Moses Austin

Before Texas, Moses Austin was a lead man. In 1789 he took a contract to roof Virginia's new capitol in lead, gained control of the state's richest lead deposit, and brought miners and smelters from England, work the Handbook of Texas credits with founding the American lead industry. He founded Austinville at the Virginia mines in 1792. In 1798 he settled at Mine a Breton, now Potosi, Missouri, built a mansion he called Durham Hall and controlled nearly all the region's smelting. His Bank of St. Louis, the first west of the Mississippi, failed in 1819, ruining his finances.

What the plaque says

Moses Austin (Front) Born in Connecticut, October fourth 1761; moved to Philadephia in 1783. Thence to Virginia in 1785 and to Missouri in San Antonio on December 23, 1820. Died in Missouri June 10, 1821. (Right) Moses Austin here petitioned the Spanish authorties for the right to bring three-hundred families to Texas and returned to MIssouri to wait the answer. (Back) Exposure and exhaustion during his Texas journey caused his death a few days after receiving notification that his petition had been granted. His dying request was that his son Stephen should carry out his vision. (Left) A man of vision, enterprise, industry and indomitable energy...he most fittingly bequeathed the realization of his plans to his more deliberate, patient, tactful and diplomatic son. (1936)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Spanish Governor's Palace — steps away
  The last visible piece of the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar: a presidio captain's house with a 1749 keystone, a century as shops and saloons, and a romantic 1930 restoration.
• San Fernando Cathedral — steps away
  The Canary Islanders' parish church on Main Plaza, where Bowie married and Santa Anna raised a red flag, rebuilt in Gothic Revival around the walls of the 1750s church.
• Casa Navarro State Historic Site — steps away
  The adobe and caliche-block home of José Antonio Navarro, a native-born signer of the 1836 declaration, and the last remnant of the Tejano neighborhood called Laredito.
• San Antonio River Walk — 0.4 mi
  A Depression-era park one level below downtown, built because San Antonio refused to pave its river after the 1921 flood, and designed by an architect the project later fired.

More markers nearby

• Bexar County under Nine Governments — steps away
• Zero Milestone, Old Spanish Trail — steps away
• Barbed Wire — steps away
• Plaza De Armas (Military Plaza) — steps away