BRYAN, MOSES AUSTIN (1817–1895). Moses Austin Bryan, soldier, son of James and Emily (Austin) Bryan (see PERRY, EMILY AUSTIN BRYAN), was born in Herculaneum, Missouri, on September 25, 1817. After the death of James Bryan, Emily Bryan, sister of Stephen F. Austin, married James F. Perry, and the family moved to Texas in 1831. Bryan was employed for a time in the store of W. W. Hunter and Stephen F. Austin and then went to Saltillo, Mexico, as Austin's secretary. In 1835 Bryan clerked in the land office. He again became Austin's secretary when Austin became commander of the Texas army in the fall of 1835. After Austin retired from the army, Bryan joined as a private. He served in the battle of San Jacinto as third sergeant in Moseley Baker's company, as aide-de-camp on the staff of Thomas J. Rusk, and as interpreter for the conference between Sam Houston and Antonio López de Santa Anna.^qqv In 1839 Mirabeau B. Lamar appointed Bryan secretary of the legation to the United States under Anson Jones. Bryan was a member of the Somervell expedition in 1842. During the Civil War he was a major in the Third Texas Regiment. He helped organize the Texas Veterans Association in 1873 and served as its secretary until 1886. Bryan married Adaline Lamothe of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, in 1840; she died in 1854. In 1856 he married Cora Lewis, daughter of Ira Randolph Lewis; they had four sons and a daughter. Bryan died in Brenham on March 16, 1895, and was buried at Independence.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Beauregard Bryan Papers, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin. Sam Houston Dixon and Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Heroes of San Jacinto (Houston: Anson Jones, 1932). Homer S. Thrall, A Pictorial History of Texas (St. Louis: Thompson, 1879). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.