Editing Moses Austin (section)

==Biography==
[[File:Elias Austin House.jpg|220px|thumb|left|Elias Austin House in Durham, Connecticut, birthplace of Moses Austin, July 2020]]
[[File:Vholifield-austinmoseshouse01.jpg|thumb|Moses Austin house in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, April 2007]]
Moses Austin was born October 4, 1761, to Elias Austin and Eunice Phelps Austin in [[Durham, Connecticut]].<ref>{{cite web|last=Gracy II|first=David B.|title=Moses Austin|url=http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fau12|work=Handbook of Texas Online|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|access-date=November 13, 2013|date=2010-06-09}}</ref> He is a descendant of [[Richard Austin (colonist)|Richard Austin]] on his paternal side.<ref name=sketch>Literary papers of William Austin, with a biographical sketch by his son By William Austin, James Walker Austin</ref> 

In 1784, he moved to [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania|Philadelphia]] to enter the [[dry goods]] business with his brother, Stephen. He then moved to [[Richmond, Virginia]], to open a second dry goods store. In 1785, he married into the affluent iron mining family of Mary Brown, who then became known as [[Mary Brown Austin]].<ref>{{cite book|title=The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wh4UAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA343|year=1907|publisher=Texas State Historical Association|pages=343–}}</ref> The Austins' second child was born in 1793 and named [[Stephen F. Austin|Stephen Fuller Austin]] in honor of his father's brother and his mother's great uncle. Their daughter [[Emily Austin Perry|Emily Austin]] followed in 1795. A second son, [[James Elijah Brown Austin]], was born in 1803.

Austin sought to start his own mining business in southwestern [[Virginia]], and in 1789 he traveled there to look at a [[lead mining|lead mine]]. Moses saw potential in the site and by 1791 his family had joined him in what is now [[Wythe County, Virginia|Wythe County]]. Moses and his brother Stephen and several other partners and individuals industrialized the area. Several smelters, [[Metallurgical furnace|furnace]]s, commissaries, blacksmith shops, liveries, and mills were established. The tiny village around the mines became known as "[[Austinville, Virginia|Austinville]]", and Moses came to be known as the "Lead King".

The Austin brothers soon incurred debts, causing the collapse of the company. After the Virginia lead business failed, Moses skipped out to avoid imprisonment and the consequences of debt, which was then customary for debtors in the U.S. under traditional English law (now being developed for U.S. federal and state codes), and looked toward the rich lead deposits in [[Missouri]], then a part of upper [[Spanish Louisiana]].<ref name=edmondson56>Edmondson (2000), p. 56.</ref> In December 1797, Austin and a companion traveled to investigate the Spanish mines. Stephen remained behind to salvage the Virginia business, creating a rift between the two brothers that would last for much of the rest of their lives. The state of Virginia seized much of the property Moses owned and broke up the various operations, which were later purchased from the state at great discounts by Thomas Jackson and his partners — they would later build the [[Jackson Ferry Shot Tower]], one of the few extant shot towers in United States, at this location. 

In 1798, the Spanish colonial government granted to Moses one [[League (unit)#Spain|league]] of land (4,428 acres) to undertake lead mining operations. In return he swore allegiance to the Spanish Crown and stated he would settle some families in Missouri. Travelling to Missouri, Austin worked with Francois Valle to identify his claims and to learn the practices of lead mining in Missouri. Valle and other French colonizers had long used enslaved African Americans and enslaved Native Americans to mine, and Austin immediately took to these practices. In 1798, the year of his arrival in Missouri, he purchased at least one enslaved man. Moses greatly expanded the use of enslaved men and women in running mining operations in Missouri. Enslaved African American men were used for the hard, difficult labor of digging the lead ore and processing it. Enslaved boys were forced to man the carts that carried ore from the pits to the smelters. Enslaved women and girls were used to prepare food for the enslaved men who worked the mines, pits, and smelting operations. 

In 1803, Missouri came under the jurisdiction of the United States as part of the [[Louisiana Purchase]]. Austin became founder and principal stockholder in the Bank of St. Louis, but the bank failed in the [[Panic of 1819]], causing him to lose his entire fortune. He again sought help from Spain. In 1820, Austin traveled to the [[Presidio San Antonio de Béxar]] in [[Spanish Texas]] and presented a plan to colonize Texas with Anglo-Americans to Governor [[Antonio María Martínez]]. In 1821, the governor asked Austin's friend, [[Erasmo Seguín]], to give him the news that he had been awarded a land grant and permission to settle three hundred families in Texas. On Austin's return trip, he became ill, and he died in June 1821, shortly after arriving back in Missouri. His son Stephen F. Austin carried out his colonization plan several years later, and led the [[Old Three Hundred|three hundred families]] to what became the first Anglo-American settlement in Texas.

In 1885, the legality of Austin's Spanish property claims were settled posthumously by the U.S. Supreme Court in ''[[Bryan v. Kennett]]''.