Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart: Texas Author and Historian Biography (1844–1931)

Sarah A. “Fanny” Chambers Gooch Iglehart, Texas author and historian, was born probably on December 9, 1844, near Hillsboro, Mississippi, to William Chambers and Fariba (Magee) Chambers. Though her death certificate lists her year of birth as 1839, federal census information supports 1844 as her birth year. The 1850 census listed the family still in Hillsboro, and the household consisted of ten children. In the mid-1850s her family relocated to Texas, and in 1860 she was living in Waco with her brother Williams Chambers, an attorney.

On December 9, 1861, at the age of eighteen, Fanny Chambers married George W. Gooch in McLennan County, Texas. Gooch, a businessman originally from Virginia, was more than twenty years her senior. In May 1873 Gooch, a prominent Houston merchant, died in Harris County, leaving her a widow.

On August 10, 1874, Fanny Gooch married Richard Henry Lee Bibb, a Texas physician. In the spring of 1882 the couple relocated to Saltillo, Mexico, where Bibb intended to practice medicine. In December 1882 Bibb shot and seriously injured an American named William Gray in Saltillo; he was later acquitted in a Mexican court. After the shooting, Fanny returned to Texas. In November 1883, citing cruelty, she filed for divorce in Bosque County, Texas, and the district court granted the divorce in January 1884. The court also granted her name change from Fanny Bibb back to Fannie Gooch.

During the 1880s she traveled extensively in Mexico and spent a total of approximately seven years there over multiple visits. These experiences formed the basis of her book Face to Face with the Mexicans: The Domestic Life, Educational, Social, and Business Ways, Statesmanship and Literature, Legendary and General History of the Mexican People, published in New York in 1887. Her book was “widely heralded throughout the country” and given “distinguished recognition” by literary critics.

On January 17, 1889, Fanny Chambers Gooch married Dr. David Thomas Iglehart of Austin, Texas. Newspaper accounts described the wedding as “one of the most notable social events” of the city, attended by the governor of Texas and other prominent guests. Following this marriage, she published under the name Fanny Chambers Gooch Iglehart. David Thomas Iglehart, a Confederate veteran, died in 1903.

In 1897 Fanny Iglehart was named a Fellow of the Texas State Historical Association for published work showing “special aptitude for historical investigation.” Her later publications included The Boy Captive of the Texas Mier Expedition (1909), which was reviewed in Texas newspapers as a serious contribution to the state’s historical literature and was reportedly recommended for use in schools by the State Textbook Board. The Boy Captive of the Texas Mier Expedition continued to circulate publicly after its publication, including through lectures Iglehart delivered on Mexico and the borderlands, and later through a screen adaptation she wrote herself.

In 1919 she was writing a third historical book, Lost Threads of Texas Romance, a “thrilling and sparkling” book filled with “interesting facts and romance of early Nacogdoches and Philip Urlan [sic].” Newspaper accounts in 1921 and 1923 stated that she was arranging for its publication, but no records indicate that it was ever published. In her final years she resided at the Confederate Woman’s Home in Austin where she died on October 10, 1931. She is buried at Oakwood Cemetery in Austin.