Francis Flournoy Wells
State Archives Division--Texas State Library

Many of Austin's colonists were genteel families who had fallen on hard times and who came to Texas to remake their fortunes. A Louisiana woman named McNutt, impoverished when she was widowed, brought her five children to Austin's colony. By 1826 she had married off her daughter Martha to Francis Flournoy Wells, one of the first medical doctors in Texas. They settled for a time in Austin's capital, San Felipe.