The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 12, July 1908 - April, 1909 Page: 80
332 p. : ill. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Texas Historical Association Quarterly.
NOTES AND FRAGMENTS.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF CASTRO'S CoLoNY.-When Henri Castro,
in February, 1843, brought his first colonists to the village of San
Antonio, no white settlement existed west of the San Pedro Creek
in San Antonio, to the Rio Grande, and the various Indian tribes
nomadically occupied the country, the Comanches, Apaches, Tonk-
awas, Lipans, Kickapoos, and others. The grant known as Cas-
tro's Colony, included portions of Medina, Uvalde, Zavalla, La
Salle, McMullen, Frio, Atascosa, and Bexar counties. Through
his agents and his own efforts, in France and Germany, in the
Rhenish provinces, four hundred and eighty-five families, and four
hundred and fifty-seven single men, amounting to five thousand
two hundred people, were brought in twenty-seven ships to Texas.
Quite a number of them never went to the colony, only five hun-
dred and fifty-eight certificates for land being issued. On the 1st
of September, 1844, Henri Castro left San Antonio, at the head
of his colonists and established his first settlement on the Medina
River, twenty-five miles west of San Antonio, the town being
named Castroville after the founder, by a unanimous vote of the
colonists. It was the county seat of Medina county until 1892,
and a prettier location for a town can hardly be found in Texas.
In 1845 he founded the town of Quihi, on the banks of Quihi
Lake, distant nine miles west of Castroville; in 1846 he founded
the town of Vandenburg, five miles northwest from Quihi. Van-
denburg, however, was abandoned; the water in Verde Creek, upon
which the town was situated, having dried up, on account of a pro-
tracted drought, the inhabitants moved two and one-half miles
below to New Fountain. In 1847 he founded the town of D'Hanis,
twenty-five miles west from Castroville. These settlements pros-
pered, and immigrants continued to arrive, and had Mr. Castro
not been prevented by many obstacles, Mexican War, drought, debts
and litigation and marauding Indians and Mexicans, his intentions
were to surround his colony grant with villages. Two more were
to be located, one on the lower Seco, below D'Hanis, to be called
Osy, and one on the Laguna San Miguel, to be named St. Louis.
The cost of transporting the immigrants from the coast of Europe
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Texas State Historical Association. The Quarterly of the Texas State Historical Association, Volume 12, July 1908 - April, 1909, periodical, 1909; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101048/m1/88/?rotate=270: accessed March 28, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.