The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001 Page: 234
673 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
1825 the state named Leftwich empresario (colonization agent) of a large
unsettled region north and west of Austin's Colony encompassing some
thirty present-day central Texas counties.
For the next five years, as Austin's Colony flourished, the affairs of the
Texas Association languished. Leftwich dropped from the historical
record, and in the fall of 1830 another Texas Association stockholder,
Sterling C. Robertson, traveled to Texas in an attempt to revive the compa-
ny's moribund project. Unfortunately for Robertson, upon arriving in
Texas he learned that the Mexican national congress had passed the mo-
mentous Law of April 6, 1830, which overturned the empresario system
and banned all further Anglo-American immigration except to the
colonies of Austin and Green DeWitt. This is where the controversy begins.
Robertson sought out Austin in San Felipe and asked Austin to inter-
cede with the state government to have the Texas Association's contract
restored, with Robertson as empresario. Austin, who was about to leave
for Saltillo to take his seat in the state legislature, agreed to help. After
arriving in Saltillo, however, Austin successfully petitioned the govern-
ment to have a new contract awarded to himself and his longtime secre-
tary, Samuel May Williams. Upon learning of this development,
Robertson understandably felt betrayed.
Over the next two years Austin and Williams did little to recruit immi-
grants to the colony, although they did allow a number of Mexican spec-
ulators to stake claims in the region, now known as the Upper Colony.
In 1833, while Austin traveled to Mexico City on a political mission,
Sterling Robertson commenced efforts to have the Texas Association's
contract restored, again with himself to be named empresario. The fol-
lowing year (1834), with Austin under arrest in Mexico City, Robertson
journeyed to the new state capital, Monclova, and succeeded in regain-
ing the contract in his own name. But in 1835 Samuel May Williams
turned the tables on Robertson and got the state government to return
the colony to himself and Austin. Finally, after the Texas Revolution
ended the empresario system, Texas courts recognized Robertson's
claims as empresario and awarded him nearly 140,000 acres of premium
lands (later cut in half when the state appealed), his reward for having
performed the duties of empresario.4
'' Robertson's suit was tried in the Travis County District Court in 1841. The court ruled that
Robertson had introduced 600 families into the colony, thus qualifying him to receive five
leagues and five labors (138,165 acres) of premium lands. The state appealed, and in 1847
Chief Justice John Hemphill reduced the number of families from 600 to 307, apparently
because many of the families Robertson claimed to have introduced had arrived after the out-
break of the Revolution and the closure of the land office. PCRCT, XVIII, 40-41, 220o-26. It is
impossible to evaluate fully the veracity of these figures using the published documents (and
probably would prove impossible through archival research). The PCRCT does not mention theOctober
234
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 104, July 2000 - April, 2001, periodical, 2001; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101221/m1/286/: accessed May 2, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.