Felipe Enrique Neri Baron de Bastrop
Bastrop, Bastrop County, Texas
Marker Inscription
(1770-1829) Erected in recognition of the distinguished service to Texas Pioneer Red River empresario. Land commissioner of Austin's colony. Member of the Congress of Coahuila and Texas. In his honor this county and county seat have been named.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Felipe Enrique Neri, the self-styled Baron de Bastrop, was one of the pivotal figures who opened Texas to Anglo-American settlement. As an empresario on the Red River, land commissioner for Stephen F. Austin's colony, and a member of the Congress of Coahuila and Texas, he helped make Austin's colonization scheme a reality in the 1820s. In gratitude, both the county and its seat bear his name.
Why it matters
Bastrop stands at the hinge between Mexican Texas and the wave of Anglo settlement that would reshape the region, a key broker in the founding of American Texas.
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Related people
- · Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop
- · Stephen F. Austin
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
The Gotier Trace
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Blazed in the 1820s, the Gotier Trace linked San Felipe, capital of Stephen F. Austin's colony, with Bastrop, threading across the counties of early Anglo Texas. It was no engineered highway but a marked path—dusty in drought, boggy in rain—named for settler James Gotier, who with several kin was killed in a raid near the route in 1837. From such rough traces the pattern of Texas travel was first drawn.
Early History of the City of Bastrop
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Long home to the Tonkawa and Comanche, this stretch of the Colorado River became strategic when Spanish explorers blazed part of El Camino Real, the King's Highway, across it in the years after 1691. A fort and community rose here in 1805 to guard the road, and by 1825 the site was one of the first settlements in Stephen F. Austin's colony, first called Mina and then renamed Bastrop in 1837 for the influential land agent Baron de Bastrop. Its founding families went on to serve in the Texas Revolution and the Mexican War, and the town became county seat and home to a noted military academy.
Bastrop County
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This land was part of Stephen F. Austin's original 1821 colonial grant, becoming the municipality of Mina in 1834 and then a county of the Republic of Texas in 1836. In December 1837 it was renamed Bastrop to honor Felipe Enrique Neri, the Baron de Bastrop, land commissioner for Austin's Colony and a member of the Coahuila-and-Texas congress. The town of Bastrop serves as the county seat.
Jesse Halderman
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This state marker honors Jesse Halderman, who took up arms in the Volunteer Army of Texas in 1835 and fought at San Jacinto in 1836 — the decisive eighteen-minute battle that won Texas its independence from Mexico. The State of Texas set the 'Star and Wreath' stone in 1962 to mark his service and resting place.