Kezia Payne DePelchin letters

Kezia Payne DePelchin, Texas nurse, social worker and teacher, was born in the Madeira Islands and moved to Texas at the age of eight. Her father died shortly thereafter, and she was raised and educated by his second wife, an English governess. She gained resistance to yellow fever in 1839 when she survived the disease that killed two siblings and weakened her father, and volunteered as a nurse during the Houston epidemics of 1852, 1854, 1858, and 1867. After her marriage during the U.S. Civil War failed, she lived with a minister’s family and participated in charitable activities with women from Houston’s elite families.

In 1878, she traveled to Memphis, Tennessee from her home in Houston to assist the Howard Association during a yellow fever epidemic known as the Yellow Jack, and worked as a volunteer nurse from August 30 until mid-November. Her devotion to volunteer work was based in her strong religious and charitable sentiments. Though she was well respected in Houston, Memphis society viewed DePelchin’s work as a violation of their expectations of a woman’s proper place. She traveled as a volunteer nurse though Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama, following the epidemic, then returned home to Houston in November of 1878. She spent many years as a teacher and matron of an orphanage in Houston.

In the late 1800’s, she took three unwanted babies into a Houston house that, supported by DePelchin and charitable donations, eventually developed into a haven for orphans. In 1893 she officially named the house “Faith Home”, but died three months later from a fever. After the turn of the century, the facility was rebuilt and is now known as the DePelchin Children’s Center.