page_title: Moses Austin
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Moses Austin / Biography
caption_attribution_description: English: Moses Austin House as seen in 2007 in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, USA
context_page_description: Moses Austin was an American businessman and pioneer who played a large part in the development of the lead industry in the early United States. He was the father of Stephen F. Austin, one of the earliest American settlers of Texas, which was at the time part of Mexico.
  After receiving a land grant from the Spanish Crown in 1820, Moses Austin planned to be the first to establish an Anglo-American settlement in Spanish Texas, but he died before his dream was realized. On his deathbed, he pleaded with his son to fulfill his dream to colonize Texas. Stephen led the colony to a now-sovereign Mexico in 1825, and in time, the settlers demanded autonomy and later won independence from Mexico under President Antonio López de Santa Anna, thereby establishing the Republic of Texas.
context_section_description: Moses Austin was born October 4, 1761 to Elias Austin and Eunice Phelps Austin in Durham, Connecticut.
  In 1784, he moved to Philadelphia to enter the dry goods business with his brother, 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' second child was born in 1793 and named Stephen Fuller Austin in honor of his father's brother and his mother's great uncle. Their daughter Emily Austin followed in 1795. A second son, James Elijah Brown Austin, was born in 1803.
  Austin sought to start his own mining business in southwestern Virginia, and in 1789 he traveled there to look at a lead mine. 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 Austin brothers soon incurred debts, causing the collapse of the company. After the Virginia lead business failed, Moses skipped out to avoid imprisonment and the consequences of debt, which was then customary for debtors in the U.S. under traditional English law (now being developed for U.S. federal and state codes), and looked toward the rich lead deposits in Missouri, then a part of upper Spanish Louisiana. In December 1797, Austin and a companion traveled to investigate the Spanish mines. In 1798, the Spanish colonial government 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 the Presidio San Antonio de Béxar in Spanish Texas and presented a plan to colonize Texas with Anglo-Americans to Governor Antonio María Martínez. 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 he died in June 1821, shortly after arriving back in Missouri. His son Stephen F. Austin carried out his colonization plan several years later, and led the three hundred families to what became the first Anglo-American settlement in Texas.
  In 1885, the legality of Austin's Spanish property claims were settled posthumously by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bryan v. Kennett.
caption: Moses Austin house in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, April 2007
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