Editor’s note: This is another in an ongoing series of articles we call “Marking History” looking at the stories behind the hundreds of historic markers scattered about the Crossroads.
Ten years after he founded Victoria, on July 18, 1834, Martin De Leon died of cholera at the age of 70. Two of the Empresario’s four sons, also considered founders of Victoria, would be murdered within a decade after his death.
Two cholera epidemics swept through South Texas, one in the summer of 1833 and another in the summer of 1834, Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm noted in “De Leon, A Tejano Family History.”
San Antonio and Goliad were the two largest towns in South Texas at the time. Victoria was home to only about 300 people.
“Ninety-one of Goliad’s less than 1,000 residents died” in the cholera epidemic that claimed De Leon’s life, Crimm wrote.
Historical markers at Evergreen Cemetery within the Historical Grave Shrine of the De Leon Family honor all four of Martin and Patricia De Leon’s sons. Fernando, Silvestre, Agapito and Felix De Leon helped their father found and govern the Guadalupe Victoria Colony.
FERNANDO
Fernando was the eldest of De Leon’s 10 children, born in 1798. He was land commissioner for the colony. He was widowed young, in 1825, and eventually remarried.
Fernando was the only one of the four De Leon sons to live past the age of 50.
When his younger brother, Silvestre, was murdered, Fernando adopted his children.
SILVESTRE
Silvestre De Leon was the Empresario’s third child, born in 1802. He served as both an alcalde (mayor) and a judge in Victoria.
He was once “called on to rule on a case involving his own father,” Crimm wrote. “Don Martin was accused of shooting a hog belonging to a Mexican resident of Victoria.”
Silvestre asked his father if the allegations were true. He said that he did shoot the hog but only after it destroyed his garden.
Silvestre asked his father if he had a “lawful fence” to keep hogs out of his garden. To which his father replied that “it was not the best,” John Linn wrote in “Fifty Years in Texas.”
But then Don Martin asked his son if he would rule against his own father.
“Don Silvestre replied that in his capacity as a public officer the ties that bound him as an individual were inoperative. On the bench he would perform his duty with strict impartiality, but off the bench he became again the dutiful son,” Linn wrote.
Silvestre ordered his father to pay restitution of $20.
“Don Martin promptly paid the amount, with the remark that he was proud of such a son, to the disappointment of a crowd that had collected to see some fun,” Linn recorded.
Silvestre supported the Texian army during the Texas Revolution, supplying the troops with provisions, livestock and military equipment, Craig H. Roell wrote in a Texas State Historical Association article.
He also served in the Texas Army and “upon the occupation of Guadalupe Victoria by Gen. Jose de Urrea (Silvestre) De Leon was arrested by the Mexican Army as a traitor,” Roell noted.
Despite his fidelity to Texas independence, he suffered a cruel fate.
After the victory at San Jacinto, Silvestre “fell victim to the severe prejudice directed against all Texans of Mexican descent.”
He was exiled to Louisiana with other members of his family and lost “his land, livestock, and most possessions to fortune hunters,” Roell continued.
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