Stuart and allied families of Texas collection

Rosa Lum Allen, 1858-1931, Rosa Lum married Samuel Ezekiel Allen (1848-1913) in 1876, moving from Fort Bend County to his ranch in southeast Harris County after their marriage. The ranch was located on the south side of Buffalo Bayou, now the Houston Ship Channel near its intersection with Sims Bayou. Samuel Ezekiel Allen was the grandson of Ezekiel Thomas, who came to Texas from South Carolina in 1824. Thomas was a member of the Old Three Hundred, the first 300 families to receive title to property in Texas from Mexican government through the auspices of Stephen F. Austin. At the time of Allen's death in 1913 he owned 13,000 acres in Harris County and an additional 10,000 acres in Brazoria County. Mrs. Allen sold 700 acres surrounding her colonial home to Sinclair Oil Company in 1917 for the site of one of the first refineries on the Ship Channel. She moved to 1916 Main Street in Houston. The ranch house was dismantled and rebuilt as a vacation home on Galveston Bay near Sylvan Beach in La Porte. At the request of the Right Reverend Clinton S. Quin she offered the use of her house and bay property to the Episcopal Diocese of Texas for a camp for the youth of the Diocese. In 1921 there were thirty-six campers from Houston, Austin, Galveston, Dallas, and Tyler who attended the first sessions at Camp Allen that starting then was named for her. In 1928 she purchased property on Trinity Bay near Baytown and also provided buildings for the second Camp Allen that was sold many years later to purchase acreage in Grimes County where the camp is now located.

Robert Cummins Stuart IV, 1896-1976, was the only child of Robert C. Stuart III and Rosa Allen Stuart. After his graduation from Harvard College in 1921, he assisted his grandmother in the founding of Camp Allen and with her Trustees Frank Andrews, John T. Scott, and Frank Michaux in liquidating Allen Ranch holdings. The land was divided for industrial, commercial, and residential use. Many streets and subdivisions of southeastern Harris County bear the names of the Allen family because they were once part of the ranch. Robert C. Stuart Park on Sims Bayou in Southeast Harris County near Hobby Airport was named for him. Robert Stuart IV married Frances Wells Stuart in 1930. They were active in Houston philanthropic causes.

Francita Stuart Koelsch Ulmer is the only child of Robert C. Stuart IV and Frances Wells Stuart. She graduated from Kinkaid School (1949) and Wellesley College (1953). In 1958 she entered the graduate program at Rice Institute. She was one of 15 students chosen to be the first graduate students in the History department. In 1959 she married Philip Carleton Koelsch, a Naval Academy graduate and later Rear Admiral. In 2000, seven years after her first husband's death, she married James G. Ulmer. Mrs. Ulmer has been honored for her dedication and contribution to various organizations including her service of 35 years on the Harris County Historical Commission, appointment by Governor William P. Clements to represent the Texas State Historical Association on the Battleship Texas Commission, as a member of the Vestry of Christ Church Cathedral, and as historian for the Garden Club of Houston. In 2005 she received the Distinguished Alumna Award in recognition of her obtaining a Texas State Historical Marker for Kinkaid and writing the first published history of the school. Mrs. Ulmer was appointed an Honorary Trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2020. The life-time appointment is in recognition of her continuing service to the Museum, and a "testament fo the Stuart family's indelible connection with and unwavering commitment to the Museum," since its founding in 1900.