The first landgrant for galveston started out in the 1830s. It went to a man and his investors. They had someone come in and lay out the plots for the city of galveston and began selling lots in the galveston was officially 1830s. Founded as a city in 1839. What is attractive about galveston, it was a natural harbor, and it was the only one between veracruz mexico, and mobile, alabama. There was this natural affinity to bring in goods and people into galveston that could go into texas and the middle part of the united states. Thats what brought it. It was really the industry, the availability of the port, the easy access from the gulf of mexico, and it really created an entire community. That followed for 100 years. As the 19th Century Maritime world changed, the ships became larger, and their cargo became much larger. What became particularly important for galveston that it was bringing in the costs from all of the cotton from the central part of the state and other states around us and shipping it around here. As that shipping became so important, they needed to get bigger vessels in here, and get them closer into the harbor in order to load them up with the cargo of cotton. By the late 19th century, cotton was the largest and more common thing shipped out of the port of galveston. It was the thing that created the wealth for the city and the wealth for the state of texas. Oil was really a 20thcentury activity. Of course, it is closely tied to texas today. Galveston is more closely tied to what occurs offshore. Those platforms are brought into galveston today to be repaired and cleaned and taken back out. But there is not a lot of immediate drilling around here. It is mostly a working port to support the industry that is offshore. Immigration into galveston is one of the really overlooked stories of Texas History and really, American History is that without the sport and its availability for 150 years we would not have had settlement in the united states, and certainly, in texas. From the early, i am talking about free civil war 1830s, aging 40s, 18 50s, you had lots of groups of europeans mainly germans coming into the port of galveston and as a group, settling in different parts of the state of texas. If you had inherent 1850s, german was the most common language spoken in galveston. Its hard to believe, but on the streets, that is what people were speaking. You can see in galveston today, if you go to the garden, you can see what became the center of german social life and entertainment. You can go to saint josephs, the first German Catholic Church in texas. You can see where they worshiped and where they were educated and how they spent their lives in galveston. But the height of immigration was the late 19th century and early 20th century and it , continued up to 1954 when it was no longer a point of entry for immigrants. But the story of that is the backandforth between the state of texas managing immigration and eventually the federal government doing immigration. But it became a place where they wanted to push immigrants away from new york and the congestion going on in the northeast and bring them into the central part of the country. In the early 20th century, there were something called the Galveston Movement a formal , program to bring jewish immigrants to this part of the country. That movement continued for a while and was very successful. It brought development to communities in texas but all the way up into kansas. We see immigrants who came into the port of galveston. The interesting thing about immigration here is that it wasnt that they pulled up a boat and everyone jumped off and it was a great time. Really immigration was heavily , regulated and created about a around a number of things in the nations history. In the late 19th century immigration was heavily inspected. You might arrive on a ship, you travel for months and weeks, and you travel with your family or by yourself. You land here, and you look at the east this island, it is pretty flat, almost no true trees. You mustve thought, oh, my gosh. What is this place going to be . Then you would go through a health inspection. If you did not pass for some reason, and there were lots of ways you could fail, you would be sent to a quarantine station perhaps and you would be you could be returned to where you came from. And theres a lot of process involved and there was a lot of angst and points of being carefully checked as you came in for medical Health Reasons as well as what you were bringing and your ability to earn a wage and your ability to bring something to this new place you are landing. I think today, we forget there is this connection to how we developed in the country and in the state of texas, in particular. We really think of it as being a 20thcentury state and area, with large cities inland. But if it were not for the gulf coast, if it were not for this transportation and the viability of bringing in ships and so forth, we would not exist. In galveston, you really have to think about it as being the point of creation in texas for what we see is a
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