TEXAS SUPREME COURT HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The two versions differ in details. Which facts can be confirmed about the story of the doughty woman theydescribe?The LadyAngelina Belle Peyton was born on July 2, 1798 in Sumner County, Tennessee to John Peyton andMargaret Hamilton Peyton. In 1818 Angelina married her first cousin Jonathan C. Peyton, the son of her father’stwin brother Ephraim. 5 Jonathan was charming, foul-mouthed, and impulsive. When he fatally stabbed a man inthe back during a dispute, he avoided prosecution by fleeing immediately to Kentucky and on to New Orleanswith his young bride—an event she later ascribed to business reverses. 6On June 2, 1822 the Peytons embarked from New Orleans on the “Good Intent” towards Matagorda Bay,Texas. After brief and rather hungry stays in two spots near Matagorda, 7 Angelina returned overland in 1824 toTennessee to retrieve possessions and slaves left behind in their hurried exit—no mean task in that era for a youngwoman in her early twenties. 8 Following a short stay in Nacogdoches, the Peytons moved in October 1825 to SanFelipe de Austin in current-day Austin County.San Felipe de Austin served as the community center for the “First Three Hundred” pioneers of impresarioStephen F. Austin’s new colony. There, on Lots 533–534 and 567–568, the Peytons built an inn that providedlegendary meals and beds to many who were to figure prominently in the Texas Revolution. 9James Bowie, when asking the Texas constitutional convention to authorize him and his men for active(paid) military service, complained that “I am a guest on the bounty of that grandest of American women in thiscountry, Mrs. Angelina B. Peyton.” 10Jane McManus Cazneau, Eberly’s friend and frequent lodger, later related that Eberly “once had bannedWilliam B. Travis from her boarding house in San Felipe because he had switched the better food of the women’stable for the coarser food served to the men.” 11 While staying at the Peyton Inn, both Jim Bowie and WilliamTravis made a pet of the Peytons’ daughter Margaret and Stephen F. Austin became the godfather of their son,Alexander. The Peytons’ second daughter, Sophronia, died before the age of six. 12 In 1836 Jonathan Eberly alsodied, leaving Angelina a thirty-eight-year-old widow with two children, several pieces of property, and a busy innand tavern to manage with the help of her eleven slaves. 135C. Richard King, The Lady Cannoneer: A Biography of Angelina Belle Peyton Eberly, Heroine of the Texas Archive War (Burnet:Eakin Press, 1981), 4.6Holley, “Interviews”; King, Lady Cannoneer, 7.7James T. DeShields, Border Wars of Texas (Waco: Texian Press, 1976), 21.8Holley, “Interviews.”9Lorraine Barnes, “Hotel Mistress Fired Archives Shot,” Austin American-Statesman, July 11, 1937; Bryan McAuley, Site Managerof Texas Historical Commission’s San Felipe de Austin State Historic Site, “Angelina (Peyton) Eberly—A Pioneering Spirit,” RealPlaces, Real Stories (Texas Historical Commission blog), March 29, 2013, http://www.thc.state.tx.us/blog/angelina-peyton-eberlypioneering-spirit,accessed May 23, 2015.10King, Lady Cannoneer, 72.11Linda Sybert Hudson, Jane McManus Storm Cazneau (1807-1878): A Biography (Ph.D. Diss., Univ. of N. Tex., May 1999), 198, citingJ. M. Cazneau’s letters to M. S. Beach (Sept. 24, 1862 and Oct. 7, 1862) in the Jane McManus Storms Cazneau Papers, New YorkHist. Soc., http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278486/m2/1/high_res_d/1002658825-hudson.pdf, accessed June 16, 2015.12King, Lady Cannoneer, 5, citing a deposition by Angelina’s niece when trying to clear her estate.13King, Lady Cannoneer, App. A, 159.39