Mrs. Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long
Richmond, Fort Bend County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Site of the home of the pioneer of Anglo-American women in Texas Mrs. Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long (1789-1880) Wife of Dr. James Long, leader of an expedition in 1819 whose purpose was to free Texas from Spanish rule Erected by the State of Texas 1936
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
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.
Why it matters
Her life bridges the earliest Anglo settlement of Texas and its revolutionary struggles, honoring the often-overlooked role of women on the contested southwestern frontier.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1819, Texas was the far northern edge of Spain's empire in the Americas: huge, thinly populated, and contested. Spain held it loosely, the young United States was expanding west and south, and the Spanish colonies across Latin America were in open revolt against the Crown. That same year a treaty between the United States and Spain set the border between them, leaving Texas on the Spanish side.
Many Americans along the frontier were unhappy with that decision. Some felt Texas should have been part of the Louisiana Purchase, and adventurers known as filibusters organized private armed expeditions to seize territory or support revolutions there. These ventures operated outside the law and usually ended badly, but they reflected a restless mood on the southwestern frontier.
Over the next two decades Texas would change hands again and again. Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821 and invited Anglo-American colonists to settle Texas. Tensions between those settlers and the Mexican government led to the Texas Revolution in 1835-36 and an independent Republic of Texas, which later joined the United States.
Jane Long lived through all of it. Her long life connects the earliest attempts by Anglo-Americans to push into Texas with the settled, statehood-era world that followed, and that is a big reason the State of Texas chose to honor her.
People & events
Jane Herbert Wilkinson was born in 1789 and grew up in the American South. She married Dr. James Long, a young physician who became caught up in the frontier politics of the day. In 1819 he led an expedition into Texas whose stated goal was to free it from Spanish rule, one of several filibustering ventures of that era.
The expedition did not achieve its aims. Like other private efforts to seize Texas, it faced Spanish forces, scarce supplies, and the sheer difficulty of holding ground in a vast and lightly settled land. Long's ventures continued for several years, and the story of how his efforts ended is generally told as a tragedy for his family: he was killed in Mexico, and Jane was left a widow.
Jane Long's own story is what made her a legend. Accounts of her time on the Texas coast, waiting for her husband's return through a harsh winter in difficult conditions, became one of the founding tales of Texas. She is widely remembered as the "Mother of Texas," and traditions hold that she gave birth to a child on Texas soil there. Claims that the baby was the first Anglo-American child born in Texas are a popular part of her legend, but historians treat that "first" with caution, and it is best understood as tradition rather than settled fact.
She stayed in Texas for the rest of her long life, which ended in 1880. Settling eventually in Fort Bend County, she became a respected figure who had witnessed the whole sweep of early Texas history, from a Spanish province to an American state. In 1936, during the state's centennial, Texas marked the site of her home here.
Its place in the American story
Jane Long's story widens the usual picture of the American frontier. Popular history tends to focus on soldiers, explorers, and politicians. Her life is a reminder that women made the choices, bore the hardships, and built the households that actually turned frontier claims into lasting communities.
Her husband's expedition belongs to a larger and more complicated national story. Filibustering, private armies trying to seize foreign territory, was a recurring feature of American expansion in the nineteenth century. These ventures reveal the ambitions and tensions that would later shape the Texas Revolution, the annexation of Texas, and the war with Mexico.
The marker itself is part of history too. It was placed in 1936, when Texas celebrated a century of independence with a big wave of monuments and markers. The phrase "pioneer of Anglo-American women in Texas" shows how that generation chose to tell its founding story, focused on Anglo settlers. Today we read that story alongside the Tejano, Native American, and African American Texans whose presence long predated or accompanied it.
Seen that way, Jane Long stands at the crossroads of the American Southwest: a single life that runs from Spanish Texas to the United States, with all the ambition, loss, and endurance that journey required.
If you visit
Richmond is an old Brazos River town in Fort Bend County, southwest of Houston, with deep roots in Texas history. The marker shows where Jane Long's home stood. It is a place to pause and reflect, not a preserved historic house, so come expecting a site rather than a museum.
As you stand there, think about the arc of her life: a young wife on a dangerous frontier venture, then a widow who stayed, then a respected elder who lived to see Texas become a state. Few people ever saw that much change in a single lifetime.
Richmond and the surrounding area have other sites tied to early Texas and the Brazos settlements, so this marker fits well into a day exploring the region's colonial and Republic-era history. It also pairs naturally with a trip to the upper Texas coast, where the most famous chapter of her legend took place.
The 1936 marker style is part of the experience too. Centennial markers like this one were placed all across Texas to tell the state's founding story, and noticing how they phrase that story is a quiet lesson in how history gets remembered.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long
- · Dr. James Long
Related events
- · James Long expedition, 1819
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
City of Richmond
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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.
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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.
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