Nuevo Santander Land Grants
Roma, Starr County, Texas
Marker Inscription
One of the last northern provinces of New Spain, Nuevo Santander was established by José de Escandón, and encompassed the present Mexican state of Tamaulipas and part of trans-Nueces Texas. Escandón, known as the father of the lower Rio Grande Valley, organized an expedition and conquered the area, settling 20 towns and 18 missions between 1749 and 1755. Settlers in the colonies in South Texas requested individual land allocations as early as 1753. In 1767, a Spanish royal commission began the work of surveying and granting possession of land to individual colonists at the Rio Grande villas of Laredo, Mier, Camargo, Revilla and Reynosa. The commissioners, Juan Armando de Palacio and José de Ossorio y Llamas, were instructed to survey the various settlements and jurisdictions, to distribute the land to individual settlers, and record all transactions. The porciones, or partitions, in each of the five settlements were assigned a number and required to be delineated by recognizable markers at the corners of each lot as indicated by the surveyors. Mojoneras, or large pointed sandstones marked with the porcion number, year and surveyor initials, were commonly used as markers. The Porcion 74 Mojonera is one of the last surviving markers of its kind. In the years after the Spanish land grants, the area of Nuevo Santander that extended into Texas, north of the Rio Grande, became involved in numerous border disputes between Mexico and Texas, and Mexico and the United States. Despite these difficulties, the people of this region created a lasting cultural legacy. (2013)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Nuevo Santander, one of New Spain's last northern provinces, was founded by José de Escandón, who settled roughly twenty towns and eighteen missions along the lower Rio Grande between 1749 and 1755. A Spanish royal commission began surveying and granting land to individual colonists at villas such as Mier, Camargo, and Revilla in 1767, dividing it into numbered porciones staked out by carved sandstone markers. The rare surviving Porcion 74 mojonera recalls that first careful mapping of the frontier.
Why it matters
These land grants laid the legal and cultural foundation of the Rio Grande borderlands, whose Hispanic communities predate and outlasted the border disputes between Mexico and the United States.
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Related people
- · José de Escandón
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
First Chapel in Roma
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Around 1840, in the borderland community of Roma along the Rio Grande, residents built a small chapel with volunteer labor on donated land and from contributed materials. For more than a decade before the Oblate Fathers arrived in 1853 to build a proper church, this humble structure served the faithful — some 500 people received the sacraments here from visiting secular priests who lived across the river in Mier, Mexico.
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