USA > Texas > Tarrant County > Fort Worth > History of Texas : Fort Worth and the Texas northwest edition, Volume I > Part 6
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Another distinctive feature of Austin's original colony is that the colonists were not restricted to definite limits in their settlement. Each of the 300 families belonged to the colony wherever its lands were located. The result was that these original settlers were dispersed from the east bank of the Lavaca to the east side of the San Jacinto, and from the coast to the San Antonio road. In this area all the lands not occu- pied by the 300 colonists belonged to the government. This wide dis- tribution of the immigrants, while it exposed them to Indian attacks. eventually proved advantageous in the development of the country, since those that came later were better served with supplies by means of these scattered settlements than they could have been from one central point.
When Austin returned to Texas in August, 1823, he found the colony almost dissipated. and immigration had entirely ceased. Many of the new settlers had stopped about Nacogdoches and in the vicinity of the Trinity River, and thus began the settlement of East Texas. But Austin's suc- cess in obtaining a confirmation of his contract and his energetic prosecu- tion of affairs soon turned the tide in his favor, and by the following year the stipulated number of 300 families had arrived. He was favored by the fact that, until after the general colonization law of the state of Coahuila-Texas was passed in March, 1825, Austin was the only empre- sario who had authority to settle families in Texas and secure them valid titles to their lands. This not only resulted in the rapid completion of the colony numbers, but also gave Austin opportunity to select his settlers and reject unworthy applicants. Austin's management in this latter par- ticular was no doubt an important factor in the subsequent welfare of all Texas.
The commissioner appointed by the governor to survey the lands was Baron de Bastrop, who had been so instrumental in the beginning of the colony. He was also instructed by the governor. in a letter of July 26. 1823. to lay out the capital town of the colony, to which the governor gave the name San Felipe de Austin.
Austin's position was no sinecure. even after he had settled all the legal affairs of his colony. The government was practically in his hands for the next five years, and the tact, ability and patience with which he directed it confirm his right to the title of Father of Texas. His colonists were in the main independent, aggressive, vigorous Americans, abiding by the fundamental rules of law and society, but not submissive to any restraints and quick to suspect imposition. Although in enrolling them-
*A labor, in Spanish land measure, is a tract of 1,000 varas square, or about 177 acres ; a league is a tract of 5,000 varas square, or approximately 4.428 English acres.
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selves as settlers they had accepted the conditions which prescribed the payment to Austin of 121/2 cents an acre for their land, when the time came to make payment the majority opposed the charge and burdened their leader with much unmerited abuse, forgetting the self-sacrificing hardships that Austin had undergone in the first stages of the enterprise. They claimed that he was speculating on their efforts, and furthermore that, when certain poorer settlers were given lands free, he was discrim- inating. The result was that he had to forego his claim to these fees, and from the sale of his premium lands received only a small share of his original investment. But when finally relieved of the active administra- tion of the colony, after having borne with wonderful patience the caba- lous and open dissatisfaction of the settlers, he had on the whole man- aged his enterprise with such wisdom that he retained the respect and gratitude of his own colony and remained to the close of his life the best loved man in Texas.
CHAPTER III THE COLONIZATION SYSTEM
Mexico's first national colonization law, which was promulgated by Iturbide on January 4, 1823, guaranteed the liberty, property, and civil rights of all immigrants who professed the Roman Catholic religion, and to encourage their settlement in the empire agreed to give them lands on very liberal terms. Colonists who engaged in farming were to receive not less than a labor (177 acres) of land, and those who engaged in stock raising received not less than a sitio, or league of land, containing 4,428 acres. Since most colonists would naturally follow both occupa- tions, this provision was strikingly generous. Practically the only con- ditions imposed upon settlers were the religious qualification just men- tioned and improvement of their lands within two years under pain of forfeiture.
