Mary Austin Holley/Austin's cousin
Mary Austin Holley, first cousin of Stephen F. Austin, father of Texas, wrote a book entitled a paragraph long: “Texas Observations, Historical, Geographical, and Descriptive in a Series of Letters Written during a visit to Austin’s Colony, with a View to a Permanent Settlement in that Country in the Autumn of 1831.”
Mary’s book was a best seller and prompted hundreds of new settlers by the spring of 1836 to wander into what became the Republic of Texas. (Note: One of Mary’s long titled books referred to in the above paragraph of an estimated 400 published, just, on March 8, 2022, sold for $7,010, by Copano Press in a multiple historic book auction. The book was from the estate of O. C. and Louise Holt. It is considered the “Holy Grail” of all books written on early Texas).
Born Oct. 30, 1789 at New Haven, Connecticut, the daughter of Elijah Austin, brother of Moses Austin, who had wandered earlier from Connecticut to Missouri to its lead mines and on into what became Texas to set up as ‘empresario’ with Mexico. As a result, 300 original settlers crossed the Sabine River into what became Texas.
Mary’s father, Elijah, was a somewhat wealthy merchant in the China trade, but his sudden death of yellow fever, sent the family into impoverishment. Timothy Phelps, brother to Mary’s mother Esther Phelps, took in Mary. She was well educated.
Ann Fears Crawford and Crystal Sasse Ragsdale tell of Mary’s fast paced life in their book “Women in Texas.”
At the age of 21, in 1810, she married Horace Holley, a Yale divinity graduate, serving his first ministerial assignment in Connecticut. By 1818, the Holleys were living in Lexington, Kentucky with two young children. Holley was serving as president of the Transylvania University. However, “religious misunderstanding” led to his resignation, and plans to open a college in New Orleans failed. On a voyage from New Orleans to New York, Mary’s husband fell ill to die of yellow fever.
A widow at the age of 45, Mary first became a teacher at the Good Hope Plantation in Louisiana. She learned that her cousin Stephen had signed a Texas league of land in her name. Mary’s brother, Henry, had already settled his family at Bolivar along the Brazos River.
In Oct. 1831 she boarded a ship to visit her brother. Mary’s book on Texas evolved as Austin came from San Felipe to Bolivar and they spent 10 days together at her brother’s home. They also, according to authors Crawford and Ragsdale, fell in love in those 10 days and planned to marry after Austin’s upcoming trip to Mexico to settle grant issues. Austin would be imprisoned for nearly two years on that Mexico trip.
Meantime, Mary completed the long-entitled book on Texas. It was published in 1833 dedicated to her cousin as “The Father of Texas.”
In July of 1836, following that spring’s establishment of the Republic of Texas, Mary published a much larger book entitled “Mrs. Holley’s Texas.” Late fall she wrote Stephen telling him she was returning to Texas. He never personally received the letter as, with his health broken from Mexican imprisonment, he died on Dec. 27, 1836.
Mary’s long widowhood financial status was troublesome. With the death of her brother Henry’s wife, she assumed responsibility of his children. She kept selling fragments of her Texas land grant to cover finances as well as struggled trying to write a biography of Austin’s life. She returned to New Orleans to again teach at the Good Hope Plantation. In 1846, shortly after the Republic of Texas became the 28th state of the United States, she died within another yellow fever epidemic.
It is claimed Mary’s books, poems, letters, and newspaper articles left a legacy of informing the United States and Europe of frontier Texas during the years of the Republic.
(Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See the website www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more information and membership).