Mary Smith Jones
First Lady of Republic of Texas
Mary Smith Jones (July 24, 1819 – December 31, 1907) was the last First Lady of the Republic of Texas, as wife of Anson Jones, the last president of the Republic. She was the first president of the newly founded Daughters of the Republic of Texas in 1891.
Early life
Mary Smith was born on July 24, 1819, to John McCutcheon Smith and his wife Sarah Pevehouse Smith, in Lawrence County, Arkansas. Her father died in 1833, and the family relocated to the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas. Mary became part of a large family of step-siblings when her mother remarried to John Woodruff. Due to growing political tensions and subsequent military operations leading up to the Texas Revolution, the Woodruffs moved a number of times, finally settling in Houston. Mary's first husband at age 19 was a soldier named Hugh McCrory. The marriage was cut short by McCrory's untimely death in 1837. He was buried at Founders Memorial Cemetery, and a cenotaph remains at this site for Mary Smith Jones as well.
Anson Jones
On May 17, 1840, Mary wed Austin physician Anson Jones, whom she had met when he rented a room at her mother's boarding house.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mary Smith Jones” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.