Women

Dame

She has just celebrated her 94th birthday. It is not Governess Ferguson. Yet she is the first woman whose portrait was ever hung in the Texas Senate Chamber. How she came to get there is a long story.

She, Rebbecca Jane Gilleland, was born in Philadelphia in 1831. Hardly out of swaddling clothes she was carried to Texas with the rest of her family so that her father could join the fight to free Texas from Mexico. He did, and after it was over he and his wife were murdered by Indians, and Rebecca Jane, eight years old, and her young brother were carried away by the savages. Finally they knocked her on the head and ran him through the body and left them to die. But rescuers came.

At 13 she was sent to college--the Rutersville Female College--the only one in the State. She stayed there two years and left, aged 15, to marry the Rev. Orcenith Fisher, a Methodist minister. She served long and well as a minister's wife and bore six children. She went with her husband to the Pacific Coast for 15 years, where he founded the Methodist Church in Oregon. In 1872 they were called back to Texas. Her husband died many years ago. All but one of her children are dead, but she has five grandchildren and as many great grandchildren.

She founded the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and has been 13 times its President. Her hearing and sight are impaired, and she is still a Grande Dame, full of poise, interest, force.