USA > Texas > History of Texas : from 1685 to 1892, volume 1 > Part 7
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47
(83)
84
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
capital: Concepcion, San Jose, San Juan and Espada. They were for a long time in a very flourishing condition, and effected many conversions among the Indians through the apostolic zeal of their clergy, aided in their work by escorts of soldiers. But since 1790, owing to the little attention paid them by the Governors and owing too, perhaps, to an abate- ment of zeal on the part of the missionaries, who have had them in charge, for the propagation of the faith, they have declined to such an extent that one of them (Concepcion ) has been entirely deserted, and its costly and magnificent church, with its holy altar and all its appendages, has been left to become a ruin, and be the subject of insolent desecration on the part of roving savages. The three others are still inhab- ited by some Spaniards and a few descendants of evangelized Indians, and are in charge of a monk of the college of Our Lady de Guadalupe de Zacatecas, who is nominally their presi- dent. Three other Missions are yet existing in the vicinity of the Presidio of La Bahia, and they, also, are under the management of a monk of the college of Zacatecas. These, too, are in a like ruinous condition with those near this capital, but are, at intervals, visited by such evangelized Indians as have their homes not far removed from them. If provision is not made from the royal treasury for the support of mis- sionaries, and for such military escorts as may be needed to enable them safely to gather the Indians, there can be no hope of farther conversions of the wild tribes, and if the same kingly aid is not extended to foster and advance every other interest in this Province, then must it ere long share the fate of the decayed Missions. * ANTONIO MARTINEZ, JOSE ANGEL FLORES."
What an exposition of the futility of the attempts of Spain to redeem the Province from savagery ! During the period
85
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
extending from 1689 to 1821, a period of one hundred and thirty-two years, desolation and decay, poverty and helpless- ness, existed on every hand. These representations to the King of Spain were made by his still loyal subjects of San Antonio de Bexar, two months after the proclamation of the Plan of Iguala, under which, five months later, that monarch had not, outside of the island castle of San Juan de Ulloa, a foothold on the soil of Mexico. The close of the Mexican revolution, by the triumph of Iturbide, left that country prostrate, to become for many years the prey of military factions.
The many Missions previously established for the propaga- tion of the Catholic faith and conversion of the Indians (sus- tained formerly by the military power of Spain ) were now allowed to decay. Three hundred years of Spanish tyranny, a tyranny perhaps never exceeded in selfish heartlessness, was well calculated to destroy in the great body of the Mexican people that knowledge of the use of arms and that spirit of courage and self-reliance absolutely necessary for the reten- tion and defense of nearly two thousand miles of frontier, constantly harassed by fierce savage tribes and along which were situated, at wide intervals, ranchos, haciendas, mines, villages and towns.
In 1820 and 1821 the civilized population of Texas had dwindled to insignificant numbers, concentrated in small com- munities at Nacogdoches, La Bahia and San Antonio de Bexar. The whole number of inhabitants, according to best authori- ties, did not exceed five thousand souls in the towns and outlying districts.
He who would read rightly and judge justly the subsequent history of Texas, should bear this deplorable picture in mind. It portrays the expiring agonies of Spanish civilization at the close of 1820, when the leader of a new civilization appears upon the scene in the person of
86
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
MOSES AUSTIN.
