Records · Registros
Los papeles, no la novela.
These are records behind the work, not the work itself. A verified record is an original or an official text that has been read. Family narrative is what the Chronicles and family memory say, and it stays labeled as that. Fiction is the dialogue and the scenes in the novel and the plays: a document does not rewrite a scene, and a scene is not offered here as a record.
The papers are not all one story. They show grants and baptisms, signed letters and death certificates. They also show conflict: crown and state, the church, the colonists, and the Native peoples already living on this land. Settling new country was discovery and disruption at the same time. It was innovative, great, and awful, depending on who is looking. The settlers conquered, lived that life, and left paper that carries both the fact of conquering peoples and the richness of the land and its water, grass, and ore. The page says that plainly. Judgment belongs to the reader.
I
Travieso · Islas Canarias
Later historical writing calls this founding company Canary Islanders (Isleños). The records cited in this section are cataloged wills, and they do not use that word.
16 January 1779
Bexar County’s Spanish Archives catalog a will of Vicente Álvarez Travieso, spouse Mariana Curbelo, at Wills and Estates folio 108, and the Handbook of Texas gives his death as 25 January 1779.
25 September 1784
The same guide catalogs her will, spouse Vicente Álvarez Travieso, at folio 18, while the death year already used on this site, 1785, follows the Handbook of Texas and not a reading of the will.
II
Flores de San Antonio
Four letters from Gaspar Flores to the alcalde of Laredo are described and linked. The scans are not hosted here. The Portal to Texas History states general terms, not an item-level license, and that review is still open.
28 November 1824, Béxar
The letter directs seizure of goods stolen by a Frenchman and then in Laredo, and it carries Gaspar’s signature and rubric. It is an official letter, not a land title.
11 December 1824
The letter instructs that the remaining belongings of the Frenchman Bordey be placed at José de Sandoval’s disposal, and the date and signature are on the page.
9 August 1829, Béxar
The letter reports Huerta’s arrest and transfer, closes with “Dios y Libertad,” and carries a clear signature and rubric.
5 September 1829, as the Portal catalogs it
The Portal catalogs this letter under 5 September 1829. It reports a prisoner delivered by Pablo Flores and lists property found and returned. A kinship phrase in the letter is not used here as a pedigree.
26 January 1837
Bexar County catalogs an unread file at Wills and Estates folio 43 under the title Gaspar Flores and Luisa Pérez, which is a catalog title only and not proof of a marriage read here, while the Handbook of Texas also notes an inventory of 11 February 1837, and the already approved public record is that Gaspar was elected a Béxar delegate in February 1836 and was not a signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence.
III
Stephenson · Azcárate de El Paso
The Ysleta pueblo grant and El Rancho de Ascarete are both printed statutes. They are shown the same way: the page, the date, the credit, and what the act does and does not prove. The name appears in these papers as Azcárate, as Ascarate, and, in the 1858 act, as Ascarete.
Approved 11 February 1858
Chapter 120 of the Seventh Legislature relinquishes the state’s right in three leagues called El Rancho de Ascarete to Juan and Jacinto Ascarete, as the act spells the name, their heirs and assigns, to be surveyed and patented, and it preserves rights that already existed.
Approved 31 January 1854
After the Rio Grande changed course in 1831 or 1832, chapter XXX relinquishes about two leagues on the east bank, formerly of the Cinecue town tract, to the inhabitants of Ysleta, and that bank was later treated as the dividing line with the Ascarate survey.
15 February 1858
The 1858 amendment changes the 1854 relinquishment, and the printed laws recite the original approval as 21 January 1854, which does not match the 31 January date on the 1854 act.
16 November 1854
Printed official copies show Francisco García y San Juan conveying two-thirds of Bracito, recited as 13,462 acres more or less, to Hugh Stephenson for $1,000, and Stephenson releasing the remaining third, recited as 6,731 acres more or less, back to García after a court partition. Bracito was not an original grant to Hugh.
5 March 1914, rehearing 23 April 1914; appeal 24 February 1916
The opinions recite the 1854 Ysleta act, the 1858 Ascarate act, the 1886 Randolph survey, and a patent of 14 September 1886 to Juan and Jacinto Ascarate, and they hold that the 1854 bank of the Río Viejo, not later course-and-distance calls, is the dividing line.
