When doing my research into South Texas Land Grants and Land titles the terms “leguas” and “varas” would show up very often in most documents. Since till this day the Porciones are still mentioned on land titles as they have been mentioned in such documents since they were granted by the king of Spain. In a nut shell I found the following chart on wikipidia.com that will help us bring into context all those Spanish Measurement terms. I noted the Castillian system since it is the most important one.
|
Castilian system of units |
||||
|
Spanish |
English |
Length in pie |
Length in SI Units |
U.S. Units |
|
punto |
1⁄1728
|
0.1613 mm |
0.00635 in |
|
|
línea |
1⁄144
|
1.935 mm |
.0762 in |
|
|
pulgada |
“inch” |
1⁄12
|
23.22 mm |
.9142 in |
|
pie |
1 |
27.86 cm |
10.969 in |
|
|
vara |
“yard” |
3 |
0.8359 m |
32.909 in |
|
paso |
5 |
1.3932 m |
54.850 in |
|
|
legua |
15,000 |
4.1795 km |
2.597 mi
|
|
Vara Measurements differ by locality:
1 Vara (Texas-Spanish) = 33 1/3 inches (as decided by the first Texas Land Commissioner)
1 Vara (Southern Colorado) 32.993 inches
1 Vara (Florida) 33.372 inches
I put an emphasis on “varas” because they are the type of measurement that is widely used in these documents as you all will see once I start transcribing some of them.
Sources:
