Havana

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way down in Hidalgo County, there's a stretch of South Texas soil that carries a name from halfway around the world, and the story of how that came to be starts not in Texas at all, but with a Spanish land grant and a man named Don Jose Matias Tijerina. The crown of Spain ceded him a piece of ground known as Porcion 46, and that happened in 1767.

Now that's the kind of date that stops you cold when you say it out loud. Seventeen sixty-seven. The American Revolution hadn't even happened yet.

This land had a name before this country had a flag. Among the early settlers who put down roots here were the families of Josefa de la Garza Salinas and a man named Patricio Perez, who had served as a Union soldier in the Civil War. Different backgrounds, different stories, same piece of South Texas ground.

In 1891, the community raised up a frame church and named it for St. Joseph, and that church stood as the kind of thing that tells you a community means to stay. And stay they did.

Descendants of those early settlers still live in the area to this day. Many of the Havana pioneers are buried in the Havana Cemetery, their names and their bones part of that same old Porcion 46 soil. Some places just hold on, and Havana, Texas is one of them.

What the marker says

Located on land known as Porcion 46, ceded by the crown of Spain to Don Jose Matias Tijerina in 1767, the community of Havana was named for Havana, Cuba, where Tijerina had stopped on his journey from Europe. Among the early settlers here were the families of Josefa de la Garza Salinas and Civil War Union soldier Patricio Perez. A frame church was built in 1891 and named for St. Joseph. Descendants of early settlers still live in the area. Many Havana pioneers are buried here in the Havana Cemetery. (1988)