Biography of Austin, Moses

For the information of our readers who are not familiar with the early colonial scheme of settling Texas with American colonists when it was a province of Spain, we will give a short sketch of the man in whose brain it originated and the various causes which led to it. Moses Austin was a native of Connecticut, born at the village of Durham in 1767. When a boy he went to Philadelphia, and in 1787 he married Miss Maria Brown. His brother, Stephen, was then at the head of an important house in Philadelphia, and Moses Austin soon after his … Read more

Hardships of the Early Natchez Emigrants

History of Alabama and incidentally of Georgia and Mississippi, from the earliest period

Taking the reader with us, to the settlements of the distant Natchez region, he will find that emigrants continued to pour in, upon those fertile hills and alluvial bottoms, from all parts of “his majesty’s Atlantic plantations.” Many were the hardships and perils they encountered, in reaching this remote and comparatively uninhabited region. It is believed that the history of one party of these emigrants will enable the reader to understand what kind of hardships and deprivations all the others were forced to undergo. Major General Phineas Lyman, a native of Durham, a graduate of Yale, a distinguished lawyer, and … Read more