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McHenry, Lydia Ann (1796-1864)
Obituary
McHenry, Lydia Ann
1864
McHenry
Lydia Ann
Lydia, daughter of Barnabas and Sarah McHenry, immigrated to TX in December 1833. She took a slave woman with her and claimed a quarter league of land near the site of Bellville in the Stephen F. Austin colony.
Outspoken and determined, she once faced down a sheriff with a warrant against her absent brother-in-law by insisting that all of the family's property was her own and her sister's inheritance from their father and thus could not under Mexican Law be seized for the husband's debts. She found little to praise in either Stephen F. Austin or his colony. She wrote letters and sent reports about the unhealthfulness of the Texas climate, it's citizens, the ad interim government for its leniency toward Antonio López de Santa Anna. In September 1834, she helped organize the first church in the colony at Caney Creek. She was also one of the first school teachers in the Republic of Texas. She opened a boarding school for girls at Montville and after closing two months later, she attempted a second school in her brother-in-law's home in 1837, with her sister as a teacher of a class of boys. It was closed in April 1838. Between 1840 and 1844, she went to KY and NY in time to attend the session of the Methodist General Conference that split the church into two branches over the issue of slavery. She returned to Texas in 1844 and lived with her sister and brother-in-law for the remainder of her life. During the Civil War, she and her sister taught clothing making to help with the shortage of clothes brought on by the war.
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