Joseph H. Hawkins

Hawkins paid for the colony before it existed. The Handbook of Texas says he bought and outfitted the Lively, arranged other schooners, paid seamen and lent money to colonists, spending an estimated $30,000 with no formal accounts. In February 1822 he told Austin that without help he might lose his house and the people he enslaved. He died bankrupt in October 1823, and Austin called him his 'adopted brother.' Before New Orleans he had served in the Kentucky legislature and in Congress. His widow trusted Austin alone to settle the estate.

What the plaque says

Joseph H. Hawkins Joseph H. Hawkins Native Virginian Joseph H. Hawkins practiced law in Kentucky, where he served as state legislator and U.S. congressman before moving to New Orleans. There he befriended Stephen F. Austin, who was broke and reluctant to complete his father's colonization plans on his own. Hawkins encouraged him to continue, offering him a job and, later, capital for the project. In 1821, the two men formalized an agreement in which Austin acknowledged receipt of $4,000 and agreed to divide equally the lands he would receive as colonizer, or empresario. Hawkins sent boats of supplies and colonists to meet Austin in Texas but died in 1823, leaving his wife, George Ann (Nicholas), and five children deeply in debt. She returned with the children to her native Kentucky to be near her family and Hawkins' brother, Littleberry. She appointed Nathaniel Cox to help settle her husband's estate. In 1824, the Mexican government gave Austin, as empresario, almost 100,000 acres, but law required a person to reach majority age and live in Texas to own land, so the Hawkins children could not immediately claim their share. Austin worked with Cox to find a suitable agreement and, in 1833, conveyed to the Hawkins heirs some 42,000 acres of land in and around Brazoria county. Each of Hawkins' children lived briefly in Texas. Edmund St. John (d. 1836) was the first, followed by Norbourne, who died at Goliad in 1836, George (d. 1837), and then Joseph Thomas (d. 1850). Mary Jane came in 1839 but, after her husband died, returned to Kentucky, where she stayed. Although none of his heirs persevered in Texas, Hawkins' legacy in Texas is apparent in the success of Austin's first colony and all that sprang from the early Texas settlement. (2002)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Brazoria National Wildlife Refuge — 10 mi
  Coastal prairie, salt marsh and bays between Freeport and Christmas Bay, where an auto tour along Big Slough passes wintering geese, ducks and wading birds in the tens of thousands.
• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 11 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 13 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.
• Brazos Bend State Park — 24 mi
  Oak and pecan bottomland, lakes and alligators on the Brazos River 45 miles from downtown Houston, with the museum's George Observatory in the woods.

More markers nearby

• The Brazos Canal — 2.8 mi
• Mammoth Lake — 3.7 mi
• Dr. Branch Tanner Archer — 4.1 mi
• William Harris Wharton — 4.1 mi