“Original Austinites” — Identifying the Citizens of Waterloo
As the city of Austin adds over one hundred new residents a day, the percentage of residents who can claim to be so-called “original Austinites” dwindles, and the calls for a return to the good old days increase. But even compared to those who were born in Austin and grew up alongside the expanding boundaries and eventual skyscrapers — or the truly original Indigenous Tonkawa, Lipan Apache, Comanche, and Kiowa groups who inhabited Central Texas for generations — there is another settler group with a claim to the mantle of “original Austinites.” The identities of the citizens of the town of Waterloo, Austin’s precursor, can be revealed through records in the GLO Archives.
Long before the city of Austin boasted a population of nearly one million people,[1] Waterloo was situated about 30 miles northwest of Bastrop. It was deemed the furthest Anglo settlement up the Colorado River when it was laid out in 1838. Waterloo’s founder, Edward Burleson,[2] had high hopes that the picturesque beauty of the site nestled on the banks of the Colorado River on the edge of the Texas Hill Country would lure settlers to the beautiful and expansive frontier.
At its heyday, Waterloo had fewer than twenty residents, dashing Burleson’s vision for the settlement. That all changed in 1839, when Waterloo was selected as the site for the new capital of the Republic of Texas on the suggestion of President Mirabeau B. Lamar.[3] He had visited the area the prior year and was taken by its natural resources and beauty. Shortly thereafter, Waterloo was renamed in honor of Stephen F. Austin.
Lamar was not alone in his appreciation for Waterloo. Writing to Lamar in April 1839, James S. Jones commented that the surrounding area was “beautiful country” that “presents a scene of grandeur and magnificence [sic] rarely if ever witness…in any other part of the American Country.”[4] W. Jefferson Jones added that “the atmosphere was charged with the most delightful perfume and every shrub and every hill and every flowere [sic] seemed to extend a welcome to the weary traveller [sic].” He concluded that “Rome itself with all its famous hills could not have surpassed the natural scenery of Waterloo.”[5]
The area was soon was filled with hundreds of surveyors, carpenters, blacksmiths, and laborers, all rushing to erect a semblance of a city before the Fourth Congress of Texas was scheduled to begin that November. By January 1840, Austin was home to over 800 people.[6]
No recorded plat of Waterloo exists in the Archives of the General Land Office. However, a few files in the archives may shed some light on who exactly those original citizens of Waterloo were.
The first order of business in transforming Waterloo from a small frontier village to the national capital was to lay out the new city’s grid. Edwin Waller was hired to chart a plan beginning on the banks of the Colorado River, and the Austin City Lots were to be sold by auction. The first public auction was held on August 1, 1839, under the majestic oak trees at what is today Woolridge Square. Records of those sales are housed in the Austin City Lots Collection at the GLO.
The Austin City Lots Records lay a vital foundation for the historical study of Texas’ capital city. The collection contains 18 boxes of sales certificates and two bound index volumes. The sales certificates were issued by the Comptroller and indicate receipt of payment for Austin city lots and outlots. They also authorized the General Land Office to issue patents to the purchasers. The slimmer bound volume is a surname index to the City of Austin Register of lots and outlots sold. Additional names were added in blue ink in 1957. The Register itself lists city lots and outlots, when the land was patented, and by whom. The Register is arranged by block, then lot number, while the surname index is arranged alphabetically.
Intermingled among the 900 Austin City Lot files are thirteen files in which the lots were not purchased, but rather granted to the recipient. The certificates in all thirteen of these files cite a Joint Resolution approved on January 22, 1840, by the 4th Congress of the Republic of Texas, granting a lot in the city of Austin to the original citizens of Waterloo.[7]
One man on this list, Jacob Harrell, is often referred to as the first citizen of Waterloo.[8] In fact, when Burleson set out to create the town, Jacob Harrell had already been living there for three years. In 1835, he moved from the Bastrop area and set up a tent at a bend near the mouth of Shoal Creek on the Colorado River. After erecting a more permanent residence near what is today Cesar Chavez and Congress Avenue, Harrell’s family joined him in 1838.[9]
When the first public auction was held, Harrell bid on two lots in the city of Austin: lots one and two in block five, the site of the home he built in 1838. Jacob’s son, Anderson Harrell, also received a grant of one city lot, and he selected lot three in the same block. As a blacksmith, Harrell was instrumental in the building of the city of Austin, and he remained an active citizen, participating in the Austin vigilance committee during the Archives War and ultimately serving a term as mayor in 1847.
When Waterloo was selected as the new seat of government, it was reported that there were other settlers living nearby the Harrells, including members of the Vandeveer, Rogers, Hancock, and Burleson families.[10] The GLO’s Austin City Lot files granting lots to thirteen individuals helps identify those who were recognized by the Republic of Texas as the original inhabitants of the future capital.[11] The enterprising families who settled on what was then the edge of the Texas frontier helped shape Austin into the capital of Texas.
The Austin City Lots and Outlots Records have been conserved thanks to generous donations from the Austin Genealogical Society. To learn more about how you can help conserve GLO records with a tax-deductible donation to the Save Texas History Program, please click here.
[1] City of Austin Demographics, accessed January 21, 2020, http://www.austintexas.gov/demographics.
[2] Handbook of Texas Online, Helen Burleson Kelso, “Burleson, Edward,” accessed January 21, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fbu40.
[3] Hans Peter Mareus Neilsen Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822–1897, Volume 2, Austin: The Gammel Book Company, 1898, p. 161. (texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6726/m1/165/: accessed January 21, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, texashistory.unt.edu.)
[4] J.S. Jones to M.B. Lamar, 14 April 1839, Charles A. Gulick, The Papers of Mirabeau Buonaparte Lamar, Vol. 2 (London: Forgotten Books, 2015), p. 529.
[5] Ibid., p. 530.
[6] Jeffry Kerr, Seat of Empire, The Embattled Birth of Austin, Texas (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2013), p. 119.
[7] Journals of the Fourth Congress of the Republic of Texas, Vol. 3, Reports and Relief Laws, p. 218, accessed August 11, 2017, http://www.lrl.state.tx.us/scanned/CongressJournals/04/houseJournalsCon4_RptsReliefLaws.pdf.
[8] Handbook of Texas Online, Seymour V. Connor, “Harrell, Jacob M.,” accessed January 22, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fha77.
[9] Kerr, Seat of Empire, p. 8
[10] Handbook of Texas Online, Claudia Hazlewood, “Waterloo, TX (Travis County),” accessed January 21, 2020, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hvw13.
[11] The following information is from Mary Starr Barkley’s History of Travis County and Austin 1839–1899: Joel Minor was identified as the publisher of a weekly newspaper called New Era from 1845–1847. Horace Baker and William Miller were Texas Rangers and stationed at Tumlinson Fort. They came to Austin (Waterloo) when the company disbanded in 1838. B.D. Bassford served as the Travis County District Clerk in 1840.
