Page:The part taken by women in American history.djvu/128

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Women Pioneers
103


Rusk a position of great prominence in her State. She filled with great courage and energy all duties which these positions entailed. Their life on this early frontier showed her to be one of the women of which America is proud and to which we owe the opening up of these new countries which are now such great and glorious states of our Union. Mrs. Rusk was the mother of seven children. She died in 1856, in the forty-seventh year of her age.

MRS. SIDNEY SHERMAN.

Mrs. Sherman's husband was a lineal descendant of Roger Sherman. Her father was married in 1835 and lived at Newport, Kentucky. The cry of distress from Texas reached the ears of young Captain and Mrs. Sidney Sherman and they felt it their duty to go to its assistance. Captain Sherman raised and equipped a company of fifty men and in 1835 embarked for the scene of his future exploits. Mrs. Sherman accompanied the expedition as far as Natchez, but from there she returned to her parents in Frankfort, Captain Sherman continuing on to Texas and arriving there in February, 1836. He took part in the engagement which preceded and led his regiment in the last stand made by the Texans on the San Jacinto. All through these trying days in the early history of Texas, Colonel Sherman bore a conspicuous part. In 1842 he was elected to Congress from his district, and some years later by popular vote Major-General of the Texan Army, and this he held until Texas was annexed to the United States. Colonel Sherman suffered severe losses prior to the war and during that period. His young son, Lieutenant Sidney Sherman, was killed. This so told upon Mrs. Sherman's health that she died in January, 1865.

LUCY HOLCOMB PICKENS.

Mrs. Pickens was one of the famous beauties of Texas. In 1856 she married Colonel Pickens, a member of Congress from South Carolina. In the following year her husband was appointed, by President Buchanan, Minister of the United States to the Imperial court of Russia, and in St. Petersburg she was no less famous as a beauty and remarkably gifted woman than in her own land. In i860 Colonel Pickens resigned his commission, having been elected Governor of South Carolina, and here Mrs. Pickens discharged with inimitable grace and dignity her duties as the wife of the Governor, and it was said that General Pickens on the twelfth day of April, 1861, at Charleston, took his little daughter in his arms and placed in her tiny hand the lighted match that fired the first gun of the war on Fort Sumter. Mrs. Pickens held all through her life the friendship of the Imperial family of Russia, and on the marriage of their daughter, "Doushka", a silver tea service was sent her by the Imperial family. Mrs. Pickens died some years ago.

MRS. ALEXANDER W. TERRELL.

Mrs. Terrell's home was in Austin. Her husband was Minister to Turkey at one time and she traveled extensively in Europe. Her attractive personality and