Moses Austin
Austin, Travis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The initiator of Anglo-American settlement in Texas, Moses Austin was a native of Durham, Connecticut. After his marriage to Mary Brown in 1785, Austin became a leading figure in the development of the American lead industry. His buiness took him to Virginia and then west to the Mississippi Valley. A colonizer and pioneer as well, Austin helped establish several frontier communities. Moses Austin's decision to ventrure into a colonziation enterprise in the Spanish territory of Texas led him to San Antonio de Bexar in 1820. With the help of Felipe Neri, Baron de Bastrop, Austin requested permission from the Spanish Governor, Antonio Martinez, to settle a colony of 300 Anglo-American families in his province. Austin returned to Missouri, where he learned in March 1821 that his petition had been granted. Although ill from the effects of his journey, he began making plans to raise a colony. Three months later, Moses Austin died in the Hazel Run settlement, where he was buried. He was later reinterred in Potosi, Missouri. In response to his father's dying wish, Stephen F. Austin continued the colonization project and led the first of the "Old 300" colonists into Texas in late 1821. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
A Connecticut native who became a leading figure in the American lead industry, Moses Austin carried his ventures from Virginia into the Mississippi Valley and on to Spanish Texas. In 1820 he reached San Antonio de Bexar and, with the help of Baron de Bastrop, won Governor Antonio Martinez's permission to settle 300 Anglo-American families in the province. Austin died in 1821 soon after learning his petition had been granted, and his son Stephen F. Austin carried out his dying wish by leading the "Old 300" into Texas.
Why it matters
Moses Austin set in motion the Anglo-American colonization of Texas, a migration that reshaped the future of the Southwest and the boundaries of the United States.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1820s, the land that would become Texas was a far northern frontier of a vast Spanish empire in its final months — and then, almost overnight, part of a newly independent Mexico. The region was enormous, sparsely populated, and difficult to defend or develop. Spanish and then Mexican authorities faced a persistent problem: how to settle a territory so remote from the centers of power.
One answer was to invite outsiders in. Rather than leave the land empty, officials were willing to grant enormous tracts to entrepreneurs who would bring in colonists to farm it, build communities, and hold the frontier. It was a bold and risky bargain — opening the door to settlers from the neighboring United States, whose growing population was already pressing westward across the Mississippi Valley.
Into this moment stepped a man whose career had already carried him across a young and expanding America: from New England to Virginia, into the lead-mining country of the Mississippi Valley, and finally toward the Spanish province of Texas. His ambitions would set in motion one of the great migrations of the nineteenth century.
People & events
Moses Austin was born in Durham, Connecticut, and after his marriage to Mary Brown in 1785 he became a leading figure in the American lead industry. His business drew him first to Virginia and then westward into the Mississippi Valley, and along the way he helped establish several frontier communities. He was, by temperament and experience, both an industrialist and a pioneer — a man who built things where little had stood before.
His boldest venture came late. In 1820, Austin traveled to San Antonio de Bexar with a plan to plant a colony of Anglo-American families in Spanish Texas. With the crucial help of Felipe Neri, Baron de Bastrop, he petitioned the Spanish governor, Antonio Martinez, for permission to settle three hundred families in the province. Then he returned to Missouri to wait.
Word came in March 1821 that his petition had been granted — but the journey had broken his health. Ill and weakening, Austin began making plans to raise his colony even as his strength failed. Three months later he died at the Hazel Run settlement, and was buried there; he was later reinterred in Potosi, Missouri. His dying wish passed to his son. Stephen F. Austin took up the unfinished project and, late in 1821, led the first of the settlers who would be remembered as the "Old 300" into Texas.
Its place in the American story
The colonization scheme that Moses Austin set in motion changed the map of North America. The steady arrival of Anglo-American families into Texas, begun with the Old 300, swelled over the following years into a migration that reshaped the region's population, culture, and eventual political destiny. What started as one man's petition became a turning point in the westward expansion of the United States.
Austin's own life traces the broader arc of the early American economy and frontier. His work in the lead industry, his ventures from Virginia into the Mississippi Valley, and his community-building all reflect the restless, enterprising spirit that pushed the young nation west. He was part industrialist, part pioneer — a combination that defined a whole generation of American expansion.
There is also something deeply human in how the story turned. The father conceived the plan and secured the grant, but did not live to see it through; the son honored a dying wish and carried it into being. The colonization of Texas thus began not with an army or a treaty but with a family's promise kept — a reminder of how often the great movements of history rest on personal loyalty.
If you visit
This is a memorial, so come to reflect rather than to tour a building. Stand before it and consider that you are near the heart of the city that carries the family name — a place where the beginnings of Anglo-American Texas are remembered in stone.
Let the marker anchor a longer arc in your mind. Picture the sweep of a single life: a Connecticut boyhood, a career in the lead trade, the long roads to Virginia and the Mississippi Valley, and finally the ride to San Antonio de Bexar to ask a Spanish governor for a colony. It is a story of enormous distances covered in an age of horseback and wagon.
If you are building a Texas road trip around the state's origins, a memorial like this makes a natural starting point — the moment before the colony, before the revolution, before everything that followed. Take a few minutes to read it slowly, and carry the sense that the vast history of Texas settlement traces back to a petition granted just months before the man who made it died. Then let it send you onward to the sites where the story he began continued to unfold.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Moses Austin
- · Stephen F. Austin
- · Baron de Bastrop
- · Antonio Martinez
Related events
- · Old 300 colonization
Themes & tags
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