EVOLUTION of a STATE CHAPTER V San Felipe De Austin! The

EVOLUTION OF A STATE CHAPTER V San Felipe de Austin; Pen pictures; Anecdotes of Prominent men; Professional men; Social happenings; Early Colonists; Duels; Colonial Poet; Character of early colonists; How it feels to be a homicide; Banished; Left a malediction on the place. San Felipe de Austin! The shibboleth that flings the door of memory wide; the spell that bids the tide of years roll back, and from the ashes, where it has lain these sixty years and more, conjures up the old town which formed the nucleus of the movement that eventuated in the extension of the great American Union in an unbroken plane from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Here, in pursuance of the scheme which cost Moses Austin his life, his indomitable son, Stephen Fuller, established his headquarters, from thence distributing the colonists who followed him into the wilderness seventy-six years ago. San Felipe de Austin! Itself but a phantom, what a host of phantoms the name summons back to repeople it. Though not one of the Three Hundred, the writer was but a few years behind them, and knew them all by repute, many of them personally. The town was still in its swaddling clothes when the writer made his advent therein in 1827. Twenty-five or perhaps thirty log cabins strung along the west bank of the Brazos River was all there was of it, while the whole human population of all ages and colors could not have exceeded 200. Men were largely in the majority, coming from every state in the Union, and every walk in life. There seeming to be a good opening for my trade in San Felipe, I bought a set of tools from George Huff on the San Bernard and set up business in the parent colony in the year 1828. In the absence of a more comprehensive view, a pen picture of the old town may not be uninteresting. The buildings all being of unhewn logs with clapboard roofs, presented few distinguishing features. Stephen F. Austin had established his headquarters something like half a mile back from the river on the west bank of a little creek - Palmito - that ran into the Brazos just above the main village. Just above Austin's house was the farm of Joshua Parker. Austin's house was a double log cabin with a wide "passage" through the center, a porch with dirt floor on the front with windows opening upon it, and chimney at each end of the building. In this vicinity the Ingram brothers, Seth and Ira, had a store, with them being associated Hosea N. League, a lawyer by profession, who with his wife lived near by. League later formed a law partnership with David G. Burnet, their office being in the immediate vicinity. Ira Ingram later moved to Matagorda, of which municipality he was the first alcalde. He also drew up the first declaration of Texas independence, at Goliad, in 1835, was a member of the first Texas Congress and Speaker of the House. Seth Ingram, a surveyor, laid off the town of San Felipe. William Pettus, better known as "Buck", Pettus, who was later elected a member of the Ayuntamiento, also resided in a suburban villa in the "west end." Going on down to the town proper, which lay along the west bank of the Brazos, the first house on the left was my bachelor abode, and near it, on the same side, stood the "village smithy" over which I presided. Then came the Peyton tavern, operated by Jonathan C. Peyton and wife; the house was the regulation double log cabin. The saloon and billiard hall of Cooper and Chieves, the only frame building in the place, was next below the Peyton's. The first house on the right as you entered the town from above was Dinsmore's store, and next it the store of Walter C. White. The office of the "Cotton Plant," the first newspaper in the colonies, and near it the residence of the genial proprietor, Godwin B. Cotton, filled the space between White's store and the Whiteside Hotel, which differed from its companion buildings, only in point of elevation, it being a story and a half in height; through the center ran the regulation "passage," and at either end rose a huge stick and mud chimney. It must not be understood that these rows of buildings presented an unbroken or even regular line of front; every fellow built to suit himself, only taking care to give himself plenty of room, so that the town was strung along either side of the road something like half a mile - like Samantha Allen's funeral procession, "Pretty good as to length, but rather thin." Professional men, as a rule, did not affect "offices." The alcalde's office was in a large double log house standing back some distance from the main thoroughfare almost immediately in the rear of the Whiteside Hotel, which building it much resembled. By whom it was built, or for what purpose, I do not now remember, but my impression is that it was designed for a hotel. The walls of hewn logs were roofed in and abandoned at that stage. It was here the ayuntamiento held its sittings, and this windowless, floorless pen, through the unchinked cracks of which the wild winds wandered and whistled at will, was presumably the Faneuil Hall of Texas. I regret that, having left Texas in 1831, I am unable to give any of the incidents or details of the conventions which decided the fate of the colonies, though many of the members were personally known to me. Strains of eloquence doubtless many times echoed through the old council chamber, but only on one occasion was I an auditor. Hearing loud talking in the alcalde's office one night, I concluded there must be something interesting going on, though there was no light save that which the bright moon poured in through the cracks and open door. Approaching warily, expecting every moment to hear the bullets begin to sing, I got near enough to make out that it was some one apparently delivering a speech. Curious to learn what it was all about, I quietly drew nearer, and, peering through a crack, perceived Whiteside, junior, a boy of sixteen, rehearsing the address of the Scythian ambassador to Alexander the Great to an appreciative audience composed of the negro boy Will; though doubtless the familiar lines, aided by the mystic light of the moon, brought up before the mental vision of the youthful orator an admiring circle of faces such as was wont to greet him on exhibition days in the old schoolhouse "back in the states." Ludicrous as the incident was, there was something pathetic in it, occurring in that schoolless land, a relic of civilization which as yet had made but little progress there. The laws providing that two single men might constitute a family for colonization purposes, many of the so-called three hundred families consisted of a couple of old bachelors, a number of whom made their homes in town. Austin's colony being the mother colony, and San Felipe being the seat of government, the empresarios of the surrounding colonies naturally assembled there to take counsel together, and there was, of course, a floating population, some of whom tarried but a few days, while others remained indefinitely. Among the men who were laying the foundation of a nation, Stephen F. Austin, the father of Texas, was of course, the central figure. He was at that time about thirty-six years of age, though care had left an added weight of years to his appearance. Dark hair and eyes, sparely built, and in manner, there was little in Austin's outward appearance to indicate the tremendous energy of which he was possessed. Though only mortal, he was far above the average of the mould, as his patience and perseverance under trials and difficulties that would have driven an ordinary man to despair abundantly testify. His character often maligned, his motives impugned, the compact he had entered into with the Mexican government disregarded, thus impeaching his integrity, he yet extended his protecting care over the colonies, alone undertaking the doubtful mission to Mexico in 1833 to present the memorial of the colonists for statehood and exert the remnant of his influence to heal the ever-widening breach between them and the home government, his appointed colleagues refusing to take their share of the risk. The story of his arrest and long imprisonment is well known. Returning home in broken health to find his labor and suffering thrown away, and the colonies already in the throes of revolution, he cast his lot with them, like his illustrious father, receiving his final summons in the hour of victory. Stephen Fuller Austin died at Columbia, December 27, 1836, a little over two months after the first regularly elected administration of the Lone Star Republic began its labors, Austin being Secretary of State. Intimately associated with Austin was Samuel M. Williams, Austin's first secretary. An early advocate of independence, Williams, for his opposition to Santa Anna's centralization scheme, was one of the first five men proscribed by that tyrant. Associating himself with McKinney, the firm opened a store at Quintana, and patriotically purchased and equipped the first two vessels for the Texas navy. Williams and McKinney also opened the first bank in Galveston. When, in 1843, the British Ministers in Mexico and Texas arranged a peace conference between the two countries, Williams was one of the two commissioners appointed by President Houston to confer with the Mexican government, his colleague being George W.

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