Stephen F. Austin - Moving To Texas

Moving To Texas

During Austin's time in Arkansas, his father traveled to Spanish Texas and received an empresarial grant that would allow him to bring 300 American families to Texas. Moses Austin was attacked on his way back to Missouri. Upon returning home, Moses became ill with what was believed to be pneumonia and died on June 10, 1821. He left his empresario grant to his son Stephen. Though Austin was reluctant to carry on his father's Texas venture, he was persuaded to pursue the colonization of Texas by a letter from his mother, Mary Brown Austin, written just two days before Moses Austin died.

Austin boarded the steamer Beaver and departed to New Orleans to meet Spanish officials led by Erasmo Seguín. He was at Natchitoches, Louisiana, on June 31, 1821, when he learned of his father's death. "This news has effected me very much, he was one of the most feeling and affectionate Fathers that ever lived. His faults I now say, and always have, were not of the heart."

His party traveled the 300 miles (480 km) in three weeks to San Antonio with the intent of reauthorizing his father's grant, arriving on August 12. While in transit, they learned Mexico had declared its independence from Spain, and Texas had become a Mexican province rather than a Spanish territory. A San Antonio native, José Antonio Navarro, having like visions of the future of Texas, befriended Stephen F. Austin, and a lasting association developed between the two. Navarro, proficient with Spanish and Mexican law, would assist Austin in obtaining his empresario contracts. In San Antonio, the grant was reauthorized by Governor Antonio María Martínez, who allowed Austin to explore the Gulf Coast between San Antonio and the Brazos River to find a suitable location for a colony. As guides for the party, Manuel Becerra, along with three Aranama Indians, went with the expedition.

Austin advertised the opportunity in New Orleans, stating that the land was available along the Brazos and Colorado Rivers. A family of a husband, wife and two children would receive 1,280 acres (520 ha) at twelve and a half cents per acre. Farmers could get 177 acres (72 ha) and ranchers 4,428 acres (1,792 ha). In December 1821, the first U.S. colonists crossed into the granted territory by land and sea, on the Brazos River in present-day Brazoria County, Texas.