FLORES DE ABREGO, JOSE GASPAR MARIA
FLORES DE ABREGO, JOSÉ GASPAR MARÍA (1781–1836). Gaspar Flores de Abrego, land commissioner and ally of the Austin colonists, was born in San Antonio de Béxar on January 5, 1781, to Vicente Flores and María Antonia de las Fuentes Fernandes. In Bexar he was elected alcalde in 1819, 1824, 1829, and 1834. At a meeting on October 13, 1834, described as the "first strictly revolutionary meeting in Texas," anti-Centralists of Bexar, worried by the dictatorial actions of President Antonio López de Santa Anna, called on all Texans to join them in convention on November 15. Among the thirty-five signers of the memorial were Erasmo and Juan N. Seguín, Gaspar Flores and his son Nicolás, and Luciano and José Antonio Navarro.
By 1835 Santa Anna had dissolved Congress and was dispersing state governments, including that of Coahuila and Texas. The crisis reached Bexar with the arrival of troops under Col. Domingo de Ugartechea. Flores, at that time serving as administrator of the Revenue Department, refused to obey the colonel's demand for his official documents, writing that "the military have no right to interfere." Santa Anna next sent Gen. Martín Perfecto de Cos to Bexar with additional troops, but Texas volunteers drove them out of Bexar and out of Texas. A small group of the volunteers remained in Bexar, headquartered in the Alamo with neither money nor supplies. Gaspar Flores offered them all his "goods, Groceries and Beeves." When the soldiers met with citizens in January 1836 Flores served on a committee that included James Bonham, James Bowie, and Juan Seguín, to draft resolutions for the consideration of the committee.
February 1 was voting day for Texas towns, each to select four delegates to the March 1 convention that would decide the future of Texas. Bexar elected Antonio Navarro, José Francisco Ruiz, Erasmo Seguín, and Gaspar Flores. Two weeks later Tejano spies brought word that Santa Anna was crossing the Rio Grande with thousands of troops for the purpose of capturing Bexar. As the younger men joined the Texas army or rode as couriers, Flores and Seguín took charge of gathering their own and other families and with loaded oxcarts and 3,000 sheep hurried to the safety of East Texas.
After the battle of San Jacinto Juan Seguín found them in Nacogdoches struck down by a fever that took a number of lives. Flores died on September 6, 1836, having gone as far as the home of George Huff, a few miles east of San Felipe. His second wife, Petra Zambrano, his son Nicolás, and his two sons-in-law accepted his estate as inventoried on February 11, 1837.
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The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this article.Handbook of Texas Online, Camilla Campbell, "Flores De Abrego, Jose Gaspar Maria," accessed March 25, 2017, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/ffl26.
Uploaded on June 12, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.