Cazneau, Jane Maria Eliza (born McManus) Storms (1807-1878)

US adventurer, journalist, and publicist. She lobbied for annexing all of Mexico, advocated manifest destiny (the belief that Americans had a providential mission to extend both their territory and their democratic processes westwards across the continent), and promoted the liberation of Cuba from Spain. She also favoured US expansion in the Caribbean.

She wrote several books under the pen-name Cora Montgomery, including The Queen of Islands and the King of Rivers (1870) and Our Winter Eden; Pen Pictures of the Tropics (1878).

She was born near Troy, New York, the daughter of a lawyer and US representative; she assisted her father in a failed scheme to establish a colony of German settlers in Texas 1833-35. Settling in New York City, she became a journalist, writing mainly for the New York Sun; in 1846 she accompanied its editor, Moses Beach, on a secret peace mission to Mexico and is said to have provided crucial information to General Winfield Scott.

By 1850 she was married to William L Cazneau, a Texas politician and fellow adventurer, and they devoted much of the next 20 years advocating the annexation the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo; they also encouraged William Walker's filibustering in Nicaragua. When their plan to annex Santo Domingo was finally rejected by the US Senate in 1870, Cazneau and her husband retired to Jamaica. She was lost at sea off Cape Hatteras on a return trip to Jamaica.