Site of Jane Long's Tavern
Brazoria, Brazoria County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Jane Herbert Wilkinson (1798-1880) was born in Maryland and moved to Natchez, Mississippi, in 1812. There in 1815 she married physician and soldier James Long (c. 1793-1822). Jane was granted land in Austin's colony in 1827, and opened a boarding house on this site in 1832. The busy port and tavern became a popular center of Anglo political activity. Here Jane hosted a benefit for stephen F. Austin in 1835, upon his release from Mexican prison, and a ball in October, 1836, attended by President Sam Houston and the adjourned Congress. She moved to Richmond in 1837 to operate a popular hotel there. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long, sometimes called the "Mother of Texas," opened a boarding house on this site in 1832 after years on the Gulf frontier. Her tavern at the busy port of Brazoria became a hub of Anglo-American political life: she hosted a benefit for Stephen F. Austin in 1835 after his release from a Mexican prison, and in 1836 a ball attended by President Sam Houston and the adjourned Congress of the Republic. She later moved on to run a hotel in Richmond.
Why it matters
Long's tavern was a gathering place where the leaders of the Texas Revolution and the new Republic met, and it stands as a rare monument to a frontier woman at the center of that history.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
When Jane Long opened her boarding house in 1832, Texas was still part of Mexico. Thousands of Anglo-American settlers had come in under the empresario system, the largest group of them in Stephen F. Austin's colony along the Brazos and Colorado rivers. They came for cheap, fertile land. Through the early 1830s, tension grew between the settlers and the Mexican government over trade, immigration, slavery, and how Texas should be governed.
Brazoria, near the lower Brazos River, was one of the most important towns in the colony. Goods and people moved by water, and a riverside town with access to the Gulf was a natural meeting point. Planters, merchants, and politicians passed through, and an inn on the waterfront heard much of the news, rumors, and debate of the day.
By 1835 that debate had become revolution. Fighting began that fall, and in 1836 Texas declared independence, fought the campaign that ended at San Jacinto, and set up a new republic. Its first Congress met that autumn at nearby Columbia, close to Brazoria. In those early days, the lower Brazos was the political center of Texas.
People & events
Jane Herbert Wilkinson was born in Maryland in 1798 and moved to Natchez, Mississippi, as a girl. There, in 1815, she married James Long, a physician and soldier. Her husband became one of the best-known filibusters of his time. He led expeditions into Spanish Texas trying to make it independent and was killed in Mexico in 1822. Jane's own experience on the Texas coast in those years, waiting out a hard winter for a husband who did not return, became the center of her legend. That legend later earned her the nickname 'Mother of Texas.' Some of its details, including the popular claim that she gave birth to the first Anglo child born in Texas, are disputed by historians.
She stayed. In 1827 she was granted land in Austin's colony, and in 1832 she opened a boarding house on this spot. It became a popular tavern in a busy port, and before long it was a center of Anglo political activity. Settlers argued over the future of Texas at her tables.
Two gatherings stand out. In 1835, Stephen F. Austin came home after a long imprisonment in Mexico, and Jane Long hosted a benefit in his honor. It was one of the important public events in the tense months before the revolution. In October 1836, with independence won, she held a ball attended by President Sam Houston and the members of the newly adjourned Congress. In 1837 she moved to Richmond to run a popular hotel there. She lived until 1880, long enough to see Texas become a republic, a state, a Confederate state, and a state again.
Its place in the American story
Jane Long's tavern is a reminder that history is made in social spaces as well as on battlefields and in legislatures. Inns and taverns in early America were where news spread, alliances formed, and political ideas took shape. Her boarding house did that work for Texas at a crucial moment, as Anglo colonists moved from complaints toward revolution and independence.
Her story also widens the usual picture of the frontier. Histories of the Texas Revolution tend to focus on men with rifles and men with pens. Long was a widow who received land in her own name, ran a business, and hosted the leading figures of her day. She shows the economic and social role that women played on the frontier, often with little recognition at the time.
The broader story also has a hard side that deserves to be acknowledged. Anglo settlement and the revolution brought Texas into the United States' orbit, which set the stage for annexation in 1845 and the war with Mexico that followed. That expansion also extended slavery, and it displaced Tejano and Native communities. The gatherings at Jane Long's tavern were part of that larger and complicated chapter of American expansion.
If you visit
The tavern no longer stands, so the marker is your doorway into the scene. Picture a bustling riverside town, with boats unloading goods, travelers looking for a bed, and candlelit rooms full of planters and politicians arguing about the future. Then picture the night in 1836 when the president of a brand-new republic came here to dance.
Brazoria sits in the heart of Texas's 'Cradle of Texas' country along the lower Brazos, a region full of sites from the colonial and revolutionary years. This marker fits well into a road trip through that history, including nearby Columbia, where the first Congress of the Republic met, and the coastal plain where Austin's colonists first settled.
If Jane Long's story catches your interest, you can follow her to Richmond in Fort Bend County, where she spent the rest of her life running her hotel. Visiting both places gives you a sense of how one determined woman built a life, twice over, on the Texas frontier.
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 Long
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Sam Houston
Themes & tags
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Brazoria Townsite
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Founded in 1828 by John Austin, a friend of colonization leader Stephen F. Austin, Brazoria grew into a port, market, and social center for the young Anglo colony. Here Jane Long — widow of the filibuster Dr. John Long, who had tried in 1819 to wrest Texas from Spain — kept a tavern that anchored the town's public life. Burned during the Texas Revolution and rebuilt, Brazoria served as a county seat and business hub until 1897.
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