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Lamar's Efforts to Promote Trade

grasses -- mesquite grass, wild rye, &c. It is undoubtedly, the paradise of all sections of the country that I have yet seen.[8] 

In March and April 1839, more than two hundred families arrived in the neighborhoods of Copano, Aransas,[9]  and Live Oak Point and were "extending the settlements quite back into the counties of San Patricio and Refugio."[10]  Many Mexican families were said to be desirous of leaving the Río Grande to settle in the western country, but were prevented from fear of Indian hostilities. The Lipans, then friendly to the Texans, were reported to have committed several murders recently in the vicinity of a place called "high timbers," just west of the Nueces, among Mexicans entering Texas.[11]  The town of Calhoun was projected on January 21, 1839, when Congress directed the Secretary of the Treasury to have 640 acres on the north end of Matagorda Island surveyed as a site for a seaport.[12]  Victoria, Goliad, Gonzales, and San Antonio were incorporated on January 26, 1839,[13]  and Aransas City, Galveston, and Matagorda were incorporated on January 28.[14]  A customhouse was located at Live Oak Point in September 1838,[15]  and at Matagorda in October of the same year.[16]  For nearly a year, until early June 1839, the town of Aransas served as the port of entry and as the point of customs collection for Copano Bay until the customhouse was removed by the collector of the district to the newly estab-



8. Letter to the Editor of the Telegraph, Nueces River, March 6, 1839, in Telegraph and Texas Register, April 10, 1839.

9. Aransas City was founded about 1837 by James Power on Live Oak Point, Refugio County (now a part of Aransas County), near the location of the old Spanish-Mexican fort of Aranzazu, which guarded the entrance to Copano Bay. Handbook of Texas, I, 56-57.

10. Morning Star (Houston), April 27, 1839.

11. Samuel Hewes to [M. B. Lamar], City of Aransas, May 23, 1839, in Lamar Papers, II, 585-586.

12. Gammel (ed.), Laws of Texas, II, 61-62, 423-424, 541-542. The development of the town was delayed, however, until the survey of the coast and harbors of Texas could be completed by the navy. Lots in the town of Calhoun went on sale in June 1841, and a customhouse was established there.

13. Gammel (ed.), Laws of Texas, II, 118-119. Except for Goliad these had originally been incorporated on December 14, 1837. Ibid., I, 1392.

14. Ibid., II, 94-99. Matagorda was originally incorporated on December 14, 1837. Ibid., I, 1392.

15. Lamar Papers, II, 220-222.

16. Ibid., II, 237.

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AFTER SAN JACINTO: The Texas-Mexican Frontier, 1836-1841
Joseph Milton Nance, 1963