Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

The Nolans arrive in Corpus Christi

This happened a long time ago. A family of immigrants was hit with a tragedy when both parents died, leaving a teen-age girl and her two younger brothers to make their way alone. Mary, Matthew and Thomas Nolan would become central figures in Corpus Christi's early history, stretching from the Mexican War to the end of the Civil War.
   Mary Nolan was born in 1828, in Athlone, Ireland. The boys were born after the family emigrated; Matthew was born in 1834, and Tom in 1836, both in Providence, R.I.
   After their parents died (possibly in Providence, but we're not sure) Mary, 17, married a soldier by the name of Higgins. She signed up as an army laundress and signed her brothers up as buglers in the 2nd Dragoons in Zachary Taylor's army. Tom was nine and Mat was 11. These kids had true grit.
   Mary's husband died after the army landed on St. Joseph's Island. She and her brothers were in Corpus Christi in 1845. When Taylor's army moved to the Rio Grande, setting off the war with Mexico, the Nolans were there. Mary had become a hospital matron, instead of a laundress. Her brothers were at the first battles of the war, at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma, and were still with the army when the war ended in 1848.
   Mustered out at war's end, the Nolans returned to Corpus Christi in 1849. Mat, a 16-year-old veteran, signed up as a bugler with "Rip" Ford's rangers in 1850. Tom signed up as a bugler with John Grumbles' ranger unit. Mary moved to Galveston, where she married Charles Hutchison of Seguin.
   Ford in his memoirs cited Mat in one fight between Rangers and Comanches near Fort Merrill, 50 miles from Corpus Christi, on May 26, 1850. The rangers were sleeping when Comanches tried to steal their horses. The rangers took after the Indians and Nolan, Ford wrote, "rushed barefooted through prickly pear to get a shot at the retreating foe."
   After the ranger units were disbanded, Mat and Tom returned to Corpus Christi. In 1854, a yellow fever epidemic hit and Mary (Nolan) Hutchison, mother of two, nursed the sick. Her husband Charles got the fever and died.
   In 1858, the 24-year-old Mat was elected sheriff of Nueces County. He hired his brother as one of his deputies. But the Nolans were always ready to ride away to far-off places. They didn't stay put for long. Sheriff Nolan and his brother rode with Ford in a campaign against Chief Iron Jacket's Comanches in the Panhandle. Later, they joined Ford on the Rio Grande in putting down "Cortina's war.''
   But life was just as uncertain on city streets as it was tracking bandits and Comanches. Mat and Tom were in Corpus Christi on Aug. 4, 1860, when John Warren, a storekeeper, got drunk and threatened to kill two men for wrongs real or imagined; James Barnard, co-owner of the new La Retama Saloon, was one of them. Warren had been in Corpus Christi since April, running a variety store on Chaparral. Mat Nolan took the drunk and belligerent Warren home and put him in bed. There was no jail in the town then.
   Later that day, Warren returned to the La Retama and tried to enter the saloon. Barnard told him to get out. Warren persisted and was ejected by Barnard. Warren pulled a Bowie knife and stabbed Barnard several times, leaving him near death. Warren went to Zeigler's Hall where he kept a pistol.
   The news spread and the Nolans went after Warren. They found him in Richardson's store, next to Ziegler's. Warren pointed his gun and shouted, "Stand back or I'll shoot you!" Tom grabbed him and tried to take the pistol from him. During the scuffle, they reached the street and Tom was shot in the forehead at pointblank range; Mat winged Warren as he ran away. Other men, hearing the shots, helped Nolan chase Warren into Zeigler's Hall, where he was shot to death, his body riddled with bullets.
   Tom died 11 days later, on Aug. 15. He was 24. The obituary in the Ranchero said, "Reared in arms, educated on battlefields, the thunder of cannon and the whizzing of shells, shot or bullets was familiar music to Thomas Nolan."
   With Mat, Mary and most of the town there, Tom Nolan - bugler boy at age 9, Mexican War veteran, former Texas Ranger, Nueces County deputy sheriff - was buried on a hot August day, a Thursday, in Bayview Cemetery. Four years later, his brother would be buried beside him.
   (This is the first of three columns. Part two will appear next Wednesday.)
  

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