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Hello, I was wondering if anyone could help me get a rough idea of an old Texas (when it was part of Mexico) document in Spanish. I don't know Spanish and it's handwritten, so I might try and make out the letters/words and shove it in a translator but I'm guessing doubling up on errors will make it very slow and hard to get some of the details. Curious if anyone who knows Spanish and is good at reading such documents can give me any idea of the specifics the document is talking about.
Context this is regarding an ancestor of mine, a George Butler who came to Texas somewhere in the early to mid 1830s... There is a certificate of character submitted for him in 1834 and I'm guessing this is the more detailed documentation surrounding him. I'm curious if any interesting or useful details might be gleaned, family information, does it just grant land, does it grant citizenship in Mexico, etc?
It's too bad you can't take it to a library /genealogy library / or school / college and see if someone can help you. Maybe donate a bit for the help. I don't speak Spanish but you could try posting on the Mexico forum. ?? Maybe?
You could also call up a Spanish to English Translation - On Google. You type in the text and it translates for you. You should also look up handwriting for that time period and get a feel for it.
Thanks for the tips. I'm pretty good with reading english cursive old handwriting from this era, though looking at this I realize how much of that is pattern matching, of predicting the words despite gaps I can't tell... Since I don't now many Spanish words it's very hard to accurately pick out every letter. I've started to dig through it a bit and throw words from here into the translator... a lot of text though.
I got it from some genealogy trees. Some of the records exist in english including some after Texas became the Republic of Texas. My ancestor George Butler actually can be found in the Texas handbook
I've copied your images, but don't know if I will be able to see all the words clearly due to the age of the paper. Looks like quite a bit of legalese, but I can translate it. I will need a few days as I have a time crunch for work this weekend and Mon/Tues, if you want me to.
There are many who can easily translate this for you as the quality is not too bad overall. Anyone else you know who reads Spanish?
I got it from some genealogy trees. Some of the records exist in english including some after Texas became the Republic of Texas. My ancestor George Butler actually can be found in the Texas handbook
I was able to copy and paste it to my desktop and then use zoom. If you are familiar with the handwriting from that time, that's half the translation. The first two pages are easier to look at.
I know Spanish, this is a legal petition on the part of George Butler and his family of four, asking permission to take up residence on land belonging to Lorenzo de Zavala according to the settlement laws of the state. Much of it is faded and hard (or impossible in places) to read, but a lot of it seems taken up with description of the exact boundaries of the land. It is the handwriting and reproduction quality that make it difficult to read most of it. I might be able to squeeze more out of it later.
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