AN EARLY MOTHER OF TEXAS

Jane Long had been left alone at coastal Point Bolivar, Texas, with a 5-year-old daughter and a newborn to tend. A 12-year-old slave girl named Kian was there to help, but she too had to be fed and sheltered. Long grew increasingly nervous as hostile Karankawa Indians gathered across the channel on Galveston Island to eye the all-but-abandoned Point Bolivar outpost. On top of everything else winter had come.

Born Jane Herbert Wilkinson in Charles County, Md., on July 23, 1798, she was the last of 10 children and experienced trials early in life. A year after Jane was born, her father died. In 1811 the