Moses Austin

know.

And a fellow come through town, he talked mighty big about this here place called Texas and said it's how old Moses Austin got himself a whopping big grand land and was Often farmland and some 400 acres of pasture to folks who would come down this way.

So pack up my kit and caboodle and come down.

Well, did you get all that was promised to you, Mr. Smithwick? I got some.

know.

And a fellow come through town, he talked mighty big about this here place called Texas and said it's how old Moses Austin got himself a whopping big grand land and was often farmland and some 400 acres of pasture to folks who would come down this way.

So pack up my kit and caboodle and come down.

Well, did you get all that was promised to you, Mr. Smithwick? I got some.

And today, we're going to meet the people who looked at that proposition and said yes.

hello i'm hank wilson and welcome to episode 99 of the hidden history of texas we've talked before about stephen f austin we've talked about the old 300 and if you grew up in texas you probably heard at least some version of the story moses austin received permission to bring 300 families into texas moses died his son stephen took over the settlers came and eventually they became known as the old 300 That's all true.

But it makes this whole thing sound remarkably organized.

It wasn't.

In fact, when this began, nobody could have been completely certain which government was going to be in charge by the time everybody arrived.

The story really begins with Moses Austin.

Austin had been involved in lead mining and banking in Missouri.

And like a lot of Americans, he was hit hard by the Panic of 1819.

Okay, let's go to the Thought Bubble.

When Mexico became independent, there were only about 2,000 Tejanos there, so to encourage economic development, Mexico's government granted a huge tract of land to Moses Austin.

Austin's son Stephen made a tidy profit selling off smaller parcels of that land until there were 7,000 American Americans there.

This made Mexico nervous, so backpedaling furiously, Mexico annulled the land contracts and banned further emigration into Texas.

Even though slavery was already abolished in Mexico, up to now they had allowed Americans to bring slaves.

Austin, joined by some Tejano elites, demanded greater autonomy and the right to use slave labor.

Thinking the better of it, Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna decided to assert control over the rest of territory with an army, turning the elite's demands for autonomy into a full-scale revolt for independence.

On March 13, 1836, Santa Anna defeated the American defenders of the Alamo, killing 187 or 188 Americans, including Davy Crockett.

Okay.

More specifically, how about the father of Texas, the man UT Austin is literally named after, Stephen F. Austin, arch patriot? Surely this principle that Texas is for everybody On the planet, except those who say this is not the case, surely that can be found in his writings, right? And, and who even was this Stephen Austin character anyways? Well, to give you a little Texas history, in 1821, Moses Austin, father of Stephen Austin, was given a grant by Mexico to settle families in the Texas region.

At the time, it was sparsely populated, just a few thousand Mexicans and a handful of settlements.

Settlements which were constantly being raided by hostile Indian tribes.

Spain gets the idea to offer American settlers the opportunity for vast tracts of land for cheap as an opportunity in order to get them, uh, to kind of turn the region into something economically beneficial, and also act as a bit of a, maybe a better buffer against the Indians, right? Then in that same year, Moses Austin dies, and on his deathbed tells Stephen, his posterity, that it is literally his dying wish to see him continue the work and fulfill the contract.

And Mexico that same year gains independence from Spain, but decides to continue the contract more or less the same, and they think that telling people, "Hey, convert to Catholicism," or bring along American Catholics, you know, things of this nature, that's going to make them more loyal to Mexico.

Of course, Mexico being more Catholic than America, America being a little bit hostile to Catholics, uh, perhaps understandably at that time.