Corpus Christi History
By Murphy Givens

Thursday, Feb. 25, 1999

Kinney is a suspect in competitor's death

   After Henry Lawrence Kinney established his trading post on Corpus Christi Bay, Mexican traders came up from the Rio Grande to buy goods. They paid with silver bars that had been molded in sand, each bar worth $50 to $60. The traders brought horses, mules, saddles, bridles, Mexican blankets, and those pure silver bars. They carried away bolts of unbleached cloth, guns and ammunition, and cartloads of tobacco.
    It was a lucrative, if illegal, trade. During the period of the Republic of Texas, the area between the Nueces and the Rio Grande was claimed by Texas and Mexico. Since both tried to collect import duties, goods were routinely smuggled to evade paying taxes to two separate governments.
    Others saw that there were huge profits to be made. In May of 1841, a hero of the War of Independence, Philip Dimmitt, and two partners, James Gourley Jr. and John Sutherland, were setting up a store at Flour Bluff, 15 miles from Kinney's store. (Accounts that place Dimmitt's operation on the Nueces River in the vicinity of today's Calallen are wrong.)
    Dimmitt's arrival threatened to end Kinney's monopoly. Then a unit of Mexican cavalry under Gen. Pedro Ampudia, a friend of Kinney's, raided Dimmitt's store, carried away the merchandise, and seized Dimmitt and two other men. The Mexican force spent the night near Kinney's rancho, but Kinney's place was not molested.
    Dimmitt was killed or he committed suicide in Mexico. Kinney and and his partner William Aubrey were suspected of having a hand in the affair and were tried in Victoria on charges of treason. They were found not guilty, but the suspicion that they were behind Dimmitt's death never went away. Another Kinney friend, Mirabeau Lamar, president of the Republic of Texas, may have played a role behind the scenes that resulted in the speedy trial and acquittal.
    Kinney faced other troubles. The land he bought from Levi Jones was actually owned by Capt. Enrique Villarreal, who had been granted ten leagues of land called the Rincon del Oso by the governor of Tamaulipas in 1831. Villarreal showed up with a small army to reclaim his 400 square miles of land on the shores of Corpus Christi Bay. To avoid a battle, Kinney agreed to pay Villarreal $4,000 (two cents an acre). Kinney bought the Rincon del Oso grant from Villarreal on July 16, 1843. It took Kinney seven years to finish paying for the land.
    In 1844, Kinney was elected to the Senate of the ninth Congress of the Republic. He represented San Patricio, Goliad and Refugio counties. He attended sessions in the old town of Washington, the capital of Texas after Sam Houston moved it from Austin. Kinney helped ratify the terms of annexation to the United States and took part in writing a new constitution.
    Two incidents that happened during the constitutional convention show Kinney's hero side. A proposal was made, and was expected to pass, that those who left Texas for the purpose of avoiding taking part in the revolution of 1835 would forfeit all rights of citizenship, including their land. Kinney argued that it would deprive loyal citizens of Mexican descent of their homes and land. It was agreed that all property would remain as it was during the Republic. On another occasion, Kinney argued that using the word "white" in fixing representation to the Legislature would discriminate against the state's Mexican-American citizens, and he won that argument.
    It was clear there would be a war between the United States and Mexico over the annexation of Texas, with the dispute centering on the no man's land between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. As an American army was being assembled at Fort Jesup in Louisiana, Kinney began a successful campaign touting Corpus Christi as a base of operations.
    When Zachary Taylor's army landed in August, 1845, Corpus Christi was a small outpost with less than 100 people, most of them working for Kinney. Kinney set up several businesses, like the Kinney House hotel, and collected his cut on others. Kinney's fort and buildings were purchased by the U.S. government for Taylor's headquarters. Kinney made a fortune off the army's stay in Corpus Christi.
    The coming conflict with Mexico showed another puzzling side of Kinney's character. He argued that neither Texas nor the United States had a legitimate claim to the land below the Nueces, that it had always been Mexican territory. But though he opposed the war, he helped win it. He joined Taylor's army, ostensibly in the role of quartermaster, but he was far more valuable as a spy. He had many contacts in Mexico and he had his own spy, "Chipito." (A street in Corpus Christi was named for this spy.)
    Kinney rode south with Taylor's army to help fight a war he believed to be unjust. He left behind a deserted town whose reason for existence -- trade with Mexico -- was being severed by that war. He would return two years later to a desolate, and all but dead, town that he had founded.
    This is the second of three parts. Part three will appear in this space next Wednesday.