MCCOY, THOMAS (?–1838?). Thomas McCoy, a partner with Daniel DeCrow as one of Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred homesteaders, came to Texas, possibly from Pennsylvania, by 1823. He and DeCrow received title to a sitio of land now in Matagorda County on July 24, 1824. At his home on lower Caney Creek in February 1836 McCoy was judge in the election of delegates from the Matagorda municipality to the Convention of 1836. By April 1836 a Thomas McCoy was heading a company of mounted riflemen, one of whose members was Richardson Royster Royallqv. Probably after the Texas revolution McCoy married the widow of William A. Alley, Sr. The couple probably had at least two children and may have lived at Alleyton. At one time McCoy had a gristmill, cotton press, and cotton gin house on his farm. In April 1837 John Duncan bought McCoy's land, and by June 1838 McCoy had died.
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). Louis Wiltz Kemp, The Signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence (Salado, Texas: Anson Jones, 1944; rpt. 1959). Matagorda County Historical Commission, Historic Matagorda County (3 vols., Houston: Armstrong, 1986). Annie Doom Pickrell, Pioneer Women in Texas (Austin: Steck, 1929). Gifford E. White, 1830 Citizens of Texas (Austin: Eakin, 1983).
