Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, December 22, 1999

Woolly times in South Texas

Think of sheep and you probably think of Australia, England or Spain; you don't think of South Texas. But this was once Sheep Country and Corpus Christi was one of the largest wool markets in the world.
   Maj. William Chapman may not have been the first, but he was among the first, to see the possibilities of sheep-raising here. Chapman was the quartermaster at Fort Brown in the late 1840s before he was transferred to Corpus Christi in 1850. Chapman had his fingers in everything. He had a livestock operation on Santa Gertrudis Creek, he was the dealer in South Texas for Colt's Six-Shooters, and he brought in Spanish merino bucks from Pennsylvania to breed with Mexican ewes.
   Chapman saw this as great sheep country. There was plenty of pasturage in those unfenced days; South Texas was a vast prairie, without trees or brush, except for clumps of timber called "motts'' and mesquite thickets known as "la seja.'' There were many thousands of acres of free-range grasslands near available water.
   The drawback was that pure merinos were not hardy enough to survive the climate. While Mexican sheep were, they produced a wiry, coarse wool. Merinos cross-bred with Mexican sheep, however, produced a hardy breed with a superior wool. The merino cross-breeds became the basis for much of South Texas' early wealth.
   In 1854, the year after Richard King started his ranch, he bought 42 Mexican ewes and 10 merino bucks from James H. Durst, the founder of what would become the Armstrong Ranch. In 20 years, by the mid-1870s, King had 40,000 sheep. F. W. Shaeffer, Joseph Almond, Robert Adams all had huge flocks of sheep. Nueces County before it was cut up had 1.25 million sheep. After the Civil War, San Diego was a major shipping point for wool. Sheep Country stretched south and west. The 1878 assessment rolls for Webb County, around Laredo, listed 8,000 cattle and 239,000 sheep.
   One shepherd handled from 500 to 1,000 sheep. He was paid $10 a month and provided three pounds of sugar, three pounds of coffee, 30 pounds of flour, and half a goat twice a week. His shelter was pile of brush or makeshift jacal just big enough to sleep in.
   This was a colorful era. Shearers from Mexico came twice a year. The wool was packed in 3-by-5 bags made of heavy sacking. To make a wool press, the bags were hung on an iron rim and men would stomp down the fleece. When full, the bags would weigh up to 500 pounds each. The bags of wool were loaded on two-wheeled carts pulled by oxen. The carts, piled high with wool, rumbled along the roads to Corpus Christi. Some of the ox-cart trains came from as far south as Saltillo. Drivers cursed in Spanish and cracked rawhide whips over the plodding oxen.
   When they reached Corpus Christi, the ox-cart drivers would look for the right sign. Because many couldn't read, the wool dealers relied on symbols. Perry Doddridge's store had a ram - "la tienda del borrego'' (the store of the ram). David Hirsch had a star of David, John Woessner a black horse, and Norwick Gussett a rooster.
   The scene in town was described by a new arrival in 1876. "Walking up Chaparral Street," Mary Sutherland wrote, "I saw that thorough-fare filled with ox carts and wagons. Some of the vehicles had as many as six yokes of oxen and the patient animals were lying down in a seeming tangle, reaching from curb to curb . . . It seemed to me that everybody spoke Spanish.''
   The harbor then was crowded with ships. Cargoes of wool were loaded at the Central Wharf and other private wharves. The wool was shipped to feed New England mills and to overseas markets. Wool shipped out of Corpus Christi by 1880 amounted to 12 million pounds a year; and it was increasing by 25 percent annually. Much of the wealth that built this city came from the woollies.
   One year, when wool sold for 30 cents a pound, Joseph Almond made $11,000 on one spring clip. But the era of fat lambs and plump profits came to a close. An epidemic killed nine sheep out of 10. The sheep ranchers had not recovered when Grover Cleveland was elected president in 1884. He vowed to lower the wool tariff, which would allow the importation of cheaper Australian wool.
   The day before the election, wool sold for 26 cents a pound; the day after Cleveland was elected, it brought seven cents. This overnight drop broke many of the wealthiest men in South Texas. This was no longer Sheep Country and Corpus Christi was no longer the wool capital of the country. By 1896, the Caller still followed the market, reporting: "Wool lower; no demand.''
   (Sources: "Forgotten Legions: Sheep in the Rio Grande Plains of Texas'' by V.W. Lehmann; "The Era of Wool and Sheep in the Nueces Valley'' by Coleman McCampbell, in Frontier Times; "The Story of Corpus Christi'' by Mary Sutherland; and various Caller-Times archive articles.)
   (Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com. Previous columns can be found on-line at caller.com/mgivens.)
  

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