INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

GENEALOGY
Database
Surname List
Name Index

FAMILY CHARTS

ANCESTRAL
Origins

Homelands
Nobility ?
Surname Origins

HISTORY
New Spain
Nuevo Santander
Camargo
La Grulla
La Encantada
Encino
The Alcala Exodus

SOURCES

PHOTOS
Gallery 1
Gallery 2
Gallery 3
Gallery 4
Gallery 5

RELATED LINKS

FINAL THOUGHTS

CONTACT US

This site is dedicated to the memory of my ancestors and to the memory of all my departed family members. After researching family history for many years, I feel like I have come to know those ancestors whom I was not able to meet during my lifetime. Though in some cases I have not even a photograph to remember them by, I can almost visualize their faces, and experience what they experienced in their everyday lives. It is my hope that each of you will come to know these long departed ancestors and our more recent and contemporary ancestors as well as I have come to know them. They will live in my heart forever; I hope they live in yours forever also. May all our family members be “...como dos gotas de agua….”; may we be as closely united as two drops of water.

If you are descended from the Longorias of the Santa Rita Ranch in southern Brooks County, Texas, I believe you will find a significant amount of family history here. My purpose is to share this compiled history with you so that you can pass it on to your children, and they in turn can pass it on to theirs. This history is not a finished product; it could never be completely up to date and despite my concerted effort, factual errors, faulty interpretations and wrong conclusions have undoubtedly been made. I welcome feedback from all of you to identify inaccuracies and errors, help me to correct them, and to make this humble history more accurate and complete.

If your surname is Longoria but are not closely related to those of us from the Santa Rita Ranch, you may still find some information here that is of interest. The sections on our Ancestral Origins, the Ancestral Homelands in Old Spain, and Ancestral Migration to New Spain should be of interest to everyone. The section on the Origin of Surnames may also be of interest.

I have researched all of my genealogical roots, but to date that research has been most fruitful in my LONGORIA branch. My research into my wife’s ALCALA branch, my mother’s VILLARREAL branch, and my paternal grandmother’s TREVIÑO branch has yielded good results, but they are not as extensive as on the Longoria branch. Not surprisingly, the roots of some of these branches frequently had common seeds in the not too distant past.

I continue my research into all branches and will update this site when appropriate.

Antonia Vidaurri note (click to enlarge)

Notation on back of photograph from my maternal great-grandmother Antonia Vidaurri de Trevino to her daughter Ninfa.

It reads:

"Ninfita, Cada vez que veas este retrato de tu mama ten presente lo mucho que te ama y sus deseos son que tu, Anita y Genovevo sean tan unidos como dos gotas de agua; tu mama que te ama hasta la eternidad.  Diciembre 19 de 1903.  Antonia Vidaurri de T."

Translation:

"Ninfita, each time you see this picture of your mother keep in mind how much she loves you and her desires are that you, Anita and Genovevo will be as united as two drops of water; your mother who loves you until eternity.  December 19, 1903.  Antonia Vidaurri de T."

NOTE:  In this website, I have sometimes named individuals by including both their paternal and maternal surnames in an attempt to distinguish between similarly named individuals.  To be consistent with the capabilities of my genealogy software, I adopted the convention of listing the paternal surname first and the maternal surname last.  This may not be consistent with the Mexican custom of listing the maternal surname first, but it is the only way I could maintain consistency with the database generated by my genealogy software.  Using my own convention, I would write my own name as Raul N. Longoria Villarreal.

Also, as in the caption for the photo above, I sometimes will include "de" in a lady's name to show that the surname that follows was her husband's surname.  Using this convention, my wife's name would become Minerva Alcala de Longoria.

Home Next

 

Raul & Minnie
ca. 1966
Raul N. Longoria Villarreal and Minerva Alcala Garza, your webmasters.

Raul & great-grandkids (click to enlarge)
Sept. 1996
Raul Longoria Trevino, with his only grandson Raul Noe Longoria Alcala and his wife Judy, and his great grandchildren, Sarah, Peter, and Rebecca.

Mauro, the country boy (click to enlarge)
ca. 1952
Mauro Alcala Quintana in the back yard of his Brownsville home; living proof that “you can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy”.

 

Copyright © 2001.  Raul N. Longoria.  All rights reserved.