Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

Albert, Driscoll swapped names

More notes on town names as we rush toward December, with the old Republic still standing despite a lot of people yelling "Tilt!"
   On the subject of Aberdeen and Alfred, let's go over this once more. In the first column on towns of the past, I wrote that Aberdeen changed its name to Alfred because there was already an Aberdeen, Texas, with a post office. After receiving calls from Orange Grove questioning that, I wrote that it was a mix-up, since the community of Alfred was located near Orange Grove.
   However, Jim Stever, author of the incomparable "Handing the Mails in Corpus Christi," has straightened me out on what turns out to be a bit of convoluted history. Stever wrote a page filler on this subject for the Nueces County Historical Commission Bulletin in 1989, to wit:
   "Aberdeen was a small community located on Corpus Christi Bay where Seaside Memorial Park Cemetery is today. Back in 1901, Aberdeen applied to Uncle Sam for a post office. They were told there could be a post office but it couldn't be Aberdeen. There was already an Aberdeen in Collingsworth County in the Panhandle. So new postmaster Oliver S. Watson named his new post office Alfred after his youngest child. However, that post office was discontinued in 1904.
   "Meanwhile, there was another Nueces County community named Driscoll that decided in 1905 to change its name to Alfred. After all, the name was now available . . . This new Alfred that was formerly Driscoll was in western Nueces County and now is in Jim Wells County . . . While all this was going on, still another Nueces County community located between Robstown and Bishop decided in 1910 that it would call itself Driscoll. Again, the name was available . . . Kind of like a chain reaction."
   Other towns traded names. In 1889, Rockport changed its name to Aransas Pass as part of its effort to gain a deepwater harbor. A few years later, it changed the name back to Rockport. With the name of Aransas Pass available, the town of Aransas Harbor was quick to grab it.
   I hit a snag on the old Spanish name for Flour Bluff. News clips list it as "El Rincon del Grullo" which was translated as, "The corner of the gray." That doesn't make sense and as Nick Jimenez pointed out, "grullo" doesn't mean "gray."
   I may have figured this out with help from Margaret Neu. Rincon is usually translated as "corner;" it was used as a surveyor's term. But it can also be translated as a remote place. One definition of "grullo" is crane. The original meaning could have been "Place of cranes." Whoopers and sandhill cranes would have abounded in the area then. If that's not right, someone is bound to set me straight.
   Bishop was first called Julia, or Julia Siding, in 1904 when it was a cattle-loading rail siding on the Driscoll Ranch. Julia was the name of the wife of Robert Driscoll Sr. The town of Bishop was founded on that site in 1910 and it was named after land promoter F. Z. Bishop, who sold some 80,000 acres of ranchland for farming.
   The town of Driscoll, the one in Nueces County, was for a short time called Coldris.
   When Port Aransas obtained a post office in the 1880s, it had no name. Mail came there addressed to "Mustang Island." In the early 1890s, when Eli H. Ropes planned to build a major port on the island, the settlement was called Ropesville. The name was changed to Tarpon, which lasted for two decades until the town was incorporated in 1911 and the name of Port Aransas was chosen.
   There are other towns that had different names. I wrote a column on the subject once. Maryville became Beeville. Roughtown, so called because of its saloons, became Lagarto (alligator), Mesquital became Taft, Bandana became Alice, and Palomas (doves) became Ingleside.
   Tilden was called Dog Town after the Civil War. The name was changed to Tilden after the presidential election of 1876, which was the most bitterly fought election in U.S. history, until now.
   In that election, Samuel J. "Whispering Sam" Tilden, the Democrat, won the popular vote, but contested results threw the race into Congress, which was dominated by radical Republicans. Congress set up a commission which proceeded to disqualify Democratic electors and replace them with Republican electors.
   The final arithmetic added up to Tilden being robbed and Rutherford B. Hayes being president. Hayes during his one term was called "His Fraudulency."
   Why the people of "Dog Town" in the 1880s admired "Whispering Sam" Tilden has never been made clear. The more colorful name of Dog Town perhaps did not resonate with civic promoters and they preferred to honor a losing presidential candidate, a man who was robbed of the White House but, rather than divide the country and raise cain about it, retired quietly from politics. That Democrat knew when to quit.
   (Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by email at givensm@caller.com.)
  
  

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