Colquitt, Alice Fuller Murrell (1865–1949)

Alice Fuller Murrell Colquitt was born in Minden, Louisiana, on November 19, 1865, to parents Isaac and Rebecca (Fuller) Murrell. She had at least five siblings, including Mary, Margaret, John, Peryle, and Patsy. Alice attended Minden College in Louisiana and married future twenty-fifth Texas governor Oscar Branch Colquitt on December 9, 1885, in Pittsburg, Texas. Alice and Oscar had five children, including Rosolino “Rawlins” Murrell Colquitt; Oscar Branch Colquitt, Jr.; Mary Alice Colquitt Laubach; Sidney Burkhalter Colquitt; and Walter F. Colquitt. In 1911 their son Walter died at the age of fifteen, just before his father took office.

Alice Colquitt assisted in preparing the festivities for the unveiling of the Hood’s Texas Brigade monument in Austin, Texas, in 1910 prior to her husband taking office as governor. She served as an honorary member of the Albert Sydney Johnston Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and served some time as the chapter’s president. She chaired a sub-committee of the UDC which sought to appropriate state funds for the Confederate Woman’s Home in Austin; a transfer of the home from the UDC to the state of Texas was ultimately approved by voters in 1911. She also served as the chair of the board of managers for the Confederate Woman’s Home.

Alice donated the gown she wore during the inaugural ball for the Texas governorship to the Jane Douglas Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the gown is currently housed at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. She contributed to efforts that helped combat tuberculosis by participating in the establishment of tuberculosis camps across Texas. She also spent time updating the Governor’s Mansion with several new electronic appliances, and she redecorated various rooms. She was the first Texas governor’s wife to drive an automobile and was noted as an “enthusiastic motorist.” One of her recipes was later published in Carl McQueary’s Dining at the Governor’s Mansion (2003). After her husband completed his terms in office, they retired to Dallas. Alice Fuller Murrell Colquitt died on June 29, 1949, in Ardmore, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, where she likely lived with her daughter Mary’s family. She was buried next to her husband and three of her sons in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, Texas.