I Would Rather Sleep in Texas:
A History of the Lower
Rio Grande Valley and the People
of the Santa Anita Land Grant
 by Mary Margaret McAllen Amberson, 
James A. McAllen & Margaret H. McAllen

Lynwood Abram writes for the Houston Chronicle, "This hefty work, the fruit of several lifetimes of firsthand knowledge and research by members of an important family in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, deals with an area that to many Texans is a foreign place.

The border of Texas and Mexico differs profoundly from the rest of the state. Anyone who has lived there knows that its way of life, its atmosphere, its food and the way the people who live there think constitute a world apart.

By telling the story of this area in terms of the families that settled on the Santa Anita Land Grant, the authors have condensed a crowded historical pageant into human terms the general reader can appreciate and enjoy.

A portion of this grant, 50 miles north of the Rio Grande in Hidalgo County, is among the oldest ranches in Texas continuously owned by the same family, the authors say. Beginning in 1790, the ranch "has endured, more or less intact, through eight generations."

The area has seen the clashes of Spanish conquistadors, Confederate, Mexican and Union troops, Texas Rangers, Mexican revolutionaries and adventurers, European investors, and politicians of every stripe on both sides of the border. Here also were such Texas titans as Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy, whose giant ranches loomed to the east of most of the action in the book.

The final battle of the Civil War, a four-hour struggle at Palmito Ranch near Brownsville, was a Confederate victory that came too late: Robert E. Lee had surrendered a month before. This book argues that the Confederates had heard the news but refused to believe it.

For many readers, the role of the region during the Civil War will be of prime interest. With the Union blockade of the ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, Mexico rose to prominence as a source of supplies for the Confederacy and of revenue gained through the sale of cotton.

Of the many characters that move through this story, none is more striking than Maria Salome Balli de la Garza, who inherited much of the grant and married a Scotsman, John Young, who helped her expand the holdings. After Young's death, she married an Irish immigrant, John McAllen, and their descendants have operated the ranch ever since. At one time, they controlled about 160,000 acres.

After her death in 1898, the ranch was divided between her heirs. One reader of this book has compared Salome, in her determination to save her land and her family, to Margaret Mitchell's fictional heroine, Scarlett O'Hara.

The book's unusual title comes from a remark of John McAllen's when he revisited Ireland. Saddened by the poor conditions he found in his native land, McAllen wrote that he "would rather sleep in Texas" and left Ireland for the second and last time."