Dates this site uses: born 8 February 1809; died 6 February 1856
Those are the dates this site currently uses, following the El Paso County Historical Society’s Password (Spring 1995). The Handbook of Texas and a modern stone still give competing years, including a birth year of 1800 and a stone date of 5 February 1857. No new photograph of a stone is shown, and the conflict is not settled. Calling her Gabriel’s 3x-great-grandmother is family narrative, not a certified pedigree.
Papers dated 1858–1993
The collection includes “Ascarate and Stephenson Families” and José María Flores letters and a journal, and publication of anything from it requires permission from the C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department.
IV
Flores de Juárez y El Paso
The facts below are approved for the prose of this site. The certificate and register images are not hosted. Vital-record scans stay with the archives that hold them.
Died 24 June 1914, El Paso. Certificate no. 12214.
The certificate names her father Hugo Stephenson, born in Kentucky, and her mother Juana Azcarate, born in Juárez, records her as widowed, and supports a birth in 1831 in El Paso rather than 1836.
3 October 1888, Santa Iglesia de San Fernando, El Carrizal, Chihuahua
The register, headed “En esta Santa Yglesia de San Fernando,” records José J. Flores, called del Paso del Norte, age 25, son of José Ma. Flores and Margarita Stephenson, marrying Josefa Samaniego, daughter of Fernando Samaniego and Guadalupe Siqueiros, in the Pueblo del Carrizal. Age 25 on this date conflicts with the 24 December 1861 birth on his death certificate, and both readings are held.
Died 12 September 1939, 1518 Montana Street, El Paso
The certificate gives his birth as 24 December 1861 in Juárez, his burial at Evergreen on 13 September 1939, his work as a real-estate dealer, his father José M. Flores as born in San Antonio, and his mother Margarita Stephenson as born in San Antonio, which is the informant Enrique Flores’s statement and not a birth register.
Born 10 October 1903, Ciudad Juárez. Died March 1988, El Paso, age 84.
His World War II draft card, signed Carlos F. Flores and registered in El Paso on 16 February 1942, gives his birth as 10 October 1903 in Ciudad Juárez and names Mrs. J. Flores de Samaniego at 1519 Montana as the person who would always know his address. In factual prose, on that date, he was ten at the November 1913 crossing. The plays and the remembered family telling keep their own ages.
The death, March 1988, El Paso, age 84, follows the El Paso Times of 22 March 1988 together with the family tree already confirmed by Gabriel. The exact day is not taken from a certificate read here. The 1950 census lists this same household with Carlos F. as age 35, which is not used to overturn the signed card, and is held. The Chronicles still also list an October 1988 obituary, and an age of 85 has been stated in that family account; that conflict is held.
V
Conflictos en los papeles
This section is a board of conflicts, not a hidden footnote. The captions stay short. The sources are named. The grants, the water, the church, the colonists, and the Native towns are all on the paper. A pueblo grant and a private ranch grant that meet at the same riverbank are shown the same way. Where the documents do not give a Native voice, none is invented.
Principal papers 2 November 1734. Index span 1719 to 2 February 1735.
A cataloged dossier of about twenty pages holds settlers’ letters and copies of royal edicts about water, imprisonment, refusal of medical travel, and a priest’s fees, and Vicente is not named on this index’s list of persons.
13 October 1735
Representatives including Vizente Álvarez Travieso, alguacil mayor, ask the viceroy to stop the governor’s sale of the settlers’ lands and water rights and to release prisoners.
24 January to 15 March 1736
The proceedings charge the governor with violating the rules for distributing land and water, and the viceroy orders compliance, which is viceregal enforcement and not an order shown here as signed by the King.
2–4 November 1734. Certified 5 March 1735.
Vicente asks leave to go to Saltillo or Mexico City because there was no local doctor. The finding aids place this petition beside the governor’s restrictions; the papers themselves have not been read here.
Documents 1771–1783. English translations 1927.
Vicente and Juan Andrés Álvarez Travieso protest mission land claims in papers that the Handbook of Texas connects with Rancho de las Mulas, a conflict between colonists and the missions over land, kept here separate from the water fight of the 1730s, and Native testimony is not in hand until the file is read.
River change recited as 1831 or 1832. Acts of 1854 and 1858. Appeals of 1914 and 1916.
The 1854 act says the inhabitants of Ysleta lost part of a grant from the government of Spain when the Rio Grande moved, leaving part of the Cinecue town tract on the east bank, and the 1914 opinion holds that the 1854 bank of the Río Viejo, not later measurements, divides that tract from the Ascarate survey.