HIDDEN FIGURES

Although Patricia de la Garza de León was the co-founder of Victoria, the town where I grew up, I only recently learned her name. I knew of her husband, Martín de León, the dashing empresario who, in 1824, brought 41 families to the Guadalupe River to build this town, back before there was a Texas. When I was little, my sister and I roller-skated in the town square, De León Plaza, where a marker reminded us that Don Martín is the reason Victoria exists.

But it was a surprise to learn about De la Garza (1775-1849), a well-to-do woman from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas who forked over her dowry to finance the Mexican colony that would someday be my home. She hauled her family here to start afresh. Even though she lived on dirt floors, De la Garza got busy erecting the town’s first chapel and school to educate her 10 children, and eventually, dozens of grandchildren. When Don Martín died of cholera in 1833, De la Garza held fast as the matriarch of her family and the town, overseeing social and religious life, making sure children were married and babies were baptized.

De la Garza was the backbone of my hometown. And yet, I’d had no idea who she was. The reasons for this are as twisted up as the times De la Garza lived in. The feminist wordplay from the 1970s rings true: Since history has been “his story,” written by men recording the deeds, wars, and decisions of other men, we have overlooked herstory. Men didn’t make history alone, and scholars, students, and the culture at large are tuning in to these omissions. Texas’ past is full of forgotten people like De la Garza.

“History may get told a certain