Pamelia Mann, Tough Texan. (original) (raw)

A lady of my acquaintance, active in the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, once complained to me on the argumentative nature of her sisters in this hereditary Lone Star sorority. My explanation: it's in the blood. Their grand mammas came here scraping. A case in point is Pamelia Mann, immigrant to Revolutionary Texas. Pamelia Dickinson, who married men named Hunt, Allen, Mann, and Brown successively, arrived in Texas during the times of trouble with Mexico. She made her home in San Felipe, headquarters of Stephen F. Austin's empresarial operations, but operated a boarding house in Washington-on-the-Brazos during the time the Consultation met there to declare Texas independent in March 1836.

At Groce's Plantation on the Brazos during Sam Houston's march eastward�with Santa Anna's victorious army from the Alamo in pursuit�two of Pamelia Mann's oxen "joined" Houston's army to pull a wagon. Apparently Pamelia did not object since she thought her property was walking its way from harm, but when she learned they were headed for a showdown with Santa Anna at San Jacinto, she overtook Houston and forced the return of her property. If this incident actually occurred, at least Houston did not hold a grudge against her�he later attended the wedding of one of her sons.

Mrs. Mann and her family lived near Lynchburg for a while, then moved to Houston when the Allen brothers developed that new settlement on Buffalo Bayou and lured its namesake, Sam Houston, and the government of the new Republic of Texas to it, at least for a while.

Pamelia Mann owned and operated the Mansion House Hotel in Houston, located on the corner of Congress and Main streets, near the capital offices, so its clientele consisted mostly of government workers and those who had business with them. It also witnessed a fair amount of frontier wildness, some of it involvement Mrs. Mann. She was charged with several crimes and convicted of forgery, though pardoned by President Mirabeau Lamar.

Mrs. Mann died in 1840 from yellow fever, but her fighting spirit survives in the scrapping women of modern Texas.