Individual Details

Birth

Her place of birth is given as NC in the 1860 Bell Co., TX Census.

Miscellaneous

In the Spring of 1855, Mitchell Garrison was severly injured while trying to break a young mustang. Her husband was past the age of 50 at this time. The horse ran in an unexpected direction toward the fenced yard of their house. Mitchell Garrison was thrown from the horse and his thigh was impaled on the picket fence. Ellender and her children were able to lift him off the picket but his wound was deep and it failed to heal. The nearest place to find a surgeon was in San Antonio. Ellender bought a hack from a neighbor and removed the back seat to make room for her husband to lie down. Ellender could not leave the farm and their small store to drive her husband to San Antonio so her grown daughter, Susan Nancy, volunteered. It was now July and they decided to take along a wagon so that when Mitchell had recovered they could go on to Galveston to pick up supplies for their store. They hitched two horses to the hack then hitched the wagon to the back of the hack and then four extra horses were tied to the back of the wagon. The wagon was packed with food and feed for the horses. The trip took two weeks so they had to cook and camp along the way. Mitchell Garrison was not able to help so Susan Nancy handled all the necessary chores.
In San Antonio, Mitchell Garrison underwent several weeks of treatment on his leg before it was decided that the infection would not heal without amputation. It was now August and Mitchell agreed to have the amputation since he needed to get on to Galveston. He did not recover from the operation and died on August 5, 1855 and Susan Nancy buried her father there in San Antonio.
Susan Nancy could not return home with the hack, wagon, and horses by herself so word spread that she needed help and a family accompanied her as far as Austin. There she sent a letter to her mother that was passed from person to person until it made the seventy mile trip back to the Garrison home on Little River near Belton, TX. When Ellender got the news she sent relatives to help Susan Nancy the rest of the way back home.
Ellender was left to raise her family and tend to the farm alone and they suffered through some bad years, especially in 1859 when the drought made it necessary for the cows to walk two miles for water and one night they lost fifteen head of cattle due to starvation and thirst.
Ellender was to have to face another gruesome injury when a neighbor who was helping her son, William, split rails accidently chopped his foot with an ax. Ike Meyers was left with a four inch gash in his foot which Ellender treated with turpentine and sugar mixture and then put six stiches in it.
Some of Ellender's fortitude and determination was passed to her granddaughter, Miriam Amanda Wallace who became known as "Ma" Ferguson, the first female governor of Texas.