Lydia Ann McHenry, Republic of Texas teacher

We first know Lydia Ann McHenry in Texas when she accompanied a sister and brother-in-law, Rev. John W. and Maria Kenney from Kentucky, in 1833.

By 1836 and through the Republic of Texas decade well into statehood Lydia taught school. Lydia, who never married, was a woman who stood for women’s rights. With her parents both dead, Lydia was eligible for a quarter league of land as an ‘orphan’ and ‘femme sole.’

Lydia and the Kenney family first settled at Washington-on-the-Brazos where Rev. Kenney is said to have built the first home. Following the Runaway Scrape, they returned to Washington-on-the-Brazos to find all their possessions lost to plunderers. She wrote, “My bed was destroyed, and all my clothes stolen, though found all our cows and have had enough to eat since.”

Lydia wrote many letters to a brother back in Kentucky that are now among the Hardin Papers held by the Chicago Historical Society. They covered the period from 1835 to 1856. George R. Nielsen, an associate professor of history at Concordia Teachers College in River Forest, Illinois, wrote of Lydia in an article of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 74, No. 3, January 1971. He included several of Lydia’s letters.

Lydia tells of sickness, dishonesty, and travails of early settlers first arriving in Texas. “We were all sick all summer and driven from one scene of pestilence and famine to another until I thought I never could recover, nor do I believe I should. If Rev. Kenney (her brother-in-law) had not got a start of a cabin and removed me from the misery of a hired shanty.” She claimed that the “country is not half so desirable as it was represented.”

The Kenneys and Lydia concluded they would never be well on the Brazos River and moved further west to the village of Mount Vernon that later served as the Washington County Seat for a few years. Rev. Kenney gave two slaves for 200 acres of land. Lydia herself owned one slave she called Carner.

Lydia soon learned enough about the Laws of Mexico to be successful in fending off debt seekers of the Kenneys. With Mrs. Kenney being Lydia’s sister, she knew that property descended from the wife’s father could not be taken for the husband’s debts. She turned back the sheriff who came to collect the Kenneys’ property stating all came from Mrs. Kenney’s father, but one horse and carriage that she (Lydia) had taken to secure herself for the loss of her saddle and trunks on the trail.”

Politically, Lydia stated the “Republic of Texas cabinet, except for Lorenzo de Zavala, a Mexican and Mirabeau Lamar, a Frenchman, was the most imbecile body that ever sat in judgment on the fate of a nation.” She disliked Stephen F. Austin, saying he was an “imbecile, artful and ambitious, considering himself entitled to every office.”

Lydia called Santa Anna “that execrable scourge of the human race.” As the Republic’s first presidential election approached in the fall of 1836, she was happy Sam Houston had consented to serve and “if he were elected may prove our salvation.”

Lydia died Aug. 7, 1864 at the age of 68 and is buried in the Old Travis Cemetery outside of Bellville near Kenney in Austin County, Texas. Family members, including her sister and brother-in-law, are also buried in this cemetery. Lydia was known to tutor Alamo hero William Travis’s son.

Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. Visit www.tworiversheritage foundation.org for more information or to become a member.