This is the second in a continuing series on Providence Catholic School’s historic Drought House, built in 1901. Future articles will cover the home’s years as a convent for the Congregation of Divine Providence at what was then Providence High School, beginning in 1951, and news on the exciting current restoration and plans for the house and school.
By Carol Baass Sowa
Today's Catholic
SAN ANTONIO • When the bells of downtown St. Mary’s Church tolled for the 1943 funeral service of 79-year-old Ethel Tunstall Drought, it marked the close of a remarkable life spent in service to San Antonio.
The three-story mansion she and husband Henry Patrick Drought built in 1901 on the site of Ben Milam’s rallying call for the retaking of San Antonio, had for nearly half a century been a rallying point for the civic and cultural life of the city.
“Every Sunday night,” recalls her grandson, attorney Tom Drought, “she had a gathering of people in that house.” Among those whom Ethel welcomed were visitors from all the fine arts, both local and national, including such notables as violinist Jascha Heifeitz and the local Onderdonk family of artists. Winston Churchill’s mother is said to have gifted her with a piano following a visit and Cardinal Patrick Hayes of New York was also a guest at the Drought House.
There was hardly a major civic endeavor in San Antonio that the generous and capable Ethel did not have a guiding hand in during the first half of the 20th century.
A founder of the San Antonio Art League, she served it in the positions of vice-president and president for decades and was its honorary life president. She likewise was instrumental in the founding of the Witte Museum, the Battle of Flowers Parade, the city’s free kindergarten and its first free library, the Carnegie, as well as being a principal sponsor of the San Antonio Symphony, whose early members often rehearsed in her first floor music room/art gallery. The San Antonio Conservation Society, which she helped found, figures prominently in the Drought House’s current restoration.
In 1898, when times were hard, Ethel Drought organized a free soup kitchen (forerunner of the Robert B. Green Hospital) and did the same during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Active in political issues of the day, she promoted adoption of the 19th Amendment, women’s right to vote. During World War I she entertained servicemen in her home on Sundays.
In addition to participating in the early movement to beautify the Old Spanish Trail, she was also responsible for the first restoration of the then crumbling ruins of Mission San José, doing so in memory of her late husband, who died in 1917.
The couple raised four sons (a fifth died at birth) in their home on what is today North St. Mary’s Street, and the walls of the Drought House doubtless reverberated with much youthful merriment and high jinks. It is said that Mrs. Drought’s two iron-clad rules were: “No feet on the banisters and no smoking in my bedroom.”
Pets were a large part of the family life, and it is reported that about 20 pet dogs of the Droughts were buried in a pet cemetery on the lawn, including great danes, fox terriers and “just plain hounds.” Two little tombstones — for a beloved poodle named Little Prince and a coon hound, Old Broad (deceased in 1906 and 1909 respectively) — were still standing when the Congregation of Divine Providence purchased the property to build Providence High School in 1950 and remained for over a decade thereafter.
Tom Drought’s grandfather died before he was born, but he remembers his grandmother well, recalling her as a warm, loving woman who never failed to present her grandsons with money to purchase candy at the neighborhood grocery store upon their arrival for a visit.
He has fond memories of playing in the pecan bottom along the San Antonio River which then ran behind the house, built on the site of the old Molino Blanco gristmill, and recalls the ceremony in the home’s back yard held by the San Antonio Conservation Society and involving the mill’s grindstone, which he and his brother posed beside for newspaper photos.
Both the old grindstone and the river have since been relocated — the stone to the home’s front lawn and the river, several blocks away in a river-straightening project by the Army Corps of Engineers.
As a child, Drought enjoyed playing in his grandmother’s attic, a veritable treasure trove as his uncles had used it to stash a variety of items over the years, including fascinating souvenirs from trips to Europe, such as French policemen’s hats. “I remember I spent a lot of time in that attic, fiddling around,” he recalls with a smile.
His grandmother had a faithful servant, he relates, who served as her chauffeur, Tom Bryant, an African-American born a slave, who had previously worked on the King Ranch. Something had occurred there, Drought recalls, that caused Mr. King to fear for Bryant’s safety, and he asked Drought’s grandfather if he would hire the man so he would be safe.
Bryant worked for the Droughts until Ethel Drought’s death, living on the premises with his wife, Ettie, Ethel’s maid.
A special event during the Bryants’ time at the house was the World War II era marriage of their daughter Florida, perhaps named for Ethel’s mother, Florida Hall Boswell Tunstall, a descendent of the first governor of Florida.
Ethel insisted that the young lady (who had notably earned a college degree) be married in the Drought House. Tom Drought, a Marine, was away on military duty at the time, but his mother wrote him an account of the festivities, which included Florida descending the ornate staircase, its landing backed by a leaded bay window, in her wedding finery — another memorable moment in the grand old house.
Ethel’s own wedding back in 1885 to Henry Patrick Drought marked her conversion to Catholicism and she is remembered by her grandson for her devoutness to her adopted faith. (Ethel’s mother was a founder of San Antonio’s First Presbyterian Church, and her grandfather is said to have been a Presbyterian minister in Kentucky.)
Born on Dec. 8, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, she established an annual birthday tradition in which the entire family would assemble on that day to receive Communion at her parish church, St. Mary’s, and afterwards proceed to the Drought House for breakfast together.
“That tradition carried on through my father’s life,” Drought recalled, “even after she was dead.”