Our Catliolic Heritage in Texas
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to he drawn and sent to them in the name of himself and the king. Thus the first civil settlement in the Province of Texas was at last established and the officers of the first municipality legally and officially recognized by the highest authority in New Spain. What the course of events might have been if the remainder of the two hundred Canary Island families had been permitted to come to settle in the Province of Texas, in groups or ten or twelve at a time, will .ever remain a conjecture. There is no ques- tion, however, that the abandonment of the plan so soon after it had been put into execution stunted the growth of the little colony established on the banks of the San Antonio, and doomed the unfortunate settlers to many hardships and privations which would have been avoided in part, had the civilian population been reenforced periodically until its number had reached approximately a thousand, as was intended in the original order of the king of February 14, 1729.
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