MOORE, HARRIET A.
MOORE, HARRIET A. (1810-1902) was born in New Orleans August 18, 1810,
the daughter of Francis Moore. She married Solomon C. Page and accompanied
him to Texas before the Texas Revolution of 1836. Page abandoned Harriett
and two small children to join the Army. She made her way to Brazoria, Texas,
where she met Robert Potter, Secretary of the Texas Navy, during the Runaway Scrape.
Potter gave the family refuge on a navy vessel in Galveston until after the
Battle of San Jacinto. At the close of the Texas Revolution, she returned
to New Orleans accompanied by Potter, who executed a series of deceptive
maneuvers that ultimately took them back to Texas and his property on
the Sabine River in Shelby (now Harrison) County.
Potter convinced Harriet that her marriage to Page was
invalid in Texas because it had not been solemnized by a priest,
and in September 1836 they were married by bond. They lived for a
year on the Sabine while they built a home at Potter's Point on Ferry (Caddo)
Lake in Red River (now Marion) County. They had two children, and Robert Potter
served in the Fifth and Sixth Texas congresses. Potter became involved in
the Regulator-Moderator War, and on March 2, 1842, he was murdered by
William P. Rose and a contingent of Regulators.
Harriet married Charles Ames in August or September 1842,
and they continued to reside on the Potter homestead. In 1875, the
Texas Supreme Court ruled that her marriage to Robert Potter was invalid,
and she was evicted from the property. She returned to New Orleans,
where she lived with the children of her third marriage. She wrote her
memoirs at the age of eighty-three. She died in Covington, Louisiana, in 1902.
Bibliography: Harriet Potter Ames Memoirs.
Collection 288.
Northwest Louisiana Archives, Noel Memorial Library, Shreveport: Louisiana State University;
Judith N. McArthur, "AMES, HARRIET A. MOORE PAGE POTTER,"
Handbook of Texas Online
(https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fam03),
accessed December 07, 2012.
Citation
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style,
15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.
"MOORE, HARRIET A." Handbook of North Louisiana Online
(http://www
.), accessed
. Published by LSU-Shreveport.
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