Born at Sainte Genevieve, Missouri, Mary Jane Harris (1819-1903) was educated in New York before moving to Harrisburg, Texas, to join her family. In 1837, she married Andrew J. Briscoe, a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence. The couple had five children, including Adele Lubbock Briscoe (1848-1935) who married Confederate officer and lawyer Michael Looscan in 1881. In 1885, Adele organized the Ladies Reading Club of Houston, which would become a model for similar study clubs throughout the state. Mother and daughter were also founding members of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, and hosted its organizational meeting at the Briscoe home in 1891.
Sources:
Connor, Seymour V. "
Hazlewood, Claudia. "
Two typed historical sketches compose the Mary Jane Harris Briscoe and Adele Lubbock Briscoe Looscan Papers, 1886, [ca. 1904], chronicling the life of Jane Herbert Wilkinson Long and Confederate artillery during the Battle of Galveston. Written by Briscoe and Looscan in 1886 for the Ladies Reading Club of Houston, the sketches describe Long's journey to Texas and life as a woman and mother in Stephen F. Austin's Texas colony as well as the conversion of a captured federal ship's shaft into a Confederate cannon in January 1863. A handwritten postscript to the artillery sketch was added around 1904.
This collection is open for research use.
Mary Jane Harris Briscoe and Adele Lubbock Briscoe Looscan Papers, 1886, [1904?], Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin.
Basic processing and cataloging of this collection was supported with funds from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) for the Briscoe Center’s