Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

The killing of Mat Nolan

The last months of the Civil War were bad times for Corpus Christi. Only a few hundred inhabitants had stayed. Wooden homes had been pulled down for their lumber and several concrete buildings were knocked down to use to block the ship channel. Streets were clogged with dead animals. Residents scavenged for food. Corpus Christi was one of the few Texas cities that endured near starvation toward the end of the war.
   The town was divided in late 1864. There was a growing sentiment among loyal Confederates in favor of arresting, trying, and hanging those who had assisted the Union army while it was stationed on Mustang Island. The Union backers were known; some were prominent citizens.
   Mat Nolan, a former Ranger who had fought in the Mexican War, was re-elected sheriff on Aug. 1, 1864, even though he was a lieutenant colonel in "Rip" Ford's command. Ford wanted Nolan to stay around Corpus Christi to maintain order and keep watch on federal activity on the coast. Ford also wanted Nolan to arrest, in Ford's words, "perfidious renegades."
   On the list of renegades was the name of H.W. Berry, a former sheriff and local official for two decades. Berry came to Corpus Christi with Taylor's army. He competed with U.S. Grant for the affections of a local girl; Berry married her. After she died, Berry married Irenah Gravis, whose husband died in the 1854 yellow fever epidemic. Berry became stepfather to the four Gravis children. The two boys - Frank and Charles - were devoted to their stepfather. They were called the Gravis boys even after they were grown.
   Berry was on the renegade list because he had been seen loading cotton on a federal ship off Padre Island. In a report to "Rip" Ford, dated March 6, 1864, Nolan wrote, "On the night of Thursday . . . under the command of Captains Gray and Doolittle, with 45 men, the enemy returned in their boats, landing with them a number of Corpus Renegades, among whom were H.W. Berry. . . ."
   At sundown, Dec. 22, 1864, Nolan was talking to a horse trader named J.C. McDonald across the street from Nolan's house on Mesquite. Frank and Charles Gravis walked up, words were exchanged, and one of the Gravises shot Nolan with a shotgun. Accounts differ on whether the Gravises were chased by McDonald or vice versa, but the horse-trader was killed a block north, where the Caller-Times is now, with a pistol shot behind the left ear.
   Nolan was taken to Dr. D.H. Lawrence, who told him the wound was fatal. Nolan named the "Gravis boys" as the shooters and said he knew why they shot him, but he died before he could say why. The official version said McDonald was the intended victim, that Nolan was killed because he was there. If that were true, though, why was Nolan shot first?
   The motive for Nolan's killing is an old mystery that may never be solved, unless some information surfaces, but I believe he was killed because of his intent to arrest Berry and other Corpus Christians for treason.
   Nolan was buried in Bayview Cemetery, next to his brother Tom. The headstone reads, "Matthew Nolan, Co. G, 2nd U.S. Dragoons."
   A grand jury indicted Frank and Charles Gravis for murder. The grand jury also returned indictments for treason against nine citizens, including Berry. But nothing was done about the indictments in 1865 as the war wound down.
   When Reconstruction came in the summer of '65, the new occupation authorities appointed H.W. Berry sheriff of Nueces County. Charles Gravis, still under indictment for murder, was made his deputy. The indictments issued by a Confederate grand jury were ignored. Frank Gravis became a respected South Texas rancher.
   Of the three Nolan orphans who came to Corpus Christi in 1845, only Mary was left. She spent the war years nursing Confederate wounded in a hospital in the Rabb home on Broadway. She nursed the sick during the yellow fever epidemic in 1867; one of the casualties was her son-in-law, William Morris. Mary Nolan Hutchison died in 1910 at 82 years of age. She was buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, a long way from Athlone, Ireland.
   (This is the third of a three-part series. Sources include archival material from the Caller-Times; "Rip Ford's Texas" by John Salman Ford; letters of Maj. W.G. Thompson of the 20th Iowa; a field report from Mat Nolan to Rip Ford; research papers of Frank Wagner in Corpus Christi's Central Library; Thomas Nolan's obituary in the Corpus Christi Ranchero; a biographical sketch of H.W. Berry by E.T. Merriman; "The Story of Corpus Christi" by Mary Sutherland; "The History of Corpus Christi" by Eugenia Reynolds Briscoe; and research papers on the Nolans by Geraldine McGloin and Monsignor Michael A. Howell.)
  

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