Mary Agnes Houston

Mary Agnes Johnston Houston was the daughter of James Houston Johnston and Nancy Rankin, strict (Covenanter) Associate Presbyterians. Her father was a contract builder of pike roads and canals. Mary married David Watson Houston on January 13, 1854. They were second cousins. In the fall of 1858 Mary with her two children followed her husband to Garnett, Kansas Territory where David,a lawyer and an abolitionist, became involved in territorial politics.

Bleeding Kansas and the Underground Railroad

Prior to the Civil War, David was involved in fights along the Kansas-Missouri border and the family participated in the unofficial Kansas underground railroad that helped move escaped (or liberated) slaves from Mound City on to Lawrence and then to freedom further north. In 1861 David enlisted in the 7th Kansas Cavalry in the Union Army and Mary and their children went to live with her parents in Pennsylvania for the duration of the war. In February 1864, David was discharged for disability and the family returned to Garnett.

From Abolition to Prohibition

 Mary was  an early member of the W.T.C.U. and was "one of that band of women who, in the 1870's, prayed together in the saloons,giving a mighty impetus to the Anti-Saloon move." (T.W.Houston) She and David had four children--Grace, James, Victor and Thomas Watson- and a daughter, Edith, probably adopted, who married a William Goodwin. 

Mary died on August 10, 1918 after a prolonged illness caused by a fall from a ladder in the fall of 1915 while she and her husband were hanging wallpaper in their home. This do-it-yourself project was part of an effort to save money to send overseas to aid victims of The Great War. She is buried next to her husband in the Garnett Cemetery. At her funeral she was eulogized as one of those pioneers who came to Kansas to make "the West --homestead of the free."