Embracing Mexico and Settling the Land

In the end, Mexico did gain its independence and the desire for land easily took primacy over American nationalistic concerns. The proof here is in what the survivors did after the new sister-republic to the south was created. As noted in chapter 3, of the known American survivors of the expedition, at least half chose to settle in Mexico and take Mexican citizenship. Nine fought in future filibusters within Texas, all against royalist Spain, but none of the survivors fought in – and some strongly opposed – the one filibuster (the Fredonian Rebellion) against republican Mexico. This shows a strong continuity of interest in Texas’ future.

Important too is the impact of the expedition on the American knowledge of Texas. In the months before the expedition, a French account of Texas spurred an American editor of the Daily National Intelligencer to conclude that the Spanish region “appears, from all accounts, to be really a kind of paradise…Who would not wish to inhabit such a spot?” Within two years, a large group of Americans had traveled much of the territory, becoming the first of their countrymen to gain and disseminate much knowledge of the richness of the land. These reports confirmed the earlier account with reliable American

Table 3: Known Survivors and their Later Connections to Texas
Survivor	Future Filibuster	Settled in Texas	Pension Application	Notes
Martin Allen		ü		Old 300 colonist
John Ash				No information
Samuel Barber	ü	ü		Settled 1829 with wife and seven children
Stephen Barker	ü			No information
Carlos (Charles) Beltran		Possibly		Wrote account of expedition
Horatio Bigelow	ü	ü		Edited Nacogdoches Texas Republican
Peter Boone		ü		Settled in Mexico
Aylette C. Buckner	ü	ü	ü	Old 300 Colonist
Henry Adams Bullard	X	X	X	Settled in Louisiana
Joshua Child(s)	ü			Long Expedition
Hamlin Cook	ü			Long Expedition
Godwin Brown Cotton		ü		In 1829 co-owned “Texas Gazette”
Bernardo D’Ortolan				Given Spanish amnesty.
Dr. Samuel D. Forsyth	*	X		Settled in Louisiana
Isaac Foster		X		Settled in Louisiana
James Gaines		ü		Signed Texas Declaration of Independence
? Gormley		X		No information
John “Jack” W. Hall		ü		Settled in Texas
Warren D.C. Hall	ü	ü		Wrote memoir of expedition
Darius Johnston		Died 1824		Settled in Louisiana
Orramel Johnston		Died 1826		Settled in Louisiana
Samuel Kemper		Died 1815		Died of disease
John Gladden King		ü		Settled in Gonzales, 1830
Thomas Luckett			ü	Sought pension
A.W. McClain		ü		Old 300 Colonist
William McLane		ü		Settled in San Antonio, 1854
Henry William Munson		ü		Served as alcalde in Atascocita
Samuel Noah	X	X	X	Lived in Virginia in 1840s
H.I. Offeet			ü	No information
George Orr		ü	ü	Served as alcalde in Atascocita
Henry Perry	ü	Died 1817		Died near La Bahia, Tx.
Edmund Quirk		ü		Returned to land near present-day San Augustine
Reuben Ross		Died 1828	ü	Died in Mexico pursuing pension
Josiah Taylor		ü		Green DeWitt colony settler
John Villars		ü		Settled in Mexico
W.W. Walker	ü			No information
Joseph Biddle Wilkinson		X		Did not return
? Wolforth		X		Living in Mississippi, 1840s
Walter Young	*	X		Believed died fighting with Miranda
* Non-Texas filibuster

tales, from men known personally to observers throughout the West. One striking feature of the participants is the degree to which they were all interconnected. In researching their histories, these characters bump into each other with the frequency of a small town. They had business dealings with each other, got their loans at the same banks, bought and sold property or slaves. On the frontier, personal networks were strong, deep and broad, making the expedition personally relevant to many thousands of people who never participated themselves.

For those who did survive and return to Louisiana or Kentucky, Texas never left their minds and this obsession would have influenced their neighbors. When Stephen F. Austin began to recruit his colonists in the 1820s, his marketing effort was building on a prior knowledge of Texas that had been established in the previous decade and a half and which facilitated his efforts. Immigration to America has always been driven by such personal stories of pathfinders who fired ambition in the hearts of those who would follow with their experiences. Texas was little different, and when the survivors of the

expedition had their own opportunity in the early 1820s to choose to immigrate to Mexico in peace, many if not most, voted with their feet and settled in Texas. Only six to nine of the 34 known survivors alive in 1828 were neither filibusters, future settlers or sought a Mexican pension (see Table 3), and at least one of these, Bullard, had already obtained wealth and standing in Louisiana by this time with his unique mixture of languages and legal training, making immigration unnecessary.