José María Jesús Carbajal

Early life

José María Jesús Carbajal was born in 1809 in the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, later San Antonio, Texas, to soldier José Antonio Carbajal Peña and María Gertrudis Sánchez Soto. He was one of eleven children. The family descended from Jeronimo Carbajal, a Canary Islands settler, and counted conquistador Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva and Francisco de Carvajal among his ancestors. After his father died when José María was young, the family befriended Stephen F. Austin, who mentored the boy.

In 1823 Austin arranged for Carbajal to travel to Frankfort, Kentucky, to learn tanning from Littleberry Hawkins's brother-in-law Blanchard. Two years later he moved to Lexington to train under saddle maker Peter Hedenbergh. Carbajal converted from Catholicism to Protestantism in 1826 and was baptized in the Reformed Baptist Church of Lexington. There he heard theologian Alexander Campbell, who enrolled him in Bethany College; Carbajal lived in the Campbell home for two years.

He returned to Texas in 1830 and asked Austin to help market Spanish-language bibles translated by the Bishop of Madrid, priced on a sliding scale. Austin later sent Carbajal to New Orleans in 1832 to collect a debt from the Bowie family.

Political beginnings

Carbajal completed his surveying studies by 1831. His bilingual skills helped him explain Spanish legal documents to Anglo settlers. Stephen F. Austin sponsored him as official surveyor for empresario Martín De León and his wife Patricia de la Garza De León to plat Victoria, Texas; the market square he laid out is now DeLeon Plaza and Bandstand. Carbajal married the De León daughter María del Refugia De León Garza and settled in the De León grant.

In January 1831 the state government of Coahuila y Tejas sent Carbajal and Jose Francisco Madero to survey land grants in East Texas for settlers residing outside other empresario grants before 1828. Mexican Colonel Juan Davis Bradburn, military governor over Galveston Bay, disputed Madero's authority and arrested both Madero and Carbajal on February 13 after Madero ignored an order to meet. They were held ten days and released pending direction from Mexico City.

They resumed surveying and filed sixty completed land titles. On April 12 the government in Saltillo ordered Madero to stop surveying in Bradburn's territory, but the work was already done.

In May 1831 he joined an elected caucus to redress Bradburn's actions. In November he was appointed to the San Felipe local government. In 1832 he served on the Nacogdoches town council and helped Liberty establish its own council.

Freedom fighter and [[guerrilla warfare]]

After Santa Anna lost Texas, Anastasio Bustamante returned from exile and became president in 1837. Many Mexicans blamed Santa Anna's Centralist regime for the loss of Texas and saw Bustamante as his puppet, wanting a return to federalism. Carbajal and Antonio Canales Rosillo recruited insurgents against Centralist troops and tried to establish a breakaway republic. During a skirmish Carbajal was struck by a musket ball and permanently lost use of his left arm.

The 1845 annexation of Texas by the United States led to the Mexican–American War, complicated by the disputed Nueces Strip. Canales Rosillo wrote to Zachary Taylor on January 29, 1846, requesting a meeting with either himself or Carbajal to discuss U.S. aid against the Centralist government. Taylor asked Carbajal for a written proposal, which requested money, supplies, ammunition, and permission to recruit volunteers from the United States, offering only to keep the Nueces Strip open for negotiation.

Secretary of War William L. Marcy declined but instructed Taylor to welcome any Mexicans crossing to enlist in the U.S. military. Carbajal and Canales Rosillo then threw their loyalties behind the Centralist government, conducting guerrilla warfare on the border. The war ended in 1848 with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. In 1851 Carbajal sought to establish the Republic of Sierra Madre, a federalist state, facilitated by Mexican import tariffs and the issue of runaway slaves from Texas, which had attracted bounty hunters.

Personal life and final years

Carbajal married María del Refugia De León Garza in 1832 despite her mother Patricia de la Garza De León's objections to her Catholic daughter marrying a Protestant. Their son Antonio was born in 1833, José María Jr. in 1834, and Cresenciano (death year 1846). During the Civil War, Carbajal enrolled his two surviving sons in Bethany College in West Virginia, where they lived with Alexander Campbell. Carbajal retired to his ranch in Mexico in 1870 and died in Soto la Marina, Tamaulipas, in 1874, having lived there for two years.