Day Trips

Harriet Ann Moore Page Potter Ames is known as "the bravest woman in Texas." She gained her title by surviving the tumultuous years of the Texas Revolution and three husbands. A granite monument to her stands on a bluff on the north shore of Caddo Lake in northeast Texas.

The pioneer woman might have been forgotten if not for a memoir she wrote when she was 83 years old. Although Harriet's tale was never published, Elithe Hamilton Kirkland came across a copy and turned it into Love Is a Wild Assault, a bestselling novel released in 1959.

In 1998, the Caddo Lake Historical Research Committee produced a play about Harriet to raise funds for the monument. On a county road, near the end of FM 727, the group placed an obelisk in her honor.

Born in New York on Sept. 6, 1810, Harriet came to Texas with her first husband, Solomon Page, just as the war for independence was heating up. He abandoned her and their two small children to join the Texas Army. She was left to fend for herself as civilians evacuated the country ahead of the Mexican Army.

That's when she met Robert Potter, a former member of the North Carolina Legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives. He escaped to Texas after castrating two men while in a jealous rage.

In Texas, as a representative from Nacogdoches, Potter signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. He also helped draft the Constitution of the Republic of Texas, participated in the Battle of San Jacinto, and was the first secretary of the Texas Navy.

After the war, Potter and Harriet were married by bond, a union without the blessing of the clergy. This was probably done because of the uncertainty of Page's whereabouts, although he was presumed to be dead.

The couple retired to a peninsula on Caddo Lake – land deeded to Potter for his military service. Potter was elected to the Texas Senate, and the couple had two children. Everything was going well until Potter got involved in the Regulator-Moderator War.

The feud had its beginnings in fraudulent land dealings along the Louisiana-Texas border. In March of 1842, Potter's home was surrounded by regulators, and he was killed trying to escape.

Six months later, Harriet married Charles Ames of Clarksville. He died in 1865, and Harriet moved to New Orleans.

In his will, Potter left his property to two women in Austin. For years Harriet tried to recover the land. Although she lost, her suit set into motion the beginnings of Texas laws on common-law marriage. She died in 1902 in Covington, La. The exact location of her grave is unknown. Only a marker on Potter's Point and a novel remind us of a woman who survived one of the most violent eras of Texas history.

995th in a series. Day Trips, Vol. 2, a book of "Day Trips" 101-200, is available for $8.95, plus $3.05 for shipping, handling, and tax. Mail to: Day Trips, PO Box 33284, South Austin, TX 78704.