Name Nannie Elizabeth Morrow
Sex Female
Age 73
Death Date 19 May 1920
Death Place Houston, Harris, Texas, United States
Marital Status Married
Father's Name Sam Houston
Mother's Name Margaret Lea
Event Type Death
Birth Date 06 Sep 1846
Birth Year (Estimated) 1847
Birthplace Raven Hill, Texas
Record Number 16915
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The following was read at the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (John Berry Chapter) memorial ceremony - On September 8, 1846, seven months after the Republic of Texas became a state, Nancy Elizabeth Houston was born at Raven Hill plantation, fourteen miles east of Huntsville; she was the second child and the first daughter of Sam and Margaret Lea Houston.

Young "Nannie" received her early schooling from her mother, grandmother Lea and a private tutor. Soon her proud father was calling her his "genius".

The Houstons moved to Independence in 1853, and Nannie attended the academy operated in conjunction with Baylor University. She was a talented musician practicing her music on a fine Steinway piano that Sam Houston presented to her when she was sixteen.

When Nannie was nineteen, she became engaged to Joseph Stiles Morrow, the owner of a mercantile business in Georgetown. Sam had died three years earlier and money was scarce in the Houston home, but Margaret insisted that her daughter have a fine wedding. Friends provided the fabric and made her wedding gown. On the evening of August 1, 1866, Nannie and Joseph Morrow were married in the presence of some three hundred guests who had not seen such a beautiful wedding dress since before the Civil War.
For their honeymoon, the Morrows traveled to New York and visited Niagara Falls, and they were entertained at the White House by President Andrew Johnson before visiting the old Morrow home in Kentucky. Then the newlyweds settled down to married life in Georgetown. When Nannie's first child was due, she returned to Independence, and Margaret Houston Morrow was born at her grandmother's house on June 4, 1867.

Six months later Margaret Lea Houston died and five of the Houston siblings moved in with Nannie and her husband. The Morrows became parents of six children of their own and lived, first, just west of Brushy Street, (now Austin Avenue) at the corner of Tenth Street, later in a home near the corner of James Street and east 13th adjacent to where the water tower now stands.

The family had posession of Santa Anna's saddle on which the children of friends were allowed to play. When one of the children shared that information with her teacher and classmates, she was told she shouldn't make up stories. Nannie confirmed the report to the teacher's astonishment.

Nannie was a member of Georgetown's First Methodist Church where she taught a children's Sunday school class for many years. She was well educated and an expert on the Bible. She painted vivid word pictures of her fundamentalist beliefs of what happened to those who did not adhere to Biblical admonitions--lessons that came back to haunt those students if they strayed from the straight and narrow. She knew and loved Texas history, and shared that knowledge in her animated style. Her home, by then at about 905 College Street, was a showcase of her love of flowers, which she generously shared with passers-by. She was also known to share unsolicited advice to students on their way to school, scolding them about their manner of dress or behavior.

On May 19, 1920 while visiting daughter, Margaret and her husband Robert John in Houston, Nannie died and her body was returned to Georgetown for burial.