José Albino Herrera

José Albino—also written Alvino—Herrera was probably born at Laredo on 15 December 1810. A FamilySearch index and a compiled pedigree report that he was baptized at San Agustín four days later and name José de Jesús Herrera and María Francisca Martínez as his parents. The original register has not been inspected, so the date and parentage remain useful working conclusions rather than documented facts.

If the record has been attributed correctly, Albino was born in Spanish Nuevo Santander. Laredo then passed into independent Mexico, through a disputed border era, and into durable United States administration after the Mexican–American War. Those changes frame his life. They do not reveal which government he supported or how he understood the changing boundary.

A 1 June 1826 school report lists an Albino Herrera among new students classified as advanced readers. The name, place, and likely age fit, but the entry gives no household link. Later records repeatedly say that Albino could not write, sign, or read. The tension remains visible because the evidence does not tell us whether the schoolchild was another Albino, whether schooling ended early, or whether the labels measured different abilities.

The first secure adult record arrives in June 1844. A Laredo municipal padrón lists “Albino Herrera,” age thirty, as a sapatero—shoemaker. The age is approximate, but the name, place, occupation, and later household records make the identification strong.

Three months later he appeared on an order directing men aged eighteen to forty to attend a drawing of lots for possible service in the First Permanent Company. That is the full military conclusion. The document does not prove selection, enlistment, auxiliary service, or combat, and no later service record has been recovered.

The correction removes a more dramatic story but leaves an important one: a working civilian in Mexican Laredo was subject to the local government’s manpower demands during an unsettled borderland decade.

Two separate municipal household lists from 1845 anchor Albino with María Victoriana Mendiola and a recurring group of young people. The first calls him a married labrador—a cultivator or agricultural worker—and then names Bictoriana, Cecilia, Esteban, Elijio, Pedro, and Marcelo. The second again lists Alvino, María Bictoriana, Esteben, Eligio, Pedro, Marcelo, Gregorio, and Secilio.

Neither padrón contains a modern relationship column. Their strength comes from repetition. Pedro occupies the same family cluster again in the original 1850 and 1860 censuses, while indexed baptisms and the later death certificates of Eligio and Bartolo independently point back to Albino and Victoriana.

That correlation makes Albino and Victoriana the strong historical reconstruction for Pedro’s parents. It does not justify quoting a record as saying “son” when none of the inspected Pedro-specific records uses that word.

In 1845 Mexican municipal officials recorded Albino’s household and electoral eligibility in Laredo. Texas had claimed the Rio Grande boundary since 1836, but it had not extended effective jurisdiction over the town; Laredo’s residents continued to regard themselves as citizens of Tamaulipas.

United States forces raised their flag over Laredo in March 1846 and occupied the town that November. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848 and made effective through exchanged ratifications, recognized the middle of the Rio Grande as the international boundary. Families wishing to remain under Mexican government established Nuevo Laredo on the opposite bank.

By 1850, Albino appeared in a United States census and cast a ballot in a Laredo municipal election. The continuity suggests that he remained rooted in the same community while sovereignty changed around him. It does not prove his exact house, every crossing of the river, or his feelings about the transfer.

The 7 December 1845 electoral roll places Alvino under the Calle Real section, calls him an artisan through a carried-forward “same” notation, and marks him unable to sign. It shows electoral eligibility and a municipal classification, not a precise home address or a declaration of political allegiance.

On 21 June 1850 he did more than appear on an eligibility list. Albino was voter number ten among fourteen men who cast ballots in Laredo Ward 1 for mayor and an alderman. The poll list documents an act of local civic participation shortly after United States administration became durable.

A ballot cannot tell us why he voted, whom he favored, or what he thought about the border change. It does show that the same working household visible in Mexican municipal records continued into the city’s new civic order.

An 1855 animal-tax register charged Albino for one taxable bovine in June. The record should not be enlarged into “one cow,” his only animal, or a complete inventory. It is a small but concrete trace of taxable property.

The 1860 census gives the fullest economic snapshot. Albino was recorded as a laborer with $1,100 in real estate and $250 in personal estate. Victoriana and seven younger people shared the household, including Pedro. The schedule records property values, not title history, debt, location, or the scale of the family’s everyday security.

In 1870 the real-estate field was blank and the schedule recorded $330 in personal estate. The contrast is notable but unexplained. Without deeds, taxes, or probate, it cannot safely be called a Civil War loss, a sale, a transfer, or proof that he owned no land.

On 19 August 1870, “Alvino” Herrera appeared in Laredo dwelling 350, family 342. The enumerator recorded him as age sixty-nine, a laborer, Texas-born, unable to read or write, a male citizen aged twenty-one or older, and the holder of $330 in personal estate. Victoriana kept house; Basilio and Bartolo remained in the household.

The recorded age conflicts with the reported 1810 birth and with several earlier ages. The recurring wife and child sequence is more reliable for identification than any one arithmetic age. The page therefore preserves the age ledger rather than forcing the records into a false agreement.

No verified 1880 entry, death record, burial, obituary, will, or probate file has yet closed Albino’s life. The defensible endpoint is narrow: he was alive in Laredo on 19 August 1870 and died sometime afterward.