Mrs. Martha Rogers
Lost Prairie, Limestone County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(about 1795 to about 1865) According to family tradition, Martha Rogers was the daugther of United States Army General James Wilkinson (1757-1825) and his wife Ann Biddle of Philadelphia. When she married Benjamin Rogers (b. 1781) in Perry County, Ala., in 1809, Martha was disinherited. She and her husband had ten children. As a widow she moved to TX in 1847 with sons Allen Jefferson, M.C. ("Lum"), and James Rogers. A true Southwestern pioneer, she lived in Lost Prairie community. Recorded - 1978
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
According to family tradition, Martha Rogers was born in the 1790s as a daughter of U.S. Army General James Wilkinson, and was said to have been disinherited when she married Benjamin Rogers in Alabama in 1809. The couple raised ten children before Martha, widowed, made the long move to Texas in 1847 with three of her grown sons. She settled at the Lost Prairie community, living out her years as one of the region's early Southwestern pioneers.
Why it matters
Her life traces the westward path of countless Southern families who pushed into Texas in the decades before the Civil War, and it preserves the memory of the women whose endurance anchored those frontier settlements.
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Related people
- ยท Martha Rogers
- ยท Benjamin Rogers
Themes & tags
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