Moses Austin was born at Durham, a village in Connecticut, in 1767, and when a boy went to Philadelphia where, when but twenty years old, he married Miss Maria Brown, presum- ably in 1787. His brother, Stephen, was then at the head of an important house in Philadelphia, and Moses Austin, soon after his marriage, took charge of a branch house in Richmond, Virginia. In a few years the brothers purchased Chizzell's lead mines in Wythe County, Virginia, and Moses Austin took charge of the enterprise. At that place, on the 3d of Novem- ber, 1793, Stephen Fuller Austin, the future colonial empres- ario of Texas, was born.1
In a few years, the Philadelphia and Richmond houses failed, involving the loss of the lead mines. At this time flattering reports of rich lead mines in upper Louisiana (now in the State of Missouri) excited the attention of Moses Aus- tin. The territory being under the dominion of Spain, he procured a passport from the Spanish minister to the United States in 1797 and visited that region and secured from the Governor, Baron de Carondelet, a grant of a league of land,
1 There were two other children of Moses Austin who reached maturity and became identified with Texas: James Brown Austin, a young man of estimable character, who died in New Orleans, in August, 1829, of yellow fever, and Emily M. Austin, born at the mines in 1795, who married first, James Bryan, a Pennsylvanian, and subsequently James F. Perry. Mr. Bryan died in Missouri in 1822, leaving three sons who are yet citizens of Texas: Wm. J., Moses A., and Hon. Guy M. Bryan. Three children, Stephen S., Henry A., and Emily M. Perry, born of the second union, lived to maturity. In 1831 Mr. and Mrs. Perry and the children came to Texas and thenceforward were well known, honored and useful citizens of the Province and subsequent Republic. Mr. Perry and his son, Henry, died while on a visit to Biloxi, Mississippi, in 1853. Emily M., an accomplished and greatly beloved young lady, died in 1862. Of Mrs. Perry the author of this work in the Encyclopedia of the New West, in 1881, wrote: "She was a cultivated woman and, until disease and trouble invaded her constitution, a remarkably beautiful one. She died - as the just die -peacefully, at her home at Peach Point, Brazoria County, in 1852."
-
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
87
covering the site where the town of Potosi, Washington County, Missouri, now stands.
In 1799, Austin and his family, following the Kanawah, Ohio and Mississippi rivers, removed to the grant and formed the first American settlement in that section. He prospered in mining and other pursuits for some years, dispensed a liberal hospitality, and enjoyed an enviable character in the surrounding country. But again disaster came. The failure of the Bank of St. Louis swept away his accumulations and left him impoverished. He freely surrendered everything to his creditors, and again, in his fifty-third year, looked abroad for a new field of enterprise. His residence for twenty years in Missouri had familiarized him to some extent, with Spanish laws and methods of administration, and he had also acquired considerable knowledge of Texas through the report of Captain Pike and other adventurers, who, in 1812-13, served under Magee and Perry and from trappers and Indian traders. In possession of such knowledge and animated by an enter- prising spirit, his mind naturally turned to Texas as a field in which to recuperate his shattered fortunes. With a fore- thought justified by results, he conceived the idea of founding a colony of his countrymen in that almost trackless wilder- ness.
Traveling by land, on horseback, he made the long and hazardous journey to San Antonio de Bexar, where he arrived on the 23d day of December, 1820. Kennedy and other writers say that he was peremptorily ordered by Governor Antonio Martinez to quit the country, as he had violated its laws by entering the Province without permission of the Spanish King, and that, on leaving the Governor to prepare for his return journey, he met the Baron de Bastrop, then a member of the municipal government, to whom he explained the peaceful object of his mission, and that the Baron warmly espoused his cause and commended him to Governor Martinez as a worthy man and former subject of Spain, and secured for
.
-
88
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
him, not only the good-will but the earnest co-operation of the Governor and other authorities of the place; and that these functionaries recommended his proposed application to settle 300 families in Texas, to the favorable consideration of General Don Joaquin Arredondo, Commanding General of the Eastern Internal Provinces, with headquarters at Monterey.
While these statements doubtless are, in the main, true, there are other facts connected with Austin's arrival at San Antonio, that no historian has hitherto furnished, as far as I have been able to learn. They are derived from an official paper found among the Spanish archives of San Antonio, and, while of no controlling importance, are not without interest. From that document it appears that on the 23d day of De- cember, 1820, there arrived in San Antonio de Bexar, three white men and one negro. On the same day (quite naturally in view of the then recent invasion of Long) the white men were summoned to appear before the Governor of the Prov- ince, Colonel Don Antonio Martinez, and on oath make true answers to such questions as should be put to them. Their examinations were conducted through the Baron de Bastrop, who acted as interpreter. Two of the parties, in answer to the questions propounded to them, said that they were born in Virginia, and made known their names, their ages and their place of domicil, Natchitoches, Louisiana. They said that they were Protestants; that one of them had come in quest of four runaway negro slaves; and that the other had come to solicit the privilege of settling in the country. The third party gave his name as Moses Austin and answered, that he was a native of the State of Connecticut, a resident of Missouri, a mer- chant and dealer in lead ore, a Catholic, was aged 53 years, and had come to Texas in the hope that he might obtain land on which to settle with his family and raise cotton and sugar ; and that the negro found in company with him and the other two white men, was a slave and his property. He also avowed before the examiners, that he had at one time been a Spanish
89
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
subject ( while Missouri belonged to the government of Spain ) and in proof of the fact produced a passport signed by Don Car- los Martinez de Trujo, Minister Plenipotentiary of his Catholic Majesty to the United States, dated at Philadelphia, July 13, 1797. When asked why he had not sooner used the passport and made application to settle in the country, he answered that he had done so promptly and had settled in Missouri as soon as he could. The scribe evidently misunderstood one of Austin's answers and substituted family, for colony, or coun- trymen, and it is reasonable to presume that he did not mean to convey the idea that he was strictly a Catholic ; but merely meant to pledge himself to obey the laws of the country, by contributing to the support of that church. The answers were satisfactory and his application for permission to introduce a colony was sent forward to General Arredondo.
