2/4/1829: La BahÃa becomes Goliad
On this day in 1829, the Mexican government issued a decree officially changing the name La BahÃa to Villa de Goliad.
The term La BahÃa (“the bayâ€) historically referred to several entities, including La BahÃa del EspÃritu Santo (present Matagorda and Lavaca bays) and Nuestra Señora del EspÃritu Santo de Zúñiga Mission and its accompanying presidio. Coahuila and Texas state legislator Rafael Antonio Manchola proposed the change, arguing that the name of the settlement around the presidio was meaningless because neither the mission nor presidio were located on “the bay.†His suggestion of “Goliad†was actually an anagram for the name of Father Hidalgo, the priest who led the fight for Mexican independence. For a time during the 1830s settlers called the town both La BahÃa and Goliad. The community played a key role in the Texas Revolution and became the site of the signing of the first declaration of independence for Texas.
2/4/1841: Republic of Texas authorizes ill-fated Peters colony
On this day in 1841, the Republic of Texas passed a law authorizing the president to enter into an empresario contract with William S. Peters of Pennsylvania and his associates.
The contract required Peters to bring 200 colonists to North Texas every three years. The colony was headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, and its bumpy history contrasts sharply with that of such earlier colonies as the Austin colony partly because the successful earlier empresarios lived in their colonies and managed them personally. After the initial authorizing law, the Peters colony entered four contracts with the republic. Each was an effort to correct some defect in the previous one, or to relax the demands of the government on colony officials, who failed to bring in the requisite colonists. Peters and his investors soon gave up, and in 1844 the Texas Emigration and Land Company was founded to take over the colony. The company continued the earlier management's precedents for rapacious demands on the colonists and inept management. The installation in 1845 of the officious Henry O. Hedgcoxe as the company's agent in residence inflamed the colonists and precipitated the Hedgcoxe War, in which the agent was driven from the colony. A settlement was eventually reached, and the deadline for colonists to file their claims was extended to May 7, 1853. But it took nearly ten legislative enactments over nearly twenty years to bring final settlement of the land titles. The colony that helped settle North Texas brought little if any profit to the investors and much disgruntlement to the settlers.
Topic: A February 4th Two Fer! (Read 48 times)