Portrait of Moses Austin [source]
Grandfather of Texas
Moving West
Moses Austin was a giant in the lead industry. When he was awarded the contract to roof the Virginia State Capitol, he began a journey to consolidate control over all parts of the lead industry in the country, founding the first American town west of, but not on, the Mississippi in the process. He helped to found the Bank of St. Louis, but when the bank failed, he lost all his money. Looking for a way to make it back, he used the newly signed Adam-Onis treaty as inspiration and headed to Spanish Texas in 1820.
Texas
Austin had a plan to bring Anglo colonists to the sparsely populated Spanish Texas. With the help of an old business acquaintance, he gained the Governor of Texas’s approval. The governor sent word to Mexico City and Austin headed home. When he reached Missouri, however, four weeks of wet weather had left him with pneumonia. Instead of resting, he spent all his time organizing the new colony and his health continued to deteriorate. He lived two more months, long enough to receive word that his request had been granted, and his death bed words were for his son.
“tell dear Stephen that it is his dieing fathers last request to prosecute the enterprise he had Commenced, that he had set his heart two much on it but for some wise purpose, god had prevented his travelling the rode he had planed out, he had opened and prepared the way for you and your brothers and that he felt a conviction you would be successful and independant in a few years”
Maria Austin to Stephen F. Austin, 8/25/1821
Carrying on the Dream
Though Stephen F. Austin was busy with his own work, he couldn’t ignore his father’s last request. He would have to renegotiate the terms with the new Mexican government in 1821, but Stephen Austin would make his father’s colony more successful than Moses Austin could ever have dreamed.
Interpreting Texas 