Locating Eva Longoria’s “Texican” Past in the Archives of the Texas General Land Office
National Hispanic Heritage Month is a celebration of the contributions of Latinos to U.S. history, culture, and society observed annually between September 15 and October 15, a time of many historical mileposts in the Americas. The observance emphasizes the deep historical imprint of Hispanic cultures on the United States and honors the place of Latinos in the contemporary American melting pot, where they number over 55 million. In honor of Hispanic Heritage Month, we’ll focus for several weeks on the impact of Hispanic historical figures in Texas. We’ll also be participating in the Tejano Genealogy Society of Austin’s 2017 Conference, including providing tours of the GLO Archives, September 28–30.
Few Americans are as interested in the investigation of their familial origins as Texans. Genealogists pour untold time and resources into proving that their ancestors arrived with Stephen F. Austin’s “Old Three Hundred” in 1824 or fought at the Alamo in 1836, and proud newcomers buy bumper stickers declaring that they “got here as quick as they could.” Yet Texas’ origins themselves are complex and multifaceted, reflecting the state’s long history as a home to diverse indigenous groups, a crossroads of empires (Spanish, French, English, Comanche), and a place of cultural encounter and conflict. In our good-natured contest over Texas bona fides, then, the list of significant dates could be expanded to include 1767 (the granting of the Rio Grande porciones), 1718 (the founding of San Antonio), 1700 (the arrival of the Comanches in the panhandle), and many others. Much of this history is represented in the records of the Texas General Land Office Archives.
In this regard, the award-winning actress and Corpus Christi native Eva Longoria has strong bragging rights indeed, since her Texas origins stretch back over 250 years. In an article on Ancestry.com, Longoria shared DNA test results that showed the mix of European, American Indian, and African ancestry common to the people of Mexico and the southwestern US and talked about her “Texican” identity and roots.[1]
Longoria comes by the Texas side of this Texican heritage rightly. Her great-great-great-great-great grandfather (5x), Juan Diego Longoria, was among the adventurous settlers who joined a 1748 Spanish expedition to settle the Gulf of Mexico region, an effort designed to protect northern New Spain from Indian incursions and French imperial schemes. The expedition, led by José de Escandón, lured dozens of families — mostly farmers and ranchers from New Spain’s provincial north — to the perilous frontier with promises of royal land grants.
Despite the many hardships of the region (heat, insects, Indian raids, isolation), the efforts of the ambitious Escandón quickly bore fruit. Between 1748 and 1755, he founded almost two dozen towns and villages across the newly-created province of Nuevo Santander, including the so-called Villas del Norte, a line of communities along the Rio Grande stretching from Laredo in the northwest to Reynosa in the southeast. The Longoria family was among the first settlers of the first of these towns, Nuestra Señora de Santa Ana de Camargo, situated just across the river from present-day Rio Grande City.[2]
Escandón initially bestowed lands upon the few dozen families and soldiers who came to populate each of the Villas del Norte as a communal unit, promising to grant individual titles after the towns’ populations had stabilized. After almost two decades on the frontier, though, still without titles and chafing at Escandón’s somewhat authoritarian style, a coalition of settlers, soldiers, and missionaries petitioned the viceroy in Mexico City to remove Escandón and send new officials to distribute land.
In 1767 they got their wish, as the Visita General (general inspection) of the Villas del Norte got underway. Arriving in Camargo, the royal commissioners called settlers to a general meeting to inform them of their charge and appoint surveyors and appraisers in order to carry out the land distribution. Juan Diego Longoria’s son, Matias Longoria, and nephew, Santiago Longoria, served as appraisers.[3]
After surveying the lands for the Catholic mission and setting aside the common pasturage (ejidos) and municipal lands (propios) of the town, the commission then began to survey and number individual tracts, which would be allotted to heads of household. The size of the tract varied according to how long a given settler had lived in the colony. As in the other four Villas del Norte, the royal commission decided to carve out long, thin tracts on both the north and south side of the Rio Grande in order to provide river frontage to as many settlers as possible. These long tracts became known as porciones.
Eva Longoria’s great-great-great-great grandfather (4x), Pedro Longoria, who was born in northern New Spain and came with his father to Camargo in 1748, was among the heads of household who received land during the Visita General. His tract, porción 94, comprised 4,649.8 acres and lay north of the Rio Grande, thus becoming part of the US state of Texas after the Mexican-American War. Remarkably, Longoria’s descendants managed to retain ownership of the land throughout the region’s tumultuous transition from colonial outpost to contested borderland and up to today. The grant encompasses parts of present-day La Grulla, Alto Bonito, and La Victoria in Starr County, and it contains some of the oldest cattle ranches in South Texas.
Land records and historic maps held by the archives of the Texas General Land Office graphically illustrate the Longoria family’s south Texas origins. The Bourland and Miller Commission of 1850, which was organized to investigate land titles in the trans-Nueces region seized by the US in the Mexican-American War, shows that Juan Nepomuceno Longoria applied for title to porción 94 as the son of the original grantee. Though he could not produce the original Spanish title, Longoria supplied witnesses who attested to his ownership, and the state commissioners recommended confirmation in their final report, which remains at the GLO. [4] An act of the state legislature in 1852 officially confirmed Longoria’s claim, and he received a patent from the General Land Office in 1854. Longoria’s grant is also visible on the GLO’s earliest maps of Starr County. As for the Longoria family’s 18th-century arrival in Camargo, it is also indirectly documented at the GLO. In 1871, the state legislature sent an agent to the former Villas del Norte to obtain copies of each of their founding charters — products of the 1767 Visita General. The transcription and translation of Camargo’s charter, which includes the allotment of Porción 94, can be found in a bound volume in the GLO archives, where it forms part of the Spanish Collection.
Genealogical research is a fascinating pastime that provides a connection to history for Texans and people all around the world, and the General Land Office Archives houses original documents that make that connection tangible. It’s always exciting to see a famous actress like Eva Longoria promoting the importance of this research, and hopefully, her example will inspire others to look into their own family history, and potentially use the GLO Archives as a helpful resource.
[1] On the racial makeup of Spanish and Mexican Texas, see Andrés Tijerina, Tejanos and Texas under the Mexican Flag, 1821–1836 (College Station: Texas A&M Press, 1994), pp. 7–24.
[2] Galen D. Greaser, New Guide to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in South Texas, 1st edition (Texas General Land Office, 2009), pp. 5–24; Armando C. Alonzo, Tejano Legacy: Rancheros and Settlers in South Texas, 1734–1900 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998), pp. 15–39; Patricia Osante, Origenes del Nuevo Santander, 1st ed. (Ciudad Victoria: Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas, 1997), pp. 93–131; Hubert J. Miller, José de Escandón: Colonizer of Nuevo Santander, 1st ed. (New Santander Press, 1980).
[3] Greaser, New Guide, pp. 55–56; The Family Tree Book: The Seabury Papers, by Francis William Seabury, transcribed and edited by Joel René Escobar (McAllen: Self-Published, 2007), p. 415.
[4] Reports of Wm. H. Bourland and James B. Miller, Commissioners to Investigate Land Titles West of the Nueces, 1850, Records of the Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX. For more on the history of the Bourland and Miller Commission and its final report, see Galen Greaser and Jesús F. de la Teja, “Quieting Title to Spanish and Mexican Land Grants in the Trans-Nueces: The Bourland and Miller Commission, 1850–1852,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 95 (April 1992), 445–464.
