Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Wednesday, January 26, 2000

The names have changed in S. Texas

The map of South Texas would look a lot different today if some of the earlier names of area towns had survived. For example:
   Tilden, county seat of McMullen, was called Dogtown in the 1860s and '70s. One explanation was that ranchers used dogs to herd cattle and sheep and another was that drunken cowboys once shot up the town, leaving an assortment of dead dogs behind.
   The original settlement was called Rio Frio. The name was changed to Colfax, I read somewhere, and then became Tilden in 1877. The name came from Democratic presidential candidate Samuel J. Tilden of New York, who lost to Rutherford B. Hayes in a stolen election during Reconstruction. Far as anyone knows, there was no direct link between Tilden and the town named after him.
   There's a funny story about Dogtown in J. Frank Dobie's "A Vaquero of the Brush Country'' in which a cowboy is unceremoniously chased out of town by a pack of barking dogs snapping at the horse's hooves and the rider's toes. And somewhere near Tilden is where Dan Dunham's gang, under attack by Indians, were supposed to have buried 31 mule-loads of silver bullion in a place called "the rock pens.'' The treasure has long been looked for and never found.
   The Freer area in Duval County was known as Las Hermanitas ("the sisters'' for twin hills south of the present townsite). It was called Government Wells after U.S. Cavalry troops dug a water well on a ranch north of Freer. The army maintained a small post to provide fresh mounts and a resting spot for troops in the South Texas brush country. You can still find the old name in Freer; there's the Government Wells Library and the Government Wells Masonic Lodge.
   An early land agent in Freer reportedly hung apples on mesquite trees to fool prospective buyers. Somewhere around there, prospective land-buyers from Missouri were being shown the sights (and sites), when one of them saw a roadrunner (paisano, chaparral cock) and asked what kind of bird it was.
   The land agent said, "Why, that's a bird of paradise.''
   "Well,'' said one of the Missourians, "he's a long damn way from home.''
   Three Rivers was called Hamiltonberg in 1913 after Annie Hamilton paid the San Antonio, Uvalde and Gulf Railroad to build a depot on her land. After the town's mail kept being sent to Hamilton, Texas, the name was changed to Three Rivers to mark the confluence of the Nueces, the Frio and the Atascosa rivers.
   Beeville's first location was on Medio Creek and Maryville was on nearby Poesta Creek. Maryville was named in honor of Mary Hefferman, the lone survivor of an Indian massacre on the site in 1835. The original site of Beeville was moved from the Medio Creek to Poesta, but the Maryville name was cancelled in 1860 in favor of Beeville, named after the founder of the Texas army during the Republic, Gen. Barnard E. Bee.
   Mary Hefferman, by the way, married Hiram Riggs and moved to Corpus Christi in 1844. Old maps of the city show the Riggs' place south of town.
   The Pettus community near Beeville was called Dry Medio in the 1850s. The name was changed to Pettus, after early settler John Freeman Pettus.
   Pettus became a major cattle shipping point after the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad reached it in 1886. With stockyards and a depot, it was a bustling place with freight trains loading cattle and old wood-burning engines taking on water. It was said that the hillsides around Pettus at night would be dotted with campfires where herds were being held for shipment.
   Blanconia, southeast of Beeville, was originally named Kymo, but was widely known as Pull Tight. I don't have a clue about where the name Pull Tight comes from unless, perhaps, it had something to do with pulling freight. Blanconia comes from Blanco Creek.
   Normanna, also near Beeville, was first called San Domingo after a nearby creek. Normanna was called Walton Station for a time. It was settled by two men who would become prominent in Corpus Christi's history. There was Mat Nolan, who would become sheriff of Nueces County and served with Rip Ford in the Cavalry of the West during the Civil War. And there was Reuben Holbien, who would become Nueces County clerk and would later serve as Richard King's accountant and private secretary. Holbien's daughters, 12 and 13, were drowned in 1874 while wading in Aransas Bay off St. Joseph's Island.
