De León, a Tejano Family History

Preface

Preface This study follows the lives of three generations of the de León family as they founded ranches along the rivers of South Texas and settled the town of Victoria in present-day Victoria County, Texas. The last years of the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth century were a time of radical change. The government under which the settlers lived shifted from Spanish rulers to a newly independent Mexican government in  to the Republic of Texas in  and finally to statehood in the United States. The society changed from autocratic to democratic, the economy from mercantile control to capitalistic investments. The story traces the de Leóns’ success in founding Victoria and their exile from Texas during the Texas Revolution. Rather than end the history with the family’s expulsionfromTexasin ,Ifeltitwasimportanttofollowtheirreturnto Texas and to discover what happened to the family and to their land and culture. Their adjustments to the new society in which they chose to live, asdomosthumanendeavors,broughtopportunitiesaswellasdifficulties. I first discussed this topic with Dr. Nettie Lee Benson at the University of Texas at Austin in . A renowned scholar of Mexican history, Dr. Benson already had turned her insatiable interest toward Mexican Texas, as her article in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly of that year attests . Her queries and guidance led me to develop a study of the struggles of Martín de León, the first Mexican empresario. The result became my dissertation. Regrettably, though she worked vigorously until the end, Dr.Bensonpassedawayattheageofeighty-eight,beforeIhadcompleted the project. Her inspiration, however, continued. NuestraSeñoradeGuadalupeVictoria,thetownfoundedbyMartínde Leónandhisfamilyin,was,withStephenF.Austin’scolony,theonly completelysuccessfulcolonizationeffortinTexas.DeLeón’scolonyonthe Guadalupe River followed Stephen F. Austin’s colonization at San Felipe on the Brazos River by only two years. Each of them faced the challenges of equitably distributing land to settlers, of protecting the settlements, of ix x • D L, A T F H maintaining peaceful relations with the Indians, and of smoothing over quarrels among the often-cantankerous colonists. It was inevitable that the two empresarios, one Anglo and the other Hispanic, should have had problems. That they were able to succeed despite periodic altercations is a testament to their dedication to their respective colonists and colonies. This study crosses the time periods most frequently used by scholars and neither begins nor ends at any date convenient to historians of either Mexico or the United States. This book starts in the s and ends one hundred years later. The chapter divisions are those which relate to the family,notthosewhichmanyhistoriansoftenuse.ThelivesofthedeLeón familymembersdonotfitintotheconvenienttimeframeshedgedaround them by historians. Nor do they provide neat solutions to scholarly theories. Their lives provide few grand, sweeping generalizations, and their actions offer scant support for broad theories or paradigms. Cliometricians struggle to find a large enough pool of individuals in Mexican Texas to make a study statistically significant, ignoring any renegade who may not conform to the pattern.Buthumanbeingsarerenegadesand,moreoftenthannot,refuse to fit the mold. The reality which historians seek may be in the actions of individuals such as Martín de León rather than in the trends of a large number of generalized subjects. Martín de León and his family lived through some of the most dramatictimesintheintertwininghistoriesofMexico ,Texas,andtheUnited States. They had no idea their lives would span such changes, and their interestwastosurviveasbesttheycould.DeLeónbeganlifeintheEscand ón settlements of northeastern Mexico, said to have been the site of the greatest land rush of all time. He spent the formative first ten years of his lifeintheexcitingboomtownatmosphereoftheminingvillageofCruillas. He did not join Bernardo de Gálvez in the attack on British Florida, but early on, he chose a life of danger both as a muleteer and as a militia captain . His reason for settling Victoria will never be fully known, but if it was to protect his family, all of his children did receive land, in his eyes the ultimate source of wealth. He also left the conflict of the Texas Revolution to his sons and sons-in-law, who remained divided in their views, a split which is sometimes hard to comprehend for students of the Texas Republic. The family, led by Doña Patricia, his wife of forty years, faced the problems of exile and the difficulties of returning to an increasingly antagonistic society in Texas. Don Martín’s marriage partner, Patricia de la Garza of Soto la Marina, Preface • xi provides a...