The empresario system was recognized and empresarios, or con- tractors, who introduced 200 families into the empire were entitled to a premium of three haciendas and two labors of land. A hacienda was equivalent to five sitios or 22,140 acres ; but no one might receive more than nine haciendas and six labors-some 200,000 acres-no matter how many families he might introduce. Moreover, empresarios were required to alienate two-thirds of their premium lands within twenty years.
Natives were to have the preference in the distribution of the public lands ; particularly those citizens who had been enrolled in the army of the Three Guarantees-the army which won independence from Spain.
The overthrow of Iturbide and the annulment . of all laws passed during his reign prevented this decree from going into operation. The sovereign constituent congress, while working on the constitution, framed a general colonization law which was promulgated on August 18, 1824. With a few restrictions, this authorized each state to adopt coloniza- tion laws, arranging details so as not to conflict with the national laws and constitution. The principal restrictions prescribed by this decree were : (1) That without the consent of the general government no colony should be settled within twenty leagues of a neighboring country, or within ten leagues of the coast; (2) that the general government should always have the right, with the approval of congress, to use any of such lands for arsenals, warehouses, or other public buildings; (3) that preference should be given in the distribution of the public lands to Mexican citizens; (4) that no one should retain title to more than eleven leagues of land, and that no transfers should be made in mort- main; (5) that no one residing outside the republic should hold lands acquired by this law; and (6) that the general government might take "such precautionary measures" as it deemed expedient "for the secur- ity of the confederation, as respects the foreigners who come to colon- ize," but at the same time it was provided that congress should not have the power before 1840 to prohibit generally the entrance of foreign immigrants who came for this purpose. Congress might, however, if it were found desirable, prohibit the entrance for this purpose of foreigners
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from any particular nation. It was under authority of this article that congress passed the law of April 6. 1830, stopping the settlement of colonists from the United States in Texas. Empresario contracts not contrary to the laws were guaranteed.
The provisional congress of the state of Coahuila-Texas was organ- ized in August, 1824, and while engaged in forming the state constitu- tion passed the state colonization law under which Texas was settled. This law, dated March 24, 1825, was designed to augment "by all possi- ble means the population" of the state. Its provisions conformed, of course, to the general rules imposed by the federal law above noted. All foreigners must become Mexican citizens and accept the national religion. The quantity of land to be assigned to each foreign settler was fixed by this law as follows: To each married man or head of family, one labor if an agriculturist, or one league if he combined agriculture and stock-raising; to each single man, one-fourth of this quantity, to be increased to the regular allotment when he married. Those who immi- grated at their own expense and settled in a colony within six years after its establishment received. if a married man, an additional labor, or, if unmarried. a third instead of a fourth of the regular quantity. Out of this system resulted the various quantities of land comprised under the old Mexican titles, some titles covering a league and a labor. others a single league, a third of a league, a quarter league, down to a single labor and fractions thereof.
This law also provided for colonization by empresarios or contrac- tors. Each empresario who undertook to introduce 100 or more fam- ilies, on his proposal being approved by the government, should have a definite tract of vacant lands assigned for the settlement of his colonists. His premium for each 100 families that he colonized was fixed at five leagues and five labores.
Immediately after the passage of this law, those who had been appli- cants during the pendency of this legislation presented their petitions for empresario grants, and they were followed in the course of a few years by others, until nearly all the available lands of Texas were assigned among the various contractors. It is necessary to explain here that the contractors had no proprietary rights in the lands thus assigned. A tract was set aside to them, for a definite period of years, during which they were privileged to introduce colonists, and the permission of the empre- sario was required before the government commissioner would survey or issue a certificate of title to the settler. But the title was issued by the government and not by the empresario, and the title of the individual set- tler was unaffected by the subsequent failure of the empresario to com- plete his contract with the state. The design of the law was that the sole advantage to the empresario should consist in the premium lands granted to him on condition that he introduce 100 or more families. Neverthe- less, through lack of perfect understanding of the relations of the empre- sarios, some extensive frauds were commited in Europe and the United States. The empresarios were represented as actual owners of the lands, and "scrip" was sold to the extent of thousands of dollars to unsuspecting purchasers. This "scrip" was. of course, worthless, and on arriving in Texas its holders found that they could secure titles to land only from
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the government and according to the provisions of the laws above described.
