Information on Austin, Texas

When you think about Texas, you think about the capital of the state too. Texas is known for its history, culture, and large land area. The millions of people who live in Texas have gracious spirits. Austin, Texas is not only a city with a very important role in the history of Texas. It is the capital of the state of Texas too at Travis County. It’s the 4th largest city in Texas in terms of population and the 11th most populous city in the United States of America. It has a fast growing population and infrastructure in our generation. It has about 305.1 total square miles with 950,715 people in 2017. It is the southernmost contiguous United States capital. Culture flourishes in Austin with rivers, lakes, highways, museums, stadium, and other locations. Numerous Fortune 500 companies have either their headquarters or regional offices in the city from Google to Amazon.com. Diverse people live in Austin from blue collar workers, college students, musicians, government employees, and others of numerous backgrounds. Live concerts are readily found in Austin, Texas as well. Austin is known as a "clean-air city" for its stringent no-smoking ordinances that apply to all public places and buildings, including restaurants and bars. Music has always been integral in the make up of the Austin atmosphere. Country, rock, soul, rthythm and blues, hip hop, gospel, and other forms of musical expression are deeply part of the whole ethos of Austin city living. It is certainly the pristine time to acknowledge the huge contributions that Austin has made in American society.

The history of Austin, Texas has a long story. Native Americans lived in Austin for centuries and thousands of years. Back about 11,000 years ago, there was habitation at the Balcones Escarpment region of Texas. The Levi Rock Shelter and Smith Rock Shelter were the oldest Paleolithic archaeological sites in Texas. Nomadic Native American tribes existed in Texas. This occurred centuries before the European settlers came into the Austin area. The Native American people back then fished and hunted along the creeks like in modern day Barton Springs. It was a campsite. At the time of the first permanent settlement of the area, the Tonkawa tribe was the most common (with the Comanches and Lipan Apaches also living in the area). The first Europeans in Austin were Spanish friars who arrived in East Texas in July of 1730. They formed three temporary missions called: La Purisima Concepción, San Francisco de los Neches and San José de los Nazonis, on a site by the Colorado River, near Barton Springs. The friars relocated to the San Antonio River within a year of their arrivals. After Mexico’s independence from Spain, Anglo-American settlers started to populate Texas and reached present day Central Texas by the 1830’s. The first documented permanent settlement in the area has been dated back to 1837 when the village of Waterloo was founded near the confluence of the Colorado River and Shoal Creek. The Texas Revolution has a complex history. Many of the Anglo-American settlers owned slaves when they traveled into Texas. The new nation of Mexico banned slavery and wanted the settlers to do the same. Many Anglo-Americans refused to do so and conflicts occurred culminating in the Mexican-American war. The United States defeated Mexico and by 1836, the Texas Revolution was over. The Republic of Texas at first was independent. Political problems were in Texas. In 1836, there were about five Texas sites that serviced as temporary capitals of the new republic (Washington-on-the-Brazos, Harrisburg, Galveston, Velasco and Columbia), before President Sam Houston moved the capital to Houston in 1837.

Soon after the election of President Mirabeau B. Lamar, the Texas Congress created a site selection commission to locate an optimal site for a new, permanent capital. They chose a site on the western frontier. President Lamar led the mechanism to find the area. Lamar visited the sparsely settled area in 1838, and Lamar believed in westward expansion. The area had abundant natural resources, and it had beauty. They wanted to make it an economic hub. The central location in Texas territory was found. The commission purchased 7,735 acres (3,130 ha) along the Colorado River comprising the hamlet of Waterloo and adjacent lands. At the time, the area was remote from population centers. It had vulnerability to attacks by Mexican troops and Native Americans. Many Texans wanted independence, but some of them wanted slavery to flourish in Texas. Sam Houston was a political leader. Austin was chartered in 1839 by the Texas Congress. It was a new city. Stephen F. Austin was one of the Texas leaders who was the city was named after. He negotiated a boundary treaty with local Native Americans at the area of Treaty Oak after a few settlers were killed in raids. The Republic purchased many hundred areas to establish the city. By March 1839, the city Austin was honored by Lamar in honor of Stephen F. Austin. Many local businesses praised the city like Waterloo Ice House and Waterloo Records (as well as Waterloo Park downtown). The construction of Austin existed. Lamar used Judge Edwin Waller to direct the planning and construction of the new town. Waller decided to work on a 640 acre site on a fluff above the Colorado River (between Shoal Creek to the west and Waller Creek to the east). Waller surveyed a grid plan on a single square mile plot with 14 blocks running in both directions. Lamar named a place called Congress on one grand avenue. It was in the city of the town from Capitol Square down to the Colorado River.

