Emily Margaret Brown Austin Bryan Perry
Historical marker location:(1795-1851)
Born near Austinville, Virginia, as was her brother Stephen Fuller Austin (1793-1836), Emily moved with her father Moses Austin (1761-1821) and mother Maria Brown Austin (1768-1824) to Missouri in 1798. The family operated lead mines there and founded the town of Potosi, south of St. Louis.
Emily was sent to schools in Kentucky and New York and returned to Missouri in 1812. She married James Bryan (1788-1822) in 1813 and gave birth to five children at Hazel run, Missouri. After James died, Emily subsisted by taking boarders and teaching school. She married James Franklin Perry (1795-1853) in 1824 in Missouri; their union produced six children.
By the end of 1831, the Perry family-- including Emily, James, four Bryan children, two Perry children, James' niece, and nine slaves-- had joined Emily's brother Stephen in Texas. They settled at San Felipe and built a house at Stephen's Peach Point Plantation, providing a home and counsel for her bachelor brother.
The Bryan and Perry offspring contributed greatly to the development of Texas. Emily's sons served as soldiers and statesmen, and preserved the Austin bloodline. Emily died at Peach Point shortly after a trip to Philadelphia, and was buried here at Gulf Prairie Cemetery.
Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986.