Women as Land Owners on the Mexican Frontier: María Calvillo’s Story
Mexican property law, adopted from Spanish law after Mexico’s independence, held the notion of land ownership in high regard for men and women. For hundreds of years, Spanish jurists had viewed women as “necessary to the continuance and expansion of the Spanish community,” and adopted laws to protect their property. On the frontier of Mexican Texas, women continued to enjoy the rights granted to them under Spanish law.
On March 23, 1834, Juan Nepomuceno Seguín, alcalde of Béxar, put María Calvillo in possession of one league and one labor of land.[1] With his signature, Seguín sealed a process begun by Calvillo nearly a year prior when she first petitioned for an augmentation to her two-league grant issued by Commissioner General Juan Antonio Padilla. Formerly part of the lands of Mission San Francisco de la Espada, near the site of modern-day Floresville, Calvillo’s land was known as Rancho de las Cabras, located near La Bahía Road, an important travel route dating back to the eighteenth century.
Although the application stated very little in regards to Calvillo, it is clear that the fifty-year-old widow and cattle rancher was well aware of the rights bestowed onto her by the government of the state of Coahuila y Texas.[2]
Calvillo’s 1834 petition referenced legislation passed by the state of Coahuila y Texas in favor of its citizens. The passage of Decree 128 granted long-established citizens of the state the right to lands with little to no dues.[3] Residents could receive land at a reduced rate, or even free of charge, if they had lived on the frontier for a stipulated amount of time and had sustained Indian attacks with “their arms and toils.” Citizens seeking a land grant or an augmentation under the terms of the decree had to request from their local ayuntamiento (municipal council) a character certificate that outlined how the petitioner met the requirements.
Aware of the opportunity that Decree 128 awarded her, Calvillo petitioned the ayuntamiento of Béxar to support her in providing the necessary paperwork. Although the character certificate provides relatively little information about her, it is clear that Calvillo was a well-known member of bexareño society. Using the honorific doña to refer to Calvillo, Manuel Ximenes certified that she had experienced “a loss of livestock due to the harassing wars of the enemy tribes,” and had lost her father during an attack on her ranch.[4] Calvillo also lost her husband and “at her own expense” supplied a mounted and armed man for the Lafuente expedition.[5] The certificate not only demonstrated that Calvillo met all the requirements of Decree 128, but it also showed the difficulties that ranchers, both male and female, experienced on the Texas frontier and the lengths to which the Mexican government went to support them.
With the governor’s approval, Calvillo could locate her land wherever she wanted. In her petition, Calvillo noted that the two leagues in her possession were surveyed with very little pastureland, which clarified why she was locating the league and labor adjacent to her lands. Seguín appointed surveyor Byrd Lockhart to survey the land that Calvillo requested. Once the survey had been completed and the field notes returned, Seguín led Calvillo by the hand and put her in possession of the tract of land.
The land was now Calvillo’s and, as stipulated in the Decree, the only requirement she had to meet was that she could not sell it within four years of the grant date. Today, Calvillo’s land is part of the Rancho de las Cabras State Historical Site, which contains archaeological remnants dating back to the Spanish Missions.
[1] Land Grant to María Calvillo, 23 March 1834, Box 120, Folder 4, Records of the Spanish Collection, Archives and Records Program, Texas General Land Office, Austin, TX. One league and one labor (4,605.5 acres) was the amount of land generally allocated to heads of households.
[2] Jean A. Stuntz, Hers His & Theirs: Community Property Law in Spain & Early Texas (Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press, 2010), 14.
[3] J. P. Kimball, trans. Laws and Decrees of the State of Coahuila and Texas, In Spanish and English (Clark, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, LTD, 2010), 146.
[4] Land Grant to Maria Calvillo, Box 120, Folder 4, p. 5.
[5] Captain Manuel Lafuente led a campaign of approximately 200 Tejanos against Tawakoni “raiders” in the fall of 1831. The expedition further strained the relations between natives and Tejanos. For further reading see Brian DeLay, War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008)
