Soy de Duval

  POSTED BY: CARDENAS.AE@GMAIL.COM MARCH 30, 2020 Jose Guerra with the Hispanic Genealogical Society of Houston points to the mojonera found at the cemetery in Roma. Earlier this week, while doing some background research on the villa of Mier, from where many of Duval County’s original settlers came, I ran across a blog from the Houston Hispanic Genealogical Society of a trip they took to that historic community. Before crossing the Rio Grande, they made several stops on the American side, including the cemetery at Roma in Starr County. There they found something called a mojonera , in English a landmark or monument. Surveyors typically used a mojonera to designate the corner of a grant. Later in the blog, it mentions that: “In a discussion with a knowledgeable person another mojonera was found in Duval County, Texas and it was believed to be pointing to a buried treasure because it had an arrow pointing in a certain direction, but this was only a boundary marker. In Duval County...

  POSTED BY: CARDENAS.AE@GMAIL.COM MARCH 23, 2020 This blogger owes its many loyal readers an apology for not having published a blog since the first week of this year. In my defense, I have a good excuse. And that excuse is that… I have finally buckled down and begun writing my long promised history of Duval County, whose working title is… Soy de Duval, the Nineteenth Century History of Duval County, Texas . The first six chapters got me off to a fast start. These chapters deal with the county’s Prehistory, Los Indios, Los Mexicanos, Los Españoles, Medio Mexico, and Los Americanos. But then I hit a brick wall with a chapter called El Terreno having to do with land titles. The problem is not that there is not enough information, but that there is too much information and most of it is hard to read. I’ve had to read old reports, such as the Bourland-Miller Commission Report of 1852, that were entirely written by hand. Try reading this, for example: The Texas General Land Office has...