Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Eli Merriman was a legendary newsman

Corpus Christi has known some first-class promoters in its history. Henry L. Kinney and Roy Miller are usually put at the top of the list. But next to their names should be that of Eli T. Merriman, who was surely the city's greatest newsman.
   The life of Eli Merriman spanned almost a century. He was born the year the city was born, 1852, and he died the year the Naval Air Station opened, 1941. In between, Merriman witnessed and wrote about a lot of history in the making.
   He was born in Hidalgo, opposite Reynosa, in 1852, the son of Dr. and Mrs. E.T. Merriman. The family moved to Banquete in 1857, where Dr. Merriman bought a ranch and practiced medicine.
   Eli Merriman wrote about growing up in Banquete. The family lived near the notorious horse trader Sally Skull. Eli wrote later that she carried two pistols and "woe to the man" who crossed her for she wouldn't hesitate to use them. Eli watched long trains of wagons filled with bales of cotton pulling through Banquete during the Civil War. This was when Banquete was an important way station on the Cotton Road.
   Toward the end of the war, Eli was sent to Corpus Christi to board at John Riggs' home and to attend the Hidalgo Seminary run by Father Gonnard. His teacher was called "Little Carroll."
   He was at school one day in 1865 when his father arrived with important news. The war was over, Lee had surrendered, and Lincoln had been assassinated.
   Eli went to Dr. Merriman's hospital on the bluff and repeated the news to Confederate soldiers, some of them in the outhouses, so sick they could barely stand. An hour later, Eli and his father rode off to Banquete, where Dr. Merriman had another hospital full of sick soldiers. On the way, they ran into Col. Lovenskiold, a Confederate officer and one of the city's leading citizens. He and two sisters-in-law were surrounded by angry soldiers ready to kill them. Dr. Merriman talked the Confederate soldiers into taking the colonel's money and letting them go.
   The city was still recovering from the war two years later when it was hit by yellow fever, which claimed a fourth or more of the town's population. Dr. Merriman died. (Eli would later marry Ellen Robertson, whose father, Dr. George Robertson, was also a victim of that epidemic.)
   When he was 18, Eli went to work as a printer's devil for the Nueces Valley. He became shop foreman. In 1874, he took a job with the Galveston News, but soon returned to Corpus Christi to work for the Corpus Christi Gazette.
   In 1876, Merriman and William Maltby launched the Corpus Christi Free Press. When Maltby died, Merriman bought his half of the paper and published it for the next three years. He sold the business in 1883 to the Caller, a new paper that had the financial backing of ranchers Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King.
   Merriman became one of three owners of the Caller, with W. P. Caruthers and W. H. Williams. Caruthers liked the name of the San Francisco Call. The Corpus Christi Caller was adapted from that name. Merriman's partners soon left the business and Merriman published the Caller for the next 20 years, before selling his interest in 1911 to Henrietta King, Richard King's widow.
   During his years as publisher, and later as columnist, he never ceased pushing for a deepwater port for Corpus Christi. He never missed a chance to editorialize on it. Anytime there was anything in the paper about the subject, he instructed the newsboys to yell, "All about deep water!" He also was instrumental in making sure the railroads building their lines across South Texas didn't bypass Corpus Christi.
   During the farm era, after the turn of the century, Merriman would tack posters on freight cars full of vegetables as way to advertise Corpus Christi. He once sent a carload of seashells to Fort Worth to erect a shell tower to promote Corpus Christi's beaches. When the city ran out of money to keep street lights going, he visited all the city's businesses and took up collections to keep the lights on. He led the campaign to preserve the old Bayview Cemetery; he encouraged the town's women to band together to build the Ladies Pavilion; and he was a prime mover behind bayfront improvement projects. In his later years, Merriman, with deep blue eyes and snowy hair, became the personification of the Caller.
   We often talk of people being legends, although they rarely live up to the billing. But Eli T. Merriman was truly a legendary figure. He was a one-man force for progress and never ceased to work for the betterment of Corpus Christi. It's too bad there's nothing at the port named for him, nor a street named in his honor in the city he loved.
   (Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.)
  
  

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