De Leon, a Tejano Family History

Winner, Presidio La Bahia Award, 2004 San Antonio Conservation Society Citation, 2005 La familia de Leon was one of the foundation stones on which Texas was built. Martin de Leon and his wife Patricia de la Garza left a comfortable life in Mexico for the hardships and uncertainties of the Texas frontier in 1801. Together, they established family ranches in South Texas and, in 1824, the town of Victoria and the de Leon colony on the Guadalupe River (along with Stephen F. Austin's colony, the only completely successful colonization effort in Texas). They and their descendents survived and prospered under four governments, as the society in which they lived evolved from autocratic to republican and the economy from which they drew their livelihood changed from one of mercantile control to one characterized by capitalistic investments. Combining the storytelling flair of a novelist with a scholar's concern for the facts, Ana Carolina Castillo Crimm here recounts the history of three generations of the de Leon family. She follows Martin and Patricia from their beginnings in Mexico through the establishment of the family ranches in Texas and the founding of the de Leon colony and the town of Victoria. Then she details how, after Martin's death in 1834, Patricia and her children endured the Texas Revolution, exile in New Orleans and Mexico, expropriation of their lands, and, after returning to Texas, years of legal battles to regain their property. Representative of the experiences of many Tejanos whose stories have yet to be written, the history of the de Leon family is the story of the Tejano settlers of Texas.