Jane Long, known as “The Mother of Texas,” came to Texas with her husband, Dr. James Long, during Texas’ filibustering days. Before the Texas revolution, many entities saw Texas as a prize for the taking. Among them was Dr. Long, who left Jane Long at Port Bolivar in his failed attempt to take Texas from Spain/Mexico. This left Jane with young children and a need to make a living for herself. Eventually, she became an inn keeper in Brazoria, Texas.
Almost hidden today on an inconspicuous street in Brazoria is a state historical marker, “Site of Jane Long’s Tavern.” She came to Brazoria through East Texas as a young widow, one of the “Father of Texas” Stephen F. Austin’s “old three hundred.” So a question emerges. Did the “Mother of Texas” and the “Father of Texas” know each other, and if so, how intimate was their relationship?
What twist of fate brought together a young widow sought after by suitors and described by early colony visitor James Clopper as “a woman with an appealing figure, a pleasant smile, and masculine vigor,” with a man generally considered by his contemporaries as “less than handsome?” Was their connection romantic or platonic? A cursory investigation of their histories leads down an entrancing path. It seems Jane’s path closely followed Stephen’s.
In August 1821, Stephen F. Austin began negotiations with the provisional Mexican government to preserve the colonization enterprise under his father’s grant. He was authorized to explore between the San Antonio and Brazos Rivers to select a site for the proposed colonization. After this successful negotiation, Austin returned to New Orleans and published the terms of the colonization. The first colonists began to appear in Texas by land and sea by November/December 1821.
On September 19, 1821, Dr. James Long left Jane at his fort in Bolivar to gather additional volunteers to wrest Texas from Spain. Instead of returning in a month, he was captured, taken to Mexico City and killed under suspicious circumstances. When he did not return, the troops defending the fort dwindled with every ship that passed by. In November 1821 when the sloop, the Lively, carrying the first of Stephen F. Austin’s settlers, stopped to ask Jane to go to the colony with them, she was alone except for her young daughter and slave, Kian. Jane refused the request, her first positive brush with Austin’s colony, and gave birth to a child on December 21, 1821.
Early in 1822, Jane learned that her husband had been captured by the Spanish and then killed by Mexican revolutionaries and temporarily returned to the Natchez plantation owned by her sister and brother-in-law, the Calvits. When her youngest child died, she and the Calvits traveled to Texas as part of Austin’s original 300.
In January 1823, the provisional Mexican government granted each family approved by Austin 4,428 acres (a league) for grazing and 177 acres (a labor) for farming – a head right. In April, Austin induced the congress to introduce 300 families on his terms. Returning to the colonies in July 1824, he set up his headquarters in San Felipe De Austin on the banks of the Brazos.
By December 1825, Jane Long and the Calvits lived near San Felipe De Austin. During this time, the Austin/Long connection began. Austin “beat a path to Jane’s door” and she and her sister made him a suit of buckskins. He even petitioned the Mexican government for a widow’s pension for Jane, citing her husband’s attempt to overthrow Spanish rule. (In 1824 Mexico gained its independence from Spain.) Though the pension was denied, Austin granted her a head right of land – she was one of only 10 women of the original 300 who received that much. But to keep it, Jane Long and the Calvits had to improve it, so they moved onto the land and produced some crops, but it was not enough to make a living.
As discontent in the colonies spread, and Brazoria became the “unofficial port and settler center,” Jane convinced her daughter, Ann, and her new husband, Edward Winston, to move to Brazoria. Soon after landing in Brazoria (January 1831), Edward died from consumption. In March 1832 Jane first announced the tavern she and her daughter would run in The Constitutional Advocate and Texas Public Adviser. It quickly became the center of social life and revolution plotting. Jane operated her tavern in Brazoria from 1832-1837.
Jane held two historic balls, the Santa Ana (sic) Ball (July 21, 1832 – after the Battle of Velasco), and the Liberation Ball (September 1835 to celebrate Stephen F. Austin’s liberation from Mexican imprisonment) at her tavern. Austin attended both balls and both furthered the cause of the Texas Revolution. During the time of the first ball, Jane secreted arms for the Texans in a brick outbuilding and organized the women of Brazoria to make bullets for the Battle of Velasco. At the second ball, Stephen F. Austin made a speech which was taken as a call to arms.
Between the times Jane opened her tavern in 1832, until April of 1833 when Stephen F. Austin was appointed to secure Texas statehood from Mexico, the two Texas legends met and conferred often at the Brazoria tavern. While Austin was in Mexico seeking Texas statehood, and continuing until news came that he had been arrested (January 1834) and imprisoned in Mexico City under suspicion of trying to incite insurrection in Texas, Jane ran the tavern and plotted a revolution.
But on March 27, 1834, she suddenly leased out the inn she had operated to M.W. Smith. When word reached the colonies that Austin was returning, she returned to business. On September 1, 1835, when Austin reached Brazoria, he went directly to her boarding house. He had been absent from Texas for 28 months. A few days after his return, on September 8, 1835, Jane gave a ball in his honor and most of the southern colonists attended.
When Sam Houston’s army fell back prior to the battle of San Jacinto and hostilities in Brazoria were imminent, Jane secured her boarding house and relocated to Bolivar. After the victory at San Jacinto, she returned and reopened her tavern in Brazoria. It was the site of a “Victory Ball” on Oct. 29, 1836.1 Austin was again a guest at the festivities. A short two months later, December 27, 1836, Austin died at the age of 43.
Austin’s death changed things in Brazoria and once the spring rains of 1837 had stopped long enough for the roads to become passable, Jane Long moved to her land near San Felipe and opened a boarding house there. By the late 1840s she had established a plantation on her own land. She raised cattle and grew cotton which was more profitable to her than inn keeping. She never remarried.
The Mother and the Father of Texas knew each other well enough to confide in one another and to be concerned about each other. Some people contend that this relationship was platonic, and an equal number of sources claim Austin was Jane’s ardent suitor. Was the nature of their relationship defined by personal attraction and affection, or did the Mother and Father of Texas merely rock the cradle of revolution? n
