OSBORN, BENJAMIN (1783-1829). Benjamin Osborn, early settler, was born in 1783 in South Carolina and married Leah Stark, also of South Carolina; they moved to Tennessee, where their sons John Lyle (or Loyle) and Thomas Osbornqv were born. Three daughters were also born in Tennessee. Sometime after 1821 the family moved to Marshall County, Mississippi, near Holly Springs and Mount Pleasant, and thence to Texas. They crossed the Sabine River on Christmas Day, 1825, and settled near Matagorda, where their son Claiborn Osbornqv was born. Osborn was one of the forty-nine signers of the four resolutions drawn up by Thomas Marshall Duke,qv alcaldeqv of the District of Mina, after the Fredonian Rebellion.qv At Duke's behest the Stephen F. Austinqv colonists met at the Bay Prairie home of surveyor Bartlett Sims,qv on January 4, 1827, and unanimously resolved to support the Mexican government. Osborn received a headright of 4,420 acres of land in Austin's Little Colony, in what is now Bastrop and Travis counties, on November 30, 1827. He and his wife died of yellow fever in 1829. Their headright was divided among their children, and their daughter Louisa was reared by Col. William G. Hillqv and his wife, of Brazoria and Galveston.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Eugene C. Barker, ed., The Austin Papers (3 vols., Washington: GPO, 1924-28).
Verna J. McKenna
