Texas Frontier Gallery

102
Rare Documents
6
Maps
22
Artworks
39
Artifacts

Stephen F. Austin, known as the Father of Anglo-Texas, greets you as you enter the Texas Frontier Gallery. Austin was a successful empresario and entrepreneur who helped settle Texas with the permission of the Mexican government. Over time, many of the new colonists wanted independence from Mexico and fought against Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna and his army beginning in 1835. Santa Anna overwhelmed the Texians at the Alamo and again at Goliad but suffered a devastating defeat at the Battle of San Jacinto in 1836. Texas became independent from Mexico and the Republic of Texas was born with Sam Houston as its president. The room is anchored by a fascinating, hand-crafted diorama with 2000 soldiers, depicting the Battle of San Jacinto.

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The Sword That Captured Santa Anna

Joel Robison, a private in the Texian army who carried this military sword during the Texas Revolution, is credited with capturing General Santa Anna. Santa Anna managed to escape the Battle of San Jacinto on April 21, 1836. On April 22, Robison and others were ordered by General Burleson to search the bayou around the battlefield for Mexican soldiers who had escaped the day before. Robison and the other five men in his squad came upon a Mexican soldier who was reluctant to return to the battlefield. After prodding him at spearpoint for a while, the prisoner was put on Robison horse. The Mexican soldier’s reluctance was explained as Robison made his way into the Texian camp and other captured Mexicans present began shouting “El Presidente.” Knowing his identity had been revealed, the prisoner, President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna himself, asked Robison to take him to General Sam Houston.

Original Borden Map of the City of Houston

Known as the Original Borden Map of the City of Houston, measuring 18 inches by 29 inches, this map was created in 1836 by mapmakers Gail and Tom Borden and Moses Lapham for city founders J.K. and A.C. Allen, brothers from New York who had come to Texas as land speculators.

After the Texas Revolution, they sited their fledgling city at the confluence of the White and Buffalo bayous, the spot where steamboats could travel and turn around. The Allen brothers, Houston’s founders, used the Borden map, the oldest known plan of the city, to illustrate for sale the size and location of the lots, blocks and streets of the proposed municipality.

Tom Borden and Moses Lapham began surveying the future town site on October 1, 1836. The town plan angled into the prairie from Buffalo Bayou instead of following a direct north-south axis. There’s an inset of an early Stephen F. Austin map of the state and boxes of text that tout the city’s virtues, since the Allen brothers used them to sell property to Easterners wanting to move West.

The Allen brothers gave one of the 62 blocks of the city to Sam Houston and handed him this map as well. Sam Houston hung the map in his office for years