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| Corpus Christi History Biographies |
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Maria A. Von Blucher (1828-1893)
Maria von Blucher was born in Berlin, Prussia and came to Corpus Christi as the bride of Felix A. Von Blucher in 1849. Her detailed descriptions of frontier life in Corpus Christi are contained in Maria von Blucher’s Corpus Christi. Letters From the South Texas Frontier, 1849-1879, edited and annotated by Bruce S. Cheeseman. This book contains letters Maria wrote to her parents depicting the transition of Corpus Christi from an untamed wilderness into a thriving town.
The letters are a personal insight into the everyday life as well as historic events of the town. Social events and family life, droughts that killed cattle, raids by Indians and the Civil War blockade are all described. Maria was an accomplished pianist who had studied with Franz Liszt in Germany; she used this skill to teach piano lessons later in life. |
Solomon Melvin Coles (1844-1924)
Solomon Coles was born a slave. After the Civil War, he worked hard to earn an education. He came to Corpus Christi as a minister. He became an teacher for the local black children and dedicated his years in Corpus Christi to helping the community. Coles Elementary was named in his honor.
Born a slave in Virginia, Solomon Coles became a minister and educator whose life was dedicated to helping blacks. After the Civil War, Coles worked and when he had earned enough money, moved to Connecticut to begin his formal education. He was the first black to enter and graduate from Guilford Institute in Connecticut, and went on to earn Bachelors and Masters Degrees from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the earliest black college in the United States. Coles decided to enter the Yale Divinity School in Connecticut the first black to do so. He decided to use the ministry as a vehicle to help educate other blacks |
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Clara Driscoll (1881-1945)
Clara Driscoll was a Texan of mythic proportions. She was the daughter of rancher and businessman, Robert Driscoll, whose family had been prominent in South Texas before the Texas Revolution. Clara, a beautiful, charming and gracious woman, could speak four languages and rope with the cowboys on her father’s ranch.
At the age of 22, Clara started a campaign to save the historic Alamo. School children across the state contributed their nickels and dimes to the cause. When fundraising efforts fell short, Clara put up her own money. She became known as the Savior of the Alamo.
Clara spent the last years of her life in Corpus Christi. She built the Robert Driscoll Hotel named in honor of her deceased brother. As the last surviving member of her prominent family, Clara left her considerable fortune to charity when she died in 1945. She stipulated the money was to be used to establish a foundation for the care of sick and undernourished children. The Driscoll Foundation Children’s Hospital opened in Corpus Christi in 1953. Since that time the hospital has continued to provide the finest pediatric medical facilities in Texas to children from all over the state. |
Hector P. Garcia (1914-1990)
Hector Garcia was a medical doctor, WWII veteran, Hispanic civil rights leader, and organizer of the American G.I. Forum. Hector P. Garcia was born in Mexico and moved with his parents after the Mexican Revolution to the lower Rio Grande Valley. His father operated a dry goods store and Hector and the other children picked cotton to supplement the family income. He went on to college, hitch-hiking to Edinburgh Junior College each day and went on to graduate with a medical degree from the University of Texas.
Hector Garcia served during WWII where he rose to the rank of Major. He realized on his return to the U.S. that conditions for Mexican Americans had not improved significantly. Mexican Americans were barred from restaurants, swimming pools, and hospitals and there were restrictions on voting, holding office and employment. From his personal experiences with segregation and poverty, Dr. Garcia understood the injustices and became determined to eliminate them.
In 1948 he founded the American G.I. Forum, an organization that was to have a nationwide impact. Under his leadership, Mexican Americans achieved rights in health care, education, labor agreements and the court system. Dr. Garcia’s humanitarian concerns made him a national figure; he was appointed alternate ambassador to the United Nations and became the first Mexican American to serve on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
[Source: KEDT Justice for My People: The Dr. Hector P. Garica Story] |
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![Mifflin Kenedy
Mifflin Kenedy was an early rancher and businessman in South Texas. He and Richard King were business partners in a several different businesses including a steamboat company, a ranch and the railroad.
A pioneer rancher and entrepreneur in South Texas, Mifflin Kenedy was a partner of Richard M. King, founder of the King Ranch. As a youth he sailed as a cabin boy, and as a young man worked on riverboat steamers in Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi as well as Florida where he first met Richard King.
Kenedy and King became partners in several business ventures. In 1850, they formed a steamship company that continued during the Civil War until it was dissolved in 1874. Kenedy began raising sheep on a ranch in Hidalgo County, but losses forced him to sell the enterprise. In 1860 he and King became full partners in the Santa Gertrudis Ranch in South Texas until 1868 when he sold his share to King.
[“KENEDY, MIFFLIN” The Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tsha,utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/]](http://www.ccmuseumedres.com/userpictures/html_page_image.136.1.s.jpg)
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Mifflin Kenedy (1818-1895)
Mifflin Kenedy was an early rancher and businessman in South Texas. He and Richard King were business partners in a several different businesses including a steamboat company, a ranch and the railroad.
A pioneer rancher and entrepreneur in South Texas, Mifflin Kenedy was a partner of Richard M. King, founder of the King Ranch. As a youth he sailed as a cabin boy, and as a young man worked on riverboat steamers in Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi as well as Florida where he first met Richard King.
