Rosa María Hinojosa de Ballí (1752–1803) was a rancher known as the first "cattle queen" of Texas. She was born in Mexico, in what is now as

Tamaulipas Tamaulipas (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tamaulipas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tamaulipas), is a state in the northeast region of Mexico; one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal Entiti ...

. Her parents, Juan José de Hinojosa and María Antonia Inés Ballí de Benavides, were Spanish aristocrats who had priority rights to extensive land grants and public offices because they were Primitive Settlers. In 1767 her family moved to

Reynosa Reynosa () is a border city in the northern part of the state of Tamaulipas, in Mexico. It is also the municipal seat of Reynosa Municipality. The city is located on the southern bank of the Rio Grande in the international Reynosa–McAllen Metr ...

, where her father had been appointed as

alcade Alcalde (; ) is the traditional Spanish municipal magistrate, who had both judicial and administrative functions. An ''alcalde'' was, in the absence of a corregidor, the presiding officer of the Castilian '' cabildo'' (the municipal council) a ...

. Rosa married José María Ballí, who was a captain of the militia. She inherited 55,000 acres of land from her husband in 1790, although it was in much debt; within thirteen years she doubled the property, as well as making improvements upon it. Rosa endowed churches, including the first chapel in Matamoros. When she died she owned more than one million acres of land in what is now the

Rio Grande Valley The Lower Rio Grande Valley ( es, Valle del Río Grande), commonly known as the Rio Grande Valley or locally as the Valley or RGV, is a region spanning the border of Texas and Mexico located in a floodplain of the Rio Grande near its mouth. The ...

. Her son

Padre Ballí Padre Ballí (ca. 1770–1829), also known as José Nicolás Ballí, was a rancher, a priest, and an original grantee of Padre Island, which was named after him. However, when he owned the island, it was known as the ''Isla de Santiago'' land grant. ...

was an original grantee of

Padre Island Padre Island is the largest of the Texas barrier islands and the world's longest barrier island. The island is located along Texas's southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico and is noted for its white sandy beaches. Meaning ''father'' in Spanish, it ...

, which was named after him. Rosa had made a joint application with Padre for eleven leagues of the island, but when reapplication was required in 1800, she withdrew her name in favor of him.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hinojosa de Balli, Rosa Maria 1752 births 1803 deaths 18th-century Mexican women 18th-century American landowners 18th-century Mexican people 18th-century farmers 18th-century women farmers People of the colonial Southwest of North America Ranchers Tejano people 18th-century American women landowners

Further reading

References