Part 1, Note 4

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Atascosito, which was very near the present city of Liberty, appears for the first time on a map drawn by Bernardo de Miranda in 1757. According to Herbert Eugene Bolton's apparently well-researched book, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915. Reprint. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), the Spanish made vague plans to establish a mission and a colony at the place they called El Atascosito in 1758, but did not. Mattie Austin Hatcher, in The Opening of Texas to Foreign Settlement 1801-1821 (Austin: University of Texas, 1927. Reprint. Philadelphia: Porcupine Press, 1976), states that a small garrison was stationed at Atascosito in 1804 to prevent smuggling, and, shortly afterward, families from Louisiana began settling at the place. They were soon removed from the site. Whether they were the first civilians to live there is unclear, but others soon would follow. Jean Louis Berlandier visited the area in 1828, and described Atascosito as one of two "villages of colonists . . . which have achieved some growth" (Berlandier, Journey to Mexico During the Years 1826 to 1834, Sheila M. Ohlendorf, Josette M. Bieglow, and Mary M. Standifer, trans., 2 vols., Austin: The Texas State Historical Association, 1980, vol. 2, p. 328). Juan Nepomuceno Almonte, in his 1835 "Statistical Report on Texas," (Carlos E. Casteñeda, trans., Southwestern Historical Quarterly, vol 28, no. 3, January 1925, pp. 177-222) fails to name Atascosito as one of the communities in Texas. He does name Liberty, however, suggesting that it had already superseded Atascosito.