“Louisa Naomi Kent Billings” Pt. 1
Jan 21, 2022
Our story takes up where everyone was left guessing about the unique Grave marker found up on a hillside in the Gila River Valley.
Shortly after publishing that picture in the Jan. 7 column, Mr. Lee Stockman contacted the Press and was then referred to me. How glad I am that we made this connection. You will be, too, because of the additional information I now have to share with you. You see, Mr. Stockman is a Great Great Grandson of our Grand Lady and his family has cherished her life and memory for so many years.
I had referred to her as Naomi for reasons that I’m not sure of. But I was corrected to acknowledge her preferred name – Louisa. Heavy on the “I”. And so, henceforth I will honor her desire.
Although our story begins in depth at the falling of the Alamo, it would be negligent on my part to not bring our story up to the Alamo with highlights from Louisa's early life.
Louisa began life as a Kent in Warren County, Missouri, to Andrew and Elizabeth Kent. Louisa had nine siblings. Don’t gasp, ten was not all that large a family in those days. Actually, large families may have been a blessing to mothers, as in Louisa's case, she had six younger siblings to help care for.
Another fact in the life of Louisa’s heredity, a fact that adds emphasis to the story and significance to the familiy’s legacy is that her mom’s father, Jacob Zumwalt, fought in the Revolutionary war. Showing that the timeline of the family was embellished with heroics.
Just for fun and chronology; shortly after the war, GrandPa Zumwalt moved from the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, to Kentucky, the state of my early years, and about the time that Daniel Boone would have been making himself well-known in that state. Boone being one of my distant relatives. All to say that there are a lot of exciting connections as we study our ancestry.
Moving along in the story and the events that bring us to the Alamo. Many years later, Sister Mary Ann remembered that Andrew Kent had money in the Moses Austin bank. It was not uncommon in those days that money invested or secured in a bank was only as good as the people who owned the bank, no FDIC. Why the bank failed Mary Ann didn’t state, but bank failures were not uncommon in those days. In lieu of the money lost, Andrew Kent was offered land in Texas, a league of land. According to where you get your information, that could have been as much as forty-four hundred acres or more. As it was, land of any kind in those days was good, but as it turns out, Mother Kent had a cousin already a resident of Gonzales, Texas. Add to that, his wife Elizabeth had two cousins living near Gonzales. So, what did they have to lose? Except for one thing, this was Texas when Texas belonged to Mexico.
At eight years old, Louisa and her family, all twelve of them, and all of their necessary possessions, boarded the common carrier of the time, a flat bottom man powered river boat and began the long drift and push down the Missouri River to the Mississippi River and on to New Orleans. At New Orleans the family, with all their possessions, transferred to a coastal vessel, a shallow draft boat designed especially for inter-coastal trading. The boat would have carried them from the La Vaca Bay on the southern side of Texas up the La Vaca River to their new land in Gonzales County, surely near the town of Gonzales.
It must have been a grand celebration at their arrival, as the Kent and Zumwalt families were greeted by cousins, aunts and uncles to get the news from the far off land of the United States of America. This would have been in the spring of 1830.
The country of Mexico had offered certain lands to the North Americans, not because of good will, but rather to stand as a buffer between Mexico and the Indigenous Indian Tribes who lived by raiding the smaller communities.
Because of their carpentry and farming skills they lived well. I’m sure that they were satisfied that the move to Texas was a great choice. But, just about the time we get used to living “high on the hog” things begin to fall apart. Maybe you know that feeling.
“And That’s My Opinion.”
