11/11/1833: Beales Colony leaves for Texas

[Craig Tx]

On this day in 1833, the Amos Wright sailed from New York for Texas with fifty-nine men, women, and children aboard, the vanguard of a proposed colony backed by the Rio Grande and Texas Land Company and under command of John Charles Beales.

In 1832 Beales and James Grant had acquired two tracts and obligated themselves to settle 800 families in the region between the Rio Grande and the Nueces; they set up the joint stock company to promote their venture. The first colonists landed at Copano Bay in December 1833 and journeyed in ox wagons to their destination on Las Moras Creek in present-day Kinney County. Here, in March 1834, the emigrants planted their settlement and named it Dolores, in honor of Beales's Mexican wife. But the colony was doomed to failure. The outbreak of the Texas Revolution caused a general exodus. One large wagon train was attacked by Comanche Indians on the Matamoros road, and all the settlers were massacred except two women and their small children, who were taken captive.