Our Catholic H e,-itage in T e:xas
rapidity the village began to take form with the houses lined around a public square, the chapel on one side and the guardhouse on the other, as provided by the Laws of tlee Indies. The first chapel was a modest building of hewn timber built with the cooperation of all the settlers. But this was soon replaced by a more pretentious church erected by the munificence of a French trader named Nicholas de la Mathe, a former friend of Ibarbo. It seems hardly credible but we have the truth as revealed in the report of the go\'ernor, that De la Mathe had visited the new settlement shortly after its establishment to collect some debts. MoYed by his devotion to Our Lady of Pilar, the patron saint of the colony, he decided to build her a new temple twenty-five varas long and proportionately wide, for which purpose he soon sent two carpenters. The settlers obtained permission for the construction of the new chapel from the Bishop of Guadalajara and were in hopes that the king in his piety would soon provide them ,vith a resident parish priest. From the beginning the settlers had gathered every evening in the chapel to recite the rosary, led _by the Justicia 111 a·yor, who also conducted the people in prayer in the morning on feast days. In 1775, early in February, two missionaries visited Bucareli, strongly urged by the parish priest of San Antonio, who obtained permission for their visit from the Father President of the missions. The ornaments of the former chapel of Nuestra Senora del Pilar de Los Adaes, left in charge of Governor Ripperda, when that post was vacated, were in part taken back to Bucareli in 1775. Early the fol1owing year, the citizens of the new settlement requested through Ibarbo, that all the ornaments be turned O\'er to them for the new chapel which eventually was done. 29 The exiles in San Antonio had continued to go to the new settlement as circumstances permitted. Some had complained that San Antonio was being depopulated. To this charge the Governor replied that he had given permission only to those who had formerly lived in Los Adaes and that even now ( 1776) there were many who because of their poverty had been unable to join their companions. lbarbo brought to the new settlement some of those who had been left in the ranch at Lobanillo and in Nacogdoches. The growth in population was temporarily checked in the winter of 1776-1777, when the struggling settlement was visited by an epidemic. Seventeen persons died, Lieutenant Gil Flores among them. The neigh- 29Ripperda to the Viceroy, January 25, 1776; Ibarbo to Ripperda, November 25, 1775; lbarbo to Ripperda, June 30, 1777. A.G. ,JI. Historia, Vol. 51, pp. 337·349, 351-354, 459-461.
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