Daughters of the Republic of Texas
Houston, Harris County, Texas
Marker Inscription
On November 6, 1891, seventeen women met at the home of Mrs. Andrew Briscoe at this site to organize an auxiliary to the Texas Veterans Association. Mrs. Anson Jones was elected president of the new organization, Daughters of the Lone Star Republic. Goals set for the group included preserving the memories of Texas Revolution heroes, instilling Texas patriotism in the state's school children, preservation of historic sites, and promoting statewide celebrations of Texas Independence Day (March 2) and San Jacinto Day (April 21). The first annual meeting of the organization was held in Lampasas on April 21, 1892. A resolution was passed to change the group's name to the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. By 1892 the first two chapters had been formed, one in Galveston and one in Houston. The DRT has been in the forefront of many historic preservation projects throughout the state. Clara Driscoll, on behalf of the D. R. T., wrote personal checks to save the Alamo from demolition. The organization also led efforts to preserve and commemorate the San Jacinto Battlefield site, and maintains the old General Land Office and French Legation buildings in Austin as museums. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
On November 6, 1891, seventeen women gathered at Mrs. Andrew Briscoe's Houston home to form an auxiliary to the Texas Veterans Association, electing Mrs. Anson Jones president and soon renaming themselves the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Their aims—honoring Texas Revolution heroes, teaching patriotism, and preserving historic sites—drove a long record of preservation work. Members such as Clara Driscoll famously wrote personal checks to save the Alamo, while the group also protected the San Jacinto Battlefield and Austin's old General Land Office and French Legation.
Why it matters
The DRT pioneered organized historic preservation in Texas, and its founding shows women claiming a public role as guardians of civic memory in the late 19th century.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
The 1890s saw a remarkable surge of American women organizing themselves into associations devoted to history, patriotism, and memory. The Daughters of the American Revolution formed in 1890, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 1891, and the United Daughters of the Confederacy in 1894 — a wave of civic energy channeled through groups founded and run by women.
It was an era when women were largely shut out of formal political power, unable to vote and rarely welcomed into public office. Yet the work of preserving the past, honoring heroes, and shaping what children learned offered a respectable and powerful avenue into public life — one that women seized with real skill.
In Texas, that impulse met a young state still within living memory of its revolution. The men who had fought for Texas independence were aging, their veterans' association thinning, and there was a keenly felt worry that the stories and the landmarks of that struggle might slip away unremembered.
People & events
The founding happened at a house. On November 6, 1891, seventeen women gathered at the home of Mrs. Andrew Briscoe to organize an auxiliary to the Texas Veterans Association. They elected Mrs. Anson Jones — widow of the last president of the Republic of Texas — as their first president, and set themselves an ambitious charter.
Their goals were clear and lasting: to preserve the memory of the heroes of the Texas Revolution, to plant Texas patriotism in the state's schoolchildren, to save historic sites, and to see Texas Independence Day and San Jacinto Day marked across the state. At their first annual meeting in Lampasas in April 1892 they took the name we know them by, the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and the first chapters soon rose in Galveston and Houston.
What followed was decades of tangible achievement. The organization threw itself into preservation, and one of its members, Clara Driscoll, went so far as to write personal checks on the group's behalf to help rescue the Alamo from demolition — an act of private commitment that helped save one of the most storied places in Texas. The DRT also led efforts to preserve and commemorate the San Jacinto battlefield.
Its place in the American story
This modest Houston site marks a genuine turning point in how Americans came to care for their own past. Long before historic preservation was a profession or a government function, it was often the volunteer labor of organized women, and the DRT was a pioneer of that movement in Texas.
The founding also captures a larger truth about American public life. Denied the vote and the levers of office, women of the late nineteenth century built parallel institutions of enormous influence, becoming the guardians of civic memory and the arbiters of which stories a young nation would tell about itself. That is a form of power, and these seventeen women wielded it deliberately.
The rescue of the Alamo is the vivid emblem of it all. That a threatened landmark could be saved because a woman was willing to put her own resources behind the cause says a great deal about how much of America's inherited landscape survives thanks to citizens, and often women, who simply refused to let it disappear.
If you visit
The marker commemorates what happened at this site — a meeting in a private home in 1891 — rather than a grand monument, so come ready to use your imagination more than your camera. The power of the place is in the event it records, not in a towering structure.
Stand where seventeen women once gathered and consider the scale of what grew from that afternoon: a statewide organization that helped save the Alamo and the San Jacinto battlefield and shaped how generations of Texas children learned their own history. It is a reminder that some of the most consequential meetings in American life happened around ordinary parlor tables.
This marker fits beautifully into a larger heritage road trip. Let it be the origin story you carry with you to the more famous sites the DRT helped preserve, and the visit to those places will feel richer for knowing where the impulse to save them was born.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Mrs. Anson Jones
- · Clara Driscoll
- · Mrs. Andrew Briscoe
Related events
- · Founding of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, 1891
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Site of Academy of the Incarnate Word
Houston, TX
Houston's first permanent Catholic school opened here in 1873, when Mother M. Gabriel Dillon and two Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament came at a local priest's request to teach young girls. Within months they had a three-story building, and a state charter soon empowered the academy to grant diplomas, educating hundreds of pupils a year as Houston grew from a muddy town into a city.
Site of the Organization of Lady Washington Chapter, NSDAR
Houston, TX
On November 14, 1899, ten organizing members met in the western parlor of the Capitol Hotel — later the Rice Hotel — to found the Lady Washington Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, named for Martha Washington. It was the first DAR chapter in Houston and the fifth in Texas. Its founders went on to help build the city's civic life, from the City Federation of Women's Clubs to the Houston Public School Art League and the Carnegie Library board.
Houston Public Library
Houston, TX
Houston's library grew from the debating societies of the 1840s, whose members formed a circulating library and, in 1854, the Houston Lyceum, a whites-only, dues-paying men's club. Women admitted in 1887 became the persistent advocates for free public access, and in 1899 the city funded a library; a $50,000 gift from Andrew Carnegie brought a grand building that opened in 1904. Under longtime librarian Julia Ideson, the system expanded into branches, a bookmobile, and a larger central facility later named in her honor.
Julia Ideson Building
Houston, TX
Houston's public library grew from a Lyceum, local women's clubs and Andrew Carnegie's philanthropy into a 1904 Carnegie building, guided by Julia Bedford Ideson, hired in 1903 as the city's first librarian. When the collection outgrew that home, Ideson and her committee spent the 1920s planning a grander library, choosing noted architect Ralph Adams Cram, who gave the 1926 building its Spanish Renaissance Revival tile roofs, arches and ornate metalwork. After more than four decades of service, Ideson died in 1945, and the city renamed the building in her honor.