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, November 3, 1999
Kinney's immigrants left their mark
Henry L. Kinney returned from the Mexican War in 1848 to find that Corpus Christi had dwindled to a mud hamlet of 300 souls. The town he founded had been a thriving and prosperous place, with a population of 5,000 or more, before Zachary Taylor's army marched south in the spring of 1846.
Kinney decided to take steps to improve the town's fortunes, and of course his own at the same time. He ran ads in Eastern papers asserting that Corpus Christi was the best "jumping-off place'' for the California gold fields. The town soon saw a steady stream of '49'ers passing through. New businesses sprang up, like J.A.F. Gravis' California House on Chaparral, where you could get a room and board for $20 a month.
But the gold rush brought transients and Kinney needed settlers who would buy his land. He began to advertise Corpus Christi as "The Naples of the Gulf'' in England, Ireland and Germany. His circulars told of a beautiful horseshoe-shaped bay, like that of Naples, behind which was the richest soil in the world. And the land was cheap. Kinney had bought 10 leagues of land (a league is 4,439 acres) in 1842 for 16 cents an acre, so he had plenty to sell.
Kinney sent Reuben Holbein as his agent to Europe to promote Corpus Christi to potential settlers. Holbein went to Ireland, which was in the throes of the potato famine of 1849. The Cahills and O'Dochartys and Ranahans and Fitzsimmons soon emigrated to South Texas. Thomas Dunn and wife arrived in 1849; he bought 100 acres from Kinney. Master mason James Ranahan came from Belfast in 1849; he bought a lot from Kinney for $150 and set up his brick kilns below the bluff (where the Caller-Times stands today).
These families became the nucleus of Irishtown, which stretched from Peoples Street to today's Heritage Park. Many of the farmers settled around Nuecestown, which was started by Kinney for new settlers. The Vetters and other immigrant families came from Germany, which was in political turmoil at the time. Felix A. von Blucher arrived from Germany in 1849; he became the county's first surveyor.
Kinney's promotional efforts to attract immigrants showed up in the county's first census in 1850. Census-taker A.W. Hicks counted 550 white citizens, one free Negro (as listed at the time), 47 slaves, and 112 soldiers stationed here in an Army unit. Of the population, 51 citizens came from Germany, 32 from Ireland, and half the town's population listed Mexico as place of birth. Many of the rest were from Pennsylvania, New York, and several Deep South states, especially Alabama.
This first census has some curiosities. Hicks couldn't spell Spanish surnames so he wrote down Garcia as "Gorsea,'' Guadalupe as "Warloope,'' and Jesus as "Casous.'' Though they are misspelled, the names are familiar ones: Hernandez, Rodriguez, Garza and Vela. Hicks listed the occupation of every Hispanic on the census as "herdsman.''
There were sizable flocks of sheep in Nueces County at the time (more than 3,500 head), but it's doubtful that the heads of households of half the city's population were employed as sheepherders.
Besides, there's no mention in the census of the prominent Hispanic merchants who were here then, like D.H. de Meza and Enrique de Lanza. There was also Jose de Alba, who had been appointed chief justice when Nueces County was formed in 1847 and had served as editor of the city's first newspaper, the Gazette; he was not a "herdsman.''
Perhaps another early immigrant at the time provides a clue to this mystery. Thomas A. Dwyer came to Nueces County in 1849. He was a barrister in Dublin, then London, but gave up the practice of law to raise horses and mules on the lower Nueces River.
In a pamphlet published in 1872, Dwyer wrote about mustangers. "At that time,'' he wrote, "many Mexicans, whose families resided at Corpus Christi . . . supported themselves by 'running,' that is, catching wild cattle and by mustanging, or hunting wild horses.''
Wild longhorns (cowboys called them brushpoppers) and mustang horses roamed the "hogwallow'' prairies, mesquite flats and cedar brakes of South Texas by the thousands. Travelers in the 1840s described seeing herds of mustangs that stretched to the horizon, as far as the eye could see. They were there for the taking. The hides could be sold for half a dollar apiece and the young cattle and horses could be tamed and sold. They had virtually been hunted out of existence by the 1860s.
Perhaps census-taker Hicks, who had his troubles with Spanish, simply listed all Hispanics as "herdsmen.'' Some probably were, but many of them, I suspect, were "mesteneros.''
The year after the census, in 1851, Kinney was still trying to sell land to immigrants. He conceived of the idea of holding a state fair to attract potential settlers and sent Reuben Holbein back to Europe with 20,000 flyers advertising "The Lone Star Fair'' to be held the first week of May, 1852, in Corpus Christi. He also offered to sell land to immigrants for one-fourth the purchase price, with the balance to be paid in three years.
James and Agnes Rankin read Kinney's ads and came to Corpus Christi from Glasgow in 1852. Other immigrants that year included the Almonds and Brydens. They didn't all come from Europe. Marcus Saures, a carpenter and stonemason, came from Matamoros and bought a lot on Artesian Street from Kinney for $200.
For Kinney's purposes, the Lone Star Fair was a failure. It didn't attract the thousands of visitors he expected and it didn't help him get out of debt. He was sued by Forbes Britton for an overdue loan and Gen. Hugh McLeod foreclosed on his Mustang Island ranch. His beef-packing plant on Water Street was a failure and his debts were mounting.
However, Kinney's efforts to promote Corpus Christi brought a large number of immigrants who would help to build the city he founded. Many of these new immigrants would die in the yellow fever outbreak of 1854, which claimed a fourth of the city's population, but those who survived would help write the history of Corpus Christi and South Texas.
