TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

And while the warriors are absent on distant expeditions, are not their families sustained by thetoils and struggles of their wives, mothers and sisters? 2On an embattled frontier, men and women had to stand strong, together, to survive.In marked contrast, rulers such as Britain’s Queen Victoria subordinated the rights of nineteenth centurywomen to men in the imperial capitals of Europe. Charles Darwin agreed, but taught that the evolutionary processescreated hierarchies of power between men and women and among races that subordinated women and all peopleof color to Europe’s ruling class:While it is generally admitted that with woman the powers of intuition, of rapid perception,and perhaps of imitation, are more strongly marked than in man…some, at least, of these facultiesare characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization. 3From a substantially more enlightened standpoint, Houston Bar Association President Laura Gibsonanalyzes Harris County District Court Judge, and later Texas Supreme Court Justice, Peter Gray’s defense of awrongfully-enslaved woman’s rights in the Emeline enslavement case.Independent scholar DeJean Melton, a researcher focusing on the material culture of the Republic,examines how Angelina Peyton Eberly’s firing of a shrapnel-loaded cannon on Congress Avenue kept Texas’sarchives and capitol in Austin. During the Archive War, President Sam Houston sought to move the Republic’sarchives back east. Angelina Eberly led activist Austinites, determined to keep the center of Texas government inthe center of Texas. On a related theme, Assistant State Archivist Anna Reznick reveals the Archives’ records ofthe Suffrage Movement and places these splendid documents in their historic context.The Journal then follows Sam Houston and his archive-gatherers back to Houston City, now simplyHouston. Philanthropist Linda Hunsaker, a descendant of Hortense Sparks Ward, shares family reminiscencesof Hortense’s campaign to enact the Married Woman’s Property Act in 1913, her struggle to secure voting rightsfor Texas women between 1914 and 1919, and her service as Chief Justice of the nation’s first all-female statesupreme court in 1925.Texas women ascend to the bench in the twentieth century, as reflected in excerpts from Chapter 7 ofHouston historian Betty T. Chapman’s book Rough Road to Justice: The Journey of Women Lawyers in Texas(Austin: Texas State Bar Association, 2008). Harris County District Court Judge Sylvia Matthews reviews Betty’sChapman’s excellent history of women in the law.Probate specialist Sarah Duckers memorializes the story of the constitutional amendment that finallyenabled woman to serve as jurors in Texas cases, beginning in 1954. Sarah uses original court records providedby Harris County Historical Documents Clerk Francisco Heredia to reconstruct a trial. That trial concerned thefirst woman to receive jury instructions beginning, “Lady and Gentlemen of the Jury.”Harris County District Court Judge Elizabeth Ray then writes about her earliest recollections and familyconnections with that groundbreaking jurist, Judge Sarah Hughes, who is the first woman to be elected as adistrict court judge in Texas, the first woman to serve as a federal district court judge in Texas, and the judge who2Edward v. James, 7 Tex. 372, 382–83 (1851) (citing the Sietes Partidas, vol. 7, tit. 33, l. 6; 2 Sala. 352).3Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 2 vols., 1874), 858.16