Jane

Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long was called the "Mother of Texas," even during her lifetime, because of the birth of her child on Bolivar Peninsula on December 21, 1821. She was not, however, as she claimed, the first English-speaking woman to bear a child in Texas. Censuses between 1807 and 1826 reveal a number of children born in Texas to Anglo-American mothers prior to 1821. Jane was born on July 23, 1798, in Charles County, Maryland, the tenth child of Capt. William Mackall and Anne Herbert (Dent) Wilkinson. Her father died in 1799, and about 1811 her mother moved the family to Washington, Mississippi Territory. After the death of her mother around 1813, Jane lived with her older sister, Barbara, the wife of Alexander Calvit , at Propinquity Plantation near Natchez, where she met James Long qv when he was returning from the battle of New Orleans. The couple married on May 14, 1815, and for the next four years lived in the vicinity while James practiced medicine at Port Gibson, experimented with a plantation, and became a merchant in Natchez. When Long left for Nacogdoches in June 1819, Jane and their daughter, Ann Herbert, born on November 26, 1816, remained with another sister, Anne Chesley, a widow, because of advanced pregnancy. Twelve days after the birth of Rebecca on June 16, Jane hastened to join her husband. She left with her two children and Kian , a black slave. While with the Calvits, now living near Alexandria, Louisiana, Jane became ill. She continued on while still recovering, and it was August before she reached Nacogdoches. Within two months she had to flee with the other American families towards the Sabine when Spanish troops from San Antonio approached the frontier outpost. James Long was returning to the stone fort from a visit to Galveston Island and managed to meet Jane near the Sabine. Jane returned to the Calvits' where she found that little Rebecca had died. About March 1820 James Long took Jane to Bolivar Peninsula on Galveston Bay, and she claimed to have dined with Jean Laffite on Galveston Island. The Longs returned to Alexandria for their daughter on their way to New Orleans to seek support for Long's cause. Jane missed sailing to Bolivar when at the last minute she returned to Rodney, Mississippi, for her daughter Ann, whom she had left with Anne Chesley. Jane and Ann waited in Alexandria until Warren D. C. Hall came to guide her overland to Bolivar.