MOSES AUSTIN - MANUSCRIPT DOCUMENT SIGNED 04/05/1812 CO-SIGNED BY: MOSES BATES - HFSID 286811

MOSES AUSTIN and MOSES BATES
Austin posts bond for his brother-in-law Moses Bates with Sheriff (later US Senator) Henry Dodge
Manuscript Document signed: "Moses Bates", "Moses Austin", 1 page, 7½x12½. Each has hand-drawn his seal to the right of his signature. Ste Genevieve, Missouri, 1812 April 5. Docketed on verso. In full: "Know all Men by these present that we Moses Bates and Moses Austin are held and formerly bound to H. Dodge Sheriff of the District of St. Genevieve in the kind sum of Eight hundred and forty Dollars lawful money of the United States to be paid to the said Dodge or his successor..The condition of the above obligation is such that a capias ad respondendum has Issued from the Court of Common Pleas for the District cop[ie]d at the suit of William C. Carr and Henry Elliott administrator of Earon Elliott deceased on which said suit bail is required for the sum of four hundred and Twenty Dollars and the said Dodge has arrested the said Moses Bates in his capacity as sheriff of the said Bates should be cast in the said suit he will pay the cost and condemnation money or surrender his body in execution for the same or that the said Moses Austin his bail will do it for him as witness our hands and seals this day and date as above written." MOSES AUSTIN (1761-1821), the father of Texas pioneer Stephen F. Austin, was known as "the Lead  King" of southwestern Virginia, where he owned mines and production facilities to make buckshot and other lead products. His business failed, and in 1798 Austin and his family moved to what is now Missouri, then Spanish territory. (It became part of the US in the Louisiana Purchase (1803). Austin established the first Anglo-American town and the first American mining operation west of the Mississippi at Potosi, Missouri, which he named after the Bolivian silver-mining town. Austin prospered for a time, but his business failed again in the Panic of 1819. He then traveled to Texas, acquiring permission to settle there with a colony of Anglos. Moses Austin died before he could return with the colonists, but his son Stephen F. Austin led 300 colonists there, and became known as the "Father of Texas," and was the first Secretary of State of the Republic of Texas when he died suddenly in 1836. MOSES BATES was the brother-in-law of Moses Austin, married to his sister Martha. The nature of Bates' legal trouble is uncertain. In this document, he posts bail with Sheriff H[enry] Dodge of Ste Genevieve, who was later a military hero in the Blackhawk War (1832), Governor of the Wisconsin Territory (1836-1847, 1845-1848), and the first US Senator from Wisconsin (1848-1857). Ironically, Dodge as a US Senator, considered for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1844, was a strong opponent of US annexation of Texas. One horizontal, two vertical fold creases. Lightly toned. Left edge irregularly cut. Multiple ink smears throughout document. Otherwise fine condition. Multiple soiled spots at lower left edge and left lower edge. Otherwise fine condition.