Austin, cheered by these auspicious prospects of success, in January started on his homeward journey, leaving the Baron de Bastrop1 (as his representative ) with instructions to look after his interests and inform him as soon as possible of the success of his application, should it meet with favor. We do not know who were his companions in this return trip, hazardous to any but a well armed party of considerable, numbers ; but it is known that he followed the old Spanish military road from San Antonio to Nacogdoches and thence to Natchitoches. It was a severe winter; rains were fre- quent and the swollen creeks and rivers had to be crossed by swimming or on improvised rafts. A gloomy beginning for a great enterprise. After suffering much from hardship and exposure, Austin reached Natchitoches and proceeded by way of Red River and the Mississippi to his home in Missouri. Before leaving for Texas he abandoned his previously con- ceived plan for establishing a farm on Red River to facilitate
1 Austin had previously formed the acquaintance of the Baron de Bastrop in the city of New Orleans.
90
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
the passage of immigrants through the wilderness of Arkansas. He determined to make New Orleans the gateway to Texas. For this purpose he dispatched his son, Stephen F. Austin, to that city, with instructions to make such conditional contracts as seemed necessary to provide for the prompt transportation of colonists, by way of the gulf, to the Texas coast. Stephen F. Austin was accordingly in New Orleans when his father returned home.
The end of the eventful career of Moses Austin and the beginning of the still more eventful career of his son was near at hand. Moses Austin arrived at Hazel Run, the home of his daughter, Mrs. Bryan, with his constitution thoroughly undermined, and lingered but a little while in the land of the living - long enough, however, to convey his blessings to the members of his family, and to transfer to his son the duty of executing his plans - plans full of promise to after ages. On the 10th day of June, 1821, he ceased from his earthly labors.
Noble heart ! Great soul ! The perpetuation of thy fame needs no stately monolith or monumental pile !
The application of Moses Austin was approved by General Arredondo, at Monterey, on the 17th of January, 1821, a few days after Austin's departure from San Antonio ; a month and seven days before the Plan of Iguala was promulgated; eight months and ten days before the power of Spain was finally trampled in the dust at the capital, and a considerable time before the change in government became an accomplished fact in the Province of Texas.
This action of the Commanding General was in due time officially communicated to Provincial Governor Martinez, at San Antonio, and he dispatched Don Erasmo Seguin ( a prom- inent citizen of that place) to the United States with instruc- tions, as special commissioner, to inform Austin of the success of his application, and conduct the first band of immigrants into the country. Being apprised of the arrival
-
91
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
of Seguin at Natchitoches and the particulars of his mission, Stephen F. Austin hastened from New Orleans to meet him. On reaching Natchitoches he learned of his father's death and of his dying injunction to carry forward the scheme of colonization. Stephen F. Austin was at this time 28 years of age, and had served as a member of the Territorial Legislature of Missouri, entering that body in 1813, and being regularly re-elected until 1819, when he re- moved to Arkansas for the purpose of establishing a farm to be used as an immigrant depot. He remained in the Territory of Arkansas part of the years 1819-20 and was appointed Circuit Judge. Moses Austin, on his way to Texas in 1820, proceeded to Little Rock, where he met his son. It was decided as has been previously stated, to give up the farm and that Stephen F. Austin should go to New Orleans, and await the action of the Mexican government upon the application for a colonial grant. Stephen F. Austin was born in Virginia and reared in Missouri. He attended school in Connecticut for a short time and completed his studies at Transylvania University, Lexington, Kentucky. Of exemplary habits, possessing a clear and conservative mind, trained to methodi- cal and industrious habits, accustomed to the exercise of the virtue of patience and not without practical experience in the affairs of life, his reputation was such as to inspire confidence in his success.
