The First Texans

The Texas you know today wasn’t built on empty land. Long before Anglo settlers arrived in the 1820s, Texas was home to diverse Native American nations with their own complex societies. The Caddo farmed the east, Comanche dominated the plains, Karankawa fished the coast, and Tonkawa hunted in central regions. Spanish influence began in 1519 when explorers mapped the coastline, later establishing missions and settlements like San Antonio (1718) across the territory. When Mexico won independence in 1821, Texas became a Mexican province that actively recruited American settlers. Stephen F. Austin’s “Old Three Hundred” families didn’t discover Texas – they joined an already contested landscape shaped by thousands of years of human history.

Old Three Hundred

The first significant Anglo settlers arrived in Texas in 1821 when Stephen F. Austin established his father Moses Austin’s planned American colony in Mexican territory. His “Old Three Hundred” families settled along rivers in southeast Texas, mostly farmers from southern states seeking cheap land and opportunity. Mexico welcomed these settlers with land grants if they became Mexican citizens, converted to Catholicism, and developed the frontier—an arrangement that brought economic growth but set the stage for cultural conflicts leading to revolution.

Here are more in-depth looks at some of the Old 300 families…

Other Early Settlers

After Austin’s pioneers, waves of immigrants transformed Texas in the 1820s-30s. Most were southerners from states like Tennessee, Alabama, and Missouri, fleeing economic hardship after the Panic of 1819. They sought Texas’s abundant land, often bringing enslaved people despite Mexico’s opposition to slavery. Empresarios like Green DeWitt and Sterling Robertson established new colonies alongside Austin’s. By 1830, concerned about losing control, Mexico banned further American immigration—but settlers continued arriving illegally. When Texas declared independence in 1836, Anglos outnumbered Tejanos nearly ten to one, with approximately 30,000 American settlers reshaping the territory’s demographic, cultural, and political landscape.

Here are the stories of some of those early settlers…