they saw a troop of horsemen, which they thought were Indians. They fled back into the forest, but ere long their fears were turned to joy, for they heard the kind tones of the wood rangers who had been detailed to guard the timber, and others who had gonein pursuit of the Indians. These men reassured the little ones and tenderly lifted them into their saddles.
The children were taken into the soldiers' camp, where they received every tender attention and sympathy from Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston and General, afterwards Presi- dent, Lamar.
When it was practicable these gentlemen put the children in the hands of parties who took them to their kindred and friends.
The little William, after an almost miraculous recovery from his wound, became one of the most distinguished men and popular poets of Texas. He married the daughter of the Hon. Kenneth Anderson, Vice President of the Republic of Texas; but he and his wife have both died within the last few years. The little girl, William Gilleland's sister, after finish- ing her education at Rutersville College, married the Reverend Doctor Fisher, a distinguished divine, a prominent Mason and Odd Fellow, and the chaplain of the two last sessions of congress of the Republic.
California and Oregon were the special fields of labor of Doc- tor and Mrs. Fisher. In the history of Methodism referred to previously, there is an account of Mrs. Fisher's heroism and presence of mind saving the life of an innocent man, a minis- ter, upon whom a fanatical mob crying, "hang him! hang him !" were rushing.
Thousands of people, men, women and children, were on the camp ground and at the stand waiting for the eleven o'clock service. While the confusion and excitement reigned, women fainting, children running and screaming, and op- posing factions, who were armed, were about to engage in
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the wildest battle, Mrs. Fisher sprang over the benches and faced the leader of the mob and ordered him in calm tones of conscious power to listen to her.
For a moment he looked into her resolute face, then be- came silent, and listened to her exhortations. He and the other desperadoes were subdued by her words; and thus she averted what would have been a bloody battle, at the risk of her life, for she was surrounded by armed men, and if a single shot had been fired she would have been in the midst of the fray.
Mrs. Fisher has been residing in Austin for more than twenty years, and there she is loved and revered for her ex- alted Christian character, and admired and respected for her intellectual attainments. She is esteemed throughout her native State, and has been the associate friend and cotem- porary of a large number of the most distinguished men and women of the century. Among these are Lady Franklin, Miss Frances Willard, Mrs. James K. Polk, Commodores Stockton and Garrison, Hon. Alexander H. Stevens, Presi- dent and Mrs. Jefferson Davis, Judge Jackson of the Supreme Court of the United States. She is now the honored and appropriate president of the William Travis Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, having held previously numerous positions of the same rank in religious and social organizations, over which she has always presided with tact and grace.
MRS. BABB .- After the close of the Civil War Texas was again at the mercy of the Indians until her readmission into the Union, in 1872. During the interval in which this border warfare was renewed, the atrocities committed by the Indi- ans were of a darker character, if possible, than ever. Two little children, a boy and a girl, Dot and Bianca Babb, and their father, are the survivors of a mother whose name should never be forgotten in the annals of the frontier martyrs of this State.
In June, 1867, Mr. Babb left his home in Wise County to go to Dallas, the nearest market town. As no incursions
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had been made by either Indians or Mexicans for a long time, he felt no fears for his family, and peace reigned for some days after his departure. One morning the two eldest chil- dren, who were playing about the door, directed their mother's attention to a number of men on the prairie. She instantly recognized them as Indians, who were approaching the house at a rapid gallop. Before she could get her children into the house and bar the door, the savages dashed in upon them, dragged her baby from her arms, dashed it upon the floor with death-dealing force, and seizing her by the hair, forced her head backward and cut her throat.
This deed accomplished, they seized the children, Dot and Bianca, and leaving the poor mother with her dead baby be- side her, started for the broad plains of the West, where they had their abiding places, and where, to quote from a Texas paper of that date, "they were fed on government beef, wrap- ped in the soft embrace of a government blanket, and armed with a government rifle and ammunition."
The sufferings of the children on that journey were intense to a harrowing degree, but when they reached the reservation they were treated with tolerable kindness, for the object of their capture was simply to extort money for their ransom from the Texans.
For years the father sought his children, going from one United States agency to another. Finally, after exhausting nearly all his resources, he found and ransomed them, and took them to Wisconsin. There they remained until a few years ago. Mr. Babb returned to this State, and when the children came to Texas they met him where their noble mother had been murdered and where they had been captured. Then it was a wilderness ; now itis a populous and prosperous region.
Mr. Babb still lives in Wise County, Texas. Bianca mar- ried a worthy gentleman, and is living near Henrietta; while Dot, at Wichita Falls, is a successful cattle man.
MRS. EDWARD SHEGOG .- Brief must be the account of the saddest of all the sad stories of massacre and outlaw occurring in the fateful period "after the war," and previous
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to the readmission of Texas to the floors of the United States Congress.
