343
THE AUSTIN PAPERS
RAMON MUSQUIZ TO GOVERNOR
Bexar, March 14, 1830.
See Calendar.
ROBERT WESCOTT TO AUSTIN
Potosi 15 March 1830.
Col: STEPHEN F. AUSTIN' . DEAR Sm: Wben I re.fleet on the intimacy and friendly ·inter- course which in days long past happily subsisted between your late worthy father and my (then) family in Philadelphia, as well as myself, (all now with a single exception resting in their graves) and the uniform regard a.nd esteem felt by ~frs. Wescott and self for your late excellent mother, my reluctance in troubling you with this communication is m,easurnbly diminished. For in appreciating your own disposition to oblige, and to promote the interests of those who are not unworthy, by that, which I know your deceased parents eminently possessed, I do believe, I but render to you a just t1ibute of estimation. Under this impression, I no longer hesitate to come to a general Development of my objects in addressing you. In the first place, excuse me for remarking that perhaps few men have suffered more severely than it has been my hard destiny to do, from the heavy blasts of adverse fortune. From Ease and ailluence, I have been cruelly reduced for a series of past years to a state of compa1·ative privation, which, personally, wcl. have been the more easly endured had it not borne heavily upon the comforts, prospects, and fair expectations of an excellent wife and eight children, by which I have been compelled to suffer a state of intense feeling and anxiety: almost beyond the exertion of my strongest moral energies ! This sad state of things, has resulted from n liberal but misplaced con- fidence in men of plausible exterior and reputed integrity, who have despoiled rue of property to an amount, which wd. now render me and my family perfectly comfortable and independent. Such is the true but brief outline of our situation. In consequences of the kind, and well intended Invitation of my Brothers in law, Doctr Joseph and Sam 1 P. Browne, to come on with my family to this place we were induced to undertake the long and arduous and expensive removal from Phildn and arrived here in November last. But altho' received and treated by Mrs. )V's Brothers with perfect kindness yet I soon discovered .that we had made a fallacious estimate of the expected advantages, which such removal appeared to promise. In fact, this section o:f Missouri seems to me to be in a deplorable situa- tion. The Staple commodity (Lead) is u. mere Drug-its price so low as to discourage the most sanguine miner, and the chance of
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