De Leon artifacts sent to state history museum

The De Leons

 Updated 

A portrait of Victoria founder Martin De Leon and a sword he owned took a trip Thursday from Victoria to their temporary home in Austin.

The De Leon family, Victoria Regional History Center and Victoria school district worked with representatives from the Bullock Texas State History Museum to get the artifacts into a new exhibit.

The exhibit will spotlight Martin De Leon as an important Texas settler along with Stephen F. Austin, said Tom Wancho, exhibits planner at the Bullock museum.

“We’re going to introduce Austin as an Anglo colonizer and Martin De Leon as the only empresario to receive a grant to settle as Mexican in Texas,” Wancho said. “Both men are significant obviously in helping to populate Texas.”

De Leon created a township in 1824 for 41 Mexican families on the lower Guadalupe that became Victoria, according to the Texas State Historical Association’s website. He died nine years later.

The exhibit featuring De Leon will run for a year starting this fall through 2016, Wancho said.

The portrait of De Leon was painted by John Hobby Jr. and was based on family descriptions, said Blanche De Leon, a descendent.

“(Martin) had a grandson that he looked very much like,” Blanche De Leon said. “They had no photography in Martin’s day, but they had photography in his (grandson’s) day, so they utilized his photograph to create this portrait.”

The portrait and the sword are owned by VISD, and the sword is normally housed in the Victoria Regional History Center, said Diane Boyett, district spokeswoman.

The sword was stored in the Mitchell School gym from 1905 until it disappeared in 1936, Blanche De Leon said.

A Mitchell School principal in the 1980s discovered the sword had been loaned to the State Fair to be on display for the centennial celebration but was never returned to the district. The principal, Ignacio Diaz, fought with the Daughters of the Republic of Texas and eventually got the sword returned from the Alamo, where it had ended up, Boyett said.

It’s important for De Leon to be included in the exhibit because of his background, Wancho said.

“This is a guy who was born into royalty and abandoned his trappings and was really a self-made man,” Wancho said.

“He seemed to have a tremendous heart – donating land to the church, brought up a good family, was highly thought of and respected by everybody. It’s pretty safe to say, if not for him, Victoria would not exist.”