The Wild Woman Sculptor of European Elite & Texas Heroes

By Jacqui Nelson

Life can take us down many paths. How does a German stone carver's daughter go from sculpting the European elite to sculpting Texas heroes? First came tenacity, then talent, then tuberculosis. 

Around the turn of the 19th century, the tuberculosis death rate worldwide was estimated at 7 million people a year, so tuberculosis definitely could be a life-changer. Even though Elisabet Ney never had tuberculosis, it resulted in her leaving her birthplace of Germany and eventually living in Texas sculpting Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston. 

Franzisca Bernadina Wilhelmina Elisabeth Ney
( born 1833 in Münster, Germany ) 

Elisabet (the spelling without the "h" seems to be the name most often used when referring to her by one name) grew up assisting her father in his stone-carving business. When her parents later opposed her becoming a sculptor, she went on a hunger strike. That's tenacity. 

King Ludwig II

In 1852, Elisabet became the first female sculpture student at the Munich Academy of Art under professor Max von Widnmann. 

In 1857, she set up her own studio in Berlin and sculpted portraits of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, composer Richard Wagner, folklorist Jacob Grimm, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, General Giuseppe Garibaldi, King George V of Hanover, and King Ludwig II of Bavaria. That seems like a dual talent: getting the job done and pleasing those elite figures.  

In 1853, Elisabet met Edmund Montgomery, a Scottish medical student, scientist, and philosopher. They kept in touch and, although she viewed the institution of marriage as a state of bondage for women, she married Edmund in 1863. 

Marriage did not change Elisabet's views on the role of women. She refused to take her husband's name, chose to wear trousers and a black artist frock coat, and rode horses astride. 

What changed Elisabet—at least as far as where she went next—was tuberculosis. The same year that she was married, her husband was diagnosed with the deadly disease. 

In 1871, Elisabet and Edmund immigrated to the United States to join a colony in Georgia that was promoted as a healing resort for those afflicted with tuberculosis. When that didn't work out, they searched for a new home. Elisabet traveled alone to Texas to see the Liendo Plantation in Waller County. When her husband was finally able to join her, they purchased the plantation. 

For the next ten years, Elisabet concentrated on running the plantation and raising a son while her husband focused on his research. Only in the early 1880s, did Elisabet restart her artistic career—after being invited to Austin by Governor Oran M. Roberts.

In 1891, the Chicago World's Fair Association's Board of Lady Managers commissioned Elisabet to create life-size marble figures of Sam Houston and Stephen F. Austin for the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition World's Fair. 

Stephen F. Austin and Sam Houston

Despite the supplement of $32,000 from the Texas state legislature, Elisabet missed her deadline and the Houston and Austin sculptures couldn't be shown at the Exhibition. They can now be seen in the Texas State Capitol in Austin and in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

 

Elisabet kept sculpting and died in her Texas studio in 1907. 

Elisabet Ney in her Texas studio

 

Elisabet Ney traveled far and immersed herself in several careers, but she always came back to sculpting. Writing, I think, is like sculpting or painting or any creative endeavor. People start with a blank page or block of stone and shape something (after heading down a creative path) that other people will hopefully connect with. 

If you'd like to see where my creative endeavors have taken me, head to MY BOOK PAGE on my website where you'll find links to read excerpts from (and view picture inspiration boards for) all of my stories. 

~ * ~

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Interesting facts about Texas

 I'm in the middle of a series called Bluebonnet Brides which takes place in Texas around 1874. Like most good writers, I find myself doing lots of research about the culture, the history, and the people of Texas.

We all know that Texas or Tejas was part of the Mexican state of Coahula y Tejas, often referred to as Mexican Texas. Americans first filed in to settle the land. Remember "Go West". People were often land poor. Farmers planted cotton which depleted the soil of nutrients if planted without crop rotation. The other draw to Tejas were horses.

 Equines rounded up, broken, and sold could often build a man's pocketbook or bank account quickly. But horses were also a commodity that the Mexican's wanted. They frowned upon the American's crossing the rivers to take the horses and selling them once they got back to the US side. Thus tensions were high.

Mexican leaders demanded that American settlers sign an agreement to stay for a certain length of time before their land would be handed over. Needless to say, things did not go well. American's wanted their own government with laws similar to those left in the United States and not those decided in Spain or in Mexico City.

So the government of Texas set out on it's growing pains. It declared it's independence from Mexico in 1835 to 1836 in a Revolution that brought about three major battles, Gonzales, San Jacinto, and the most famous the Alamo. While they finally got their victory with the capture of General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the Mexican Congress did not recognize the Independence of the Texans because the general was a prisoner and signed the articles of surrender under duress.  

