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is a city in and the county seat of Liberty County, Texas, United States and a part of the Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown metropolitan area. The population was 8,033 at the 2000 census.
Liberty is the third oldest city in the state—established in 1831 on the banks of the Trinity River. The city also has an exact replica of the Liberty Bell from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its area code is 936 and its ZIP code is 77575.
Liberty was officially established in 1831 as the "Villa de la Santissima Trinidad de la Libertad". After Mexico was granted independence from Spain in 1822, the new country allowed immigration to Mexican Texas from other countries for the first time. Although immigration was supposed to be controlled by
who had been granted large tracts of land, many people from the United States settled illegally in areas not under empresarial control.
A large group of these illegal immigrants settled in an area known as Atascocito, near the Trinity River, despite the fact that the Mexican Constitution of 1824 prohibited immigrants from settling with of the coast. In January 1831, a new state land commissioner, Jose Francisco Madero, arrived to grant land titles to people who had settled in the area before 1830. The local military commander, Colonel Juan Davis Bradburn, believed that only the federal government had the authority to grant titles in the area near the coast, and that as the representative of the federal government he was the only individual who could authorize surveys of the land.
Bradburn arrested Madero and his assistant, Jose Maria Carbajal. Within 10 days, Bradburn received orders from his superiors to release the men. Madero issued deeds as quickly as he could. Madero then established an official council, an
, for the residents in the disputed area, which became Liberty. Although Bradburn believed that Liberty was created illegally, as the town was too close to the coast, he made no attempt to interfere with its establishment. On December 9, however, Bradburn's superior, commandant general Manuel Mier y Teran, ordered Bradburn to dismantle the town and establish the