Austin himself was one of the first to take advantage of the coloniza- tion laws to introduce another colony in addition to the 300 families whom he had settled by 1824. He forwarded his first petition to the general government in 1824, asking to introduce several hundred families through Galveston as port of entry. His petition as finally approved by the state government and signed by Austin on June 4, 1825, provided for the intro- duction of 500 families, who were to be located on the unoccupied lands within the limits of his first colony, the contract being limited to six years from the date of signing. As the limits of the first colony had never been officially designated, an order dated March 7, 1827, described the boun- daries of the colony as follows: Beginning on the San Jacinto River, ten leagues from the coast, up the river to its source and thence in a line to the Nacogdoches-San Antonio road, this road being the northern boun- dary, and the western boundary was the Lavaca River and a line from its source to the above named road.
On April 22, 1828, Austin was granted the right, by special consent of the president of the republic, to colonize with three hundred families the ten-league reserve on the coast, between the San Jacinto and Lavaca rivers. This extended Austin's colonies from the San Antonio road to the coast, comprising what is now the most populous portion of Southeast Texas. Another contract undertaken by Austin. November 20, 1827. was for the settlement of one hundred families on the east side of the Colorado above the San Antonio road. A later contract, of Austin and Williams, covered a portion of the other grants south of the San Antonio road, and extended north of that road between the Colorado River and the dividing ridge between the Brazos and Trinity to a line above the present site of Waco.
One of the most important colonies outside of Austin's was DeWitt's. Green DeWitt was at Mexico seeking a contract in 1822, when Austin arrived at the capital. His application was delayed several years until the general laws were enacted, his contract being granted April 15, 1825. His assignment of lands lay on the southwest of Austin's, extending from the ten-league coast reserve with the Lavaca as its northeast boundary, the San Antonio road on the northwest, and on the southwest a line two leagues beyond and parallel with the Guadalupe River. In the war for independence this colony was the most exposed to Mexican in- vasion, Gonzales, the capital of the colony, being the first to suffer the vengeance of Santa Anna after the fall of the Alamo.
DeWitt contracted to introduce four hundred families, but at the time his contract expired in 1831 only 166 titles had been issued, and the government refused to extend his contract.
Between DeWitt's grant and the coast, along the Guadalupe, was the territory assigned to Martin de Leon, whose contract was made in 1825. Victoria was the principal center of this colony.
Haden Edwards had also been in Mexico at the time Austin was there, and on April 18, 1825, he was given a contract to introduce eight hundred families about Nacogdoches, his lands being comprised within the territory between Austin's colony on the west, the ten-league coast
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reserve on the South, the twenty-league reserve on the East, and on the North was bounded by a line fifteen leagues north of the town of Nacog- doches.
Other empresario contracts that should be mentioned chiefly because of their relation to subsequent land litigation were:
Robert Leftwich obtained a contract April 15, 1825, for a tract on the Navasota River, between the San Antonio road and the Brazos and Colorado rivers. The contract was subsequently carried by Sterling C. Robertson and Alex. Thompson, and the colony was known as the Nash- ville or Robertson's colony.
James Power and James Hewitson, from Ireland, contracted June 11, 1828, to colonize the vicinity of Aransas Bay ; a second contract of 1830 covered a portion of the territory between the Nueces and Guadalupe rivers. The first colony marked the beginning of Refugio County.
John McMullen and Patrick McGloin, also Irishmen, August 17, 1828, contracted for a settlement on the Nueces River, their enterprises being commemorated in the present San Patricio County.
Lorenzo de Zavala was granted colonization rights, March 12, 1829, to lands lying west of the Sabine between Nacogdoches and the coast.
Joseph Vehlein's contracts, dated December 22, 1826, and November 17, 1828, covered land in East Texas, lying partly in the Haden Edwards tract.
