BUCARELI. Bucareli was a Spanish settlement on the Trinity River, probably near the Robbins Ferry crossing of the river in Madison County, north of Midway. Dissatisfied Spanish colonists ordered from their East Texas homes as a result of the report of the Marqués de Rubí lived for a brief time in San Antonio until they could persuade Viceroy Antonio María de Bucareli y Ursúa to permit them to return to East Texas. Permission was granted for a settlement at the site where the Old San Antonio Road crossed the Trinity. The settlement, named Nuestra Señora del Pilar de Bucareli, was founded in September 1774, and soon had a plaza, a church, a guardhouse, twenty houses of hewn wood, and numerous huts. It was to be exempt from civil taxation and church tithes for ten years. For a time the community prospered, reportedly because of illicit trade with the French, but an epidemic in 1777 was followed by Comanche raids in 1778. Led by Antonio Gil Ibarvo, the settlers, without official permission, deserted Bucareli and moved back to East Texas, where, before April 1779, they established what is now Nacogdoches. See also SPANISH TEXAS.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Herbert Eugene Bolton, Texas in the Middle Eighteenth Century: Studies in Spanish Colonial History and Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1915; rpt., Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970). Carlos E. Castañeda, Our Catholic Heritage in Texas (7 vols., Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1936-1958; rpt., New York: Arno, 1976).