Don Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, called the Father of Mexico, was born in the state of Guanajuato, Mexico on May 8, 1752. He died when he was executed on July 30, 1811. He is considered a national hero of Mexico. Father Hidalgo was born in Penjamo, Guanajuato. He studied at the College of San Francisco, a Jesuit school, in the town now known as Morelia. After the Jesuits were expelled from Mexico, he received further education there at the College of San Nicolas Obispo. Hidalgo was considered a good student. He was ordained as a Catholic priest in 1778 after which he taught in the school and held numerous positions in the church. Various articles note that as he was receiving his education and later serving as a priest, he came to be influenced by injustices experienced by Mexican citizens under Spanish rule. He was assigned to the position of parish priest at Dolores, Guanajuato in 1808, after which he became involved in Mexico’s independence movement.
A key event in his life and ministry occurred on September 16, 1810 when he declared liberty from Spain by giving a speech referred to as the Grito de Dolores (Cry of Dolores) and defiantly ringing the bell of the parish church there. This event signaled a call to thousands of oppressed Mexican citizens to assemble and march to Mexico’s capital. Hidalgo had no military training. Though the group he led was essentially disorganized from a military standpoint it had some early success. However, it failed to take Mexico City in October, 1810. Father Hidalgo and his followers attempted to retreat to the west towards Guadalajara in Jalisco and regroup. They were pursued by royal troops until they met in a decisive battle on January 17, 1811 at Calderon Bridge, about fifty miles due east of Guadalajara. Hidalgo and his followers were soundly defeated by troops led by General Felix Maria Calleja del Rey. Following this event and despite another fairly successful retreat, Hidalgo was either removed or voluntarily resigned his military leadership position.
Hidalgo attempted to flee with hopes of going further north to safety, but he was soon captured near Chihuahua, incarcerated and tried both by the church and the Spanish government. He was convicted of sedition and sentenced to death. The Catholic church was closely aligned with the Spanish at that time. In 1810, Hidalgo had been excommunicated by the church for having been a leader of the failed attempt to unseat the Spanish from their control of Mexico. Also cited was that forces under the leadership of Hidalgo had committed violent acts against members of the clergy who were loyal to the Spanish. The church hierarchy also considered it an offense that Hidalgo would use symbols of the church as he led his paramilitary activities. The point should also be noted that even near the end of Spanish rule, a majority of clerical personnel were from Spain with some exceptions, such as Hidalgo. Following his conviction, Father Hidalgo was humiliated in public by Spanish authorities, publicly stripped of his ecclesiastical robes and imprisoned again. He was finally brought out on the morning of July 30, 1811, executed and beheaded. Though he did not live to see it, Spanish rule would end about ten years later.
Father Hidalgo’s excommunication had briefly been rescinded but was reinstated before his execution. His excommunication stood for almost two hundred years despite calls for it to be rescinded or annulled. Finally, a movement took hold in Mexico in anticipation of the Republic’s 200th anniversary of its independence from Spain based in part on the fact that Hidalgo had confessed to another priest while in prison. His confession was considered as having reconciled himself to the church. In 2007, the Archdiocese of Mexico ruled that the excommunication was annulled. The ruling was warmly received in Mexico and was viewed as the correction of an injustice for a Mexican hero. Additional developments involved his remains. Originally, his incomplete body was buried in Guanajuato. In 1823, the Mexican congress ordered his remains including his skull to be buried with honor in Mexico City in a local cathedral.
One hundred years later to the day, the governor of Chihuahua presided over a ceremony in Hidalgo’s honor in Dolores, by then renamed Dolores Hidalgo. It was attended by every state governor of the Republic of Mexico. Father Hidalgo has been honored in Mexico in many other ways, including a national holiday on September 16, numerous statues and monuments in his honor, streets and plazas named for him, the creation of the Mexican state of Hidalgo as well as the issuance of stamps and currency bearing his likeness.
The Texas county of Hidalgo was created by the Fourth Texas Legislature on January 24, 1852. It was formed out of portions of Starr and Cameron counties. Its commissioner’s court held its first recorded meeting on September 2, 1852, according to a 1968 article in the McAllen Monitor. Hidalgo was one of several counties created in the formerly disputed land that was ceded to Texas after the Mexican-American War (1846 – 1848). It is also one of about a half dozen counties named for prominent Mexican individuals in a trend that honored the culture of the area. Some time later, a portion the original county was given up along with land from several other counties to form Willacy County.
According to a 1969 article in the Brownsville Herald, prior to the establishment of the county seat, local residents had to travel 70 to 80 miles to Brownsville to conduct their legal business. Scottish settler John Young founded a town originally named after his plantation and called La Habitacion, but later changed the name to Edinburgh, after Edinburgh in Scotland where Young was born. It was located across the Rio Grande from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, Mexico. Young had an agricultural operation there and was said to have also been a merchant. The location once had a ferry across the river and a steamboat landing. Periodic flooding in the late 1800s washed away “old” Edinburgh and a nearby community named Hidalgo, less than one mile away, became the second county seat on February 7, 1861. The proximity of Hidalgo to “old” Edinburgh is close enough for some to consider them to essentially be the same town.
Around 1907, yet another location was chosen as the county seat, about 20 miles to the north of Hidalgo. It was called Chapin after a local individual by that last name. Four years later in 1911, the town of Chapin was renamed Edinburg (this time without the letter “h” at the end) as an homage to John Young. The above mentioned town of Hidalgo has survived as well. As for Scotsman John Young, his final resting place is unknown.
Hidalgo County is one of the ten most populous counties in Texas. It has grown to have an estimated current population just under 1,000,000. Its four major towns are McAllen, Mission, Edinburg and Pharr with many other towns and communities.
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