David G. Burnet's contract, December 22, 1826, was for settlement along the Navasota and Trinity rivers and about the San Antonio road.
The last three mentioned contracts were assigned in 1830 to the "Galveston Bay and Texas Land Company," a New York company who issued large quantities of worthless "scrip" against the lands.
CHAPTER IV THE FREDONIAN WAR
The nineteenth century was the poor man's golden age in the Amer- ican West. The discontented wage worker had the knowledge that a hundred or a few hundred miles away lay the unlimited public domain, and with a minimum of capital and equipment he could be working for himself. With no great disparity between the living condition of the well-to-do and the newcomer, all shared the confidence that time and industry would bring security and independence. Physical toil and hard- ship, with a very modest degree of initiative and enterprise, were never better rewarded than in the settlement of the Western states.
In the new Texas colonies the years 1825 and 1826 passed off com- paratively quietly. The tide of emigration continued to flow in, and the colonists were prosperous. A trade had recently opened between New Orleans and the colony, which enabled the colonists to obtain the long wished luxury, coffee and sugar, on which they feasted to the full; they were also able to treat their wives and daughters to a calico dress, and themselves and sons to a pair of shoes, a thing which they had not had for several years, and which were kept to wear on Sunday, or in attend- ing a merry-making. Many of the noble dames still donned their buck- skin skirts.
The same conditions that encouraged the aspirations of the indus- trious and law-abiding in their struggles also favored the unfit, the shift- less and the turbulent. Texas long had an undeserved reputation for general lawlessness and looseness, due to exaggeration of individual or specific incidents. However, it is important not to minimize such ele- ments in the history of the period now under consideration.
Among the American settlers was much impatience of restraint and the aggressive independence of the frontiersmen, which have proved tur- bulent factors in every new state and territory of the American Union. In this eager, restless throng of settlers, Austin's steadiness, tact and patience and personal influence succeeded in preserving order long enough to give stability to the colonies, and the value of his services in this respect can hardly be overestimated. His own testimony of the character of his colonists revealed in a letter written in 1825, is an interesting light on this subject: "I have had a mixed multitude to deal with-collected from all quarters, strangers to me, save from the testi- monials of good character which they are expected to bring with them -strangers to each other, to the language, laws and customs of this country. They come here, with all the feelings and ideas of Americans, unwilling to make allowance for the peculiar state of things existing, and expecting to find all in system, and harmony, and organization, as in the country they have left. * * Amongst a certain class of Americans with whom I have had to deal, independence means resistance and obstinacy, right or wrong; this is particularly the case with most frontiermen; and a violent course with men of this cast would have kindled a flame that might have consumed the colony. For it was with
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the greatest difficulty, and after more than eighteen months' solicitation, that I obtained the consent of the Mexican government to progress with the settlement, and the principal objection expressed to my doing so was, that the Americans were considered in Mexico a turbulent and disor- derly people, difficult to govern, and predisposed to resist authority. This impression as to the American character it was not easy to remove; and the least commotion among the settlers, in the infancy of the colony, would have revived that impression anew, and probably have proved fatal to all our hopes."
In the latter part of the year 1826 the people of Austin's colony were startled by the news of a revolt at the town of Nacogdoches, East Texas. Colonel Hayden Edwards had been granted a colonization con- tract by the State of Coahuila and Texas, in 1825, by which he agreed to introduce and settle a certain number of families within a defined territory, including the ancient town of Nacogdoches, which he made the capital of his colony. In consequence of representations made to the governor, that officer annulled his contract, and ordered him to leave the country. Edwards felt that he had been unjustly dealt by, and, determining to right himself by force, raised the standard of revolt with the declared intention to establish an independent state, and collected such force as he could, composed of Americans and Cherokee Indians.
