Jane Long Boarding House
Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Maryland in 1798, Jane H. Wilkinson moved to Mississippi (1811) and became the ward of her famous relative, Gen. James Wilkinson, field commander of the United States Army. Jane married Dr. James Long in 1815 and later followed him on a filibustering expedition to free Texas from Spain. In 1821 Long led his forces into battle, leaving Jane alone with their daughter Ann and slave girl Kian at Point Bolivar, near Galveston. On Dec. 21, 1821, with snow falling, their food supply gone, and Kian ill, Jane gave birth to a daughter, then rose and got food and firewood for her family. Her heroism earned her the name "Mother of Texas." Later she learned of her husband's death in Mexico. During the period Texas was a colony and a republic, Jane Long operated two well-known boarding houses. She started the first in Brazoria in 1832; her guests included William B. Travis, Sam Houston, and Mirabeau B. Lamar. In 1837 Jane moved to Richmond and on this site opened another boarding house which became a center for social and political activities as well as lodging for prominent Texans and European visitors. Jane ran this hotel until her plantation near town became prosperous in the 1840s. She died in 1880 and is buried in richmond's Morton Cemetery.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Long's story places a woman at the center of Texas's founding, and her boarding houses were informal statehouses where the republic's leaders gathered, planned, and argued.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
Jane Long's life unfolded across the turbulent birth of Texas. In the years before it became a Mexican colony, an American republic, and finally a state, the territory was contested ground—claimed by Spain, eyed by American adventurers, and crossed by armed expeditions hoping to pry it loose. This was the age of the "filibusters," private military ventures launched by Americans to seize or free territory beyond the nation's borders.
Into that unsettled world came a young woman from the American South, connected by family to the highest ranks of the United States Army. When she followed her husband into a filibustering expedition aimed at wresting Texas from Spain, she stepped directly into the violent uncertainty of the frontier's edge.
By the time she settled into the work for which she is best remembered—running boarding houses in the colonial and republic eras—Texas was filling with the leaders and settlers who would shape its destiny. A good boarding house in that world was more than lodging; it was a crossroads where the business of building a country got done.
People & events
Born Jane H. Wilkinson in Maryland in 1798, she moved to Mississippi as a girl and became the ward of her famous relative, Gen. James Wilkinson, a field commander of the U.S. Army. In 1815 she married Dr. James Long and later followed him on his expedition to free Texas from Spain.
The defining moment came in the winter of 1821. Her husband had led his forces into battle, leaving Jane at Point Bolivar near Galveston with their young daughter Ann and an enslaved girl named Kian. On December 21, with snow falling, their food gone, and Kian sick, Jane gave birth to a daughter—and then rose from childbed to gather food and firewood for her family. That act of endurance earned her the name "Mother of Texas." Only later did she learn that her husband had died in Mexico.
Widowed, she made her own way. In 1832 she opened her first boarding house in Brazoria, where her guests included William B. Travis, Sam Houston, and Mirabeau B. Lamar. In 1837 she moved to Richmond and, on this site, opened another boarding house that became a center of social and political life as well as lodging for prominent Texans and European visitors. She ran it until her plantation near town grew prosperous in the 1840s. She died in 1880 and is buried in Richmond's Morton Cemetery.
Its place in the American story
Jane Long's story places a woman squarely at the center of Texas's founding, at a time when the historical record so often left women in the margins. The name "Mother of Texas" endures because her ordeal at Point Bolivar came to stand for the sheer grit that survival on the frontier demanded.
Her boarding houses matter for a different reason. In the colonial and republic eras, there were few formal halls of government, and much of the real work of politics happened in private rooms—over meals, in parlors, around a fire. When Travis, Houston, and Lamar took lodging under her roof, her houses became informal statehouses where the leaders of a rising republic gathered, planned, and argued.
That a widowed woman ran these hubs of public life, and prospered by her own enterprise, complicates the familiar frontier story of men on horseback. The making of Texas ran straight through establishments like hers, and through the woman who kept them.
If you visit
This Richmond site is where Jane Long opened her 1837 boarding house, and the reward of visiting is imaginative rather than architectural: stand here and picture the coming and going of a young republic's leaders, arriving to eat, sleep, and talk politics under one roof.
Let the scale of her life sink in. From a snowbound birth at Point Bolivar in 1821 to a bustling house of state figures and European travelers, to a prosperous plantation and a long life ending in 1880—she outlived the frontier era she helped define.
To complete the story, you can seek out Morton Cemetery in Richmond, where she is buried. Together, the boarding-house site and the grave bracket a remarkable life, and both fit naturally into a day tracing the founding-era history of Richmond and Fort Bend County. Come ready to imagine, and Jane Long's Texas comes vividly to life.
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
- · Jane Long
- · James Long
- · William B. Travis
- · Sam Houston
- · Mirabeau B. Lamar
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Richmond
Richmond, TX
Settled in 1822 by members of Stephen F. Austin's colony as 'Fort Settlement,' Richmond was formally laid out in 1837 and named for Richmond, Virginia, becoming county seat in 1838. Among its residents were Jane Long, the 'Mother of Texas,' and scout Erastus 'Deaf' Smith, both buried nearby, and the arrival of Texas's first railroad in 1855 brought new prosperity. Later the town saw saloon-smasher Carry Nation run a hotel and the violent 1889 Jaybird-Woodpecker feud climax in a shootout on Courthouse Square.
Mrs. Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long
Richmond, TX
Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long, often remembered as a pioneer among Anglo-American women in Texas, made her home on this Fort Bend County site. She was the wife of Dr. James Long, who led an 1819 expedition aimed at freeing Texas from Spanish rule. Living through the turbulent years when Texas passed from Spanish to Mexican to independent hands, she became a lasting symbol of frontier endurance, memorialized here by the State of Texas in 1936.
Alief Cemetery
Houston, TX
The first permanent settlers here were Dr. John Magee and his wife Alief, who arrived in 1896; the community, briefly called Dairy, was renamed in 1897 for Alief Magee, its first postmistress. When the need for a burial ground arose in 1900, this property was deeded for a cemetery, and many of the pioneer settlers — including Alief herself — were laid to rest here. Roughly half the graves are those of infants, a stark record of the hardships of childbirth and disease on the early prairie, while the 1900 hurricane scattered many discouraged families before some returned to fight the area's floods.
Stacye Ann Marlin Morgan
Waller County, TX
Stacye Ann Marlin was a young woman when, on January 1, 1839, a raid in Falls County killed and scalped several members of the Morgan and Marlin families. Her younger brother Isaac ran seven miles for help while Stacye Ann, gravely wounded, was left for dead — yet she survived, married William J. Morgan, and raised a large family before dying in Waller County in 1894. Her long life stood as a living memorial to one of the Republic of Texas's frontier tragedies.