Talk:Empresario

First empresario?
I removed this text from the article:

From a marker on Old Bastrop Rd. (CR-266), 1.2 mile NE of FM-621, 2½ miles SE of San Marcos, Hays County Texas Don Felipe Roque de la Portilla TX10256

At the request of Antonio Cordero, interim Governor of the Province of Texas, Spanish-born Felipe Roque de la Portilla (1768?-1841) established a colony here on El Camino Real. With his own family of eight, he brought 51 persons from the interior of Mexico and founded San Marcos de Neve in April 1808. Titles were issued to 13 lots, and home were built, only to be washed away in June floods. Hardships plagued the colony: the defensive troops departed; no priest arrived; seed and a farm irrigation system did not materialize; horses and cattle were lost to Indians, and the people feared for their own lives. In 1809 new settlers brought the population to 81 without bettering living conditions. Portilla lost his health and fortune and was forced to lead his people back to Matamoros, Mexico, in 1812.

In 1829, however, he helped his son-in-law, James Power, and Power's associate, James Hewetson, plant their colony at Refugio, near Copano Bay. Portilla received land there in 1834, but left for Mexico in 1836. Because he invested his own fortune in the colonizing effort, he is sometimes called the First Empresario, and recognized as a forerunner of Stephen F. Austin, "The Father of Texas."

Texas Historical Commission, 1976. I've done extensive research into Spanish Texas (see the article Spanish Texas, which I wrote most of) and have not run across this information. While I don't doubt that he may have founded a town, that did not make Portilla an empresario; all research I've seen says that colonization contracts per se were not offered to individuals until the 1820s. If you can find this same information in a scholarly work, it should probably be included in this, but I don't necessary trust just a historical marker. Karanacs (talk) 19:53, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * "At this time, about 3500 people lived in Texas, mostly congregated at San Antonio and La Bahia.[4]"

White settlers I presume? What about native Americans, or don't they count? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.178.147.90 (talk) 02:04, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Potential sources
Karanacs (talk) 17:44, 17 June 2010 (UTC)
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 * (Republic of Texas times)
 * - Life magazine 1959, full view
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 * - SW historical quarterly from 1928 on "Minor empresario colonization"
 * - SW Historical Quarterly - Republic of Texas