Canary Islanders

On February 14, 1719, the Marqués de San Miguel de Aguayo proposed to transport 400 families from the Canary Islands, Galicia, and Havana to populate Texas. The king of Spain approved the plan, and by 1730 twenty-five families from the Canary Islands had reached Cuba and ten more families, which increased by marriages to 15, had been sent from the Islands to Veracruz before orders from Spain to stop the movement arrived. The 15 families of 56 individuals formed San Fernando de Béxar, the first regularly organized civil government in Texas. These Canary Island emigrants became the root from whence many of the old San Antonio families descend.

Source : Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. Canary Islanders, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/CC/poc1.html (accessed May 19, 2010)

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