Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long
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Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long (July 23, 1798 – December 30, 1880) was a Texas pioneer. She owned boarding houses and a plantation in Texas. She is best known as the "Mother of Texas."
Biography
Early life
Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long was born on July 23, 1798, in Charles County, Maryland.<ref name="Henson">Template:Cite web</ref> She was a niece of General James Wilkinson;<ref>John Edward Weems, "WILKINSON, JAMES," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwi87), accessed May 10, 2015. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.</ref> her father was James' eldest brother, William Mackall Wilkinson (c.1751–1799).<ref>Wilkinson page on RootsWeb at Ancestry.com, accessed 19 Apr 2015.</ref>
About 1811, her family moved from Maryland to the small town of Washington, Mississippi, the capital of the Mississippi Territory.
Adult life
She moved to Texas with her husband in the 1820s.<ref name="Henson"/> In 1822, her husband died after being captured by Spanish/Mexican forces and she became a widow.<ref name="Henson"/> Stephen F. Austin gave Jane grants of land in Fort Bend and Waller counties; but instead of farming, she opened a boarding house in San Felipe, Texas.
She sold part of her land in Fort Bend County, on which the town of Richmond was built. She later moved to Richmond, where she opened a boarding house and started a plantation nearby.
Personal life
Jane was married in Natchez, Mississippi,<ref name="Henson"/> in 1815 to James Long, a doctor and a native of Virginia. He had led a filibuster expedition attempting to take control of Spanish Texas in 1819, and in a second attempt in April 1820 he brought his pregnant wife and 300 troops to join refugees from the first expedition on the Bolivar Peninsula near present-day Galveston. Forced to surrender along with his troops at Presidio La Bahía in October 1821, he was killed by a guard on April 8, 1822, during imprisonment in Mexico City.
Meanwhile, left behind at Bolivar Point (now Port Bolivar), Jane gave birth on December 21, 1821, to her third child, Mary James Long,<ref name="Henson"/> with her only slave, Kian, helping.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> Throughout a long winter, they and her children struggled as she waited for her husband's return. At one point, several Karankawa Indians appeared, but she fired a cannon each day to make them think there was an army stationed there. Together Jane and Kian fought starvation for weeks, hunting their own game, fishing and gathering oysters, until the news of her husband's death finally reached her during the spring, whereupon they headed out.<ref name=":0" /> She then left Texas but returned in the later 1820s as a bona fide colonist.
Jane Long claimed to be the first woman of English descent to settle in Texas, and her daughter Mary is often said to be the first child born in Texas to an English-speaking woman,<ref name="Henson"/> but this has been disproved by census records from 1807 to 1826 which show a number of Anglo-American births.<ref name="Henson"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Nevertheless because of this, she became known as the "Mother of Texas." Sam Houston later gave the same title to Margaret Theresa Wright during a gubernatorial speech on August 1, 1857, in Wright's hometown of Victoria for Wright's heroic support of Texas troops during the Texas Revolution.<ref name="McArthur">Template:Cite web</ref>
Her sister, Barbara Mackall Wilkinson, married Alexander Calvit, a sugar planter.<ref>Neila Skinner Petrick, Jane Long of Texas, 1798-1880: A Biographical Novel of Jane Wilkinson Long of Texas : Based on Her True Story, Pelican Publishing, 2000, p. 89 [1]</ref><ref>Mary Austin Holley, Mary Austin Holley: The Texas Diary, 1835-1838, Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1965, p. 113 [2]</ref>
Death
She died on December 30, 1880, in Fort Bend County, Texas.
Legacy
A number of schools within Texas have been named after the "Mother of Texas." Among them are the following:
- Jane Long Elementary School located in Freeport in the Brazosport Independent School District
- Jane Long Elementary School located in Richmond, in the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District
- Jane Long Intermediate School located in Bryan, in the Bryan Independent School District
- Jane Long Middle School located in Houston in the Houston Independent School District
- Long Early Learning Center located in Abilene, in the Abilene Independent School District
- A marker in Fort Bend County, Texas was erected in her honor in 1936.<ref name="Henson"/>
- Jane W Long Elementary located in Harlingen, in the Harlingen Consolidated Independent School District
- Jane Long Elementary School located in Midland, Texas, in the Midland Independent School District
References
External links
- Jane Long historic materials from the Fort Bend Museum, hosted by the Portal to Texas History
- Template:Find a Grave
- Jane Long and Kian