Ancestors

Ann Elizabeth Bryant

Ann Elizabeth Bryant was born on 17 September 1847 in Milam County, Texas, on the frontier along the Little River. Her family called her Annie. Her father was Jesse Bryant, a son of Capt. Benjamin Franklin Bryant, who fought at San Jacinto and built the fort called Bryant Station in Milam County. Her mother was Mary Williams, who had been born in Texas about 1826 and married Jesse in 1842. Annie was born in the years when the fort was still the edge of settlement.

In the census of 31 October 1850 she appears as Ann E., 2, in her father's house in Milam County, a few doors from her grandparents. Her father was 28 and her mother Mary 24. With them were her brother John G., also 2, and the baby James W.

She married young, to a man named Lowery, and their son Thomas Allen Lowery, born in 1868, became a doctor in Fort Worth. By 1871 she was a widow. On 25 December 1871 she married John Newman Nisbett, a Tennessee cattleman more than twenty years older, who had come to Texas on horseback in 1849 and had been widowed twice. She bore him Jesse Bryant Nisbett in 1872, named for her father, and then Emma Newsom, Elva Delene, Eliza Dee, William Adolphus, Eura Alice, Lena E. and John Ephrim. About 1874 the family settled in Hood County, around Granbury, and she lived in that county for more than fifty years.

John died at Granbury on 14 May 1890. On 3 September 1890 she married H. W. Ridgway in Hood County, and J. T. Hunt, a minister, performed the ceremony the same day the license was issued. Ridgway died in Hood County on 7 October 1899, and she did not marry again.

In May 1927, aged 79, she applied to the State of Texas for a Confederate widow's pension on John Nisbett's service. She swore that she was born on 17 September 1847 in Milam County, had lived in Texas all her life and in Hood County for 53 years, and owned nothing beyond what was on the tax rolls. She did not know his company or regiment, but she sent with the application the letter that had appointed him second lieutenant, which her daughter Mrs. J. H. McDaniel kept.

She died as Annie E. Ridgway on 22 February 1930 in Tarrant County, aged 82. She was taken back to Granbury and buried in the same cemetery as John Nisbett. Her stone is carved "Mother" above her name.

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Cite: Heirology, "Ann Elizabeth Bryant (1847-1930)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/ann-elizabeth-bryant-1847-1930-35104c.