The Mullarky Blog 🎙💻📷🎶

The Presidio de Bahía.  In 1836 over 420 prisoners of war from the Republic of Texas were executed by the Mexican Army in Goliad, Texas on the command of General Santa Anna. This is referred to, in Texas history class, as the Goliad massacre. The birthplace of Ignacio Zaragoza, the Mexican general who defeated the French in the Battle of Puebla on May 5th, 1862. That’s why you’ve never see a Frenchman celebrating Cinco de Mayo.  -WAM- October, 2021

Mission Nuestra Señora del Espíritu Santo de Zúñigav was founded in Matagorda Bay in 1722 to uphold territorial claims of the Spanish from the French in Louisiana. The mission was moved twice; first to Victoria, Texas in 1726 after an unsuccessful effort to befriend and assimilate with the Native Americans of Matagorda Bay, then to a safer and final location in Goliad, Texas in 1749 along the San Antonio River. By 1778 the mission was the first and largest cattle ranch in Texas, with over 40,000 free-roaming cattle. The mission also grew crops of grain, fruit, and vegetables. The stone wall pictured is what remains of the original construction finished in 1758. The rest of the church was rebuilt in the 1930s. Much of the original stone was taken freely by local builders for construction of nearby buildings after the mission was secularized in the 1830s. The early failures of the Mission Espiritu Santo was in part due to the missionaries’ failed collaboration and conversion attempts wit...

Founded in East Texas in 1690, Mission San Francisco de Tejas was the first Spanish Mission in Texas. It was a strategic point and acted as protection from the French in Lousiana. After fires, floods, and diseases ravished the mission, it was moved to the San Antonio River in 1731. At this time the name was changed to Mission San Francisco de la Espada. The Franciscan missionaries allied with the Coahuitecan natives of Central Texas and over a fifty year period the hunter gatherers learned European skills like masonry, blacksmithing, and loom weaving as they integrated with the Spanish.   The mission bells would clang 3 times a day as the hot Texas Sun shined down on the fertile lands of the Texas mission. The reason the land was so fertile was because the Spanish built an extensive aqueduct system from the San Antonio River to irrigate the lands for crops like corn, melon, pumpkins, and cotton. The 18th century aqueducts were an architectural feat and are still standing to this...