Aldrete, José Miguel

José Miguel Aldrete, Mexican official and early Texas patriot was born in Texas. For a number of years he served in the ayuntamiento at Goliad and was alcalde in 1823–24 and from 1830 to 1833 and he was collector at the port of El Cópano. In 1830 he represented the Mexican government in the secularization of the mission.

Aldrete, probably the largest landowner in the Refugio area at the time, was land commissioner of the state of Coahuila and Texas in 1835 and was functioning as such when Antonio López de Santa Anna dissolved the state government. He immediately espoused the Federalist cause and was a member of Ira Westover’s Lipantitlán expedition, after which he went to San Antonio de Béxar where, according to some accounts, he was a member of the Texan army during the Siege of Bexar. He was a member of Philip Dimmitt’s garrison at Goliad and a signer of the Goliad Declaration of Independence. Aldrete furnished many animals and supplies to the Texas army during the Texas Revolution and was one of the few Mexicans who enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Dimmitt .

About 1840, after living in Goliad and Victoria, Aldrete moved back to Refugio County. He, like many other family members, was a warm abettor of the Mexican Federalists. From 1841 to 1844 he was a justice of Refugio County. Upon him was conferred one of the orders of the papal nobility. In addition to their holdings in Refugio County, the Aldretes owned large ranches in the Nueces River region. Aldrete lived in Corpus Christi in 1854. About the time of the fall of Maximilian’s empire, he moved to Chihuahua, Coahuila, where he died sometime before 1873.

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