KENT, AMBROSE DUDLEY (1836–1907). Ambrose Dudley Kent, Confederate officer and state representative, was born in Frankfurt, Franklin County, Kentucky, on March 31, 1836, the son of J. and Lanauza M. Kent. Prior to 1861 Kent immigrated to Texas, settling in Jefferson County where he taught school in Beaumont for a time. In the summer of 1861 at the outbreak of the Civil War, Kent served as a second lieutenant for a coastal defense unit in Jefferson County at Sabine Pass. From May to December 1863 Kent saw action in southwestern Louisiana, serving as third lieutenant for Company E of the Eleventh Battalion of Texas Volunteers. Following the war Kent returned to Beaumont, and on January 11, 1866, he married Druzilla Lillian McFaddin. This couple had one son and one daughter. Later in 1866 Kent won election as representative for Jefferson, Liberty, Chambers, and Orange counties, to the Eleventh Texas Legislature. Kent died in Houston, Harris County, on April 19, 1907.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Randolph B. Campbell, Grass-Roots Reconstruction in Texas, 1865–1880 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1997). IGI Individual Record: "Ambrose Dudley Kent" (http://www.familysearch.org/Eng/search/frameset_search.asp?PAGE=ancestorsearchresults.asp), accessed May 29, 2007. Frances T. Ingmire, Jefferson County, Texas Marriage Records, 1837–1899 (St. Louis: Ingmire, 1981). MyKindred.com: "Ambrose Dudley Kent" (http://mykindred.com/cloud/TX/getperson.php?personID=I43545&tree=mykindred01), accessed May 29, 2007. Cooper K. Ragan, ed., "The Diary of Captain George W. O'Brien, 1863," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 67 (July, October 1963, January 1964). T. J. Russell, Pioneer Reminiscences of Jefferson County (Beaumont: Southeast Texas Genealogical & Historical Society, 1986).
