MCKINZIE, ELIZABETH (1778-1840). Elizabeth McKinzie (McKensey), early Austin colonist, was born in North Carolina in 1778. In 1827, when she applied to Stephen F. Austin for a land grant, she was a forty-three-year-old widow living in Kentucky. She had a fourteen-year-old son and three teenage daughters. Her oldest daughter, Mary Eveline, had come to Texas in 1821 with her husband, Josiah H. Bell. Bell, a friend of Austin, was allowed to select the land for Elizabeth McKinzie. The land was in northeast Wharton County, adjoining Austin's own premium land. Mrs. McKinzie was given until April 1828 to settle on the land.
On the same day that she applied for her land, her son, William W. aged twenty-three, also applied for land. However, he did not stay in Texas but returned to Kentucky. Elizabeth McKinzie died in 1840 and was buried in the Presbyterian Cemetery in Columbia, now West Columbia.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Virginia H. Taylor, The Spanish Archives of the General Land Office of Texas (Austin: Lone Star, 1955). Villamae Williams, Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families (Nacogdoches, Texas: Ericson, 1984).
