She met her death by accident. While attending the rehearsal of a children’s school entertainment, she fell through a trap door to the floor below. She was carried home and died of the injuries a few days afterwards. Dr. Joseph Cross, then a Methodist minister, officiated at her burial.


Tennessee Cousins

??28) ELMORE Douglass, WHO MARRIED ??E WIDOW (DIVORCED) OF SAM HOUSTON On the list of the earliest settlers of SUMNER COUNTY is found the name of 28. ELMORE DOUGLASS and his brother EDWARD Douglass. These two were grd. sons of JAMES Douglass, who was born March 15, 1762, and died, March 29, 1851. This ELMORE Douglass married sometime after 1829, ELIZA ALLEN HOUSTON, the divorced wife of GEN. SAM HOUSTON,who had been Governor of Tennessee, then President of the Republic of Texas & of the State of Texas, and a member of the United States Senate. Gen. Sam Houston and his first wife ELIZA ALLEN, whose parents and family lived At GALLATIN, in Sumner Co. are said to have lived together only twelve weeks, and the cause of the unnatural separation between them has been an unsolved question from that good day until this.

Marquis James in his life of ANDR?? JACKSON describes the Allens of GALLATIN (Sumner County) as the "Rich and influential Allens". The mother of ELIZA ALLEN appears to have been a Douglass, and probably an aunt of her second husband, EDMORE Douglass. ELIZA ALLEN and her first husband, - Gen. Sam Houston, of course, had no children, but by her second marriage to ELMORE Douglass, Eliza had two children, a son and a daughter. HARRIET LOUISE Douglass, born September 2, 1843, and died September 26, 1853. WILLIAM K. Douglass, born on June 3, 1848, and died Feb. 25, 1849. Neither of these children reached an age of maturity, and both are buried in the old GALLATIN CEM??TERY, with the Allens and Duglas. The father of ELIZA ALLEN was G. W. ALLEN, whose wife was LOUISE F. Douglass. ELIZA ALLEN had a brother YOUNG NO??VEL ALLEN, who died in 1840. As I understand the record it seems that JOHN ALLEN - b. 1776 in PENNSYLVANIA was perhaps ELIZA ALLEN'S grand father, and the family was not related to the ALLENS from N. C. and VIRGINIA.

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Eliza Allen, Sam Houston's first wife, was born to Laetitia and Colonel John Allen, a wealthy Sumner county couple who believed that Houston was an acceptable match for their daughter. After Houston and Eliza's eleven-week marriage soured in 1829, Eliza went into seclusion and Houston left Nashville to live with the Cherokees in Arkansas. The couple never saw each other again.

Four years later, Eliza's mother died while giving birth to her tenth child, and the following year, her father died after being kicked in the abdomen by a horse. Eliza was left to care for her younger siblings.

Houston and Eliza were officially divorced in 1837, a year after Houston became the president of the Republic of Texas. In 1840, Eliza married Dr. Elmore Douglass of Gallatin, a widower with ten children. She and Dr. Douglass added four more children to their family; only two of the four survived to adulthood, but died before age 35, having no families of their own.

On March 3, 1861, Eliza died of stomach cancer at age 51. She had no descendants and tradition holds that before her death she requested that all images of her be destroyed and her that personal papers and letters be burned. She was buried in an unmarked grave in the Gallatin cemetery, although a marker was placed on the grave a century later.

http://www.wnpt.net/samhouston/people/eliza.html

• Married: 22 JAN 1829 in Nashville, Sumner County, Tennessee
• Divorced:

• Married: 8 NOV 1840 in Sumner County, Tennessee

1. Martha Allen Douglass b: 1841 in Gallatin, Sumner County, Tennessee
2. Harriett Louisa Douglass b: 2 SEP 1843
3. Susan Miller Douglass b: 1845
4. William K. Douglass b: 23 JUN 1848