Marriage certificate from Austin’s Colony

All Anglo immigrants wishing to obtain land in Austin’s Colony and settle in Mexican Texas had to convert to Catholicism as required by the Mexican government. To attend to the needs of the now Catholic parishioners in Austin’s Colony, Father Michael Muldoon was appointed to serve them as priest.

Michael Muldoon (ca. 1780–unknown) was born in Ireland and became an ordained Catholic priest in Seville, Spain. The Diocese of Monterrey, Mexico, appointed him to serve in Texas as a diocesan secular priest to the Anglo settlers who were moving there.

One of Muldoon’s primary responsibilities in Austin’s Colony was performing the sacraments of baptism and marriage. Since most of the Anglo settlers in the colony had been raised Protestant, not all their baptisms and marriages were considered valid by the Catholic Church and the Mexican government. Many of them had to be re-married and re-baptized. Muldoon tended to perform these sacraments in large groups. He charged settlers $2 for baptisms and 25 cents for marriages.

He also performed new marriages and baptisms. This marriage certificate from 1831 is for a new marriage between widower James Tumlinson Jr. and Diana Wilkerson White, the widow of Thomas White. Both were part of Austin’s Old Three Hundred, or the original 300 Anglo colonists in Texas, but had moved to Gonzales in DeWitt’s Colony. DeWitt’s Colony did not have a priest so the couple was married by Father Muldoon.