Accompanied by the Commissioner, Don Erasmo Seguin, he left Natchitoches for San Antonio de Bexar, on the 5th of July, 1821, to confer with Governor Martinez, secure a trans- fer of the grant made to his father and ask permission to explore a portion of the country and select a district in which to locate the colony. Besides himself and Seguin, the party consisted of fourteen persons, all of whom became settlers in the country, viz. : Erwine, Barre, Marple, Beard, Belew, W. Smithers, Edward Lovelace, Henry Holstein, Neill Gasper, William Little, Joseph Polly, James Beard, William Wilson,
92
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
and Dr. James Hewitson. On the first day of August, 1821, they encamped at the old San Antonio and Nacogdoches cross- ing of the Brazos. On the 12th of the same month, they arrived at San Antonio. Governor Martinez extended a cor- dial welcome to Austin, recognized him as successor to his father's right and manifested a sincere desire to encourage his enterprise. Austin submitted to the Governor a plan for granting land to immigrants, the plan promising a section of six hundred and forty acres to each man over twenty-one years of age, half that amount to each married woman, a hundred and sixty acres to each child, and eighty acres to owners of slaves for each slave introduced. This plan was approved by the Governor.
Austin hastily examined the country lying along the lower waters of the Guadalupe, Lavaca, Navidad, Colorado, Brazos and San Jacinto rivers, and along the gulf coast. Selecting the site for his colony in that rich alluvial region, he repaired by land to New Orleans. The groundwork for the edifice was now laid. It remained to erect the superstructure. It was a trying period in his life. The responsibilities he had assumed were such as to call for the exercise of great strength of mind and will; great constancy of purpose; great power as a leader. And however much he may have differed, tempo- rarily, at a later time, with a portion or a majority of his countrymen as to the wisdom of measures of public policy, the successful application of which showed his judgment in those instances to have been at fault, he deserves the admira- tion of all liberal minds for the noble life-work he performed.
To inaugurate his enterprise funds were required beyond his limited means. In New Orleans he found in Joseph L. Hawkins, a former class-mate at Transylvania, a friend with the means and will to assist him. Through the aid of Hawkins, the schooner Lively was freighted with a supply of provisions and implements necessary for husbandry, and dispatched to the mouth of the Brazos River. Here the supplies were cached
5
STEPHEN FULLER AUSTIN
93
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
and the Lively returned to New Orleans. The vessel was soon after sent to Matagorda Bay with another cargo of supplies and eighteen immigrants. The vessel, with its cargo and pas- sengers, was never heard of more.
Austin scattered widely over the valley of the Mississippi a prospectus advertising his scheme and inviting persons to be- come members of the proposed colony. It excited profound attention and ultimately secured the co-operation of home- seekers. About the time (November, 1821), when the Lively sailed on her second voyage, Austin left New Orleans, to lead the first body of immigrants into Texas by way of Natch- itoches. He reached the Brazos on the 31st of December, 1821, crossed to the west side of that stream and, January 1, 1822, pitched camp on a creek in what is now Washington County that he, in commemoration of the event, named New Year's Creek, a name it still bears. Andrew Robinson and other members of the party settled in that vicinity. Thus began the permanent settlement of Texas by Anglo-Americans.
Austin proceeded to the appointed place of rendezvous on the coast, intending to secure the supplies cached near the mouth of the Brazos, and to meet the Lively. He was sorely disappointed to find that the supplies had been stolen by Carancahua Indians, and at last realized that the Lively had been lost at sea.
Returning to New Year's Creek he found that additions had been made to his colony by new arrivals from the States, among whom were his brother, James Brown Austin, and Josiah H. Bell, a South Carolinian. "With Mr. Bell was his young wife, Miss Mary E. Mckenzie, a native of Kentucky. Her son, Thadeus C. Bell, born later in the year, was the second child born in the colony, being preceded a few weeks by a child of Henry Jones, who with his brother, Captain Randall Jones, from Alabama, settled farther down the Brazos, about the time that Mr. and Mrs. Bell reached Texas.