It was in 1878, in Cooke County, that the Comanches and Kiowas perpetrated one of the darkest deeds that stains the pages of Texas history, and it will serve to show the dangers to which the pioneers were exposed.
On the third of January of that year the people living in the vicinity of where the village of Rosstown now stands were startled by the arrival of a courier from the settlement in Montague County, who informed them that a large band of Indians were coming in that direction. Mr. Daniel Menasco, with his wife, two children and his aged father, all lived together in a small house on Clear Creek. That morn- ing the two little girls, May and Lizzie, the pride of the whole settlement, had been sent on a visit to Mrs. Edward Shegog, their aunt, who lived on the opposite side of the stream. Daniel Menasco had gone out on the prairie to look after his cattle. As soon as Mr. Menasco, Sr., heard the terrifying news of the Indian raid, he left his son's wife and hurried across the stream to bring his grandchildren and his daughter to his son's house. They all started back in haste, bringing Mrs. Shegog's baby who was only a few month's old. Just as they reached the crossing on Clear Creek the Indians rushed upon them, killing and scalping the elder Mr. Menasco, and making prisoners of the children and Mrs. Shegog.
In the meantime, while the main body of the Indians remained in charge of the prisoners, the others swept down on Mrs. Menasco's house. The heroic little woman had closed all the windows and doors except the front entrance. In that she stood, shot gun in hand, averting them from their course; for Indians are naturally cowardly and rarely attack a closed house or an armed foe that faces them. Mrs. Menasco was, of course, ignorant of her father-in-law's fate and the capture of her children and sister-in-law.
The band passed on, joined the other party and made for the reservation. As they were crossing Blocker Creek, about a mile above Gainesville, on the Rosstown road, Mrs. Shegog's baby began to cry. The Indians ordered her to
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silence it. She could not, and then one of the wretches struck it, and another took it away from her. He turned off from her, and when she next saw her baby they had killed it, and it was lying on the ground where they had thrown it. Mrs. Shegog then lost all consciousness, and the Indians, proba- bly finding they could not carry her with them, left her to perish in the woods. She was vaguely conscious of being pushed from her horse. The horrors of that awful night no one can tell or even faintly imagine. The next morning she was found in a half demented condition at the door of a Mr. Samuel Doss, and the family thought at first that she was an insane woman. They led her into the house and found that it was Mrs. Shegog. She did not know how she reached there, or what had become of her little nieces.
Daniel Menasco, almost wild with grief, sought his children everywhere. He went to all the Indian agencies, hoping to find and ransom them, but in vain. Mrs. Shegog's baby was found where the Indians had killed it. The fate of little May and Lizzie Menasco was not revealed until the spring or early summer, when their skeletons were discovered and rec- ognized. The Indians had either killed or abandoned the children, for a blizzard came up the night they were cap- tured, and the supposition forced upon the settlement was that the savages, finding it difficult or impossible to keep the little creatures from freezing, had abandoned them to their fate. These are only three of the many raids made and atrocities committed in Cooke and the adjoining counties.
When General Sherman made a tour of the frontier posts in person, and came near being murdered himself, when he saw with his own eyes the brutal deeds of the government- protected Indians, tracing them to a government reserva- tion, he arrested three of the band that had killed his wagoners and burned his wagons and had nearly succeeded in murdering him, had them tried in a Texas court and sen- tenced for life to the penitentiary.
After that the United States Government protected the frontier from the " poor Indians." Scenes like these inspired Hawthorne, Longfellow, Cooper, Gilmore, Simms, and George
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Egbert Craddock. When will our Miss Murfree or George Eliot be born on Texas soil to write for us the legends of our border warfare, and record our deeds of frontier heroism, and tell in burning words the glory-crowned martyrdom of the early settlers of the State ?
CHAPTER IX. IN THE REALMS OF ART.
MRS. ELIZABET NEY .- It is not generally known that there now lives in Texas one of the world's renowned artists- Mrs. Elizabet Ney. In her famous works the richest forms of sculpture have found expression, and splendid courts and costly galleries have testified to her genius and rewarded her achievements. No less great than her great sisters in the art-Prospersia Rossi of the sixteenth century and Harriet G. Hosmer of her own age-she has demonstrated the powers of her sex in the highest regions of plastic creation. Mrs. Ney's father was the nephew of the celebrated French marshal of the same name, and she was born in the Westphalian town of Münster. She is the wife of Doctor Montgomery, a scien- tist whose specialties lie in the fields of botany and biology, but she has preferred to retain her own name, being that under which she earned her earliest laurels, and by which she is identified in art circles.
