The most controversial of Dutch immigrants, Phillip Hendrick Nering Bögel, was possibly the most influential and perhaps the first. He left his homeland, wife, and children, having embezzled the results of his work as a tax collector.

In Spanish Louisiana by 1795, he had enough money to introduce himself as Felipe Enrique Neri, Baron de Bastrop, to the highest aristocratic circle and was soon engaged in a series of land deals in Louisiana and the U.S. He made more than one fortune but lost them all.

About 1810, nearly broke but with a good change of clothes and the requisite languages, he traveled to San Antonio and, by conversation and appearance alone, was soon made second alcalde (a mayor pro tem) of the city. He presented himself as a loyal Spanish subject who had opposed the sale of the Louisiana territory by France to the United States. France had ceded the lands west of the Mississippi to Spain in 1762, but by 1800 King Charles of Spain had been forced to give the lands to Napoleon Bonaparte and France. Napoleon, needing money and tired of New World involvement, sold the land to the U.S. In such a place, just who was Spanish was sometimes in doubt.

The Baron de Bastrop's story was believed and, within only months, his advice was sought as far as Mexico City concerning the dangerous United Statesians. Yet the baron seems to have been responsible for Anglo settlement in Spanish and Mexican Texas.

Twenty years before his arrival in Texas, Bögel had shared the hospitality of a roadhouse in then-Spanish Missouri with a lead miner named Moses Austin. And in San Antonio de Béxar, in 1820, he recognized Austin, who had just been rejected in his request to bring in settlers. In fact, he had been ordered out of Texas.

The baron asked Austin to stay with him for several days, under the pretext of sickness, while the request was reworded. Austin, like Bastrop, quickly became a loyal Spanish citizen who was outraged at the transfer of the Louisiana territory. Austin, like Bastrop, only desired to live under Spanish rule but, a bit unlike the baron, wanted to bring in several hundred like-minded and loyal Spanish citizens.

This time, permission was granted. After all, the baron had used nearly the same line.

Even after the death of Moses and a change of governments—Stephen F. Austin had taken over his father's work, and New Spain had become Mexico—the baron continued to help. He was influential in renewing the agreement.

At Bastrop's death, legislative members paid for his funeral. His will left land claims to his wife and children in Holland; years later, these records finally revealed his true identity.