Hostage Rescuer to Hotelier

       Mary Dodson Donoho probably stopped at the hollowed old oak at Council Grove, KS, to post a letter back home to her mother in Missouri.  Most did.  That was the post office on the Santa Fe Trail and Mary was the first woman to go out it.

       She and her husband, Bill Donoho, planned to profit from the spirited fur trade by setting up a hotel and trading post in Santa Fe.  Mary nursed her nine-month-old daughter and bushwhacked a team of oxen, in company with 185 travelers, she the only woman. 

        In Santa Fe, she operated the American Hotel, where the La Fonda now stands, in a town where women smoked, drank and gambled.  Then Texas won independence from Mexico and claimed New Mexico.  New Mexicans disagreed. 

        Mary, Bill and their three children left, taking rescued Indian hostages with them.   Mary fed, clothed and nursed these women and listened to their accounts.   

       One of the Texas captives, Rachel Plummer wrote, “I have no language to express my gratitude for Mrs. Donoho... anxious to make me comfortable... assured that every thing should be done to facilitate my return to my relatives…I still owe her a debt of gratitude.”

       From there, Clarkesville beckoned, booming with the flood of emigrants into independent Texas.  It needed a fine hotel.  In 1839, the Donoho’s rented a double log, two-story house.  Two years later, they bought a long house on the square and opened the Donoho Hotel.  Over the next four years, Mary bore three more children. 

       By 1845, Donoho had purchased settlers’ headrights and owned 10,000 acres in and around Clarksville.  He received 4,600 acres in Young County from the Republic of Texas compensating him for his payments to rescue captives.

       But in 1845 he died without a will, leaving Mary, a widow at 37 with five children and a business, land rich and cash poor.  She applied to the court for permission to sell land and slaves for cash to keep operating the hotel and support her children. 

       Six years later, the estate settled, she enlarged her hotel already known for fine food, excellent hospitality and comfortable rooms. A large bell mounted outside rang fifteen minutes before meals.  

       Mary served liquors in her tavern and hosted balls at the Donoho Hotel, “one of the most commodious in the State, affording a large number of single rooms and ample accommodations...pleasantly situated…especially comfortable,” her ad read.

       “Strong and determined,” her son described Mary, she responded to setbacks.  A fire threatened her hotel and she used this to fan political flames to organize a fire department.  When a stage traveler passed through and died a few miles and days later from smallpox, Mary advertised, “despite rumors, the traveler had not stayed in the Donoho Hotel...patrons’ minds could be eased ...there was no contagion.”  The Butterfield Stage stopped at her front door where a historical marker now stands.  Inside, she sold passage for 10 cents a mile. 

       The hospitality queen, she hosted all night graduation dinners and balls for her children at the hotel.  “The parties and balls given at the Donoho Hotel were among the greatest pleasure evenings in the history of the grand old town,” one settler remembered.

       Wealthy hotelier, respected and influential, Mary not only held onto the land Donoho had acquired, but continued purchasing land, cattle and horses.  She tripled the family’s worth to $41,000 in 1860. 

       She reigned through the rapid changes of the Republic, statehood, the Civil War and reconstruction, but her family dwindled.  Most of her daughters died in childbirth, one in childhood. 

       Sparing her remaining family the estate wrestling she had experienced, Mary wrote a nine-page, detailed will, naming her son and three grandchildren heirs.  The daughter’s children would receive the first land Donoho had purchased in 1840, over a league along Boggy Creek.  One granddaughter would receive her “five-year-old dark bay mare” and 156 acres.  Her son’s share included town lots, land, and the hotel with instructions that his four children should inherit from him. 

       Each of her seven grandchildren was to have one of the hotel’s prized feather beds “when they reached age tweny-one.”

       “Complaining of a difficulty in getting her breath,” her son said, she “quietly and without a struggle passed away,” in January, 1880, at 73. 

       Like others of her era, she had embraced the frontier’s bawdy nature, the mix of cultures and then the conservative restraint ushered in by settlement and civilization along the Red River. 

        A staunch Baptist at her death, she was buried in Clarksville’s Baptist Cemetery, alongside her husband, in a corner of the state where women did not smoke or gamble. 

If a woman in your family or community has pioneered in Texas in any role, please drop a note to Texas Dames™ Carmen@carmengoldthwaite.com or P. O. Box 470841, Fort Worth, TX 76147.