Meet Lizzie Johnson Williams: The Woman Who Helped Shape Texas History
Lizzie Johnson Williams challenged the status quo. She advocated for equal rights through her pioneering actions as a female entrepreneur and cattle driver!
Read on to learn more about her life and accomplishments.
Seeds of Independence
Here's a brief timeline illustrating key moments in Lizzie's early life:
1840 - Lizzie was born on May 9th in Cole County Missouri to educators Thomas Jefferson Johnson and Catherine (Hyde) Johnson.
1844 - She moved to Texas with her family when she was 4 and her early years were spent in Huntsville, Lockhart and Webberville.
1859 - Lizzie earned a degree from Chappell Hill Female College when she was 19. She went on to become a school teacher at The Johnson Institute (founded by her father in 1852). Up until the 1870s, she was teaching at various schools in and around Austin.
1860s - 1870s - during some of this time, she supplemented her teaching income by writing for Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. She had saved $2,500 from this job which she then invested to earn over $20,000. During this time of teaching and writing, she worked as a part-time bookkeeper for cattle ranchers and businessmen.
Throughout her early life, Lizzie Johnson proved that she was smart, well-educated and intuitive - all attributes that would contribute to her future success!
Achievements and Accomplishments
Using the money she had previously earned through work and early ventures - Lizzie honed her skill as an investor and entrepreneur.
Through the 1860s and 70s, Texas was seeing a boom in the number of cattle. Due to the American Civil War and other ongoing conflicts, livestock was mostly unattended and it grew so much that by the 1970s, cattle outnumbered people 6 to 1!
This overabundance presented an opportunity for enterprising cattle drivers to take longhorns up north. And Lizzie was just the woman for that job! During her previous experience keeping books for ranchers and businessmen, she learned all the ins and outs of the cattle trade and would have seen the tremendous opportunity before her.
In 1871, she registered her own cattle brand (CY) under her name. Two days after registering she made her first real-estate transaction by purchasing ten acres of land in Austin from Whitis for 3,000 gold dollars.
She is regarded as the first woman to drive her own cattle up the Chisholm Trail. This earned her the name of "Cattle Queen of Texas".
Lizzie moved to Austin where she bought a plot of land with a 2-storey house in 1873. She used the top half as her residence and taught school out of the bottom half. In 1879 she met, fell in love with and married Hezekiah G. Williams. At the time, upon marriage, a wife's rights, freedoms and property cam under control and ownership of their husbands'.
Well, our Lizzie wasn't havin' none of that! Before their marriage, she got Hezekiah to sign a prenuptial agreement which meant she got to keep everything she had before they got married. This was amazing in two ways,:
- this is believed to be the first prenuptial agreement in Texas history!
- this would have been a beacon of hope to other women of the time who would be able to realize that they didn't have to put up with any kind of chauvinism!
Up through the 1890s, she continued to invest and build her wealth by:
- purchasing lots and buildings in downtown Austin, which was developing rapidly during this period.
- investing in commercial properties in the growing Austin business district.
- acquiring residential properties in Austin that she would rent out.
- investing in larger tracts of land in the surrounding area that had potential for appreciation. She purchased land in several counties including Llano, Hayes and Trinity.
Hezekiah was not the savvy businessperson that his wife was. He was a drinker and gambler who often had to be bailed out by his wife. One time, it was even reported that he was kidnapped and Lizzie paid a ransom of $50,000 to get him back. Friends of theirs would joke that Hez faked his kidnapping so he could get the money.
While doing research, I got the impression that Hez was quite chaotic, and they had a few crazy adventures, but she loved him. After Hez got sick and died in 1914, Lizzie paid for a fancy $600 casket, allegedly writing a note to the undertaker stating "I loved the old buzzard this much".
Lizzie survived for 10 more years, but was said to have become somewhat of a recluse with a disheveled appearance. Lizzie Johnson Williams died on June 9, 1924, in Austin, Texas and is buried at Oak Woods Cemetery beside Hezekiah.
It is reported that Lizzie - aside from being a cattle driver, entrepreneur, investor and teacher - was also a writer. For women of the time, writing anything but romance novels was frowned upon and stigmatized. Hence, she would have written anonymously or used a male pseudonym and I was unable to find any of her writings. In 2013, she was honored in the Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
References
- preliminary research done with Claude AI / Leo AI.
- Lizzie, the Chisholm Trail Cattle Queen
- The Cattle Queen of Texas: Elizabeth “Lizzie” Johnson Williams
- Lizzie E. Johnson Williams: Pioneer Cattle Queen of Texas
- Elizabeth (Lizzie) Johnson Williams
- Women in Texas History
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