Empresario land grants in Texas

DEFINITION: Tracts of land granted to settlers—known as empresarios—by Mexico to encourage settlement in Texas while it was part of Mexico 

SIGNIFICANCE: By issuing empresario grants, Mexico hoped to attract settlers from around the world. Some Europeans did immigrate to Texas, but most settlers were from the United States. Rather than assimilate as loyal Mexican citizens, the American settlers remained a foreign element, and many of them were instrumental in leading the Texas Revolution in 1835-1836. 

During the Spanish colonial era in Mexico, Texas was on the far northern fringe of the Spanish empire—there was little effort to settle the region. In 1820, Moses Austin—a miner and businessman from Missouri—traveled to San Antonio de Béxar, the provincial capital of the Texas region, to meet with governor Antonio Mária Martínez about bringing American settlers into the region. Austin eventually received permission to bring in three hundred American families, but died shortly after returning to Missouri. 

In 1821, Mexico became independent of Spanish control. Stephen F. Austin—the son of Moses Austin—made an arrangement with the new Mexican administration that was similar to the one his father had worked out with the Spanish. Settlers entering Mexico were required to become Mexican citizens and had, at least nominally, to profess Roman Catholicism—the established religion of Mexico. Each American settler was given a generous land grant—either 170 acres suitable for cultivation or more than 4,000 acres of grazing land. 

Austin led the first settlers into Texas in December 1821. In 1824, the Mexican government passed a law formalizing these colonization efforts—offering land and tax exemptions to foreign settlers. Mexico hoped that these settlers would create a kind of buffer between Mexico and the United States and also deal with the hostile Indigenous groups in the region. Most American settlers, however, saw their Mexican citizenship as a mere formality and still considered themselves Americans. 

The vast majority of the settlers who came into Texas were from the United States, but European immigrants established a few colonies, including two of the most successful—San Patricio and Refugio—near the Gulf coast. In August 1828, James McGloin and John McMullen were allowed to bring in two hundred Irish Catholic families, who created the San Patricio colony. The Irish settlers were actually recruited in New York City; however, many had only recently arrived from Ireland. In 1831, James Power and James Hewetson were given permission to bring in another two hundred Irish families, and these people founded the Refugio colony. 

In 1830, about seven thousand Americans were living in Texas. By then, the Mexicans realized that allowing Americans to colonize the province had been a mistake—the settlers largely resisted assimilation. New laws were passed forbidding further American migration into Texas, but illegal immigration continued. By the time of the Texas Revolution (1835-1836), about thirty thousand Anglo-American settlers and about three thousand enslaved African Americans were living in the region. 

In the 2020s, the immigrant situation faced by the government of Texas echoed that of Mexico in the nineteenth century. The fundamental similarity was the need for labor. In the early 1800s, Mexico required labor—in the form of settlers—to inhabit the large wilderness area of Texas and to buffer against nomadic raids of Indigenous American groups, such as the Comanche and Apache.

In the twenty-first century, labor demand continued to grow in Texas, as the state had built the eighth-largest economy in the world, ahead of some developed nations. Among populations born in the United States, including Texas, people increasingly had longer life expectancies but were experiencing lower birth rates. This meant older generations were getting larger relative to the shrinking younger demographics. The employment opportunities that emerged attracted millions of newcomers to the state, both from within the United States and externally from foreign immigrants.  

Beginning in 2023, the Hispanic population surpassed the White population to become Texas’s largest demographic. This evoked many anti-immigrant sentiments from nativist-minded Texans, regardless of the fact that their predecessors culturally remade the state when control was wrested from Mexico.

Bibliography

Anderson, Gary Clayton. The Conquest of Texas: Ethnic Cleansing in the Promised Land, 1820-1875. U of Oklahoma P, 2005.

Cantrell, Gregg. Stephen F. Austin: Empresario of Texas. Yale UP, 1999.

Davis, William C. Lone Star Rising: The Revolutionary Birth of the Texas Republic. Free Press, 2004.

Frey, William H. “New 2020 Census Data Shows an Aging America and Wide Racial Gaps between Generations.” Brookings, 1 Aug. 2023, www.brookings.edu/articles/new-2020-census-data-shows-an-aging-america-and-wide-racial-gaps-between-generations. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025. 

Lang, Aldon S., and Christopher Long. "The History of Land Grants in Texas." Texas State Historical Association, 23 Jan. 2016, www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/land-grants. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025. 

Ura, Alexa. "Hispanics Officially Make Up the Biggest Share of Texas’ Population, New Census Numbers Show." The Texas Tribune, 21 June 2023, www.texastribune.org/2023/06/21/census-texas-hispanic-population-demographics. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.