SANTA ANA CEMETERY

With permission of Hidalgo County Historical Commission 2006

LOCATION: From FM 967 (Alamo Road) and US 281 (Military Highway), go left (east) .4 mile and turn south into Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge. Cemetery is 1.2 miles south on asphalt road.

SURVEYED: Virginia G. Stinson and Sara E. Stinson, 1976 for McAllen Genealogical Society. Texas Historical Marker, Santa Ana Land Grant 1993, Grave marker Thomas W. Jones 1994.

HISTORY: Santa Ana Land Grant of two square leagues was awarded by Mexico in 1834 to Benigno Leal. Headquarters for Leal’s Rancho del Adentro ("Inside ranch") was near the cemetery, part of whose palisade fence of 130-year-old ebony logs still stands.

In 1852, Cristobal and Victoria Balli Leal sold the east league (4428 acres) to Eli T. Merriman, one of Hidalgo County’s first commissioners. The Yankee surgeon and Mexican-American war veteran planned a vast cattle ranch.

The next year, Thomas Walter Jones (c1827-1853) of Washington DC drowned in the Rio Grande while surveying the Texas-Mexico border for the International Boundary Commission, in accordance with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848. He was buried at Dr. Merriman’s ranch.

In 1859, Leal and his wife Victoria Balli adopted Cristobal Leal (1833-1876) as their heir. The adopted son is buried in Santa Ana Cemetery, in a large boveda (above-ground crypt) erected by his widow (and first cousin), Maria Rafaela Treviño, daughter of adjacent El Gato (Sp. "cat") Land Grantee Jose Maria Treviño.

According to family tradition, Benigno Leal was killed by Indians in revenge for the death of a member of their tribe, whom Leal killed for trespassing.

The east league passed by tax sale deed in 1878 from Merriman to Dr. W. T.G. Brewster, a Union surgeon who had settled in the Rio Grande Valley. By 1902, both leagues of the Santa Ana Grant were held by Peter Ebenezer Blalock, developer of Camp Ebenezer (later Alamo).

In 1943, Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge comprising 1,981 acres was established. The staff maintains the cemetery, as well as Brewster Cemetery, also located on the Refuge.