What were the incentives that Stephen F. Austin gave the Anglo settlers of Texas? (OC1)
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Answer:
ANGLO-AMERICAN COLONIZATION.Anglo-American colonization in Mexican Texas took place between 1821 and 1835. Spain had first opened Texas to Anglo-Americans in 1820, less than one year before Mexico achieved its independence. Its traditional policy forbade foreigners in its territory, but Spain was unable to persuade its own citizens to move to remote and sparsely populated Texas. There were only three settlements in the province of Texas in 1820: Nacogdoches, San Antonio de Béxar, and La Bahía del Espíritu Santo (later Goliad), small towns with outlying ranches. The missions near the latter two, once expected to be nucleus communities, had been or were being secularized (i.e., transferred to diocesan from Franciscan administration), while those near Nacogdoches had been closed since the 1770s. Recruiting foreigners to develop the Spanish frontier was not new. As early as the 1790s, Spain invited Anglo-Americans to settle in Upper Louisiana (Missouri) for the same reason. The foreigners were to be Catholic, industrious, and willing to become Spanish citizens in return for generous land grants. Spain expected the new settlers to increase economic development and help deter the aggressive and mobile Plains Indians such as the Comanches and Kiowas. Mexico continued the Spanish colonization plan after its independence in 1821 by granting contracts to empresarios who would settle and supervise selected, qualified immigrants.
A rustic cabin built of rough-sawn cedar planks in about 1823 by John R. Williams who was a Texas colonist and part of the Old Three Hundred. It is the oldest-known structure in Harris County, Texas, and is a part of Sam Houston Park. Photography by Brian Reading. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
Anglo-Americans were attracted to Hispanic Texas because of inexpensive land. Undeveloped land in the United States land offices cost $1.25 an acre for a minimum of 80 acres ($100) payable in specie at the time of purchase. In Texas each head of a family, male or female, could claim a headright of 4,605 acres (one league-4,428 acres of grazing land and one labor-177 acres of irrigable farm land) at a cost about four cents an acre ($184) payable in six years, a sum later reduced by state authorities.
Father Miguel Muldoon marker on the grounds of the Queen of the Holy Rosary Catholic Church at Hostyn, TX. Courtesy of Carolyn Heinsohn. Image available on the Internet and included in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107.
Beginning in 1824 when the Mexican Republic adopted its constitution, each immigrant took an oath of loyalty to the new nation and professed to be a Christian. Because the Catholic Church was the established religion, the oath implied that all would become Catholic, although the national and state colonization laws were silent on the matter. Religion was not a critical issue, however, because the church waited until 1831 to send a resident priest, Michael Muldoon, into the Anglo-Texan communities. This was inconvenient for those wishing to marry because there was no provision for civil ceremonies, and only priests had authority to perform nuptial rites. Anglo-Texans unwilling or unable to seek a priest in Catholic communities received permission from the authorities to sign a marriage bond, a practice common in the non-Anglican foothills of Virginia and the Carolinas before 1776, promising to formalize their union when a priest arrived.

Against this background, Moses Austin traveled from Missouri to Spanish San Antonio in 1820 to apply for an empresario grant to bring Anglo-American families to Texas. Like so many others, he had suffered losses in banking failures and hoped to restore his family's fortunes by charging small fees-12½ cents an acre-for land within his assigned area. He had become a Spanish citizen in 1798, when he moved from Virginia to the St. Louis area where he acquired an empresario grant to develop a lead mine and import workers. The Spanish governor at San Antonio gave tentative approval to Austin's plan, subject to review by his superiors, to bring 300 moral, hardworking, Catholic families from the former Spanish territory of Louisiana. Although the authorities wanted him to settle close to San Antonio, Austin opted for a still-to-be-defined area along the lower Colorado River, where he hoped to establish a port. On his return to Missouri he became ill and died at home in June 1821, leaving the plan with his eldest son, Stephen Fuller Austin.
Austin's advertisements for colonists coincided with Mexican independence and the presumption that a republic would be organized. Stimulated by these events, some families began moving immediately to the Red River near future Texarkana and across the Sabine along the old Spanish road leading to Nacogdoches. There they remained as squatters, some with intentions of joining the Austin colony, but others engaged in trading with the Indians and Mexicans.