The Laura
© Judith-Ann Saks 1975 All Rights Reserved
oil on canvas
| 10" x 13" Giclée | $89 | ||
| 12" x 16" Giclée | $175 | ||
| 15" x 20" Giclée | $299 |
The Laura
The Laura was the first steamer to come to Houston. The Allen brothers, Augustus and John, were high powered promoters who had the knack of making their claims come true. Following the Battle of San Jacinto, which freed Texas from Mexico, the Allens purchased about ten thousand acres of land for about one dollar per acre and began advertising Houston in leading newspapers in the United States, including New York, Washington, New Orleans, Mobile, and St. Louis. Houston was pictured in the ad of August 30, 1836 as destined to become a thriving metropolis, with activity humming as buildings would be constructed and trade would be busily carried on.
The city was represented as having a delightful climate and only a few pleasant hours sailing from the bay where one might make excursions and enjoy the seafood. Actually, Houston was an almost uninhabited wilderness including steaming mosquito-infested swamps that were later drained. This location was twelve to fifteen miles by water and eight or ten miles by land further up Buffalo Bayou from Harrisburg, an already existing bayou port. The banks of these twelve or fifteen miles of bayou were covered with dense growth of trees and brush, and the channel was infested with alligators. Houston existed only in the minds of the promoters and on a crude map drawn by Augustus Allen.
The Allens had taken soundings from Harrisburg to their proposed site to determine the bayou's depth. Some months after the announcement of Houston, the founders hired Captain Thomas Wigg Grayson to bring the Laura from Columbus, Texas, to Houston. Since this was a promotional venture to Houston the ship carried not only a large number of newcomers including heroes of the Battle of San Jacinto, but also prominent people, such as judges and professional men with their ladies in fine clothes, who made the trip as an excursion. It was an easy, pleasant trip to Harrisburg, but the twelve to fifteen miles of winding bayou from Harrisburg to Houston took three long days during which both passengers and crew removed logs and obstructions from the bayou while keeping a watch for alligators. Francis R. Lubbock, later a Texas governor, and some of the passengers became impatient and went ahead in a yawl. They missed Houston and backed down the bayou looking for it. When they saw a road cut to the water's edge(now Main Street) with wagon tracks, footprints, and lot stakes, they had found Houston. Governor Lubbock, in his memoirs, stated that he wasn't present when Columbus discovered America, but he was there when Houston was discovered.
This first Bicentennial painting shows the Laura docking at Allen's Landing with Captain Grayson in the wheelhouse and two men assisting with a rope. The man standing in formal dress to the right of the man on shore with the rope is Augustus Allen. He frequently wore a stove-pipe hat, but here it is safely set aside out of sight so it would not be injured in the activity and excitement of supervising the landing or be blown into the bayou. The man with the thumbs in his vest behind the man holding the rope is John Kirby Allen, who made the trip with the Laura. The artist sketched portraits of the Allen brothers and Captain Grayson in the Texas room of the Central Library and used them in painting these persons in positions consistent with their personalities. There are several frontiersmen and a dog on the lower deck. From the upper deck, the excursionists in their fine clothes and other passengers watch the landing.
The foliage is what would be expected. Behind the group on land is a willow tree above which is a magnolia tree. The artist thought that it would be pretty to show the magnolia tree in full bloom, but the director of the Arboretum, Bill Basham, said, "No, not in January". So no blossoms were included. To the upper left is a cottonwood tree; at the lower left is a holly tree below which cattails grow. In the background are Cyprus trees.
The blue flag with one gold star at the prow of the Laura is the Burnett flag that flew over the Republic of Texas during its first two years. The United States flag on the stern has twenty-five stars which was used for only one year--from the time Arkansas became a state until Michigan was admitted.
This painting portrays the birth of Houston's water transportation system in January,1837.