Our Catliolic Heritage_ in Texas
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needed to reach their destination. Implements, tools, machinery, and household goods could be brought in free of duty; but all articles on the prohibited list found among the effects of the immigrants would be confiscated. To prove their good faith, they were to be asked to submit with good grace to a thorough examination of their baggage and equipment. 29 A letter of Father Antonio de Sedella, of New Orleans, throws an interesting light on the character of the whole scheme and on the kind of immigrant that was likely to come in under the permission just granted. In a communication to Governor Elguezabal Father Sedella declared that he had received a letter from a discalced Carmelite, Father John Brady, Irish curate of Baton Rouge. Father Sedella, after the sale of Louisiana to the United States, had been requested by the former subjects of His Catholic Majesty to seek permission to remain in New Orleans and the king had granted his petition. Father Brady had just apprised him of his recently acquired contract permitting him to introduce I ,500 Catholic families into Texas. The news aroused the suspicions of Father Sedella, who had come to know Americans rather well in his twenty-seven years in New Orleans. "Catholics, God knows!" he exclaimed. Pointing out that American settlers had no scruples in claiming that they were Catholics in order to deceive the Spaniards, he added angrily, "Better to leave Texas to the natural protection of its untrodden forests than to clear the fields on which to permit dis- guised enemies to live under the honorable title of Catholics." His opinion of Father Brady was no more flattering. "If such is the leader," he commented, "the governor may judge the character of the settlers." 30 Governor Elguezabal was spared the embarrassment of refusing admis- sion to Father Brady, for he seems to have withdrawn from the enterprise at about this time. \,Vhen the regulations of the commandant general arrived, Elguezabal wrote Salcedo that he was requesting Despallier to come to San Antonio to discuss the details of the settlement of Louisiana families in Texas. Salcedo, still uneasy about the true designs of the settlers. hastened to inform Elguezabal that the colonists, if they pre- ferred, could come by water through any port on the coast, but that 19 Salcedo to Elguezabal, May 23, 1804; Copia de los once capitulos de Om del Sor Comdte gral de 22 de Mayo de 1804. Nacogdoclies Archives, XI, pp. 30-32. 30 Antonio de Sedella to Elguezabal, July 6, 1806. Nacogdocl,es Arc/,ives, X, pp. 121-123.
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