Trails West: Tejas the Promised Land

They packed up their Bibles and left behind them a life that had been filled with turmoil, peril and oppression. The horizon ahead of them to the west, that new Promised Land of Stephen F. Austin called Texas, was their destination. TH Farenbach summed it up best in his book Lonestar when he wrote, 'Like all truly successful emigrants, these Anglo-Celts abandoned a world in Europe they at heart hated. They were Israelites leaving Egypt. They had already burned most of their bridges to the traditional culture behind them when they sailed for America... They were bound for the Wilderness on an Old Testament trek to build the New Jerusalem. All such peoples, throughout history have been the most fitted to seize new ground. They were not going to retreat. They were poised to attack, a tough, hungry, numerous, riotous, and yet, curiously disciplined horde. They had no banners, armies or grand leaders, no real rationale for conquest. Their own sayings were, 'God helps them who help themselves' and 'there's no such thing as luck' and they were going West. Men like Crockett, Houston and Travis joined thousands of other Scots-Irish trailblazers, men of their own heart and breeding who had preceded them on the trek to Texas. These earliest pioneers, some whose names history has failed to record, paved the way for the more illustrious that followed, carving out the apple that would lead America to its Manifest Destiny. That prize was Texas. A handful of these brave colonists unknowingly descended from the stock of kings, and settled in a place that came to be known as Austin County, Texas. In 1822, James and Thomas Bell joined the westward trek of their kinsmen, leaving Florida for the wilds of Texas. In the years that followed, they would carve a vast plantation from a virgin wilderness. They fought hostile Indians, experienced disease, and faced the hardships of an uncivilized land. Along the way, both brothers found themselves in the arms of the lovel