DUTY, GEORGE (?–1837). George Duty, early Texas settler, was born in 1797 or 1799 to Solomon Duty. He was living with William Stephenson in Hampstead, Arkansas Territory, in October 1823, when he took a letter from Stephenson to Stephen F. Austin in Texas. Evidently Duty remained in Texas. As one of the Old Three Hundred settlers, he was granted title to a league of land now in Fayette County on July 19, 1824; Dutys Creek, a tributary to the Colorado River, is named in his honor. He participated in the alcalde election in 1825, and the census of that year listed him as a tanner. According to the census of March 1826 he was a partner of his brother, Joseph Duty, and was a single man, a farmer and stock raiser aged between twenty-five and forty. He was probably also a freighter, for in November 1831 he hauled brick to build a house for Anthony Butler. Duty moved to the Mina or Bastrop district before May 30, 1837, when he was appointed administrator of the estate of Matthew Duty. George Duty himself died later in 1837, and on January 22, 1838, William Duty was appointed administrator of George's estate.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924–28). Lester G. Bugbee, "The Old Three Hundred: A List of Settlers in Austin's First Colony," Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association 1 (October 1897). Worth Stickley Ray, Austin Colony Pioneers (Austin: Jenkins, 1949; 2d ed., Austin: Pemberton, 1970). Noah Smithwick, The Evolution of a State, or Recollections of Old Texas Days (Austin: Gammel, 1900; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1983). Vertical Files, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.