How do you? Howdy and welcome to Wise About Texas, the podcast about Texas history, culture, and everything

Texan.

I'm your host Ken Wise and this is episode one. For

episode one I thought I'd combine Texas history with my current service as a

judge and talk about the first judges of Texas. Now Texas has a lot of

judges. We have state trial courts, county trial courts, justice of the peace

courts, state court of appeals, which is what I'm on, two Supreme Courts,

one called the Supreme Court of Texas and one called the Court of Criminal Appeals.

We're a big state with lots of people, and that means lots of court court cases but it hadn't always been this

way so let's go back to the 1820s and get wise about Texas now you'd think there'd

be one first judge of Texas, but neither lawyers nor

Texans would ever make things that easy. The first judge of the Republic of

Texas was Benjamin Cromwell Franklin, but we're going to get him in a minute because I can't call

him the first judge in Texas.

For that we've got to go a little further back to the 1820s.

Now you'll recall that Stephen F. Austin settled 300 families on a land grant referred to as

Austin's colony. Austin's first colonists began arriving in December 1821.

And for reference, the capital of Austin's colony

was the town of San Felipe Day Austin,

and you'll have to pardon my pronunciation.

Austin's colony was governed like other Mexican settlements of the time.

A town council which was called an Ayonto govern the settlement.

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