Austin's land office and its agents rapidly mapped and surveyed land, issuing nearly 1500 land grants to settlers in Mexican Texas between 1823 and 1835. He emphasized good character, morals, sobriety, and industrious habits among colonists. Grants were issued as leagues of 4428 acres to stock raisers and labors of 177 acres to farmers, and most settlers claimed both pursuits, entitling them to more than 4600 acres. Through surveying, Austin directed the transformation of wilderness into property, while Land Commissioners representing the Mexican government formally issued grants based on those surveys. During the colonial era, roughly a dozen empresarios brought settlers to Texas, but Austin's colony accounted for over 40% of the more than 13 million acres granted. Austin wrote in 1830 that he had not made a fortune for himself except in lands that then had no value and likely would not live to gain much personal benefit. At San Felipe, Godwin Brown Cotten operated the first print shop from 1829 to 1831, producing issues of The Texas Gazette, the first book published in Texas, and forms such as permissions to settle that supported the colony's work. A field desk believed to have belonged to Austin was salvaged from the land office before the town was burned in March 1836 and was returned to San Felipe for the Josey Store Museum in the 1960s by Texana collector Thomas Streeter of Morristown, NJ. Colonial Secretary Samuel May Williams wrote out deeds in Spanish in long hand and transcribed surveys and deeds into a bound book called the Registro. Austin taught himself Spanish for his colonization effort, used the name Estevan on many legal documents, and in the colony's early days worked to establish representative government for the settlers. By 1828 San Felipe de Austin had selected an ayuntamiento, or town council, and an alcalde, or chief or mayor, and by 1831 seals had been established for the juzgado, or court, and the council.