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Here Come The Anglos (1821 to 1830) – Part II

Haden Edwards received his empresarial grant on April 14, 1825.. Like all empresarios he was to uphold land grants certified by the Spanish and Mexican governments, provide an organization for the protection of all colonists in the area, and receive a land commissioner appointed by the Mexican government.

Edwards’s contract specified land for up to 800 Anglo-American families in a large area of East Texas from northwest of Nacogdoches, including the forks of the Trinity, west to the Navasota River, thence southeast along the Trinity River valley to upper Galveston Bay. The tract did not include Galveston Island, or the twenty-six-mile-wide coastal reserve forbidden to foreigners. The eastern boundary was the fifty-two-mile-wide border reserve along the Sabine River running north from the Gulf of Mexico to the thirty-second parallel. The state instructed Edwards to respect the property of long-time residents in the Nacogdoches area, some of whom had been there since the 1780s. Edwards, insensitive to Hispanic culture, reached Nacogdoches in October 1825 and threatened to dispossess those who had no proof of ownership unless they paid him for the land….

Transcript of program is HERE