Frances Jane Ridge - Densmore
Mr. Jefferson Ridge, a Cherokee farmer from Arkansas and Mrs. Corine King Ridge, described by family records as a Black woman, were the parents of Frances Jane Ridge and her siblings. Frances Jane Ridge and some of her siblings were kidnapped at a young age and sold into slavery. Frances Jane Ridge used the "Densmore" surname of her first slave owner for the remainder of life. Frances Jane Ridge Densmore had a younger sister named Margaret Ridge Davis, Ellen Ridge Sternam Caldwell and a brother named Ellis Ridge Sternam. Also, Ellis Ridge was found on a Travis County census record as Ellis Dinsmore. Frances was also related to Frank Hannah and his family of Springfield, Greene County, Missouri and to the Fosters of Calvert, Robertson County, Texas, as well as, Lewis Caldwell and the Edmund and Ellen Ridge Sternam Caldwell family in Travis County, Texas. Frances Densmore had two mulatto children, William Wells and Thomas Jefferson Wells who were born in Illinois, both buried in Oakwood Cemetery in Austin, Texas. Frances was finally sold to Louis Horst, a plantation owner in Austin, Texas. According to the older family members, Frances was a slave on the Horst Plantation and did not just work for the Horst family. The only job Frances held after slavery was working as a cook at the Stephen F. Austin Hotel in downtown Austin, Texas. Frances Densmore had four mulatto children by the slave owner's son, Charles Carl "Charlie" Horst: Ernest Edward "Ed" Horst, Mary Elizabeth Horst, Robert Horst and Walter Horst. Frances Jane Ridge Densmore died in Sept. 1925 in Coyle, Logan County, Oklahoma. Please Note: Frances was a slave and was never married to Charles Horst. In her later years Frances lived with her daughter, Mary, who was married to Thomas Black. Frances Jane Ridge Densmore and three of her sons, Ernest Edward (Ed) Horst, Walter Horst and Robert Horst, are buried in Bethany Cemetery in Austin, Travis County, Texas.