Samuel Houston was an American general and statesman who played a prominent role in the Texas Revolution. He served as the first and third president of the Republic of Texas and was one of the first two individuals to represent Texas in the United States Senate. He also served as the sixth governor of Tennessee and the seventh governor of Texas, the only individual to be elected governor of two different states in the United States.
Texas Woman's University (TWU) is a public coeducational university in Denton, Texas, with two health science center-focused campuses in Dallas and Houston. While TWU has been fully co-educational since 1994, it is the largest state-supported university primarily for women in the United States. The university is part of the Texas Woman's University System. It offers undergraduate and graduate degree programs in 60 areas of study across six colleges.
Ross Shaw Sterling was an American politician who was the 31st Governor of Texas, serving a single two-year term from January 20, 1931, to January 17, 1933.
James Edward Ferguson Jr., known as Pa Ferguson, was an American Democratic politician and the 26th governor of Texas, in office from 1915 to 1917. He was indicted and impeached during his second term, forced to resign and barred from holding further Texas office.
Independence is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Texas, United States. According to the Handbook of Texas, the community had a population of 140 in 2000. It is located about an hour northwest of the Greater Houston metropolitan area.
Margaret Lea Houston was First Lady of the Republic of Texas during her husband Sam Houston's second term as President of the Republic of Texas. They met following the first of his two non-consecutive terms as the Republic's president, and married when he was a representative in the Congress of the Republic of Texas. She was his third wife, remaining with him until his death.
Marion Price Daniel Jr. was an American politician from Texas who served as Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives from 1973 to 1975. He was a member of the house from 1969 to 1975. He is also known for his death during his marriage to his second wife in 1981, after he had written her out of his will and her third time filing for divorce.
Mildred Paxton Moody was the wife of Texas Governor Dan Moody. Upon her recommendation the 42nd Texas Legislature established the Board of Mansion Supervisors in 1931, with Mrs. Moody as the first head of the Board. Until its abolishment in 1965, the Board oversaw all interior and exterior upkeep and enhancements to the Texas Governor's Mansion.
Joshua Houston was born into slavery in about 1822 on the Perry County, Alabama plantation owned by Temple Lea and Nancy Moffette Lea, parents of Margaret Lea Houston. When Margaret married Sam Houston, Joshua moved to Texas with the newlyweds. Joshua traveled with Sam Houston and worked on the construction of Raven Hill in Huntsville, Texas. He became educated and was elected to local public offices. He had three wives and was the father of eight children, including Samuel Walker Houston. Joshua was a Texas delegate at the 1884 Republican National Convention. He helped establish the Bishop Ward Normal and Collegiate Institute.
Minnie Fisher Cunningham was an American suffrage politician, who was the first executive secretary of the League of Women Voters, and worked for the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution giving women the vote. A political worker with liberal views, she became one of the founding members of the Woman's National Democratic Club. In her position overseeing the club's finances, she assisted in the organization's purchase of its Washington, D.C. headquarters, which is still in use.
The Texas Women's Hall of Fame was established in 1984 by the Governor's Commission on Women. The honorees are selected biennially from submissions from the public. The honorees must be either native Texans or a resident of Texas at the time of the nomination.
Mary Eleanor Brackenridge was one of three women on the first board of regents at Texas Woman's University, the first women in the state of Texas to sit on a governing board of any university. She was active in women's clubs and was a co-founder of the Woman's Club of San Antonio. Brackenridge was a leader in Texas suffrage organizations and helped get the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution passed. She was the first woman in San Antonio to register to vote. Although it's the Brackenridge name in Texas that is associated with wealth, philanthropy and achievement, Brackenridge qualified as a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution through her mother's lineage. Miss Brackenridge was a founding member and the first Regent of the oldest DAR chapter in San Antonio, the San Antonio de Bexar Chapter, established on December 11, 1902.
The Texas Federation of Women's Clubs (TFWC) is a non-profit women's organization in Texas which was founded in 1897. The purpose of the group is to create a central organization for women's clubs and their members in Texas relating to education, the environment, home and civic life, the arts and Texas history. Seventy-percent of public libraries in Texas were created through the work of the members and clubs of the TFWC.
The Texas Equal Suffrage Association (TESA) was an organization founded in 1903 to support white women's suffrage in Texas. It was originally formed under the name of the Texas Woman Suffrage Association (TWSA) and later renamed in 1916. TESA did allow men to join. TESA did not allow black women as members, because at the time to do so would have been "political suicide." The El Paso Colored Woman's Club applied for TESA membership in 1918, but the issue was deflected and ended up going nowhere. TESA focused most of their efforts on securing the passage of the federal amendment for women's right to vote. The organization also became the state chapter of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). After women earned the right to vote, TESA reformed as the Texas League of Women Voters.
Tom Blue was an enslaved personal servant and coachman of Sam Houston, who purchased Blue prior to his marriage to Margaret Lea. He worked for Houston for nearly 30 years. In the fall of 1862, he ran away with another servant, a boy named Walter Hume. They traveled together to Laredo, Texas and Blue sold Hume for $800. He crossed into Mexico, where he lived as a free man. Blue later settled in Harrisburg, where he married a woman who was around age 30. He said at the time that he was 119.
Sam Houston was a slaveholder who had a complicated history with the institution of slavery. He was the president of the independent Republic of Texas, which was founded as a slave-holding nation, and governor of Texas after its 1845 annexation to the union as a slave state. He voted various times against the extension of slavery into the Western United States and he did not swear an oath to the Confederate States of America, which marked the end of his political career.
Sam Houston Jr. was the oldest of eight children born to Sam Houston and Margaret Lea Houston, and was the only Houston child born in the Republic of Texas, before its December 29, 1845 annexation to the United States. He was home-schooled by his mother, and later attended both Bastrop Military Institute and Baylor University. After Texas seceded from the Union in 1861, he enlisted in the Confederate States Army 2nd Texas Infantry Regiment, Company C Bayland Guards. Wounded at the April 1862 Battle of Shiloh, he served time as a prisoner of war at Camp Douglas in Illinois. Following his release, he received a medical discharge from the Confederate States Army. He attended the Philadelphia University of Medicine and Surgery. Upon graduation, he returned to a private life, and it is unknown if he ever practiced medicine. At some point, he became a writer. Houston married Lucy Anderson in 1875. Their daughter Margaret Bell Houston (1877–1966) was also a writer, as well as a suffragist who became the first president of the Dallas Equal Suffrage Association. Upon his death, Sam Jr. was buried on private property near his mother.
Antoinette "Nettie" Power Houston Bringhurst (1852–1932) was a Texas poet, the youngest daughter and fifth child of Sam Houston and his third wife Margaret Lea Houston. The elder Houston had no children with his two previous wives. Antoinette was born in the family's Woodland home near Huntsville, Texas. As a child, she lived in the Texas Governor's Mansion when her father served as Governor of Texas. Her youngest brother Temple Lea Houston was born in the mansion. She received an education at Baylor Female College in Independence, Texas, and at Austin Female College in Huntsville.
