Murphy Givens Corpus Christi History Caller-Times

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Corpus Christi History is published Wednesdays. Murphy Givens also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at givensm@caller.com

Wednesday, July 21, 1999

Forts and fortified places

   I said in last week's column that we never had any forts like you saw in John Ford's "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon.'' But at least one of the old forts that once existed in this area of South Texas - Fort Merrill - came close to that movie ideal. It was built in 1850 and apparently was a substantial fort for its time.
   Forts like Merrill were built and manned by to guard against Indian "depredations.'' They had very little practical value. Fort Merrill, like many others, was garrisoned by mounted infantry, which usually meant soldiers who had barely learned to sit a horse. These outposts of regular Army soldiers - on a pocket handkerchief of ground in the middle of vast distances - were supposed to stop raids by Comanches, perhaps the best mounted warriors since Genghis Khan's Mongolians? The forts were almost as useless, as a writer of the time put it, as "sawmills in the middle of the ocean.''
   Perhaps the real value in the forts was to help ease settlers' minds. In the long run, it was the settlers and their encroaching farms and ranches - not the soldiers or forts - that spelled the end of the Indian tribes in Texas.
   That's another topic. If you poke around South Texas, you can find the sites where old forts were located, but nothing remains. They have all disappeared, along with the other vanished landmarks of the past. I'm sure I'm leaving some out, but the rest of my list of forts and fortified places includes:
   3 Fort Merrill. It was built on a hill at the point where the road between San Antonio and Corpus Christi crossed the Nueces River. Capt. S. M. Plummer, of the 1st U.S. Infantry stationed at Fort Brown, was in charge of building the fort. It was named in honor of Hamilton W. Merrill, a brevet major killed during the Mexican War. The fort was built on a high hill 300 yards from the river in Live Oak County.
   Pummer's troops cut timber, which was hauled up the hill with mule teams, and some fancy lumber was shipped from New Orleans. The troops, under the guidance of a carpenter and mason, built quarters for the officers and barracks for the enlisted men. They built storerooms, kitchens, a hospital, stable, guardhouse and a sutler's store. Companies H and K of the First United States Infantry were stationed at Merrill. This was mounted infantry sent here to guard against Comanche warriors.
   Fort Merrill was garrisoned intermittently after 1853 and finally shut down in 1855. A cow pasture covers the site now.
   3 Fort Ramirez. This was a fortified ranch house located on the west bank of the Nueces River in southern Live Oak County. It was built by the Ramirez family, who constructed it with sandstone quarried half a mile away, sometime between 1790 and 1802. It was abandoned by the Ramirez family in 1812 because of fierce Indian attacks.
   Fort Ramirez was used again as a fort during the Confederacy to help guard the Confederate supply line called the Cotton Road. Local legends that said the fort was the site of buried treasure led to its eventual destruction. Nothing is left of the quarried walls of Fort Ramirez today.
   3 Fort Esperanza was a Confederate stronghold on Matagorda Island. This was originally Zachary Taylor's old Fort Washington. The Confederates renamed it, I guess, so as not to be reminded of their former national ties. Esperanza means "hope.''
   Fort Esperanza was a powerful earthwork, with walls 12 feet high and 15 feet thick, that commanded Pass Cavallo, the entrance to Matagorda Bay. The Confederates had a strong battery of 24-pounders and one giant 128-pound "Columbiad'' cannon.
   After Union forces under Gen. T.E.G. Ransom reached Fort Esperanza on Nov. 27, 1863, a two-day battle followed and Confederate forces abandoned the fort. Later, after federal forces withdrew, Confederate soldiers reoccupied the fort and held it until the end of the war.
   3 Fort Semmes was another Confederate fort on the eastern end of Mustang Island (where Port Aransas is today) facing the Aransas pass. Benjanin F. Neal, judge and former mayor of Corpus Christi, was in charge of a heavy artillery company (with a battery of three cannon) headquartered at Fort Semmes. After the federals captured the fort, they named it Post Aransas. Federal soldiers raided Corpus Christi and other places along the coast for furniture and lumber for their huts.
   3 Shellbank Fort, on Shell Bank Island, (between Aransas Pass and Rockport) was another Confederate outpost. The Confederates had an artillery detachment stationed there to try to keep Yankee ships out of Corpus Christi Bay.
   (Sources include Caller-Times archives, the Texas Handbook of History, "Aransas'' by Sue Hastings Taylor and William Allen, "Raw Frontier'' by Keith Guthrie, the Mexican War diary of Capt. Jarvis, "Soldiers, Sutlers and Settlers'' by Robert Wooster, and "Refugio'' by Hobart Huson.)