Vicente Ferrer Enríquez de Amador: A Historical Profile of San Fernando de Béxar's Alcalde (1736–1820)

Vicente Ferrer Enríquez de Amador, alcalde of San Fernando de Béxar in 1792, was born in La Barca, Jalisco, in present-day Mexico in 1736. While he noted that his place of origin was Celaya in present-day Guanajuato in two documents, and Atontonilco de Alto in Jalisco in a census record, his baptismal record of February 1736 was from La Barca and listed his parents as María Nicolasa de Soto and Ignacio Xavier de Amador. Of note, the baptismal entry recorded the infant Amador as a mulatto, though later documents in Béxar listed him as a Spaniard. Amador, a tailor in one census, migrated to Béxar in the 1750s and in 1756 married Manuela Banul, the widow of Manuel Leal. Together they had ten children: José María de la Trinidad (1757), Mariano José de la Trinidad (1757, twin with José María), María Ignacia de la Cruz (1760), José del Refugio (1762), María Josefa (1764), José Refugio (1766), Juana Leocadia Luciana (1768), Juana María de Jesús (1770), María Theresa Guadalupe (1773), and María Juliana Fernanda (1776). Amador received land grants in the San Antonio area in 1762, 1771, and 1793.

Prior to his years of public service, Vicente Amador appeared in a 1768 assault case in San Antonio. When Amador’s mare entered and damaged cultivated fields belonging to neighbors as well as his stepson, Juan Leal, the alcalde, Jacinto Delgado, requested that Amador pay the damages, but he took too long to do so. When the alcalde sent a deputy to find Amador, the deputy claimed that Amador attacked and hit him with some object that left him unconscious. Amador sought refuge in the church at Mission Valero, and the alcalde ordered Amador’s belongings confiscated until proceedings could occur. Amador eventually appeared before the alcalde and received a pardon after paying some costs. Despite this early brush with justice, Amador later rose to important positions within the villa of San Fernando de Béxar.

In 1791 Amador served on the local ayuntamiento as city attorney (procurador and mayordomo). In late 1791 he was elected alcalde de primer voto, or first alcalde. At the beginning of 1792 Governor Manuel Muñoz visited the newly-elected ayuntamiento officials to install the new officers and administer the oath of office. Muñoz reminded Amador and the others that the residents of Texas were living in poor circumstances and that the cattle herds were depleted. In such a dire situation, Muñoz charged the ayuntamiento with devising plans to increase the cattle herds, and he ordered the previous officials to hand over the keys to the mesteño funds which were royal reserves collected when a citizen killed or acquired unbranded cattle. Clearly, managing cattle herds and monitoring ranching activities was one of the most significant roles of Amador’s tenure as alcalde. 

Soon thereafter, Amador handled a case that began in January 1792 in which Francisco Hernández confessed to killing a cow and an ox that belonged to others. He was ordered to pay restitution and sentenced to one month labor; he helped build a new powder magazine and spent nights in jail. Later in February, Amador and the other ayuntamiento members attempted to manage the issue with which Governor Manuel Muñoz had charged them—increasing the cattle herds. Amador wrote a letter to the governor and requested that soldiers from La Bahía and Béxar patrol the area so that Bexareños could travel outside of the town and work their ranchos and protect cattle from Indians. Despite their ideas, Amador and the other officials did not solve this difficult problem.   

Early in his office tenure, Amador went missing, as members of the ayuntamiento wrote letters stating his disappearance in the midst of important cases he was overseeing. In one instance, the alcalde de segundo voto Don Salvador Rodriguez and regidor de cano Don Ignacio de la Peña received permission from the governor to issue a public edict calling for Amador to present himself to the governor or the ayuntamiento within three days. The men were granted permission to search for Amador at his home, but Amador was not found, and his family members reported to not know his whereabouts. An issue that arose due to the absence of alcalde Amador was that he had ordered the arrest and jailing of Tomás Travieso for drunkenness and resisting arrest. Travieso filed a complaint alleging that the alcalde did not issue any charges against him, and he was jailed and suffering in the meantime. Governor Manuel Muñoz removed Amador as alcalde but soon reinstated him per the order of the commandant general. 

After serving as alcalde for the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, Amador served as an alcalde at the Pueblo de Valero, as residents and officials called Mission Valero after secularization in 1793. As the Valero alcalde, Amador oversaw the distribution of some Valero lands to private citizens. Amador himself received a large land grant there in 1793. Later, in 1797 and 1817, respectively, his sons José Refugio and José Amador received Valero land grants as well.  During his tenure as alcalde of Valero, Amador faced a petition signed by Adaeseños, former residents of Los Adaes who relocated unwillingly to San Antonio when the Spanish closed the presidio of Los Adaes and ordered the residents to leave. The petitioners requested that Amador be removed as alcalde for his many unfair practices that included issuing expensive fines against poor people for offenses. The petition specifically mentioned complaints by citizens in 1792 and referred to Amador’s tyranny. In the end, Amador remained in the position, and the petitioners agreed to follow his orders. 

Amador died in June 1820. His burial record, entered in the San Fernando burial registry, indicated that he had married Josefa de la Garza sometime after the death of his first wife. He was most likely buried in Campo Santo, the Catholic cemetery in San Antonio. While embroiled in controversies throughout his life, Vicente Amador left his mark as a local leader and managed to amass significant land holdings. A historical marker, erected in 1971, for the Norton-Polk-Mathis-House in the King William Historic District of San Antonio explains that this historic site was once part of Amador’s lands.