Tamara Diaz | Special to the Advocate | Updated
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.
Fourteen-year-old Maria Candelaria planned to marry her childhood companion after she turned 15. Her 1818 marriage would join two influential ranching families in New Spain, the Aldrete and De Leon families.
The De Leon family traveled from Soto la Marina, in present day Mexico, to southeastern Texas, where the young bridegroom, 17-year-old Jose Miguel Aldrete waited with his family, near present-day Victoria.Marking History
“The choice of bridegroom was no surprise,” A. Carolina Castillo Crimm said in her book entitled “De Leon, A Tejano Family History.” “Seventeen-year-old Jose Miguel Aldrete had grown up with Candelaria, and the two had known each other for most of their lives.”
This journey into Texas was the family’s second attempt to establish themselves here, and the size of the family was growing. Candelaria’s parents, Martin and Patricia De Leon soon celebrated the birth of their tenth child, a daughter.
Martin De Leon wanted to ensure he would have enough land for his children as they grew into adulthood and started families of their own. He was concerned as he watched Anglo-Americans colonize the land around him and decided to seek a colonization grant himself before nothing was left, according to Crimm.
Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821.
De Leon and most of his family had returned to Soto la Marina to recruit colonists. He had to have a sizable number of willing colonists before his grant would be approved.
Meanwhile, some Mexican officials grew uneasy because “Texas had always excited the envy of the United States and colonization would afford the United States the easiest and most advantageous method to obtain it,” Crimm said in her book.
De Leon managed to recruit 41 families and his colonization grant was approved April 13, 1824, according to the Texas State Historical Association. He became an empresario and founded Victoria with that grant, the “only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas.”
“Martin’s main purpose — providing lands for his sons and daughters — would be accomplished,” according to Crimm.
On Bridge Street, next to the Victoria Police Department’s downtown headquarters, a historical marker designates the home of Empresario Martin De Leon.
While the family had this home in town, they also had a 22,140 acre ranch in southeastern Victoria County.
“De Leon stood six feet tall and was skilled as a horseman and Indian fighter; Indians called him ‘Capitan Vacas Muchas’ (‘Captain Plenty of Cows’) since he often placated raiding parties by feeding them beef,” according to the Texas State Historical Association.
For example, Patrica De Leon donated the land St. Mary’s Catholic Church sits on, upon her death.
The De Leon ranch and other De Leon properties were taken from the family when they were exiled shortly after the Texas Revolution, even though they supported and assisted the revolutionaries.
“The bitter aftermath of the Texas Revolution was felt most directly by the Mexican settlements along the Guadalupe and San Antonio Rivers, those closest to the Anglo-American colonies of Austin and DeWitt,” David Montejano wrote in “Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986,” “Here the Mexican communities were subjugated and in many cases expelled.”
As Martin Dryer said it in a 1972 Houston Chronicle article in the De Leon collection at the history center, “They were persecuted, murdered, robbed of their land and properties and driven into exile.”
They will return, in a manner, as Victoria prepares to celebrate the 200th anniversary of its founding, in part, with the dedication of statues depicting Don Martin De Leon and Dona Patricia De Leon on DeLeon Plaza.
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