The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 56, July 1952 - April, 1953 Page: 211

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ANNE A. BRINDLEY
ON a hot summer day, July 23, 1798, a new baby was born
at the Truman Place plantation on the Patuxent River
in Maryland. There probably was little excitement, for
she was the tenth child and seventh daughter born to Captain
William Mackall Wilkinson and his wife, Anne Herbert Dent
Wilkinson.' They named her Jane Herbert, for her grand-
mother, but could not know that one day she would be called
"the Daughter of Maryland, Wife of Mississippi, and Mother
of Texas.""
Jane came of illustrious forebears on both sides of the house.
Courage was a common trait among them, and it is not surprising
that she inherited a double portion. Her maternal grandfather,
John Dent, was a brigadier general under George Washington,
his neighbor and personal friend. His wife was Sarah Marshall of
Marshall Hall on the Potomac. An uncle, George Dent, was pres-
ident of the Maryland senate and is said to have elected Thomas
Jefferson to the presidency; in Dent's disappointment over failure
to receive a foreign commission, he moved south, married Anne
Magruder Truman, and started a long line of prominent south-
erners which included James Longstreet, John Dent, commander
of Old Ironsides, and Mrs. U. S. Grant.3
Unfortunately neither of Jane's parents lived to see her reach
womanhood. Her father died the year after she was born.4 Her
mother lived long enough to see that she got the basic training
considered proper for girls of her time and class. She learned to
read and write, but not well, to card and spin and weave and to
embroider and make quilts. In a large family of adults who were
active in the affairs of the new country, she learned to think for
herself and to make quick decisions. Here also probably appeared
1Alexander H. Bell, A Daughter of Maryland was the Mother of Texas (Wash-
ington, 1935), 5-
2Thomas Garner James to T. D. Affleck, March 2, 1940 (MS. in Affleck Papers,
in possession of T. D. Affleck, Galveston, Texas).
sBell, Daughter of Maryland, 23.
4lbid., 6.