Travelers who rode south past Isleta along the eastern bank of the river in the early eighteenth century would have encountered huge stands of cottonwood trees interspersed with open fields of native gramma grass.
In 1718 Diego de Padilla, prostate a resident of Albuquerque, hospital petitioned Governor Antonio Valverde y Cosio for a grant to this land that he claimed his ancestor, Cristobal Tafoya, had owned prior to the Pueblo Revolt. On May 14, 1718, the Governor directed Captain Alonso Garcia, alcalde of Isleta, to place Padilla in “royal possession” of approximately 52,000 acres of this land bounded on the north, by the bluff of the sand hills of Isleta; on the east, by the Sandia Mountains; on the south, by the lands and houses that my grandfather, Balencia, formerly owned; and on the west, by the Río Grande.
Church of Peralta
In August of 1854, the Albuquerque Baptists acquired land just south of the Catholic Church and between 1855 and 1861 built a large flat-roofed structure, using existing adobe walls where possible. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the congregation numbered about one hundred. A report in 1884 suggests that the facility also included a school with “thirty scholars and taught by Rev. N. W. Chase.”
Padilla grazed sheep on the land and apparently sold a few small parcels to other individuals before his death in 1736. His seven children sold the land to the Pueblo of Isleta on August 22, 1751, for “1,300 reales.” The description filed with the original grant papers led to some legal wrangling in 1884, when Franz and Charles Huning of Albuquerque tried to prove that the grant was actually located north of Isleta. However, the Court of Private Land Claims eventually rejected the Huning claim and confirmed the grant south of Isleta in its present location.
A few miles south of the Isleta escarpment nineteenth-century travelers would have arrived at the large hacienda called Los Pinos owned by the Chaves family. About a mile further south, near the site of the present-day Catholic Church, one came upon the hacienda of Juan Antonio Otero, described by a European visitor in 1847 as “… another of the rich nobility of New Mexico. His land is also very extensive, well-cultivated and fenced in with adobes.”
In 1837 Juan Antonio, the second son of Vicente Otero and Gertrudis Chaves y Aragón, married Mercedes Chaves, the eighth child (and fifth daughter) of Francisco Xavier Chaves, the owner of Los Pinos. Juan and Mercedes moved to the area and built a large hacienda on a parcel of land that probably belonged to his father. This hacienda was the beginning of what we now know as “downtown” Peralta.
Church of Peralta
In August of 1854, the Albuquerque Baptists acquired land just south of the Catholic Church and between 1855 and 1861 built a large flat-roofed structure, using existing adobe walls where possible. By the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861, the congregation numbered about one hundred. A report in 1884 suggests that the facility also included a school with “thirty scholars and taught by Rev. N. W. Chase.
Padilla grazed sheep on the land and apparently sold a few small parcels to other individuals before his death in 1736. His seven children sold the land to the Pueblo of Isleta on August 22, 1751, for “1,300 reales.” The description filed with the original grant papers led to some legal wrangling in 1884, when Franz and Charles Huning of Albuquerque tried to prove that the grant was actually located north of Isleta. However, the Court of Private Land Claims eventually rejected the Huning claim and confirmed the grant south of Isleta in its present location.
A few miles south of the Isleta escarpment nineteenth-century travelers would have arrived at the large hacienda called Los Pinos owned by the Chaves family. About a mile further south, near the site of the present-day Catholic Church, one came upon the hacienda of Juan Antonio Otero, described by a European visitor in 1847 as “… another of the rich nobility of New Mexico. His land is also very extensive, well-cultivated and fenced in with adobes.” In 1837 Juan Antonio, the second son of Vicente Otero and Gertrudis Chaves y Aragón, married Mercedes Chaves, the eighth child (and fifth daughter) of Francisco Xavier Chaves, the owner of Los Pinos. Juan and Mercedes moved to the area and built a large hacienda on a parcel of land that probably belonged to his father. This hacienda was the beginning of what we now know as “downtown” Peralta.