   Alice, the county seat of Jim Wells County, was originally called Bandana, after the depot there that was established in 1883. The name was changed briefly to Kleberg, then finally residents settled on the name of Alice, after Robert J. Kleberg's wife, Alice (King) Kleberg. The town of Alice became one of the great cattle-shipping points between 1890 and 1895. It was a wild cowtown then, with numerous saloons that were well-attended. A fire in 1909 wiped out much of the historic old business district.
   San Diego, the county seat of Duval County, was for a time called Perezville after early settler Pablo Perez. The name was changed to San Diego when the town's first post office was established in 1852. The town goes back to 1845. It was the thriving center of the sheep country in the 19th century.
   San Diego was the site of an interesting rain-making experiment in 1891. U.S. Department of Agriculture agents set off 17 gas-filled balloons and then shot off howitzers on the ground. They expected to make rain by synchronizing air and ground explosions. The first bombardment on Oct. 16 brought no results. The second one the next day brought torrents of rain. But the government abandoned the experiment in 1892.
   Refugio was renamed Wexford in 1836 after Wexford County, Ireland, where many of the Irish immigrants came from. But the name never stuck and it reverted back to the name for Our Lady of Refuge Mission, which was built by the Spanish in 1793.
   Goliad, the oldest Spanish municipality in Texas, goes back to 1749. It was originally called Santa Dorotea before it took the name of the mission La Bahia del Espiritu Santo (even though it was quite a distance from the Gulf). In 1829, the name was changed to Goliad, an anagram (with a silent H) of Father Hidalgo, the priest who led the Mexican independence movement. Anglo settlers called the place La Bahia, but with their willful mispronunciation of Spanish words it became "Old Labardee.''
   Rockport was first called Rockport, after its famous rocky ledge, then in the 1880s the name was changed to Aransas Pass. A few years later, the name was changed back to Rockport. Meantime, Aransas Harbor coveted the name of Aransas Pass and appropriated it. You could say that we've gotten our money's worth out of the name Aransas.
   Ingleside was Palomas (doves) before the name was changed to Ingleside, which comes from a poem by Robert Burns, "The Cotter's Saturday Night.'' Naval Station Palomas has a nice sound to it.
   Taft was called Mesquital for a grove of mesquite trees. Mesquital was the name used for a railroad siding in the middle of Coleman-Fulton Pasture Co. land. In 1909, after a post office and store were built, the name was changed to Taft after the chief executive of the ranch, Charles P. Taft, brother of President William Howard Taft.
   Port Aransas was listed as Mustang Island after the Mercers built a store and it got a post office in 1880. It was called Star, then Ropesville after promoter Elihu Ropes, then Tarpon for most of two decades, and finally Port Aransas was chosen when the city was incorporated in 1911. Port Aransas might have become the major city of the Coastal Bend if Congress had followed through with plans, which date back to 1853, to make it the site of a deepwater port.
   Corpus Christi from its founding in 1839 was called "Kinney's Ranch'' or "Kinney's Rancho,'' after founder H.L. Kinney. Within three years, Kinney in letters was calling the place Corpus Christi, after the bay. But years before, in 1836, Peter Grayson laid out a city called Grayson on the present site of Corpus Christi. Grayson, the attorney general of the Republic of Texas in 1837, had the place surveyed for a townsite in 1838, just before he killed himself during a painful illness. Grayson was a town on paper only.
   The oldest names in South Texas came long before there were any settlements or towns. They were the names for huge blocks of land, the early Spanish land grants. They were called the Rincon del Oso, Rincon de Corpus Christi, the Santa Gertrudis and De la Garza grants, the Casa Blanca and Agua Dulce grants, the La Parra, La Barreta, El Penascal, El Chiltipin, Palo Alto, Santa Petronila, San Diego de Abajo and San Diego de Arriba grants. The old Spanish names were here for 100 years or so before the people came who couldn't pronounce them.
   (Sources: Caller-Times archives; the Handbook of Texas; "King Ranch'' by Tom Lea; "A Vaquero of the Brush Country'' and "Coronado's Children'' by J. Frank Dobie; "Texas Coastal Bend'' by Alpha Wood.)
  

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