Moses Austin

Before Texas, Austin's career was in lead. In 1789 he won the contract to roof Virginia's new capitol in lead and took control of the state's richest deposit, then founded Austinville at the mines in 1792. In Spanish Upper Louisiana he began the first Anglo-American settlement back from the Mississippi at Mine a Breton, now Potosi, and built a mansion called Durham Hall. Furnaces learned from English smelters made him about $190,000. The failure of the Bank of St. Louis, which he helped found, in 1819 left him in debt, and the Texas plan followed.

What the plaque says

Moses Austin 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.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bullock Texas State History Museum — steps away
  The state's history museum at the head of Congress Avenue, built around the hull of La Salle's ship La Belle, raised from Matagorda Bay with 1.8 million artifacts.
• Texas State Capitol — 0.3 mi
  Austin's fourth statehouse, a Renaissance Revival capitol of 1888 that stands 311 feet to its Goddess of Liberty and was restored after the 1983 fire.
• Harry Ransom Center — 0.4 mi
  The University of Texas archive where a Gutenberg Bible and the earliest surviving camera photograph are always on view, free, beside the papers of Watergate and the movies.
• LBJ Presidential Library — 0.7 mi
  A ten-story travertine archive on the University of Texas campus holding 45 million pages from a presidency of civil rights laws, the War on Poverty and Vietnam.

More markers nearby

• The Railroad Commission of Texas — steps away
• Diocese of Austin — steps away
• State Bar of Texas — 0.2 mi
• Tyler Rose — 0.3 mi