The name Old Three Hundred is sometimes used to refer to
the settlers who received land grants in Stephen F. Austin's
first colony. In January 1821 Austin's father, Moses Austin,
had received a permit from the Spanish to settle 300
families in Texas, but he died in Missouri a short time
later before he could realize his plans. Stephen F. Austin
took his father's place and traveled to San Antonio, where
he met with the Spanish governor Antonio María Martínez, who
acknowledged him as his father's successor. Austin quickly
found willing colonists, and by the end of the summer of
1824 most of the Old Three Hundred were in Texas. During
1823-24 Austin and the land commissioner Baron de Bastrop
issued 272 titles, but Bastrop was called away in August
1824, and the work remained unfinished until 1827, when the
new commissioner, Gaspar Flores de Abrego, issued the
remaining titles. Since the family was the unit for
distribution, Austin permitted unmarried men to receive
grants in partnership, usually in groups of two or three.
Twenty-two such partnership titles were issued to fifty-nine
partners. In all, 307 titles were issued, with nine families
receiving two titles each. Thus the total number of
grantees, excluding Austin's own grant, was actually 297,
not 300. The colonization decree required that all the lands
should be occupied and improved within two years; most of
the settlers were able to comply with the terms, and only
seven of the grants were forfeited.
The lands selected by the colonists were along the rich
bottomlands of the Brazos, Colorado, and San Bernard rivers,
extending from the vicinity of present-day Brenham,
Navasota, and La Grange to the Gulf of Mexico. According to
the terms of the colonization agreement, each family engaged
in farming was to receive one labor (about 177 acres) and
each ranching family one sitio (about 4,428 acres). Because
of the obvious advantages, a sizeable number of the
colonists classified themselves as stock raisers, though
they were technically planters. Each family's sitio was to
have a frontage on the river equal to about one-fourth of
its length; thus the east bank of the Brazos was soon
completely occupied from the Gulf to what is now Brazos
County. Most of the labors were arranged in three groups
around San Felipe de Austin, which formed the nucleus of the
colony.
The majority of the Old Three Hundred colonists were from
the Trans-Appalachian South; the largest number were from
Louisiana, followed by Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and
Missouri. Virtually all were originally of British ancestry.
Many had been born east of the Appalachians and were part of
the large westward migration of the early years of the
nineteenth century. Most were farmers, and many - including
the Bell, Borden, Kuykendall, McCormick, McNair, McNeel,
Rabb, and Varner families - already had substantial means
before they arrived. Because Austin wanted to avoid problems
with his colonists, he generally only accepted those of
"better" classes; indeed, only four of the Old Three Hundred
grantees were illiterate. Another indication of the
financial stature of the grantees was the large number of
slaveholders among them; by the fall of 1825, sixty-nine of
the families in Austin's colony owned slaves, and the 443
slaves in the colony accounted for nearly a quarter of the
total population of 1,790. One of the colonists, Jared E.
Groce, who arrived from Georgia in January 1822, had ninety
slaves. Though not all of the original grantees survived or
prospered, Austin's Old Three Hundred, as historian T. R.
Fehrenbach has written, formed "the first Anglo
planter-gentry in the province." Their plantations, arrayed
along the rich coastal riverbottoms, constituted the heart
of the burgeoning slave empire in antebellum Texas.
Christopher Long, "OLD THREE HUNDRED," Handbook of Texas
Online(http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/umo01),
accessed March 14, 2013. Published by the Texas State
Historical Association.