Her talent revealed itself almost in infancy, and it was developed under the hand of Christian Bauch, then unrivaled in the art. After his death, she opened a studio at Berlin, where the first fruits of her work excited the warmest admira- tion in the circle of the lovers of art, among others, Alexander von Humboldt, whose visits bore testimony to the genius of the artist. While in Berlin she carved the statue of Mitsch- erlich, Jakob Grimm, and other celebrities, and was recalled thence to her native town to adorn its public hall with the busts of the representative men of Westphalia. From Mün- ster she was summoned to the royal court of Hanover, where
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she sculptured the blind king, and also Joachim, the violinist; Faulbach, the painter ; and Stockhausen, the singer. While there, she also carved in marble the gloomy features of the austere philosopher, Schopenhauser, the veritable Heraclitus of his day.
Among Mrs. Ney's notable performances was the statue of Garibaldi, for which purpose she was called to that famous warrior's home in the Island of Caprera. This seems to have given offense to her powerful friend and patron, the king of Hanover, despite whose protestations, she persisted in honoring her ideal of a patriot and a hero.
At Munich, the Bavarian capital, Mrs. Ney designed much of the splendid ornamentation lavished upon the interior of one of the most massive and sumptuous of its public build- ings. While there engaged, her studio was established in the royal palace, and it was there that she sculptured from life the busts of Liebig and Wohler, the most advanced chem- ists of their generation. These busts now adorn the cham- bers of chemistry in the polytechnic school of Munich.
Mrs. Ney's next work of public interest was the marble bust of Bismarck, for which she was retained by the late Ger- man Emperor William I. This bust and that of Garibaldi were exhibited together at the Paris Exposition in 1868. Mrs. Ney's travels have been principally in Italy, Greece and Egypt, whose classic memories, no doubt, directed her steps. Egypt, the earliest of historic nations, was the cradle of sculpture, and Greece, the most æsthetic, was its nursery. Born of devotion on the mystic banks of the Nile, it ripened into beauty under the mellowing skies of Olympus, Parnas- sus and Delphi.
Mrs. Ney's advent among us is partly due to the softness of our genial climate, which she learned to love on the Medi- terranean shores, but chiefly to the unopened field for didac- tic effort in the fine arts. She, therefore, came to the capital of the State to inaugurate plans for the erection of an acad- emy of liberal arts, and to induce the State to recognize the practical benefits of art education by providing for it in the curriculum of her State University. Her plans are, of course,
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not restricted to her own specialty, but embrace all the arts that have been created by modern discoveries and inven- tions. She assumes the position taken by the most advanced teachers of the day : that the progress made in the world's activities and in the improved methods required in pursuing them, has had the effect of creating an unprecedented de- mand for trained labor and, consequently, of throwing out of employment such numbers of untrained hands as to dis- turb the equipoise of social industries and bring distress upon large classes of worthy and willing people; that, in order to relieve this plethora of unskilled industry, the new conditions must be met by training young men and women to labor in the new fields and according to the new methods, that upon this training depends the success, if not the safety, of the government; and that technical instruction should, as a consequence, be engrafted upon the State's present system of free education and eleemosynary aid. Mrs. Ney, holding these views, and being strongly impressed with the belief that the general poverty and frequent disorders that prevail con- stitute a serious menace to the country, fervently appeals to our statesmen and political economists to avert it.
- CHAPTER X.
MRS. WALTER GRESHAM - MISS JULIA SINKS ROBERTSON - MISS DEE BEEBE-MISS MARGARET JOBE-MISS CORDIE
HEARNE-MRS. G. W. BARKER-MRS. BIRD DU- VALL-MISS MARION BROWN-MRS. KRON- ENGER-MRS. MARIA CAGE KIMBALL.
MRS. WALTER GRESHAM .- The best society in the most cultured nation of antiquity gave less thought to the forms and urbanities of social life than to its embellishments as exhibited through the fine arts and their attendant graces. In process of time these habits of home culture were lost in the multiplicity of customs that crowded upon the broaden- ing area of national intercourse, and the arts, except as
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MRS. WALTER GRESHAM.
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industrial pursuits, were submerged under the flood of con- ventionalities that deluged the gay courts of rival capitals. It is only within comparatively modern times that the world's new civilization has begun to restore the deposed graces and to reinstate in social circles the neglected arts of twenty cen- turies ago. The recall of these exiles is, in mythologic phrase, the reinstatement of our household divinities ; the restoration of the muses to their rightful thrones. American society, es- pecially American women, have given their quota of toil and talent to this result, and Texas women, like their cultured sis- ters in the other States, are daily adding to their triumphs in arts and letters. To this class of workers belongs Mrs. Walter Gresham of Galveston, who is distinguished for pure taste and execution in the art of painting. She has elicited the applause of critics upon her work, both on canvas and china, and she still pursues her studies, ever reaching after the pre- pon and the ariston of the æsthetic Greeks. With her ardor and her talents she may easily pass beyond the borders of the dilettante, and wrest from fame some of her envied trophies.
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