The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 39, July 1935 - April, 1936 Page: 289
346 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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The Mercer Colony in Texas, 1844-1883
my associates and persecuted as I have been by the Texas legisla-
ture and convention, I ask but a very moderate remuneration for
expenses incurred in adding largely to the population of Texas, and
in directing her character in a very critical state of her affairs-
when her navy was laid up within the harbor of Galveston; her
army reduced to a few frontier rangers; her treasury exhausted;
her territory threatened with invasion. You will remember doubt-
less the abrupt adjournment of her Congress while we were
together at Washington, on receipt of rumor, which proved to be
unfounded that a large army had crossed the Rio Grande accom-
panied by all the materials for a renewal of Mexican hostilities.
Reviewing in this letter the opposition in the Texas Congress
and in the Convention of 1845, and the final conclusion by those
bodies that his rights should be upheld, Mercer recalled the threats
and attacks made upon his surveyors by agents who were inspired
by Texas Rangers and certain members of the legislature. In his
despondency, Mercer seems to have lost the promise Texas held
for him. Yet he wrote:
Seven only of all my associates have been faithful throughout
to their engagements to me, and if your legislature will enable
me to satisfy their part of the claims, I care little what may
become of mine, altho I devoted at an advanced age with dili-
gence rarely surpassed three years and a half of my life to the
prosecution of the object of my grant. Believing as I did that
I could not more usefully terminate a long life devoted to objects
of public improvement than by planting and nourishing a colony
of which I could become the moral head and in the midst of
which I meant to live and die.56
Besides his personal disappointment in the apparent failure to
secure satisfaction from Texas and his anxiety over the invest-
ments of his friends, Mercer was suffering from the infirmities of
old age and pecuniary distress. Relief came when he transferred
his interests in the Texas project and in a farm at Carrollton,
Kentucky, to George Hancock of Louisville, Kentucky, in return
for which he received an annuity of two thousand dollars which
enabled him to live comfortably. On August 13, 1853, he sailed
from Philadelphia on the steamship Manchester to visit Europe,
where he traveled extensively for three years" in an effort to
'"Charles Fenton Mercer to W. D. Miller, received April 22, 1852. Aus-
tin, Texas. This letter is on file in the records of the case, Preston vs.
Walsh.
"9R. T. Birchett, deposition, in the records of the case, Preston vs. Walsh.289
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 39, July 1935 - April, 1936, periodical, 1936; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101095/m1/315/: accessed April 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.