Stephen Fuller Austin

Austin was the founder of the first successful Anglo-American colonies in Texas. He was born on November 3, 1793 in Virginia, the son of Moses Austin and Maria Brown Austin. After graduating from Transylvania University in Kentucky, he served several years in the Missouri Territory legislature and (briefly) as a First Circuit Court judge in Arkansas Territory, eventually settling in New Orleans. In late 1820, Moses Austin received an empresario (land agent) grant from Spain to settle 300 families in Texas, then a Spanish territory. However, when Moses Austin became fatally ill with pneumonia in 1821, Maria Brown Austin persuaded Stephen to take up his father's "Texas Venture" as his own. Despite years of negotiation over the grant with the new governments of Mexico (which became independent from Spain in 1821), by 1825 he had successfully settled the first 300 Anglo-American families in south Texas on the Brazos and Colorado Rivers and obtained grants for further settlement. His tenure as empresario was marked by the institution of a land management system, a new legal code, and active promotion of trade, but also by the firm establishment of slavery and violence against the local Karankawa tribes. He assisted Mexico in putting down the Fredonian Rebellion and generally avoided conflict with Mexican officials in favor of moderation and conciliation; however, rising political tensions and multiple incendiary incidents (including his own arrest in 1834) led to rebellion in 1835. During the Texas Revolution he briefly commanded the Texian volunteers at the Siege of Bexar and then served as a commissioner to the United States, seeking aid for the Texian cause in the form of volunteers, supplies, and the promise of recognition from the United States government if Texas won independence. Defeated in the first Texas presidential election, he accepted the position of Secretary of State but died only two months later on December 27, 1836.