Emily Margaret Brown Austin Bryan Perry
Jones Creek, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1795-1851) Born near Austinville, Virginia, as was her brother Stephen Fuller Austin (1793-1836), Emily moved with her father Moses Austin (1761-1821) and mother Maria Brown Austin (1768-1824) to Missouri in 1798. The family operated lead mines there and founded the town of Potosi, south of St. Louis. Emily was sent to schools in Kentucky and New York and returned to Missouri in 1812. She married James Bryan (1788-1822) in 1813 and gave birth to five children at Hazel run, Missouri. After James died, Emily subsisted by taking boarders and teaching school. She married James Franklin Perry (1795-1853) in 1824 in Missouri; their union produced six children. By the end of 1831, the Perry family-- including Emily, James, four Bryan children, two Perry children, James' niece, and nine slaves-- had joined Emily's brother Stephen in Texas. They settled at San Felipe and built a house at Stephen's Peach Point Plantation, providing a home and counsel for her bachelor brother. The Bryan and Perry offspring contributed greatly to the development of Texas. Emily's sons served as soldiers and statesmen, and preserved the Austin bloodline. Emily died at Peach Point shortly after a trip to Philadelphia, and was buried here at Gulf Prairie Cemetery. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Emily Austin was the sister of Stephen F. Austin, the empresario who led the first Anglo-American colonization of Texas. Raised in the lead-mining town of Potosi, Missouri, that her father Moses Austin helped found, she twice married and raised a large family before bringing her household to Texas in 1831 to join her bachelor brother. From the family's Peach Point Plantation she offered Stephen a home and counsel during the crucial years of colonization and the Texas Revolution, and her descendants went on to help build the new republic and state.
Why it matters
The Austin family stands at the origin of Anglo Texas, and Emily's steady presence anchored her famous brother's work through the founding of the Republic. Her life also reflects how women shaped the frontier through family, property, and endurance rather than public office.
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Related people
- · Emily Austin Perry
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Moses Austin
- · James Franklin Perry
Related events
- · Anglo colonization of Texas
- · Founding of the Republic of Texas
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Jane Long Boarding House
Richmond, TX
Jane Wilkinson Long earned the name "Mother of Texas" through the winter of 1821, when—stranded at Point Bolivar with her small daughter and an enslaved girl named Kian while her husband's filibustering expedition marched into Mexico—she gave birth in a snowstorm and then rose to gather food and firewood for her family. In the decades that followed she ran two of the most famous boarding houses of the colonial and republic eras, hosting William B. Travis, Sam Houston, and Mirabeau B. Lamar. On this Richmond site she opened a house in 1837 that became a hub of Texas social and political life until her plantation prospered in the 1840s.
James Franklin Perry
Jones Creek, TX
A Pennsylvania-born merchant who made his fortune in Missouri's frontier trade, James Franklin Perry married Emily Austin and, urged on by her brother Stephen F. Austin, moved his family to Texas in 1831. He built mercantile and farming interests and settled at Peach Point Plantation on the Brazos River. As an active supporter of the Republic of Texas and executor of Stephen F. Austin's estate, his careful stewardship of Austin's maps, land papers, and reports preserved records now central to the Texas archives.
William Joel Bryan
Jones Creek, TX
Grandson of Moses Austin, whose colonizing dream reshaped Texas, William Joel Bryan came to the country with his family in 1831 and served in the Texas army from 1835 to 1838 during the struggle for independence. A prosperous planter, he was instrumental in building a deepwater port at the mouth of the Brazos and lived at 'Durazno,' a plantation given to him by his uncle Stephen F. Austin. The city of Bryan, Texas, bears his name.
Henry William Munson
Jones Creek, TX
Henry William Munson's life spanned the violent birth of Anglo Texas. He fought at the 1813 Battle of Medina near San Antonio, returned east, then came back as one of Austin's colonists in 1824. He took up arms for Mexico to put down the 1827 Fredonian Rebellion, but turned against Santa Anna's agents at the 1832 Battle of Velasco. He and his wife Ann named one son Mordello, after the Mexican officer who had saved Munson's life at Medina.