The Rangers of Austin's Colony

The plaque names Moses Morrison only as the man who led the first ten. He was probably born in North Carolina around 1793, served with the U.S. Army on the upper Mississippi frontier and came from Missouri to Texas in 1821. Austin's militia made him a lieutenant in 1822, and his 1823 company scouted against the Karankawa. A grant of 1824 placed him in present Matagorda County. He later fought Indians near the San Saba in 1829 and helped board the Hannah Elizabeth in 1835. He enslaved five people by 1850 and is last documented alive in 1855.

What the plaque says

The Rangers of Austin's Colony By March 1822, Stephen F. Austin had attracted about 150 colonists to Texas. The pioneers faced many hardships, including concern for their protection form Indians along the Colorado and Brazos rivers. In December of that year, Trespalacios, the Mexican governor, divided the colony into two districts, each having an alcalde to preside over matters of local administration and captain to handle protection of the colonists. In 1823, after several Indian attacks on members of Austin's colony, Captain Robert Kuykendall and Alcalde John Tumlinson of the Colorado District requested permission form Tresplacios to raise a company to protect the colonists. Ten men were recruited to serve under the command of Moses Morrison. When Stephen F. Austin returned from Mexico City in August 1823, he found the colony still plagued by Indian disturbances and announced that he would employ ten additional men, at his own expense, to serve as "Rangers" for the common defense. Although the law enforcement group known as the Texas Rangers was not formally organized until 1835, the "Rangers" of Austin's Colony are the earliest recorded force of this type raised in Texas and served as a model for the later formation of the Texas Rangers. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836 - 1986

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Stafford Opera House — steps away
  A cattleman's bank and theater of 1886 on the Columbus square, in a river town Sam Houston burned in 1836 and a county marked by a long feud and a 1935 lynching.
• Attwater Prairie Chicken National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  Ten thousand acres of native coastal prairie northeast of Eagle Lake, kept for a critically endangered grouse, many of whose birds are hatched in captivity and released here.
• Saints Cyril and Methodius Catholic Church (Dubina) — 18 mi
  The church of Texas's first Czech settlement, under a sky-blue painted ceiling that was whitewashed in the 1950s and brought back from faint traces by its own parishioners.
• St. John the Baptist Catholic Church (Ammannsville) — 20 mi
  A wooden Carpenter Gothic church built in 1919 after storm and fire took two before it, its dusty-rose interior painted by an artist whose name was lost for decades.

More markers nearby

• Tumlinson Family — steps away
• 1890 Cornerstone Ceremony — steps away
• Colorado County, City of Columbus — steps away
• Early Site of Dr. Logue's Drugstore — steps away