DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, Fort Bend County holds a lot of history, but right here — right on this very ground — stands the site of a home that belongs to one of the most remarkable figures in all of Texas. The marker calls her the pioneer of Anglo-American women in Texas.
That's not a title handed out lightly. Her name was Mrs. Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long.
Born in 1789, she lived all the way to 1880 — and if you know anything about what she walked through in this life, you understand those years carried some serious weight. She was the wife of Dr. James Long, and Dr.
Long was the kind of man who looked at Texas — then firmly under Spanish rule — and said, no, that's not how this ought to be. In 1819, he led an expedition with one declared purpose: to free Texas from Spanish rule. That was the mission.
And behind that mission, beside that man, was Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long. This was her home. Right here.
The State of Texas thought it important enough to mark in 1936, and I'll tell you — standing at the site of a home belonging to the pioneer of Anglo-American women in Texas, you start to feel the full reach of that word. Pioneer. It doesn't just mean first.
It means she carried something forward that nobody had carried before her, on ground that didn't yet belong to the people who would eventually call it home.
What the marker says
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