GOLIAD — Several descendants of the founding family of Victoria were among those gathered at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church parish hall Sunday afternoon at a meeting of the Presidio LaBahia Chapter of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas.
The key event at the meeting was a presentation given by Blanche De Leon of Victoria.
Blanche De Leon is a sixth-generation descendant of Empresario Martin and Patricia De Leon, founders of Victoria. She is descended from two of Martin and Patricia’s children and has become a leading source and advocate of De Leon family history.
Reynaldo Olivarez Castro, 72, and his wife Carol Castro made the trip to Goliad from their home in San Antonio.
Castro’s mother, Amalia Olivarez Castro, 94, is a recently discovered De Leon descendant and will be inducted into the DAR group. Castro said his elderly mother was not able to make the trip to Goliad.
“They (the Castros) invited me to come out to their home in San Antonio,” Blanche De Leon said Sunday, “and I expected to see a few people gathered there, but there had to be a hundred. They are all De Leon descendants.”
Castro’s lineage can be traced to Martin and Patricia’s oldest daughter, Maria Candelaria (De Leon) Aldrete.
Maria married Jose Miguel Aldrete in 1818 and the couple had four children.
“My wife is a genealogist,” Castro said. “She started tracing my family history and woke me up one night at about 2 in the morning and said, ‘Look at this!’ She showed me I was an Aldrete and De Leon descendant.”
Castro was also accompanied to Sunday’s meeting by his cousin, also a De Leon descendant, Lisa Perales, of San Antonio.
On the way to Goliad, the Castros and Perales, stopped in Kenedy to visit the Sacred Heart Cemetery where Castro’s great-grandmother, Maria Isabel “Isabelita” Aldrete is memorialized at her son’s, Eliseo Olivarez, gravesite.
“Isabelita is actually buried in Runge, but it is not a well-marked grave,” Carol Castro said.
The Castros said they will attend the anniversary festivities in Victoria next year. They already have hotel reservations, he said, for the April 13, 2024, unveiling of the DeLeon Plaza statues of Martin and Patricia De Leon.
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