Nuevo Santander Land Grants

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, and friend, this one goes back a long way. Now picture the lower Rio Grande Valley, long before there was a Texas to speak of. We're talking about Nuevo Santander, one of the last northern provinces of New Spain.

And the man behind it all was José de Escandón, the man the marker calls the father of the lower Rio Grande Valley. Escandón didn't just wander into this territory. He organized an expedition, he conquered the area, and between 1749 and 1755 he settled twenty towns and eighteen missions.

Twenty towns and eighteen missions. That is not a man who does things halfway. Nuevo Santander stretched across what is now the Mexican state of Tamaulipas and reached up into trans-Nueces Texas.

It was big country, and people were putting down roots in it. So early on, as early as 1753, settlers in the South Texas colonies were already asking for something that settlers everywhere always want: their own piece of land. Individual allocations.

Something with their name on it. Spain heard them, eventually. In 1767, a Spanish royal commission got to work, the serious, painstaking work of surveying and granting possession of land to individual colonists.

The commission focused on five Rio Grande villas: Laredo, Mier, Camargo, Revilla, and Reynosa. Two commissioners were tasked with carrying it all out. Juan Armando de Palacio and José de Ossorio y Llamas.

Their instructions were clear: survey the settlements and jurisdictions, distribute the land to individual settlers, and record every transaction. Every single one. Now, when you're dividing up that much land among that many people, you need a system.

The answer was porciones, partitions, each one assigned a number, each one requiring recognizable markers at the corners to show exactly where one man's land ended and another's began. And here's where the story gets tangible. The markers they used were called mojoneras, large pointed sandstones, carved with the porcion number, the year, and the initials of the surveyor.

You could hold one of those stones and read exactly what it was saying across more than two centuries. Most of those stones are gone now. Lost to time, to weather, to the long grinding work of history.

But the Porcion 74 Mojonera, the one this marker is telling you about, is one of the last surviving markers of its kind. One of the last. That is a rare thing.

The years after the grants were not quiet ones. The portion of Nuevo Santander that reached into Texas, north of the Rio Grande, got caught up in border disputes, between Mexico and Texas, between Mexico and the United States. The lines on the maps kept shifting, the arguments kept coming.

But here is what the marker wants you to know at the end of all that: despite every difficulty, the people of this region created a lasting cultural legacy. That Porcion 74 Mojonera, sitting in Starr County, is a piece of that legacy. A pointed sandstone with a number scratched into it, surviving everything the centuries could throw at it.

Turns out, some markers are harder to move than others.

What the marker says

One of the last northern provinces of New Spain, Nuevo Santander was established by José de Escandón, and encompassed the present Mexican state of Tamaulipas and part of trans-Nueces Texas. Escandón, known as the father of the lower Rio Grande Valley, organized an expedition and conquered the area, settling 20 towns and 18 missions between 1749 and 1755. Settlers in the colonies in South Texas requested individual land allocations as early as 1753. In 1767, a Spanish royal commission began the work of surveying and granting possession of land to individual colonists at the Rio Grande villas of Laredo, Mier, Camargo, Revilla and Reynosa. The commissioners, Juan Armando de Palacio and José de Ossorio y Llamas, were instructed to survey the various settlements and jurisdictions, to distribute the land to individual settlers, and record all transactions. The porciones, or partitions, in each of the five settlements were assigned a number and required to be delineated by recognizable markers at the corners of each lot as indicated by the surveyors. Mojoneras, or large pointed sandstones marked with the porcion number, year and surveyor initials, were commonly used as markers. The Porcion 74 Mojonera is one of the last surviving markers of its kind. In the years after the Spanish land grants, the area of Nuevo Santander that extended into Texas, north of the Rio Grande, became involved in numerous border disputes between Mexico and Texas, and Mexico and the United States. Despite these difficulties, the people of this region created a lasting cultural legacy. (2013)