The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 99, July 1995 - April, 1996 Page: 61
626 p. : ill. (some col.), maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Johann von Racknitz
help. There the governor and the citizens of San Antonio were quick to
give him food and supplies for his people and three carts in which to
transport it all to Bastrop. By the time he returned to his camp, however,
all of his surviving colonists had already scattered to other settlements.43
After the failure of his first colonization attempt, which had cost him
and others a great deal of money and property,44 Racknitz decided to
continue on to Mexico City to conclude the negotiations for a land
grant. On December 16, he was in San Antonio again where he and a
companion by the name of "Veysser" (Weisse?) submitted a petition to
the governor to travel with three chests of personal belongings to Mon-
clova.45 On the way to the capital, Racknitz traveled through the states of
Coahuila, Nuevo Leon, and Tamaulipas, looking along the way for suit-
able land on which to settle his German colonists. He had already aban-
doned the idea of establishing a colony in Texas, he later wrote, for
Texas had become "in recent years a hotbed for North American riffraff
and a bone of contention between North American greed and the Mexi-
can Republic."46 He found some land that suited his purposes in
Tamaulipas, and after exploring it thoroughly, he traveled to Ciudad
Victoria and presented his plans to the authorities there. Officials in the
government of that state immediately responded very positively to his
proposal. From Ciudad Victoria Racknitz traveled then to Mexico City
where he received further assurances of government support, including
the promise of President Santa Anna himself, to endorse the project.47
From the federal capital Racknitz returned to Tamaulipas. On or
about March 12, 1834, he presented to the military authorities in Mata-
moros three letters of identification given to him by the Mexican envoys
in The Hague and in Paris.48 On March 13, Racknitz himself wrote three
* Racknltz, Kurze und getreue Belehrung, ix-xi. Racknitz's presence in San Antonio at the end of
October is documented in the record of a complaint registered there by him against the gover-
nor concerning the loss of Racknitz's horse that had been held as security. "German resident of
Bastrop, to answer his complaint on loss of horse," Bexar Archives, BX 10/29/1833,
158:o0988-89 (CAH).
The year following Racknitz's failed colony on the Colorado, a German traveler in Texas re-
ported meeting an orphan boy in San Antonio who was one of the survivors of the colony. Ed-
uard Ludecus, Reise durch die Mexicanischen Provinzen Tumalipas, Cohahusla und Texas im Jahre
1834: In Bnefen an seine Freunde (Leipzig: Joh. Friedr. Hartknoch, 1837), 135.
44 "Memorial," Mar. 27, 1849, Governors' Letters: Wood.
45 These personal belongings were the homesteading supplies he had brought along for use in
the colony: molds for making candles, a bedstead with feather comforters, shovels, mattocks, car-
penter's planes, five pounds of gunpowder, and other items. "Petitions to carry personal belong-
ings to Monclova," Bexar Archives, BX 12/16/1833, 159: o6og (CAH).
46 Racknitz, Kurze und getreue Belehrung, xii (quotation).
47 Ibid.
I At the end of the third letter there is the notation: "This is a verbatim copy of the three orig-
inals that were presented to me and that I returned to the party concerned. Matamoros, 12
March 1834." Archivo de la... Colonizaci6n, vol. 307, p. 59.1995
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 99, July 1995 - April, 1996, periodical, 1996; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101217/m1/89/: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.