Fernando De Leon

In November 1835 Fernando De León drove livestock to New Orleans with José M. J. Carbajal and Peter Kerr and traded it for about $35,000 in munitions and provisions for the Texan cause. A Mexican brig intercepted their schooner, the Hanna Elizabeth, and De León and Carbajal were held at Brazos de Santiago and then Matamoros before they escaped. The supplies reportedly reached the Texans after a patriot ship recaptured the schooner, but the men were never repaid. His ranch, Rancho Escondido, took its name from a legend that the padres hid church valuables there.

What the plaque says

Fernando De Leon (1798-1853) Eldest son of empresario Martin de Leon. Came with parents from interior of Mexico to Texas, the northermost province, about 1800. Worked with his fathter in founding De Leon Colony and city of Victoria in 1820s. He was a commissioner of the colony and an Indian fighter. Loyal to cause of Texas freedom from Mexico, he was imprisoned by the Mexicans in Texas War for Independence. A cattleman and horseman, he owned the famous "Escondida" Ranch. Recorded - 1972

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• De León Plaza — 0.8 mi
  The central plaza of Guadalupe Victoria, the only predominantly Mexican colony in Texas, founded by Martín De León in 1824 and taken from his family after 1836.
• Museum of the Coastal Bend — 1.6 mi
  Victoria College's museum of thirteen thousand years on the middle Texas coast, from Clovis hunters and Karankawa potters to La Salle's lost Fort St. Louis and the first ranches.
• Fannin Battleground State Historic Site — 16 mi
  The open prairie east of Goliad where Fannin's retreating column formed a square short of the Coleto Creek timber on March 19, 1836, and surrendered the next day.
• Fannin Memorial Monument — 25 mi
  The 1938 pink granite memorial over the common grave of Fannin's men, shot on the roads out of Goliad on Palm Sunday 1836, the grave itself found again only in the 1930s.

More markers nearby

• Silvestre De Leon — steps away
• Dona Patricia De La Garza De Leon — steps away
• Don Martin De Leon — steps away
• Darwin M. Stapp — steps away