San Jacinto Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas

Adele Briscoe Looscan, one of the eight founders, was born in Harrisburg in 1848, the daughter of Andrew and Mary Jane Briscoe. She organized the Ladies Reading Club of Houston in 1885, a model for study clubs across the state, and chaired the executive board of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. She was president of the Texas State Historical Association from 1915 to 1925, wrote three articles for Dudley G. Wooten's Comprehensive History of Texas and sometimes signed her work Texan. Her library of 1,500 works, mostly on Texas history, went to the Houston Public Library.

What the plaque says

San Jacinto Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas On November 9, 1891, eight Houston women organized the San Jacinto Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas. Founding members were Mrs. Andrew Briscoe; Miss Belle Fenn; Mrs. John R. Fenn, who served as chapter president until 1896; Miss Annie Hume; Mrs. Anson Jones, widow of the last Republic president; Mrs. A. B. Looscan; Mrs. J. J. McKeever; and Mrs. Minnie Phelps Vasmer. The state organization had been formed three days earlier in the Houston home of Mrs. Briscoe. Preserving the San Jacinto Battlefield (18 mi. E) became a priority project for this chapter. In 1894 its members helped veterans mark key sites at San Jacinto. Members urged the state to acquire land there, and by 1900 some 327 acres were added to 10 acres held since 1883. The chapter placed 20 granite markers there by 1912. State and Federal funds erected the San Jacinto Monument in 1936-39, so the chapter's own monument fund was used for other projects. This log headquarters was built in 1936 with Federal labor, and a bronze sun dial was placed at the battlefield in 1939. The chapter developed the Children of the Republic organization in 1936, and sponsors student essays on Texas history. Local libraries receive books and funds, and D. R. T. state projects are generously supported. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — 1.0 mi
  The oldest art museum in Texas, grown from a 1900 schoolroom art league into a campus of Watkin, Mies van der Rohe and later buildings, with Ima Hogg's Bayou Bend up the bayou.
• The Menil Collection — 1.8 mi
  John and Dominique de Menil's free museum in Montrose: a grey-sided Renzo Piano building among bungalows, holding antiquities, Surrealism and art of Oceania under natural light.
• Rothko Chapel — 1.8 mi
  An octagonal chapel open to all faiths, built by the de Menils around fourteen dark canvases by Mark Rothko, with Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk standing in the pool outside.
• Buffalo Soldiers National Museum — 1.9 mi
  A museum in Houston's 1925 Light Guard Armory that tells the service of Black soldiers from the Revolutionary War onward, built from one veteran's thirty years of collecting.

More markers nearby

• First Presbyterian Church of Houston — 1.1 mi
• The Houston Light Guard — 1.9 mi
• San Jacinto High School — 2.1 mi
• Courtlandt Place — 2.3 mi