On April 8, 1824, Impresario Don Martin De Leon, requested that the provincial delegation at San Fernanco de Bexar give him permission and assistance in settling forty-one Mexican families in an area on the lower Guadalupe River, creating the town of Nuestra Senora Guadalupe de Jesus Victoria. It was the only predominately Mexican city in the Mexican state of Texas. The Mexican constitution was also approved that year, declaring the country a federal republic, much like the United States.

In 1829, DeLeon managed to acquire a second contract. This one was to settle one hundred fifty families in an area ten leagues from the Gulf Coast. In doing so, the town of Victoria, Texas was founded.

In 1833, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was elected to the Mexican presidency. Initially, Santa Anna was a supporter of the federal republic, but in time he fired his congress, abandoned the constitution of 1824 and established himself as the primary source of political power in Mexico. He became a dictator. All individual states’ rights had to be forfeited with this event.

Almost immediately, the Mexican state of Texas seceded from Mexico. Years later the state of Yucatan would secede for the same reasons. Victoria, a predominantly Mexican settlement, opposed Santa Anna’s dictatorship.

On October 2, 1835, the first battle of the Texas Revolution was fought at Gonzales, Texas. Over a period of three months, the Texans had driven all Mexican troops out of Texas.

In January of 1836, Santa Anna led his troops into Texas to put down the rebellion. He ordered General Jose Urrea to take troops to Goliad; Santa Anna went to San Antonio de Bexar. Victoria was occupied by General Jose Urea’s Mexican troops, but the citizens of Victoria quietly provided volunteers, arms and other supplies to the Texas Army.

At an old abandoned mission in San Antonio, called the Alamo, on March 6, 1836, Santa Anna began to arouse hatred more so that ever among the Texans. Three weeks later, at a presidio in Goliad, General Urrea’s troops massacred 342 prisoners as directly ordered by Santa Anna, adding more to the causes of hatred. Santa Anna was yet to face the events of April 21, 1836!

Victoria was incorporated in 1839, as a city in the Republic of Texas. For a brief time in 1840, it served as a refuge for the provisional government of the short-lived Republic of the Rio Grande, which collapsed later that year.

During the US Civil War, Victoria’s location on the road from Alleyton, Texas in Colorado County to Brownsville, Texas, made it a Union target. Along this road came wagonloads of cotton being transported to Mexico, a neutral nation, through which cotton from the South was exported and arms and medicine for the Confederacy were imported from foreign allies. In 1863, an invasion by Union forces was threatened. The railroad from Port Lavaca was destroyed.

Following the Civil War, Victoria grew as an agricultural area. In time, as oil became a more needed commodity, it grew as the result of its oil.