ELGUÉZABAL, JUAN JOSÉ (1781–1840). Juan José Elguézabal, the son of Juan Bautista Elguézabal and Maria Gertrudis Ximenes, was born in San Antonio de Béxar, Texas, in 1781. He spent most of his public career in Coahuila, where he was an army captain and commandant of the Presidio del Río Grande and, like his father, adjutant inspector of presidios of Coahuila and Texas. On August 30, 1834, during the controversy between the rival governments at Saltillo and Monclova, the ayuntamiento of Monclova appointed him governor ad interim of Texas. When the dispute was submitted to Antonio López de Santa Anna for solution, Elguézabal was kept in office until a new election could be called. He resigned on March 12, 1835, upon the election of Agustín Viesca. Elguézabal commanded the First Company of Tamaulipas, which reinforced Martin Perfecto de Cos during the siege of Bexar, was captured with Cos on December 10, 1835, and was sent back to Matamoros, where he died in 1840.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of the North Mexican States and Texas (2 vols., San Francisco: History Company, 1886, 1889). Henderson K. Yoakum, History of Texas from Its First Settlement in 1685 to Its Annexation to the United States in 1846 (2 vols., New York: Redfield, 1855).

Robert Bruce Blake