José María Jesús Carbajal (1809–1874) (also spelled Carvajal, Caravajal, Carabajal, and Carbahal) was a Mexican Tejano who opposed the Centralist government installed by Antonio López de Santa Anna, but was a conscientious objector who refused to take up arms against his own people. Mexican conscientious objectors paid a price for their refusals, in that Texan Brigadier General Thomas Jefferson Rusk confiscated the homes of those who wished to remain neutral in the war. In July 1836, Rusk ordered the Carbajal and other Tejano families of Victoria escorted off their own land. They took refuge in New Orleans. Carbajal was a direct descendant of Andres Hernandez and Juana de Hoyos (1709-?) (m.1729) of the settling Spanish soldier's founders of Villa de Bejar in 1718 and Canary Islands settlers who immigrated to San Antonio, Texas in the 18th century. As a teenager in San Antonio, he was mentored by Stephen F. Austin and came under the spiritual guidance of Alexander Campbell while attending school in Virginia. He was a surveyor by trade and a politician as a result of historical events. Carbajal married into the influential De Leon family of Victoria, Texas. He called himself "a true Mexican" whose allegiance lay with the people of Mexico. He turned his back on the Republic of Texas after his land and that of many other Tejanos were confiscated by the liberal Rebels. He moved to Mexico, where he conducted guerrilla warfare against Mexican military forces. Carbajal was active in the establishment of the Republic of the Rio Grande and made an unsuccessful attempt at establishing the break-away Republic of Sierra Madre. Indicted twice in the United States for his activities, Carbajal was never convicted in a court of law. He was an early supporter of Benito Juárez and was appointed the military governor of Tamaulipas. Early life Birth and background, Stephen F. Austin José María Jesús Carbajal was born one of eleven children in 1809 in the villa of San Fernando de Béxar, which would later become the American city of San Antonio, Texas, to soldier José Antonio Carbajal Peña and his wife María Gertrudis Sánchez Soto. The family was directly descended from Jeronimo Carbajal, who came to San Antonio with other Canary Islands settlers in the 18th century. José Antonio died while José María was a young child, leaving his widow and eleven children to survive in a community that was beginning to