The streets running north-south (paralleling Congress) were named for Texas rivers with their order of placement matching the order of rivers on the Texas state map. The east-west streets were named after trees native to the region, despite the fact that Waller had recommended using numbers. (They were eventually changed to numbers in 1884). The city's perimeters stretched north to south from the river at 1st Street to 15th Street, and from East Avenue (now Interstate 35) to West Avenue. Much of this original design is still intact in downtown Austin today. By October 1839, the government of the Republic of Texas arrived by oxcart from Houston. The town of Austin had 839 people by January 1840. During the Republic of Texas era, France sent Alphonse Dubois de Saligny to Austin as its chargé d'affaires. Dubois purchased 22 acres (8.9 ha) of land in 1840 on a high hill just east of downtown to build a legation, or diplomatic outpost. The French Legation stands as the oldest documented frame structure in Austin. Also in 1839, the Texas Congress set aside 40 acres (16 ha) of land north of the capitol and downtown for a "university of the first class." This land became the central campus of the University of Texas at Austin in 1883.

Austin increased in its power. By 1842, Lamar’s successor was President of Texas, Sam Houston. Houston ordered the national archives transferred to Houston for safekeeping after Mexican troops captures San Antonio on March 5, 1842. Convinced the removal of the republic’s diplomatic, financial, land, and military service records was tantamount to choosing a new capital. People from Austin refused to relinquish the archives. Houston moved the government anyway, first to Houston, and then to Washington on the Brazos, which remained the seat of government until 1845. The archives stayed in Austin. When Houston sent a contingent of armed men to seize the General Land Office records in December of 1842, they were foiled by the citizens of Austin and Travis County (via the Texas Archive War incident). Austin suffered. Between 1842 and 1845, Austin’s population dropped below 200. Its buildings deteriorated. By the summer of 1845, Anson Jones (Houston’s successor as President) called a constitutional convention meeting in Austin. Anson Jones approved the annexation of Texas to the United States. Austin was the state capital until 1850. This was the year when at which time the voters of Texas were to express their preference in a general election. After resuming its role as the seat of government in 1845, Austin officially became the state capital on February 19, 1846, the date of the formal transfer of authority from the republic to the state. Austin’s status as capital city of the new U.S. state of Texas remained in doubt until 1872, when the city prevailed in a statewide election to choose once and for all the state capital, turning back challenges from Houston and Waco.

Austin gradually increased their population reaching 854 by 1850. All black people in 1850 were slaves except for one free black person. So, 225 slaves were in Austin back then. 48 percent of Austin’s family heads owned slaves. The city increased its growth after the 1850 election. The new Capitol building was found at head of Congress Avenue. It was finished in 1853. The Governor’s Mansion was completed by 1856. By the outskirts of the town, there were state run asylums for the deaf, blind, and mentally ill Texans. There were many churches filled with Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Catholics. Greek revival mansions were common back then. By 1860, Austin’s population increased to 3,546 people. There were 1019 black slaves and 12 free black human beings. 35 percent of Austin’s family headed owned slaves. So, this was a very terrible existence for African Americans back then. Texas voted overwhelmingly to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy in 1861. Travis County was one of the few counties in Texas to vote against the secession ordinance (704 to 450). Yet, Unionist sentiment waned once the war began. By April 1862, about 600 Austin and Travis County men had joined some 12 volunteer companies serving the Confederacy. Austinites followed with particular concern news of the successive Union thrusts toward Texas, but the town was controlled by the rebels. Like other communities, Austin experienced severe shortages of goods, spiraling inflation, and the decimation of its fighting men. The end of the Civil War brought Union occupation troops to the city and a period of explosive growth of the African-American population, which increased by 57 percent during the 1860's. During the late 1860's and early 1870's the city's newly emancipated blacks established the residential communities of Masontown, Wheatville, Pleasant Hill, and Clarksville. By 1870, Austin's 1,615 black residents comprised some 36 percent of the town's 4,428 inhabitants.




By Timothy