PANKEY, MARY ANN KENNEDY (ca. 1777-?). Mary Ann Kennedy Pankey, settler in Austin's colony, was born about 1777 in Missouri. She married Michael Early (Earley), an Irishman, on September 25, 1806, in Madison County, Kentucky. They had seven children. Family tradition says that Michael Early is the man referred to by Sterling C. Robertson, who traveled to Texas on an exploring expedition in the winter of 1825-26 and "almost got shot when he tried to file claim on a piece of land already occupied by a squatter named Early." Michael died in July 1827 in Austin's colony. Mary Ann stated in her 1829 and 1831 applications for land grants that she had arrived in Texas in 1824 from Louisiana, was a widow and farmer, and had seven children. She married James W. Pankey on January 5, 1829, in Austin County, Texas, and they had a son. In 1831, as the widow of Michael Early, she received a league of land on Jackson's Creek on a site now in Washington County. She was listed in the 1850 Washington County census as being seventy-three years of age. Her sons, John and Thomas, served in the Texas army in the Texas Revolution.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Malcolm D. McLean, comp. and ed., Papers Concerning Robertson's Colony in Texas (19 vols., Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1974-76; Arlington: University of Texas at Arlington Press, 1977-87). Joyce Martin Murray, Washington County, Texas, Deed Abstracts, 1834-1841 (Dallas, 1986). Villamae Williams, Stephen F. Austin's Register of Families (Nacogdoches, Texas: Ericson, 1984).
