Jane Johnson Endsley
Jane Johnson Endsley (c. 1848–1933) was a successful Dallas businesswomen and community leader. A former slave, Endsley eventually ran one of the city's largest railroad-yard coal and log businesses.[1]
Biography[edit]
Endsley was born into slavery in Jefferson, where she worked on a plantation.[2] In 1862, she married Moses Calloway, and the two moved to Rowlett.[2] The couple started out as sharecroppers, but eventually owned their own farm.[2] Together, they had eleven children.[2]
Endsley took over as the manager of the 100-acre family farm when her husband died in the late 1880s or early 1890s.[3] The farm was in Dallas County and had been assessed in 1882 to be worth $15,150 (~$412,559 in 2023).[3] Endlsley would take her own cotton to the local cotton gin, and defended her hard work from theft, even accidentally killing a white man who attempted to steal her cotton.[2] She was never prosecuted for striking the man; since another "white man who witnessed the accident apparently took the blame for it."[2] Endsley married three times after her first husband, all ending in divorce until she married H.E. Endsley in 1914.[2]
She sold her farm, retaining the timber rights on the land, and set up her own rail-yard coal and log business in Dallas.[2] Her sons, Joe, Lube and Emmett, helped her run the business, which became very lucrative.[2]
Endsley's home had the only telephone in the neighborhood for many years, and she allowed neighbors to use it.[2] She and others helped found the Macedonia Baptist Church, which eventually became a 5,000 member congregation called the Good Street Baptist Church.[2] She also started a lodge within the Household of Ruth in the 1920s.[2] Endsley and her daughter Maggie, reached out to the hungry and poor, especially during the Great Depression.[2]
Endsley died in her home on Collins Street in Dallas in 1933.[2] She was buried in Rowlett.[2]
References[edit]
- ^ Lownes-Jackson, Millicent Gray (2006). "Women and Business". In Smith, Jessie Carney (ed.). Encyclopedia of African American Business. Vol. 1. Greenwood. p. 840. ISBN 9780313331107.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Acosta, Teresa Palomo (12 June 2010). "Endsley Jane Johnson". Handbook of Texas Online. Texas State Historical Association. Retrieved 12 February 2016.
- ^ a b Sharpless, Rebecca (2008). "'De Useful Life,' 1874-1900". In Glasrud, Bruce A.; Pitre, Merline (eds.). Black Women in Texas History. Texas A&M University Press. p. 88. ISBN 9781603440073.
- 1933 deaths
- 1840s births
- Businesspeople from Dallas
- 20th-century American businesspeople
- 19th-century American slaves
- People from Rowlett, Texas
- People from Jefferson, Texas
- 19th-century African-American women
- 20th-century African-American people
- 20th-century African-American women
- 19th-century African-American businesspeople
- 19th-century American businesspeople