Las Colonias

The history of land grants in Texas is a long and complex one. The earliest grant was made by the Spanish crown to establish a mission and presidio in East Texas in 1716. In 1731 town lots in San Antonio de B?xar were granted to Canary Islanders , and by the mid-1700s larger livestock grants were being made along the San Antonio River valley. In later years, the titles were issued by the governor of the province, who received a small fee, as did the local officials who participated in the process. Ranching lands further away from the town were generally held informally in the early years of Spanish Texas , and only regularized in later years. Private land grants in what is now South Texas did not begin until the mid-eighteenth century. Settlers in the colonies founded by Jos? de Escand?n in South Texas requested individual land allocations as early as 1753, but not until 1767 did 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 (later Guerrero), and Reynosa. The commissioners, Juan Armando de Palacio and Jos? 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 land was to be divided on the basis of merit and seniority, with the colonists divided into three categories: original, old, and recent settlers. Due to the shortage of water and the importance of irrigation for agriculture in the region, the commissioners surveyed long, thin strips of land, each with narrow frontage on a water course. These elongated quadrangles were known as porciones