Carlos

Carlos Rancho was a Mexican village on the north side of the San Antonio River in what is now Victoria County. It was located at Carlos Crossing, about twelve miles below Goliad on the old road from Victoria to Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission. The village was established about 1830 and named for Carlos de la Garza, whose father, Antonio de la Garza, a Mexican soldier stationed at Goliad, settled the area as a ranch. In 1834 Carlos received title to a league of land that included the old ranch, Carlos Crossing, and Carlos Rancho. He had a commissary, barrel house, smithy, and double log cabin at the site and operated a ferry at Carlos Crossing alternately with John White Bower, another resident. Bower and George B. Amory also had a store there. The settlement had numerous houses and jacals, barns, corrals, and sheds, and a Catholic church where José Antonio Valdez was resident priest. A local school for boys was operating in 1841.

In 1835–36 the population of Carlos Rancho grew substantially as the Mexican residents of Goliad abandoned that town in the wake of its capture and subsequent occupation by George M. Collinsworth, Philip Dimmitt, and especially James W. Fannrin, J. (see GOLIAD CAMPAIGN OF 1835 and GOLIAD CAMPAIGN OF 1836). Consequently, Carlos Rancho fell suspect as a nest of spies. Fannin launched at least two attacks on the place and captured several citizens, including Father Valdez, the suspected leader. John Crittenden Duval wrote of one of these raids in his celebrated Early Times in Texas (1892). Carlos de la Garza recruited his Victoriana Guardes, a unit of some eighty horsemen, from among the Goliad refugees and joined Gen. José de Urrea in defeating Amon B. King and William Ward in the battle of Refugio and in keeping Fannin under surveillance, thus contributing to his defeat in the battle of Coleto.