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Falfurrias Name
One tradition suggests the name of this city stems from the Lipan Indian language and means "land of the heart's delight." Another states that Falfurrias was named using the Spanish name for an area wildflower. Still another theorizes that the name refers to a slovenly local shepherd named Don Filfarrias. The term filfarrias is Mexican slang for a "dirty and unsavory wretch."
Prominent People in Falfurrias
Don Pedrito Jaramillo, aka the "Saint of Falfurrias," ranks as one the most illustrious curanderos, or mystic healers, in the history of Texas. Not an official Catholic saint, Don Pedrito picked up his therapeutic skills after falling off a horse. Experiencing hideous pain from a crushed nose, he slopped mud from a nearby cattle wallow on his injury and mysteriously healed himself.
Following the advice of God given in a dream, Don Pedrito began curing his neighbors using unconventional methods. When a woman afflicted with migraine headaches sent someone else to pick up a remedy, the healer, realizing the ruse, recommended that the woman cut off her own head and feed it to a drove of pigs. On hearing about her drastic cure, the woman went blue with anger—and never experienced another headache in her lifetime.
Falfurrias features a shrine to Don Pedrito that praises him as "The Benefactor of Humanity." Many people continue to claim cures administered by the spirit of the eccentric physician.
Industry in Falfurrias
Celebrated for an exceptionally fine fresh creamery butter, Falfurrias thrived temporarily as a household name during the early 1920s.
General Falfurrias Trivia
Just north of Falfurrias on U.S. Hwy. 281, the Lady in Black, a miserable ghost from the 1700s, supposedly roams the landscape, spooking passersby with the words: "I will never let you forget." Once the wife of a rich and handsome cattleman called Don Ramos, the woman, known to all as Leonora, turned up pregnant while her husband was away on business. Another woman, one overlooked by Don Ramos, began circulating rumors that Leonora had been unfaithful. Don Ramos believed the false stories and ordered his vaqueros to dress his wife in black and lynch her from a tree on his ranch.
Leonora died insisting on her innocence. Local denizens report that she routinely appears out of nowhere and forcefully repeats her grisly reminder. Before taking any questions, she quickly vanishes again into the Texas afterworld.
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