Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Mat Nolan leads Confederate forces

Mat Nolan came to Corpus Christi in 1845 with his brother and sister. The Nolans, Irish orphans, joined Zachary Taylor's army, with Mary as a laundress and Mat and Tom as buglers. After the Mexican War was over, the boys became Texas Rangers.
   Mat was elected sheriff of Nueces County in 1858. Tom, a deputy, was shot to death while trying to arrest a drunk. (See last week's column.)
   When the Civil War broke out, Mat raised a company of volunteers in Corpus Christi and served on the border in the command of "Rip" Ford, his old Ranger captain. In the second year of the war, on May 22, 1862, Mat returned to Corpus Christi to marry Margaret J. McMahon.
   Nolan and his company were sent east to take part in the recapture of Galveston, on Jan. 1, 1863. Three weeks later, Nolan's "horse marines" went aboard a Confederate vessel and helped capture federal gunboat "Morning Light." Nolan was promoted to major and recalled to South Texas.
   Nolan helped to end the forays of Cecilio Balerio, a Nueces County rancher who was a Union supporter. Balerio commanded 120 men in an irregular cavalry outfit that rounded up cattle on King Ranch to feed Union troops in Brownsville and he attacked wagon trains hauling cotton on the Cotton Road.
   Balerio's son, Jose, was captured when he visited his girlfriend in Corpus Christi in early March, 1864. He was tried before a military court and sentenced to be executed as a spy. Nolan told Balerio he would let him go if he told them where his father's camp was located. Balerio at first refused to talk, but he broke down when he was led before a firing squad.
   His father's outfit was camped in the brush near the present town of Falfurrias. Nolan's forces surrounded the camp at night. At the last minute, Jose yelled, "Cuidado!"(Look out!) The fight left five of Balerio's men dead, but father and son escaped during the melee and stayed in Mexico for the rest of the war. (In 1870, Reconstruction Governor Edmund J. Davis awarded the Balerio's heirs a quarter-section of land for his services rendered to the United States.)
   The last full year of the war was a terrible time for Corpus Christi. What little population remained was on the verge of starvation. The town was divided between Confederate and Union supporters. Many of the town's prominent citizens were veterans of the U.S. Army who came here with Zachary Taylor. Some of them had come from the north. Early in the war, Union backers laid low. But they began to show their colors after the 20th Iowa captured Confederate Fort Semmes on Mustang Island.
   Maj. William C. Thompson, commander of the 20th Iowa, led a patrol into Corpus Christi on Christmas Day, 1863. He wrote his wife that, "There are many good Union men in the place (Corpus Christi) and they send me much valuable information, every word of which would hang them if Rebel leaders knew it."
   Neither the 20th Iowa on Mustang Island or Mat Nolan's company at Banquete tried to hold the town. But they made periodic forays. Union troops searched homes looking for Confederate leaders and Confederates would look for Union sympathizers. There were skirmishes in the town between the two forces.
   Nolan was angered by the fact that Thompson's men searched his home and took away two American flags and a sword he had taken as souvenirs of war in the capture of the union gunboat "Morning Light."
   This cat-and-mouse game ended when Gen. U.S. Grant ordered federal forces to evacuate Mustang Island. This left the Union sympathizers without protection.
   Two Confederate deserters who had gone over to the other side were captured, tried by a military court, and hanged from a tree on the north end of Mesquite Street. Capt. John Ireland, who would later become governor of Texas, was in charge of the execution.
   In August of 1864, Mat Nolan was re-elected sheriff of Nueces County. He assumed the office with the approval of his commanding officer, "Rip" Ford. Nolan was ordered by Ford to arrest Union sympathizers. At the top of the list was the name of H. W. Berry, a respected citizen, former mayor of Corpus Christi, former postmaster, the first sheriff of Nueces County. He was a native of Ohio who came to Corpus Christi with Zachary Taylor's army. Like Nolan, he was a Mexican War veteran and an ex-Ranger. He was also a co-owner of the La Retama Saloon, where the fight started that claimed the life of Mat's younger brother Tom.
   The order to arrest and try Berry and other Union supporters, which certainly could have led to their executions, may have been the action that led to Mat Nolan's killing.
   (This is the second of three columns. Part three will appear next Wednesday.)
  

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