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Stephen F. Austin is widely known as the “Father of Texas”. This title was originally given to him by the Republic of Texas’s first president, Sam Houston, in a eulogy following Austin’s death in December, 1836. Austin earned this designation because he was the leading empresario, (a Mexican term for a person granted the right to settle on land). Austin successfully led the second, and ultimately permanent, colonization of the region. He successfully brought the “Old Three Hundred” families from the United States into Mexican-controlled Texas in 1825, cementing his legacy as the founder of Anglo Texas Born in Virginia, November 3, 1793, and raised in southeastern Missouri, Austin served in the Missouri territorial legislature. He moved to Arkansas Territory and later to Louisiana. His father, Moses Austin, received an empresario grant from Spain to settle Texas. After Moses Austin died in 1821, Stephen Austin won recognition of the empresario grant from the newly independent nation of Mexico. Austin attracted numerous Anglo-American settlers to move to Texas, and by 1825, Austin had brought the first 300 American families into the territory.

The Texas flag, widely known as the “Lone Star Flag,” was officially adopted by the Republic of Texas on January 25, 1839. Designed by Dr. Charles Bellinger Stewart, of Montgomery, Texas, it features a vertical blue stripe with a single white star alongside two horizontal stripes with white on top, red on bottom. Senator William H. Wharton introduced the current design. When Texas was annexed to the United States in 1845, the Republic’s national flag was retained as the state flag.

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