You can find an interesting article about a current effort to preserve some interesting records from Bexar County (Texas) at https://bit.ly/37JXyqG.
The article by Brian Kirkpatrick and originally published by Texas Public Radio:
“An $18 million project on Bexar County’s historical archives is underway and should be completed in two years. The project backed by County Commissioners includes the preservation, protection and online digitization of county records that date back to the Spanish Colonial era.
“The oldest local document is a Spanish land grant that dates back to 1736. The royal seal of Spain’s King Ferdinand VII, who ruled in the early 1800s, can also be seen in the Spanish archives. County Clerk Lucy Adame-Clark led the project to preserve and protect the records and make them available online.
“So why would researchers beyond Bexar County be so interested in the old archives found here?
“Adame-Clark said after Spanish and Mexican rule over Texas ended in 1836, the newly created Bexar County of the Republic of Texas was huge.
“People don’t understand that the records in Bexar County used to include also five different states, you know. We have Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado and a little north of Wyoming. And we gave birth to 128 counties,” she said.
Included among the papers is Jim Bowie’s wedding contract to Ursula Veramendi from 1831.”
Again, you can find the article at: https://bit.ly/37JXyqG.