Parajitos Cemetery

Hidalgo Co. Cemeteries of Tx

Submitted by Frances Isbell

With Permission  of Hidalgo Co. Historical Commission (2005)

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LOCATION: West of Progreso. On US 281 (Military Highway) .8 mile east of FM 88, about 600 feet north of highway and west of drain ditch under a double pole power line, in a hackberry grove.

SURVEYED:  Ray Hunt and Joe Fallin for McAllen Genealogical Society, 1979.

HISTORY:  Parajitos Ranch (Sp. “little stations”) was named for the camps of Confederate soldiers patrolling the brush south of the ranchhouse, which lay on the south side of the Military Highway (now US 281) about 1,000 feet west of the cemetery.

Parajitos Ranch was located in Llano Grande Land Grant (1790) of Juan Jose Hinojosa and divided among his eight children in 1848.  In 1876, brothers Florencio and Jesus Saenz purchased  Parajitos (2314 feet river frontage and 17 miles depth) from Leonardo Manso, who had it from Manuela Hinojosa de Cavasos..  In 1880, Florencio Saenz and his bride Sostenes Cano of Campacuas Ranch founded their own Toluca Ranch a few miles east. In 1886, Florencio’s father Dionisio and Jose Saenz registered cattle brands from Parajitos Ranch.

 Just after the turn of the century, Severiano and Manuela Avila  bought Rancho Parajitos, then 263 acres extending from the river to the railroad.  When 1909 floodwaters rose to the top of the windows, they left Parajitos to buy 10 acres in East Donna.

The property was conveyed to American Rio Grande Land & Irrigation Company in 1904, when it became part of a large surface irrigation project and was developed for commercial farming.  Bandits burned down ranch buildings in 1915.

Octaviano Cavasos (1866-1925), who is buried in nearby San Pedro Cemetery, fenced Parajitos Cemetery in the early 1920s.  His wife Francisca Saenz was a niece of Florencio Saenz.  Their son Ignacio Cavasos lives in Parajitos community just east of the  cemetery on the south side of the Military Highway.

An unmarked grave in Parajitos Cemetery is the resting place of Isidro Casares, who came to the RGV from Linares, Nuevo Leon in the 1850s.  Casares worked as a skilled mason and baker at Rancho Campacuas, where he made bricks from river clay to build first an oven, then the house, barn, and church, as well as the owners’ two bovedas. His bricks were used in building Our Lady of Mercy Church in Mercedes.

The cemetery is maintained by Camilo Cavazos of nearby Parajitos Subdivision of Progreso Lakes.  Oldest marked grave is 1911.