Only the front foundation wall remains of Durham Hall, a frontier mansion built here by Moses Austin in 1798-1789 and named for Durham, Connecticut, where he was born in 1761. The home became the political, social, and economic center of Austin's American colony and of much of early Missouri, as well as the Cradle of Texas. In 1797 Austin received a Spanish land grant here adjoining the earlier French mining camp of Mine Au Breton, founded in 1763. Austin, his wife Maria Brown Austin, and their children Stephen F. Austin and Emily Margaret moved into Durham Hall in J. 1799, and a third child, James Elijah Brown Austin, was born here in 1803. Durham Hall and the first Washington County Courthouse, built in 1814, were designed by Austin in Greek Revival style, linked to his associations with Thomas Jefferson in the first Virginia Capitol, and both were the first of that architectural style in middle America. From here Austin developed mining and smelting of lead into Missouri's first major industry, repulsed an attack by a band of Osage Indians from the lawn on May 12, 1802, gave land in 1813 to establish Potosi as the county seat of Washington County, and in 1818 served as the starting point for Henry Rowe Schoolcraft's famous exploration tour to the Southwest. At Durham Hall, Emily Austin married James Bryan in 1813, and their first child, Stephen Austin Bryan, was born here in 1814. In 1816 Moses Austin moved to Herculaneum, which he founded, and expanded his financial interests in St. Louis, leaving Durham Hall in the care of Stephen F. Austin, who spent 1816-17 here alone while representing Washington County in the Territorial Legislature of Missouri. As early as 1813 Moses Austin had envisioned expansion to the Southwest. He lost Durham Hall and his other properties in 1820 during financial reverses, then traveled to San Antonio, where in 1821 he received the first American grant for a colony in Texas. After his death on June 10, 1821, the Texas venture passed to his son Stephen F. Austin, who became the Father of Texas. In 1831 the last Austin family members left Potosi when Emily Austin, her second husband James F. Perry, and their family moved to the Peach Point Plantation in Texas after reburying Moses and Maria Austin in the Potosi City Cemetery. Durham Hall burned in 1871 in a fire that destroyed much of downtown Potosi.