Edwards had been devoting his time and means to procuring settlers for his colony. He, however, labored under the misfortune of having within the limits of his colony a number of American and Mexican families, the first, from what was called the "neutral ground," had pre- vious to this time acknowledged no government, nor law, but their own; the latter had fled the country in 1819, and stopped in Louisiana and Mississippi, and had returned to their old homes after the establishment of Mexican independence in 1822-23. Neither of the two classes were entirely friendly to the new colonists, but regarded them as intruders. and were unwilling to be governed by them. Among them were some very bad men who, in consequence of their crimes in the United States. had fled from just punishment.
Among others whom Edwards found in the colony was Colonel Ellis Bean, one of the followers of Philip Nolan, and, subsequently, of Gen- eral Morelos, in the Mexican revolution of independence. He had been sent by his chief, in 1815, to the United States, to raise men for the Republican Army. He arrived previous to the battle of New Orleans. in which he participated. He remained several years in the United States. In the summer of 1825 he made a visit to the City of Mexico. where he met many of his old fellow soldiers. In consideration of his services, the Mexican government commissioned him a lieutenant colonel in the permanent forces of the republic ; also, Indian agent in Texas.
While in the city, Bean met Dr. John Dunn Hunter, who had been sent by the Cherokee Indians of Texas, as their agent, to apply to the government for lands they occupied, and titles for the same. They asked the government to grant them a certain territory in which they resided, to be held in common. This the government refused, but agreed to give them titles for their possessions as other settlers. Hunter returned to the nation, and reported what he had done, and the promise of the gov-
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ernment, which was unsatisfactory and exasperated them against the government. During 1825 Bean returned to Texas and located on the Angelina River.
At this time, 1825, Colonel Edwards had gone to the State of Mis- sissippi to procure settlers, and induced his brother, Benjamin W. Edwards, to go to Texas and take charge of the colony until he returned. After making arrangements to bring and settle his family, he returned to Texas, but, in consequence of the poor mail facilities, did not report to the Political Chief, Saucedo, until January, 1826. He informed the Chief that he had been using his best exertions since his return to estab- lish good order and an observance of the laws, and that he had been successful, with the exception of José Antonio Sepulveda and Luis Pro- cela-the first, had been guilty of forging drafts for money, and land titles ; the latter had fled from confinement in the United States, where he left his family, and since his arrival in Nacogdoches, he had been acting as alcalde by proxy. Edwards further informed the Chief that his prospects for fulfilling his contract were good; and, after transmit- ting copies of his official acts, hinted that if these turbulent characters had been citizens of the United States, he would have dealt summarily with them, as he had a right under the law and his contract to do.
This letter was offensive to the Chief. Edwards had correctly por- trayed the character of these two obnoxious characters, no doubt ; but they were Mexicans, so was the Chief. Still there were other causes of offense. In 1819 Nacogdoches was depopulated by the Royalist troops. There were none there to govern or to be governed ; nor did any of them return for years. Previous to this time, however, grants of lands had been made, but had lapsed. As before stated, after independence had been declared a few of the old settlers returned, together with some new settlers. Of these there were some hundred or more in number, consist- ing of all ages, colors and nationality. Sepulveda and Procela, believing that the lands would become valuable and of ready sale, went to work getting up old titles to the best land in the colony, and, when necessary, did not hesitate to manufacture titles.
Edwards, aware of a number of old claims set up, in November issued an order requiring all claimants under old grants to present them, in order that such as were genuine should be reviewed, and all spurious ones rejected ; and declaring further, that the lands claimed by those who failed to do so would be sold, but that those who bought the land thus sold should pay the occupant for the improvement made by them. That the first part of this order was both necessary and just is unquestion- able; but it is equally unquestionable that he had no legal authority to use such lands.
The next cause of offense was an order for the organization of the militia and election of officers; also, for the election of an alcalde. In accordance with orders an election was held by Sepulveda, the acting alcalde. The first part of this order was right and in accordance with law and the contract; but the order for the election of an alcalde was unauthorized. However, the election for alcalde was held. There were two candidates-Chaplin, a son-in-law of Colonel Edwards, and Norris, the brother-in-law of Captain James Gaines, who resided on the Sabine
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