Credited as being the first woman sheriff in America.
BANISTER, EMMA DAUGHERTY (1871–1956). Emma Susan Daugherty Banister, probably the first woman sheriff in the United States, daughter of Bailey and Martha Ann (Taylor) Daugherty, was born in Forney, Texas, on October 20, 1871. Her father, who had come to the area from Alabama before the Civil War, was murdered in 1878. After her mother remarried, Emma stayed with her family for two or three years, then went to live with the family of her uncle, Lou Daugherty, in Goldthwaite. There she completed her schooling and studied to become a teacher. She taught in Turkey Creek, Mills County, and at Needmore (now Echo), on Jim Ned Creek in Coleman County. There she boarded in the home of the Sam Golson family.
On September 25, 1894, in Goldthwaite, she married John R. Banister, a former Texas Ranger and special agent of the United States Treasury Department. After several months of travel the couple settled in Santa Anna, where Emma assumed the duties of rearing John’s four small children from a previous marriage and bearing five of her own. Having had experience tracking cattle rustlers, Banister began working for the Texas Cattle Raisers’ Association and organized its Field Inspection Service, of which he was the first chief. He was elected sheriff of Coleman County in 1914, and the family moved from the farm to the first floor of the Coleman County Jail. Emma served as John’s office deputy. She bought supplies, ran her household, and oversaw the preparation of meals for the family and the prisoners.
On August 1, 1918, the sheriff died, and the commissioners of Coleman County appointed his wife to complete his term in office. Newspapers across the country did not fail to notice that a woman, even in the era before woman suffrage, had been made a sheriff in Texas. Under the heading “Woman a Sheriff!” the New York World classed Emma Banister among “a stock of westerners that does not know fear.” She ran the office efficiently by day, answering mail, instructing deputies, replying to inquiries, and managing the prisoners. In the evenings she kept the records up to date, planned meals, and took care of domestic duties. She declined the county commissioners’ offer to place her name on the ballot for the November elections for a further term in office. At the completion of the term the family moved back to the farm in Santa Anna.
Mrs. Banister was a member of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and a Baptist. In later years she took little credit for her service as sheriff of Coleman County. Oil income enabled her to travel and to deal in real estate in Santa Anna and in Elida, New Mexico. She and her husband had collected Indian artifacts and trophies of his forty-four years in law enforcement; most of the collection is now in the museum at Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, San Angelo. She died in Brownwood Memorial Hospital on June 4, 1956, and was buried in Santa Anna.
Source:
Handbook of Texas Online https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbacq
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Leona Bruce, Banister Was There (Fort Worth: Branch-Smith, 1968). Leona Bruce, Four Years in the Coleman Jail, Daughter of Two Sheriffs (Austin: Eakin Press, 1982).
Margaret White Banister
CITATION
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.
Margaret White Banister, “BANISTER, EMMA DAUGHERTY,” Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbacq), accessed July 10, 2015. Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
