All the major themes in Texas history have had real-life expression at Moore-Hancock Farmstead.
This part of Texas was under Spanish rule from 1519 until 1821 and then under the Mexican flag until 1836. Beginning in 1823, Stephen F. Austin was licensed by the Mexican government to bring colonists to settle in the area.
The Farmstead is in the large tract Stephen F. Austin intended to be his home, but which ended up being deeded to Thomas Jefferson Chambers perhaps fraudulently.
Clouded land titles and lawsuits involved the first two owners of Moore-Hancock and lasted many years, a common problem in early Texas.
In 1836, Texas freed itself from Mexico and established a Republic. Soon, a commissioner was sent out to locate a good spot for the capitol of the new republic, and the Austin area on the Colorado River was chosen.
Martin Moore came to Austin from Ireland in 1839, before the Republic of Texas Capital government buildings were constructed. He was the first to open a mercantile business in the new Capital city and became quite wealthy.
In 1842, when Mexican troops again invaded Texas, President Sam Houston moved the government to Houston. Most of Austin's 600 residents also left in 1842. During Austin's near abandonment, Moore stayed in Austin and kept his store open. He also served in the Republic of Texas Minutemen.
In 1844, he married one of the few women remaining in Austin, Elizabeth White.
Elizabeth's family had come to Austin in 1838 from Alabama. Her father, Gideon White, immediately purchased 1,237 acres and built a log house on Shoal Creek where the current 34th Street crosses the creek.
White helped move by wagon the records and paraphernalia of the Texas government from Washington-on-the-Brazos to Austin in the fall of 1839.
White was killed by Native Americans in 1842 on Shoal Creek. When White's estate was finally settled, his daughter Elizabeth inherited 521 acres, which ran almost to Anderson Lane, a long narrow tract beginning about 40th Street.
From 1846 to 1861, Texas was under the flag of the United States. In 1849, the Moores built the log house and other buildings on country land that Elizabeth inherited. The Moore family and their two enslaved persons, Renty Lott and Harriet, lived and worked here. In 1850, when a new Capitol building was planned, Martin Moore received the contract to build the foundation. Moore raised cattle and horses until one of those horses killed him in 1859.
Texas joined the Confederacy in 1861. The Moore's son-in-law, gunfighter Ben Thompson, was a Confederate soldier. At the end of the war, Elizabeth sold her house and land to a Unionist, Judge John Hancock, whose nephews served in the Union Army.
Following the war, one of Hancock's former slaves, Orange Hancock, with his family, lived in the farmstead, registered to vote, saved wages, and soon purchased his own farm. Judge John Hancock was elected to Congress, where he served four terms while his nephews, William and James, managed his large farming and ranching operation. They operated a dairy on the Farmstead tract using the log house as a residence.
While the Moore/White families exemplified our immigrant roots and frontier stamina, the Hancock family laid bare the legacy of slavery. Among Judge John Hancock's slaves were four black men (Orange, Rubin, Salem, and Payton) who were all sired by one of the white Hancocks making them blood kin to Judge John Hancock.
From earliest natives to frontier pioneers; from gunfighter to Congressman; from slave to immigrant; the Moore-Hancock Farmstead story includes all.