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.
Texas wasn’t always so big.
As a matter of fact, things in Texas were slight at one point.
When Texas revolted against Mexico in 1835, the state was a remote frontier, bordering what Mexicans then called the United States of the North. Only a handful of towns dotted the state, including Victoria.
The Texian Army never reached more than 1,200 volunteers, and was usually composed of about half that number.
The population of Texas at the time was roughly 35,000 (about half that of Victoria’s current population), not including Indigenous people.
With such sparse settlement, the De Leon family, the founders of Victoria, loomed large and were among Texas’ first families; and yet, in a recent 900-page publication about Texas history, Martin and Patricia De Leon appear in just three paragraphs, on three separate pages.
Why the scarcity of mention?
One reason may be found in the tragic story of a Tejano hero of the Texas Revolution: Juan Nepomuceno Seguin.
Seguin died in Mexico, displaced from his home in San Antonio by fear.
In 1974, his remains returned to Texas and were buried on July 4th, 1976, in Seguin, the town named for him, about an hour-and-a-half northwest of Victoria.
Seguin’s gravesite, at 789 South Saunders St., lists his many contributions to the Republic of Texas.
He fought at the Battle of San Jacinto, served as mayor of San Antonio and was a three-term senator for the Republic of Texas, to name a few. He was one of the first among the famed Texas Rangers.
His father, Erasmo Seguin, and Martin De Leon are mentioned in the same paragraph of that 900-page history text “Big Wonderful Things: A History of Texas” by Stephen Harrington as early “private rancheros” in the state who employed some of the first Texas cowboys, vaqueros.
These Tejano families led the way in Texas history, many embracing later Anglo settlers.
“By the fall of 1834, the most visible Tejano leader was twenty-eight-year-old Juan Seguin, Erasmo’s son,” historians Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson and Jason Stanford wrote in 2021. “Lean, handsome, and more than a little dashing, Seguin was destined to become the true tragic hero of early Texas.”
He married at the age of 19 to Maria Gertrudis Flores de Abrego. The town of Floresville, south of San Antonio, is named for her family. The couple had 10 children, the same as Martin and Patricia De Leon.
“Like most of those in the old San Antonio families, Seguin was a liberal federalist who loved Mexico but loathed the authoritarian impulse Santa Anna represented,” Burrough, Tomlinson and Stanford added.
As the tide of revolution flowed over the state, Seguin was all-in against Santa Anna and all for Texas. And he was at the Alamo when the show started.
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