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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.
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