Every year, the parish priest of Mier would visit each household and conduct a census. After reviewing the town, he rode to each of the ranches in the Mier jurisdiction. The following is a list of the families who resided in Mier and the surrounding area in 1782, the earliest and one of the most complete padrones for that town. The original documents can be found here. Also, a very helpful transcription has been made by dedicated genealogists. This transcription was compared with the original documents in well in compiling the data below.

The 1782 padron was presumably the first conducted in Mier. The census was conducted by Fr. Pedro Maldonado y Zapata. Outside the town, recorded the route he took, including the direction and distance. He also notes the names of the owners of many of the ranches. This, along with the fact that many of the original grantees of the Mier porciones were still alive and some were living on their ranches, helped me to reconstruct the path that he took and the locations of the ranches. Many of these became like small villages that persisted over the years and in some cases (such as Rancho Guardado and Rancho Arcabuz) to the present day. Please note that the location of most of the ranches is conjectural and based on an interpretation of their relative proximity to each other and to geographic features.

By 1782 there were 28 ranches in the vicinity of Mier and over half of the population (56%) of the total population of 842 people lived on the ranches.

According the priest, 77% of the citizens were of Spanish descent (españoles), 18% were of mixed race (casta), and 4% were listed as indios. Mier did not have a mission, and except for one household headed by a man named Jose Cristobal Garza on the ranch called Miguel Perez, most of the indigenous people listed on the census were probably servants living in Spanish homes. It is known, however, that Native people lived independently in proximity to Mier, but these were likely excluded from the census.

Abbreviations for the Status field are as follows: C - casado/a (married); S - soltero/a (single); M - mozo (young man); D - doncella (unmarried girl); N - niño/a (child); P - parvulo/a (young child/infant); V - viudo/a (widow or widower).

Abbreviations for the Race field are as follows: ES - español/a (Spanish/white); CA - casta (mestizo/mixed Spanish-Indian heritage); MU - mulato/a (mixed African/Spanish heritage); IN - indio/a (Indian)