Balli Cemetery
Donna vicinity, Hidalgo County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Juan Jose Hinojosa (1700-1789) was granted land including this site posthumously in 1790. His great-grandson Antonio Balli Cavazos (1813-1887), was the first to live on the land, which he named the Balli San Antonio Del Esterito Ranch in 1839. He established the family cemetery. The earliest marked grave is that of Atilano Pina (d. 1874), the husband of Francisca Natividad Balli Rubalcaba. Antonio Balli Cavazos was laid to rest with his wife Manuela Rubalacaba in 1887. The last burial was that of Apolonio Balli Salazar in 1956. There are seventeen marked and at least sixteen unmarked graves in the Balli Cemetery. The graveyard is all that remains of a 7,000 acre cattle ranch that dominated this part of the valley for 120 years. (1998)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This small graveyard is the last trace of a 7,000-acre cattle empire rooted in an 18th-century Spanish land grant to Juan José Hinojosa, confirmed posthumously in 1790. His great-grandson Antonio Balli Cavazos settled the land in 1839, named his Balli San Antonio del Esterito Ranch, and established the family cemetery, where burials continued into the 1950s. For roughly 120 years the ranch dominated this stretch of the Rio Grande Valley before fading away.
Why it matters
The Balli Cemetery embodies the Tejano ranching dynasties whose Spanish and Mexican land grants shaped South Texas long before it became part of the United States.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Juan José Hinojosa
- · Antonio Balli Cavazos
- · Atilano Pina
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Run
Donna, TX
Once part of the Cavazos family's mid-1800s Asadores Ranch, this stretch of the Rio Grande Valley was transformed at the turn of the 20th century when East Texas rice farmers and other newcomers organized irrigation companies and coaxed the railroad into the area. The tiny community of Run took its name from postmaster Ed Ruthven, whose store, a school, and his brother's irrigation pumps briefly anchored local life. A devastating flood in 1909 sent many residents drifting toward nearby Donna, and Run faded soon after.
Handy Ranch
Donna, TX
Thomas J. Handy came to the lower Rio Grande as a Union cavalryman during the Civil War and stayed to build a life on the border. In 1866 he married Angelita Cavazos at her family's ranch along the old military highway, and together the couple became substantial landowners, joining an Anglo newcomer's fortunes to a rooted Tejano ranching family. Handy farmed, ranched, and served as a U.S. Customs inspector, and the family's holdings shaped the land around present-day Alamo for nearly a century.
Asadores Ranch
Donna, TX
Salvador Cavazos Gallegos and Maria San Juana Anzaldua founded Asadores Ranch in 1881 on land from the Mexican La Blanca grant to Lino Cavazos, raising cattle and horses and farming corn and beans along the Rio Grande. The family and its ranch workers formed a small but tight-knit community, and though the land was sold in 1902, they kept a one-acre burial ground used into the 1940s. The ranch typifies the many Hidalgo County settlements rooted in Spanish and Mexican land grants.
Weslaco City Cemetery
Weslaco, TX
Weslaco, named for the W.E. Stewart Land Company, was founded in December 1919 as land developers opened the Rio Grande Valley to new settlers. The city laid out this cemetery in 1921 just beyond the original townsite, and its first burial came that same year. Among those interred are city founders Edmond Cooper Couch and Robert Lee Reeves, and the grounds — now holding more than 6,000 graves — are dotted with markers noting military service and fraternal ties.