Moses Austin - Biography

Biography

Austin was born in Durham, Connecticut to a family that and some more can be traced back to Richard Austin, who arrived on the ship "Bevis" in Massachusetts colony in 1638, only a few years after the colony was founded.

In 1784, he moved to Philadelphia to enter the dry goods business with his son, Stephen. He then moved to Richmond, Virginia to open a second dry goods store.

In 1785, he married into the affluent iron mining family of Mary Brown, who then became known as Mary Brown Austin. The Austins' first child was born in 1793 and named Stephen F. Austin in honor of his father's brother and his mother's great uncle. Their daughter Emily Austin followed in 1795. James Elijah Brown Austin was born in 1803.

Austin sought to start his own mining business in southwestern Virginia, and in 1789 he traveled to southwest Virginia to look at a lead mine site. Moses saw potential in the site and by 1791 his family had joined him in what is now Wythe County. Moses and his brother Stephen and several other partners and individuals industrialized the area. Several smelters, furnaces, commissaries, the Jackson Ferry Shot Tower, blacksmith shops, liveries, and mills were established. The tiny village around the mines became known as "Austinville," and Moses came to be known as the "Lead King."

The brothers ran up debts, causing the collapse of the company. After the Virginia lead business failed, Austin looked toward the rich lead deposits in Missouri, then a part of upper Spanish Louisiana. In December 1796, Austin and a companion traveled to investigate the Spanish mines. In 1798, the Spanish crown granted to Moses one-league (4,428 acres). In return he swore allegiance to the Spanish Crown and stated he would settle some families in Missouri. Stephen remained behind to salvage the Virginia business, creating a rift between the two brothers that would last for much of the rest of their lives. The state of Virginia seized much of the property Moses owned and broke up the various operations, which were later purchased from the state at great discounts by Thomas Jackson and his partners.

In 1803, Missouri came under the jurisdiction of the United States as part of the Louisiana Purchase. Austin became founder and principal stockholder in the Bank of St. Louis, but the bank failed in the Panic of 1819 causing him to lose his entire fortune. He again sought help from Spain. In 1820, Austin traveled to Presidio San Antonio de Bexar in Spanish Texas and presented a plan to colonize Texas with Anglo-Americans to Governor Antonio María Martínez. The Governor rejected Austin's plan due to the ongoing attacks on Texas by American filibusters. An old acquaintance, Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, who was living in San Antonio at the time and well liked by the Spaniards, helped convince the governor to accept Austin's plan. In 1821, the governor asked Austin's friend, Erasmo Seguín, to give him the news that he had been awarded a land grant and permission to settle three hundred families in Texas. On Austin's return trip, he became ill and died in 1821, shortly after arriving back in Missouri. His son Stephen F. Austin carried out his colonization plan.

In 1885, the legality of Austin's Spanish property claims were settled posthumously by the Supreme Court in Bryan v. Kennett.