Eventually, the Republic was formed in March of 1836. As it's own country, Texas flew a flag with one star on a blue field. While trying to stand on its feet, Mexico considered it a hostile province. The Native Americans who were being pushed off the land were fighting back. Besieged, Texas nearly didn't make it.

In wasn't until 1845, that it was annexed to the United States to become the 28th state. Negotiations gave Texas it's borders. Yet tensions still remained and those were not settled until the Mexican American War 1846 to 1848. Twist of fate here, both Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant served in the Mexican American War. We all know that they would later face off in America's Civil War.

The Compromise of 1850 gave Texas two unique clauses. First, four additional states can be divide from its borders. Second, Texas didn't have to give up its public lands. In other words, if the U.S. government wished to purchase lands from Texas, they had to pay. So all those oil wells and leases off shore belong to Texas. These monies are used to fund colleges in the state.

So in Texas, when they say "dream big" they mean it. 

Happy reading,

Nan

The Hamill Brothers At Spindletop

The year I turned sixteen my mother moved us from Kentucky to Big Springs, Texas. It was 1988 and we’d made the journey in a late seventies model, faded yellow Datsun 210. The car wasn’t cool, and neither was the wind damage to my Aqua Net hairdo. I cranked up the volume on my Walkman, closed my eyes and tried to lose myself in Bad Medicine. 

Allfreedownload.com

I was a rebellious teenager who wasn’t impressed by the dry, dusty landscape of the Permian Basin or the horrible smells coming from the oil refineries. But Texas has a way of soaking in deep to your soul. I quickly fell in love with the Lone Star State, its people, and history.  

With Breaking the Cowboy, the third and final book in my Coldiron Cowboys series scheduled for release in late summer, I started thinking about where I wanted to go with my next series, which secondary characters nailed their auditions and what stories I wanted to tell. I've been eager to write about Finn Durant ─ a roughneck, bad boy turned sheriff ─ since his appearance in the first Coldiron book. And I was curious about what I might find if Durant Drilling were a real company. I soon began to draw from those memories of the years I’d spent in West Texas, to the derricks and to the stories of the oil boomtowns.

This is where the romantic in me sighs heavily and sets back in her chair, ready to write.

HARPER, W. D. / LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

At the latter part of the nineteenth century, the only resource ranchers and farmers wanted to spew from the ground was water and the black sludge contaminating their wells was a pestilence they could do without. Little did they know that it was about to spew forth in an abundance and thrust them into the biggest consumer boom known to man.  

Lyne Taliaferro Barrett is credited for drilling the first oil well in 1866 near Nacogdoches. But the state of the economy after the Civil War made finding investors for his endeavor difficult and the market for oil was limited. Fast forward thirty years, toss in names such as John D. Rockefeller and Joseph Stephen Cullinan, stir in a few politicians and you have the construction of the first pipeline and refinery in the Lone Star States history.

At the same time, in the southeastern part of the state, a man without financial investors or political influence was becoming the laughing stock of Beaumont. Holding tight to his notion that there was an ocean of oil looming under the towns salt dome, Pattillo Higgins placed his faith in God and a spiritually like-minded man who, along with other investors, agreed to finance the drilling at Spindletop.  In 1892 Higgins partnered with George Washington Carroll, George Washington O’Brien, and J.F. Lanier to form the Gladys City Oil, Gas, and Manufacturing Company.

A year and three shallow attempts later, oil was nowhere to be found. Higgins and Lanier parted ways with the company and four years later, Anthony F. Lucas leased the land. John H. Galey and James M. Guffey put forth the finances for drilling and brought in Al and Curt Hamill, two expert oil drillers.

(Cue the dramatic music as the origins of Durant Drilling pop into my head like beautifully written sonnets. Okay, maybe that was a bit much.)

Photo by the Texas Energy Museum Newsmakers

In the fall of 1900, the Hamill brothers brought new technology to the game of drilling by using a steam engine to pump through the sand at Spindletop. But the sand was too fine for progress and the walls soon collapsed. But the brothers devised a solution. Using cattle stomp, water, and dirt, they made mud and inserted it into the well to encase the walls.

On January 10, 1901, they hit the motherload. The geyser at Spindletop spewed oil one-hundred and fifty feet into the air and began producing over eighty-thousand barrels a day. 

The Hamill brothers became legends in the oil industry. In the months that follow, the Gladys City Company produced six more successful wells and over forty-thousand people flocked to the town of Beaumont. 

Forget the series, I'm ready to write a historical romance. 

The stories of oil boomtowns are filled with rich history, colorful characters, treachery, murder, deceit, money and of course, love and the writer in me is always fascinated by the stories that might have been. I can’t wait to write about the rugged Durant roughnecks and the ladies who love them.