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Brief History of José Tomas Canales
CANALES, JOSÉ TOMÁS (1877-1976). José Tomás (J. T.) Canales, lawyer, legislator, landowner, and a founder of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the son of Andreas and Tomasa (Cavazos) Canales, was born on a ranch in Nueces County, Texas, on March 7, 1877. His mother was a descendant of José Salvador de la Garza, the recipient of the Espíritu Santo grant, an enormous Spanish land grant that occupied most of what is now Cameron County. His mother's family still retained extensive holdings of ranchland in Nueces County at the time of Canales's birth. As a child, Canales lived with his parents and with several relatives and attended a variety of schools in Nueces County and at Tampico, Matamoros, and Mier, Tamaulipas. From 1890 to 1892 he attended a secondary school at Austin called Texas Business College. After delivering a shipment of cattle to Oklahoma he befriended a cattle dealer and moved to Kansas City, Kansas, to live with the man's family and complete high school. There Canales left the Catholic Church and became a Presbyterian. In fall 1896 he attended the University of Michigan, where he received a law degree three years later. After practicing law in Corpus Christi and Laredo from 1900 to 1903 he settled in Brownsville, where he worked in the county assessor's office. (source -TSHA Online.org)

School History
In January of 1949, plans for a new school building for Victoria Gardens received approval from the Board of Trustees. Classes were held at the new Canales school in the Fall of 1949. In January of 1950, a bond issue was passed providing funding to build a two-winged addition to the existing structure. The school was named after J.T. Canales, a lawyer from Corpus Christi who moved to Brownsville in 1904. In 1905, he was elected to the Texas State Legislature and served several terms. Lucinda B. Schiwetz served as the principal of Canales from 1949-1963. (source - bisd.us)

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