Emily Austin Bryan Perry (June 22, 1795 – 1851) was an early settler of Texas and sole heir to Stephen F. Austin. She achieved significant political, economic and social status as a woman in Texas at a time when women were often not treated equal to men.
Perry attended Mrs. Beck's Boarding School in Lexington, Kentucky from October 1804 until December 1808, then two years at the Hermitage Academy located on the Hudson River to further her education.
Perry married James Bryan (1788–1822) in Potosi, also known as "Mine á Breton" or "Mine au Breton." The two lived with Emily’s parents at their home called Durham Hall, in Missouri, from 1813–1814. In 1815, they moved to Hazel Run, Missouri, and also later to Herculaneum, Missouri. Emily and James Bryan had five children:
James Bryan (Emily’s first husband) died on July 16, 1822, in Potosi, Missouri. Perry supported her family by taking in boarders and teaching at a school in Hazel Run, Missouri.
On September 23, 1824, Perry married her second husband, James Franklin Perry. Emily and James Franklin Perry had six children:
Of her eleven total children, six would live to adulthood. On June 7, 1831, the family, composed of Emily and James Perry, four Bryan children, and Stephen Perry, began the long move from Potosi, Missouri, to Texas.
Emily and most of her family (including Samuel Stephen and Eliza Margaret) arrived at San Felipe de Austin, Texas, on August 14, 1831. Her son, Moses Austin Bryan, had arrived in Texas some months before his parents, on January 2, 1831. Emily and the younger children remained in San Felipe de Austin for several months, and then the family lived for about one year on the Chocolate Bayou producing sugar and cotton.