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Rebel Rancher Runs Guns One of the earliest women credited with bringing culture to Tejas—education and religion especially-- was a young Spanish royalist woman who left behind the comfort and security of ranching near Cruillas, Mexico. Besides the culture she brought, she would become a Texas rebel and a gunrunner to the Republic of Texas Army troops. This adventure began with her husband and two-year-old son, and a line of carts loaded with supplies. Patrica de la Garza de Leon headed north in 1799. She crossed the Rio Grande into a land her husband Martin de Leon had described, “where grass sprouted four to six feet high, buffalo and antelope roamed and handsome wild mustangs galloped.” At her first home here —a jacal, a mud and grass hut—on the Nueces River, Patricia DeLeon swapped her fine silk and embroidered dresses for buckskins and a dream she shared with Martin of becoming empressarios. A woman who loved the out of doors and riding fine horses found herself and her growing family in a region rich in fish and vegetation, cattle, mules and mustangs, and in the midst of Indians who did not want them. After ten years rounding up livestock and trailing them to New Orleans for supplies, hostilities came to a head. Alone with her children, she faced down an attack by firing a canon through the door of her home. Relocating in 1810 to San Antonio for protection and trade and cultural advantages of the province’s capitol, Patricia and her husband continued ranching. She kept the books, reared the children and taught her daughters to become the finest seamstresses. Once again she and her girls wore fine silks, embroidery on every petticoat. Denied their dream of becoming empressario’s, she and Martin stood by while the Spanish government awarded over 40 such grants to Anglos like Stephen F. Austin and his father. The DeLeon’s switched loyalties. During the Mexican Revolution, they championed the rebels’ cause and when Mexico won its independence in 1821, the DeLeon’s won their colonizing grant. Patricia’s inheritance financed what would be the only Mexican colony in Texas, the DeLeon Colony. She returned to the coast, riding in a gold gilded coach pulled by handsome descendants of the Andalusia horses. She placed her fine furniture on the dirt floor of another jacal, and she and Martin began building the colony, the town site, now Victoria, which she first named Victoria Guadalupe. They ranched nine miles out. A first priority for Patricia was to build a church. She did and furnished it and appointed it with gold and silver altar vessels. St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Victoria remains the second oldest Catholic parish in Texas, originally named Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe. In the early years, she had home schooled. But now she hired a teacher for all children in the sprawling DeLeon Colony. While Martin governed and built the town, Patricia facilitated a strife free community hosting dances, dinners and receptions in her home, the grandest in the area. In addition, she minded their ranch on the Guadalupe River. Well schooled, and for years the meticulous manager of accounts, now Patricia rode roundup and oversaw stock raising while tending their 11 children ranging from 2 to near adulthood. The colony was valued at $1 million, half of it theirs. But a cholera epidemic claimed Martin de Leon in 1833. Wearing black and grieving, Patricia managed both the ranch and the colony while rustlings of rebellion swept through Texas. Once again, Patricia, as head of her family, sided with the rebels, supporting Texas in its Declaration of Independence from Mexico. She bought guns and ammunition in New Orleans and smuggled them across her ranch to Texas troops. Hers sons captained Texas Army forces. In another time, Dona Patrica de la Garza DeLeon would have been honored. But in the backlash of war, those with Spanish names paid a price. Thieves ran off her livestock and robbed her homes. And then, a son was shot and killed. At age 60, she led her family first to New Orleans and then, when safe, back to Mexico. But after seven years, yearning to go home, she returned to Victoria in 1844. She spent her remaining years petitioning the Republic and then the State of Texas for war reparations. She tried to collect debts owed her by neighbors in the colony. None paid. She willed these to her children in equal amounts and spent her time worshipping in her beloved church, now St. Mary’s. When she died, in 1849, she donated her home to the parish. If a woman in your family or community has pioneered in Texas, please drop a note to Texas Dames™ at P. O. Box 470841, Fort Worth, TX 76147 OR, |
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