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TEXAS STATE LIBRARY
(Dr. Jas. Hewitson from Ireland,) residing at Saltillio)-grant was obtained from the Genl. Govt. in !lay 18.!8 - and contirm1::d by the State Govt. in the year after= The State tho' authorized to make Empresario Contracts, could not do it for the 10 Border Leagues from the Gulf, which had been reserved, without the consent of the Genl. Congress = Power and Hewitson applied to the State authorities, who recommended the application to the Genl. Govt. Under this recom- mendation, the Grant waR obtained. The first grant embraced from the guadaloupe, to the Labacca - and a seccond grant called an aug- mentation, extendied from the Guadalupe to the Nueces river - These grants were to be settled with 4 hundred families, - one half at least to be mexicans, and the other half to be Irish Catholics = Before he could do anything towards Colonizing, he met with several difficul- ties - first he was opposed by a claim which Martin DeLeon put up for the same lands. Deleon's claim to the territory was founded 41 a contract between a provisional governmt and himself in 1811 or 12 when Mexico waf? in a state of Revolt to old spain. This claim, wholly unknown to the govermt. of Mexico & -to the state also and not based upon any authority recognised by them, was of no force; but it formed a pretext for the political Chief Musquiz to oppose & embarrass Power in his attempts to settle his colony; Musquiz's opposition arising from· the fact that he had located 6 leagues of of [sic] land on the Labacca, = Muquiz and Deleon, applied to Genl. Teran, who was appointed to en- force the Law of April 1830; and Teran immediately sustained the pretensions of Musquiz, and ordered Power under a heavy penalty not to survey a foot of the soil under his contract - Power, attempted to shew to Teran, that the law of 1830 did not affect his grant, because his emigrants were to be Irishmen & Mexicans, and that law was in- tended only to exclude N. Americans- The case was then referred to the President Govt. of Mexico, who havig no cognesance of the mat- ter, re-referred it to the State Authority who were [sic] alone had jurisdiction over such points - The State Authorities, decided in favor of Power, by legislative act, rebuked Teran for his military in- terference with the civil affairs of the state, and granted Power an extension of time for the interruptions which he had sustained. This was March 1832 - was not the entire conclusion of his difficulties. The Governor, Latone, died very soon after this law had passed, and the Vice Govr. Beremendi, in assumig the office, declared that the law extending the time for Power to complete his contract, was in contravention of the 9th article of the General Colonization law. He was induced to this, because he had made locations within the grant himself. He at the same time· sanctioned a law granting a similar ex- tension of time to Mason & others - 80 much for Mexican justice and honesty - Power had not heard of this act of the Governor until he had left the countrv. He went to the US in 1833 and found sev- eral of his emigrants, ·in Philadelphia - he started them ofI imm<'di- ately for Texas, whilst he sailed the 14 Octr. 1833 for Ireland; where he commenced shipping his emigrants. The first partv were 108 souls, embarked in the ship Prudence; all of whom except 8 perished in one week with the Cholerea. He still continued to ship smaller numbers
"Evidently the word "on" should be inserted here.
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