AUSTIN, Texas — Sam Houston was twice elected the president of the Republic of Texas. He served as governor of Texas and even represented Texas in the U.S. Senate. He loved the state – but was not a huge fan of Austin.
It wasn’t because it was too weird or too crowded. Houston just didn’t think it was a good fit to serve as the capital city. He once said Austin was the most unfortunate site on earth for a seat of government.
But between Houston’s two stints as president of the Republic of Texas, in the year 1839, President Mirabeau B. Lamar moved the capital and the state's important documents to Austin. Lamar – who now has a popular street in Austin named after him – liked the city’s central location in what was then the Republic of Texas.
Two years later, Sam Houston was elected president of the republic for the second time. He wanted to move the capital and the archives out of Austin permanently.
Houston didn’t have success with his relocation proposal with the Legislature, so he decided to go another route. He chose two Texas Army officers to lead a group of men tasked with packing up the archives and moving them to Washington on the Brazos, near where Brenham is today. The archives included official documents like land titles, military records and even international treaties.
On Dec. 30, 1842, when the packing and moving was taking place, Angelina Eberly – a local innkeeper who at one time hosted Houston at her inn because he didn’t want to live in the president’s home – saw what was going on at the land office. Eberly, like most Austinites of the time, liked the city being the capital.
So, the innkeeper, who was described as a fiery character, took matters into her own hands. She located a howitzer cannon that had been left loaded in the event Austin was ever attacked – and she fired it.
Some of the grapeshot hit the land office. No one was injured, but plenty of Austinites were stirred to action. The ensuing battle became known as the Archives War of 1842.
The "war" lasted about a day. The Austinites chased the archive robbers all the way to Brushy Creek, north of town, where, the next day, the 20 or so vigilantes from Austin recovered the valuable documents and returned them to their rightful place.
If not for Eberly and a group of Austin vigilantes, Blue Bell Ice Cream would be the second most popular tourist attraction in present-day Brenham.
Houston was reprimanded by the congress for his actions and went on to serve 13 years in the U.S. Senate. Texas became a state in 1845, and Austin has twice been voted by the people of Texas to serve as the capital city.
Eberly eventually moved to the Gulf coast, where she died in 1860. You can find her statue, alongside that howitzer cannon, between Sixth and Seventh streets on Congress Avenue.
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