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 Mission San Juan Capistrano (Texas) - San Antonio, Texas Posted by:  iconions
N 29° 19.946 W 098° 27.320
14R E 552880 N 3244940
This mission was named fo a 15th-century theologian and warrior priest who resided in the Abruzzo region of Italy. It is located at 9101 Graf Road in San Antonio, Texas.
Waymark Code: WMYAXT
Location: Texas, United States
Date Posted: 05/22/2018
Views: 2
The Mission San Juan Capistrano, one of the five San Antonio missions, under went several building periods during its ninety-three-year existence as a Spanish outpost in the New World.
The mission compound follows a traditional plan of rooms arranged side by side in a rough quadrangle around a plaza. Entrance to these rooms is gained through walls facing the plaza. Spaces not occupied by structures are walled (see site map). Minor modifications on this plan were made in the several building periods of the mission's life.
By 1756 a church had been completed, with a cloistered convent and a granary. The Indian quarters were composed of Jacale homes made up of upright posts plastered with adobe for walls an thatched roofs. Evidence of these jacales (rows of post holes evenly and closely spaced along the south wall) were revealed during excavations at the site in 1971..
In 1762 Fray Mariano Francisco de los Dolores inspected the mission. He states that a second church was under construction and the convent expanded. Indians were still living in the temporary quarters.
The apex of mission development is considered to be that period between 1756 and 1777 when the economic stability of the mission allowed it to supply goods to other missions.
In 1794 Mission San Juan Capistrano was partially secularized. Twelve Indian families received ownership of mission land and properties, but by 1823 (the complete secularization of the mission) when San Juan property was sold at auction nearly all the Indian population had disappeared and only four or five Indians were left at the mission.
What remains now are the ruins of the second church (c. 1756-1763/64) and the third church (post 1762),originally the granary, that chapel which is now in use. During excavations conducted in January-March 1971 foundations of what is believed to be the first church (1731) were uncovered.
Additional remains of the mission complex are the walls surrounding it, foundations of some of the Indian quarters, the convent, granary foundations, the well and an old residence (c. 1824) built within the mission walls after its secularization.
- Texas State Historical Atlas Entry
Mission San Juan Capistrano (originally christened in 1716 as La Misión San José de los Nazonis and located in East Texas) was founded in 1731 by Spanish Catholics of the Franciscan Order, on the eastern banks of the San Antonio River in present-day San Antonio, Texas. The new settlement (part of a chain of Spanish missions) was named for a 15th-century theologian and warrior priest who resided in the Abruzzo region of Italy. The mission San Juan was named after Saint John of Capestrano.
The first primitive capilla (chapel) was built out of brush and mud. Eventually a campanile, or "bell tower" containing two bells was incorporated into the structure, which was replaced by a long granary with a flat roof and an attractive belfry around 1756. In around 1760 construction of a larger church building begun on the east side of the Mission compound, but was never completed due to the lack of sufficient labor. Mission San Juan did not prosper to the same extent as the other San Antonio missions because lands allotted to it were not sufficient to plant vast quantities of crops, or breed large numbers of horses and cattle; a dam was constructed in order to supply water to the Mission's acequia, or irrigation system. (the Mission reportedly owned 1,000 head of cattle, 3,500 sheep and goats, and 100 horses in 1762).
Some 265 neophytes resided in adobe huts at the Mission in 1756; by 1790 the native Coahuiltecan people were living in stone quarters, though their number had dropped to 58. The Mission often encountered systemic issues concerning corralling the native's nomadic tendencies, which consequently led to large amounts of the converted Indians to sporadically leave. San Juan Capistrano was administered by the College of Santa Cruz de Querétaro until March 1773, when it was placed under the care of the College of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe de Zacatecas.
- Mission San Juan Capistrano (Texas) Wikipedia Entry Visit Instructions:
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