A few single men, and the families of Garrett, Higgins and
94
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
John Williams (a Cherokee chief), settled on the Brazos at the old Nacogdoches and San Antonio crossing in the first days of 1822. During the year Buckner, Powell and Jessie Burn- ham settled on the Colorado, and Kendall, Philip Dimmitt, Robert King and others elsewhere in the colony.
Having proceeded thus far, Austin deemed it proper to report his progress to the Governor at San Antonio ; and, undertaking the journey with his brother and fifteen or twenty companions, reached that place March 15, 1822. Greatly to his surprise and disappointment, he was informed that, owing to the triumph of the Plan of Iguala, it would be necessary for him to go to the city of Mexico and procure from the new government a renewal of the authority and privileges previously granted.1 He accordingly left Josiah H. Bell as his agent, and, with Dr. Robert Andrews as a companion, rode out of San Antonio on the 20th of March, and made the trip to the city of Mexico, a distance of twelve hundred miles, in thirty-six days, safely reaching the capital on the 29th of April, 1822.
Late in March, 1822, the schooner Only Son, Captain Ben- jamin Ellison,2 from New Orleans, entered Matagorda Bay with a number of immigrants seeking homes in the new colony. She also had aboard supplies of provisions, house- hold effects and farming implements. She was owned by two of the immigrants, Kincheloe and Anderson, and sailed from New Orleans on the 7th of February with a total of ninety
1 Kennedy and other writers have erred in the assumption that Governor Martinez was, in August, 1821, acting under the Plan of Iguala, when he agreed to permit Stephen F. Austin to succeed to and carry out the empres- ario contract secured by Moses Austin. In fact the news of the promul- gation of the Plan had not at that time reached Texas, and Martinez was still acting under a Spanish commission.
2 Captain Ellison afterwards made a number of other voyages to Texas. In 1869, and again in 1870, it was the pleasure of the author to meet him living in retirement in his pleasant home, with his most estimable wife, in the historic village of Groton, Connecticut.
95
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
colonists and prospectors, among whom were Abram M. Clare, of Kentucky, George Helm, Mr. Bray and his son-in- law, Charles Whitson and - Morgan, with their families, and Greenup Hayes, of Kentucky, a grandson of Daniel Boone.1 During this voyage a considerable number of passengers died of yellow fever and were buried at sea. A few days after the arrival of the schooner another vessel from New Orleans came to anchor in Matagorda Bay. Among the passengers aboard were Samuel M. Williams, afterwards the famous secretary of Austin's colony, and Jonathan C. Peyton and wife. The immigrants from both vessels were landed on the west bank of the Colorado River, at a point three miles above the mouth of the stream. Here they went into camp and entered into a treaty of friendship with the Carancahua Indians. A party composed of Helm, Clare and four com- panions, was dispatched to La Bahia for Mexican carts.
James Cummings conducted the new-comers into the interior, some to his camp, and some to the Atascosita cross- ing of the Colorado, a few miles below where the town of Columbus now stands. The immigrants being without means of transportation for their effects left three or four men on the Brazos to guard their stores. When the party sent to La Bahia returned with the carts they found that the Caran- cahuas had murdered the guard and plundered the camp. Captain Jesse Burnham and a well-armed body of men, marched against, surprised and visited vengeance upon the savages. Thus began hostilities between the settlers and the aborigines, hostilities that, with few intermissions, lasted for years and resulted in the destruction of many valuable lives.
1 Helm died the year of his arrival. It was his intention to return to Kentucky for his family. One of his sons was, in after years, Governor of Kentucky.
Bray and his son settled on Bray's Bayou, near where Harrisburg now stands.
Hayes soon returned to Kentucky.
96
HISTORY OF TEXAS.
Eighty colonists arrived in Galveston Bay on the schooner Revenge, Captain Shires, in April, 1822. Of the number, Moses L. Choate and William Pettus located on the San Jacinto, the first settlement established on that stream.1
Other home-seekers continued to flock to the shores of Texas and the colony gave substantial promise of that success that afterward attended it.
1 At the close of 1819, Anson Taylor, a stalwart frontiersman, settled near the Cooshattie village on the Trinity, and in 1820 Col. Knight and Walter C. White, from Long's camp (afterwards well-known citizens of Brazoria) burned off a cane-brake and raised a crop of corn at a point on Buffalo Bayou.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.