I was reminded recently that I was ‘connected’ — by marriage — to Sam Houston. I remember hearing this in some very vague way and knowing that it was a bit of a joke to whoever was saying it to me. However, in the course of various researches I’ve been doing, I stumbled across Isabel Mary (John) Evans.

Isabel was one of nine children in the John family of Houston, Texas. Her grandmother was Nancy Elizabeth Houston, Sam Houston’s oldest daughter. She was in fact the great-grandchild of Sam Houston. Houston married three times but had no children with his first two wives. With his third wife he had eight children, the last of whom was born about two years before he himself died. His own claim to fame is unassailable. He was governor of Tennessee, twice President of the Republic of Texas, and governor of Texas. He is the only person that was governor of two different states. His children became soldiers, singers, poets, and lawyers.

Isabel is associated with my family, having married my great uncle, Griffith Evans. The comment that we were connected “by marriage” was quite true. In fact, I must have third cousins who are direct descendants. Maybe second cousins? It’s pretty remote. But interesting.

Isabel herself got a degree from Rice Institute in 1917, at age 22, part of the second graduating class. She married Griffith, a professor in theoretical mathematics at Rice, in June, 1917, just after the United States entered World War I. She was 93 when she died, having outlived her husband and her oldest son.

There’s a picture of her here… https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/John-2757

And a picture of her husband here… https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Evans/

There’s a lot of food for story thought here but it will take time to develop…