352
AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION
soon as possible with all your family ·and property and that I had petitioned the Governor of the state to grant you Eleven Leagues of land. I now have the pleasure to inform you that I yesterday received the grant from the Governor. he hus had the goodness t.o grant to James F. Perry and to his wife Emily l.\fargarita Austin Eleven Leagues of land to be selected on any vacant lands in Austin's colony and he has issued all the necessary orders to the General land Commissioner to give a patent in due form: as the colonization law requires. The grant is however subject to the condi~ion that you remove and ~ettle here with your family _within two yeays from the first day of last January. In eleven Mexican leagues there is within a. fraction_of forty eight thousand eight hundred :rnd thirty acres english measure. Under the present law as it now stands you cannot sell any of this land, untill after several years: bnt ·r did not ask for it .with an expectation that you wished to _s_ell any ·of it now. ·My object was to sec11.re a fortune for your children and this' was the reason why I asked for it in bo_th of your names, by the laws .of this country the husband and wife can hold .prop- erty separately. Th\$ grant as it now stands belongs to both of you, one half to each, so that my sisters children by Bryan, as her heirs will be entitled to their full share. I have now done all that I can do. 'You have got the highest grant that can be given by the laws of this country to uny one which is eleven Leagues as you will see by examining the •12th article of the national colonization law of August 18 1824 in the translations which I sent you. It is what ver-y few people can get, and it will" be trifling with fortune not to accept it. . You are allowed two·years to remove, but I most earnestly advise you to remove immediately. I shall expect to eat my next Christmas dinner with you all. dq not disappoint me. The object is of too much importance to be neglected. You have no idea at all of this country, nor of the great emigration that is daily coming to it, nor of the chara,cter of the emigrants We are getting th~ best men, the best kind of settlers. pay rio attention to rumors and silly re- ports but push on as fast as possible. We have nothing to" fear from this Govt. nor from any other quarter except from the United States of the North. If that govt. should get ho]d of us and intro- •duce its land system etc etc thousands who are now on the move and who have not yet secured their titles, would be totally ruined. The greatest misfortune that could befall Texas at this moment would be~ sudden change by which many of the·emigrants would be thrown upon the liberality of the ConO'ress 'of the United States :::,, ' 1 • .. of the north-theirs would, be a most forlorn hope. I have no idea of any change unless it be effected by arbitrary force, and I ha.ve too much confidence in the magninimity of my native country
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