Henry Castro, a Texan pioneer, of Portuguese descent, born in France in 1786, died in Monterey, Mexico, in 1861. He was an officer of the Paris national guard in 1814, and after the overthrow of Napoleon came to the United States, where he was naturalized, and appointed in 1827 Neapolitan consul at Providence, R. I. In 1838 he went to Paris as a partner in the banking house of Laffitte, and in 1842 he became consul general in that city of the republic of Texas. Having received a grant of land on the banks of the Medina river, he began in 1840 to send out emigrants to Galveston; and though the first attempt was unfortunate, he succeeded in 1844 in establishing a settlement on the site of the present town of Castroville; and in the next two years he founded Quihi and Vandenberg. The number of his emigrant vessels amounted in 1846 to 26, which brought over 485 families and 457 single persons, chiefly Alsatians. In 1847 he founded Dhanis. All his settlements subsequently constituted Medina county, with Castroville as the capital.