Maria Elena Zamora O’Shea
Teacher, Lay Historian, and Author, Elena Zamora O'Shea was born on July 21, 1880, to Porfirio Zamora and Gabina Moreno. She was the first known Latina student to attend Southwest Texas State Normal School (STSNS) in 1906, when 26 years old and the summers of 1911 and 1917. As early as 1895, at age 15, Elena Zamora taught children at a rancho three miles from where she grew up in Hidalgo County, Texas. She taught on the rancho for seven years before moving to the King Ranch, where she was employed as a schoolteacher. However, she knew she would need a teaching certificate in order to teach in public schools. She made a choice to leave her home in pursuit of education and a career. At Southwest Texas State Normal School in San Marcos she hoped to obtain a higher degree and a teaching certificate. She continued to teach based on her boarding school education while continuing her education at not only Southwest Texas State but also the Normal School in Saltillo, Nuevo León, and the Universidad Autónoma de Mexico in Mexico City. Her first “city” job was in 1907–08 in Alice, Texas, where she served as a school principal and taught the celebrated Texas writer, J. Frank Dobie. Maria Elena’s teaching career spanned 23 years. Her belief in the importance of education, directly and indirecty, influenced a number of family members to enter the field of education.
In 1912, Elena Zamora married Daniel Patrick O’Shea of London and had two children. In 1918, the couple moved to Dallas, Texas, where Elena worked as a translator for Sears Roebuck and taught Spanish. She was a Democrat, Catholic, and member of the Dallas Woman’s Forum and the Latin American League.
Elena Zamora O’Shea’s concern about the lack of information in print on her forefathers, Spanish land grant settlers who fought for Texas independence, led her to become a lay historian and author. In 1935, she wrote El mesquite, a fictionalized account of Mexican settlers between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande from 1575 to the early 1900s. The book chronicles her own life on a rancho in South Texas and the struggles of others who came to live there. This book is considered a major contribution to Mexican American literature and Texas letters. She breathed her last in 1951.
On Friday, Nov. 12,2021 Texas State University renamed a residence hall on the San Marcos Campus in honor of Elena Zamora O’Shea, the first known Latina student to attend Texas State in 1906. A residence hall is named under her name as Elena Zamora O'Shea Hall.
