The Old Three Hundred

In the spring of 1821, the royal Spanish government of Mexico approved a contract for one Moses Austin, a businessman from Potosi, Missouri, to establish a colony of American immigrants in their interior territory of Texas. The empresario died soon after, entrusting the project to his son, Stephen Fuller Austin, who set out to explore the "wild, howling solitude." Austin's contract called for him to enroll and settle three hundred families on his colony. Thousands of Texans now proudly trace their ancestry to the "Old Three Hundred."