Every once in a while a knowledgeable descendant of someone important in history passes their family lore on to willing listeners.
Blanche De Leon is one such person. She is a sixth-generation descendant of Martin De Leon, the founder of what is now Victoria, and a granddaughter on the branches of two of De Leon’s children, Augustina and Felix.
Her eyes are dark. Her manner is direct and dignified. Her confidence is catching, and her knowledge is expansive.
She and her many scattered relatives are what remain of Victoria’s birth story. On Tuesday, she confessed she is aging and needs to get the story of her family into the city’s consciousness.
Rafael Alderete, “the grandson that most looked like Martin,” Blanche De Leon said.
“Our Texas history has done a lot to create myths,” Blanche De Leon said.
There are errors in the story as it is told, she said. One such error may come as quite a surprise to Victoria residents.
On the grounds of the historic Evergreen Cemetery, 1868 N. Vine St. in Victoria, there is a small plot designated as the “Historical Grave Shrine of the De Leon Family, Founders of Victoria.”
Within that plot is a prominent headstone that reads, “Don Martin De Leon, Founder of Victoria, Empresario of Colonial Grant from Mexico in 1824.”
Blanche De Leon, sixth-generation granddaughter of Victoria founder Martin De Leon.
By all appearances, Martin De Leon, who died in 1833, is buried there.
Not so, said descendant Blanche De Leon.
“In 1948, the Catholic Church sold the land that St. Joseph’s Academy was on to what is now the Federal Building,” De Leon said. “They were digging the basement, and they came across cemetery bones.
“The problem was that we didn’t know who those bones were, and it was more than one person. They collected all those bones, put them in a box, and put them in Evergreen Cemetery.”
Martin De Leon’s wife, Patricia de la Garza De Leon, deeded the land to the Catholic Church upon her death in 1849, Blanche De Leon said.
“When they dug that foundation, they did find bones,” Victoria County Heritage Director Jeff Wright said. “They assumed the bones were those of the De Leon family and moved them to Evergreen Cemetery.”
In 1959, construction ended on the Federal Building, which is now the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Building on the corner of Church and Main streets.
Blanche De Leon said she does not believe the bones in Evergreen Cemetery are those of Martin De Leon.
It’s likely she’s correct, according to the writings of one Victoria historian, Henry Wolf Jr., whose book, “Henry’s Journal: Historically Speaking,” was published in 1999 by the Victoria Advocate Publishing Co.
A ship’s manifest from the De Leon exile, on hand on the De Leon collection at the Victoria Regional History Center.
In the Feb. 5, 1998, entry in his journal, Wolf writes that the De Leon private burial ground was probably not where St Joseph’s College stood. It was more likely at the De Leon home nearby where the family had a small chapel, where St. Mary’s Church stands today.
“It was a custom in Mexico,” Wolf wrote, “for wealthy families to have private chapels and burial grounds at their haciendas.”
The De Leon home in Victoria was not where St. Joseph’s College stood but rather was across the way at the corner of Church and Bridge streets.
In an undated article marked as “Item 5 File Del-6” in the De Leon collection’s Box 1 on hand at the Victoria Regional History Center at the University of Houston-Victoria, the author writes that the first home of Martin and Patricia De Leon was on “the present day site of St. Mary’s Church.” The home consisted of “one large room, a 10-foot hallway and a small room.”
Could Martin and Patricia De Leon still lie beneath this plot of land across from City Hall, underneath the site of present-day St. Mary’s church?
Or could they rest where the De Leons had acres of grazing land south and east of Victoria? The ranch is documented in the De Leon collection at the history center. The ranch was 9 miles from Victoria with its southern border on Matagorda Bay.
So, whose bones are in the De Leon family plot at Evergreen Cemetery, under Martin De Leon’s headstone? We may never know for certain.
On a final note, the De Leon family was exiled shortly after the Texas revolution, despite the fact that they were patriots who aided the Texan cause.
Blanche De Leon said that Patricia De Leon and her remaining family had nothing when they were cast out. The ship that carried the De Leon family away from Texas has a manifest, which can be viewed at the history center.
As Martin Dryer put it in a 1972 Houston Chronicle article in the De Leon collection, “They were persecuted, murdered, robbed of their land and properties, and driven into exile.” This historical chaos may lend some confusion about exactly where Martin De Leon was buried before his family was exiled.