Emilia Schunior Ramirez

Ranch Life in Hidalgo County after 1850 began as a chapter for a county centennial book that was never published. Her son Alfonso, later Edinburg's first Hispanic mayor, found the manuscript about ten years after her death and issued it in 1971 as a small booklet. She drew on talks with her parents and relatives, and she described what each person on a ranch did, from the men who drew well water for hours to the women who made the family's clothes. A grandson reissued it in 2017, with a list of 35 to 40 early ranches.

What the plaque says

Emilia Schunior Ramirez Hidalgo County native Emilia Schunior (1902-1960) graduated from Edinburg High in 1919 and married Rafael Ramirez in 1921; the couple had four children. Emilia attended college and earned a B.A. in 1940, becoming a teacher and principal at several Rio Grande Valley schools. At the University of Texas at Austin, her 1950 master's thesis in education examined children of illegal Mexican immigrants in south Texas. Emilia later taught at Pan American College as an assistant professor of Spanish. She visited Spain and Mexico, and in 1960 represented the Pan American Round Table of Edinburg at the Inter-American Alliance Meeting in Guatemala City. As an eduator and historian, she was a role model for Hispanic women and others. (2007)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of South Texas History — 1.0 mi
  Edinburg's regional museum, begun in 1967 in the 1910 Hidalgo County jail and now telling the Rio Grande's story from fossils and native peoples through steamboats to the 20th century.
• La Lomita Chapel — 14 mi
  A small sandstone chapel on the Rio Grande levee, built by Oblate missionaries in 1865 and rebuilt at this site in 1899, the landmark that gave the city of Mission its name.
• Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park — 15 mi
  A 587-acre stand of Rio Grande woodland near Mission, once part of a Spanish porción, given to the state by the Bentsen family in 1944 and now headquarters of the World Birding Center.
• Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge — 16 mi
  About 2,000 acres of river forest on the Rio Grande's north bank, the surviving part of Benigno Leal's 1834 land grant, kept as a refuge since 1943 where two bird migration routes meet.

More markers nearby

• Everitt Building — 1.1 mi
• John H. Shary Home — 6.9 mi
• The Pharr Riot — 7.4 mi
• City of Pharr — 7.7 mi