Kenedy and King became partners in several business ventures. In 1850, they formed a steamship company that continued during the Civil War until it was dissolved in 1874. Kenedy began raising sheep on a ranch in Hidalgo County, but losses forced him to sell the enterprise. In 1860 he and King became full partners in the Santa Gertrudis Ranch in South Texas until 1868 when he sold his share to King.
[“KENEDY, MIFFLIN” The Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tsha,utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/] |
Col. Henry L. Kinney (1814-1862)
Henry Kinney came to the Corpus Christi area in 1839 and built a store called Kinney’s Post. By 1844, Kinney's Trading Post controlled virtually all the Mexican trade. General Zachary Taylor chose Kinney's Post for his campsite on the eve of the Mexican-American War. Kinney served as Quartermaster for Taylor's troops in 1846 and sold town lots to some of Taylor’s soldiers. Kinney began to buy up large tracts of land with the idea of promoting Corpus Christi to new immigrants. His promotional scheme involved organizing the first Lone Star Fair in 1852. Kinney expected 30,000 visitors, but only 2,000 came. Still, the Fair was considered successful, even though it did not attract large numbers of settlers. Several other schemes Kinney tried to promote including a camel corps to transport goods from Corpus Christi to San Francisco and an army military hospital in Corpus Christi never got financial backing. Kinney is considered the founder of Corpus Christi and worked hard to attract settlers to the area. |
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Henry Pomeroy Miller (1884-1946)
Miller was editor of the Daily Caller from 1908 until 1913 when he was elected mayor. He served three terms and during his administration made major improvements in the town’s infrastructure: paved roads, sewers, streetlights and a water system. Through his leadership a full-time fire department was established and a new city hall and municipal wharf were built. He headed the relief committee after the 1919 storm.
Roy Miller spearheaded efforts to get congressional funding for the Port of Corpus Christi. As one of the founding members of the Gulf Intracoastal Canal Association, he was a leader in getting the waterway completed. Another major accomplishment was bringing the Naval Air Station to Corpus Christi. In 1950 Corpus Christi High School was renamed in his honor. |
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Benjamin Franklin Neal (179?-1873).
Texas pioneer, judge, newspaper publisher and first mayor of Corpus Christi. Born on the east coast, Neal arrived in Texas in 1838. After being a publisher in several newspapers in Texas, he moved to Corpus Christi in 1846 where he founded the Nueces Valley newspaper. He opened a law practice and then was elected mayor of Corpus Christi in 1852. He was re-elected in 1855. Neal organized and financed an artillery unit “Neal’s Battery” to defend Corpus Christi against Union ships when the Civil War began. This unit was attached to Col. Hobby’s Eighth Texas Infantry Regiment and participated in the two battles of Corpus Christi. Neal served as judge during and after the Civil War. He actively supported efforts to secure legislation and financial support for a deepwater port and railroad line.
“NEAL, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.” The Handbook of Texas Online.
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Rosalie Hart Priour (1825-1903)
Bridget "Rosalie" Hart was born in Ireland, the youngest of 10 children. In 1834 she sailed to Texas with her parents who were settlers in the Power and Hewetson Colony. After the death of her father, she lived with her mother and another sister at Refugio until the Texas Revolution. Rosalie and her family fled the Mexican armies and spent the next several years in Alabama.
Rosalie Hart married Jean Marie Priour in 1844, and relocated to Corpus Christi after the Mexican War. She and her mother operated a mercantile trade in Corpus Christi in the 1850's. Their correspondence with lawyers and agents in New Orleans and Mobile provides valuable information about early business conditions in Corpus Christi. In addition, Rosalie Priour served as the only teacher at the Corpus Christi Academy during the Civil War. In her later years, Mrs. Priour left an unpublished autobiography that narrated her eventful life through the end of the Civil War.
[“PRIOR, ROSALIE HART”. The Handbook of Texas Online. |
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Arthur Edward Spohn (1845-1913)
Dr. Arthur Spohn came to Corpus Christi because of the yellow fever epidemic. He invented a new type of tourniquet used around the world. Spohn Hospital was named after him.
A Canadian by birth, Arthur Spohn attended medical school at the University of Michigan and trained at Long Island Hospital, New York. In 1868 he was sent to Texas as United States surgeon in charge of the military quarantine at Galveston. He moved to Mier, Tamaulipas, Mexico, and in 1872 to Corpus Christi, Texas. In 1876 he married Sarah J. Kenedy, daughter of Mifflin and Petra Vela Kenedy. The Spohn Sanitarium, built in 1905, was named in his honor. For fifteen years he was in charge of the United States Marine Hospital at Corpus Christi. He was also chief surgeon of the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway and a member of all of the important medical and scientific societies of the day. |
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General Zachary Taylor
On the eve of Texas' admission to the Union, President James Polk was preparing to go to war with Mexico over the disputed Texas southern boundary. Mexico claimed that the Nueces River was the northern boundary of its soveriegn territory. The United States claimed that the Rio Grande River was the southern boundary of its sovereign territory. As a result of this disputed boundary, the Nueces strip was a hotly contested no man's land.
Acting on the orders of President Polk, General Zachary Taylor proceeded to move his "Army of Occupation" to a position within the disputed Nueces strip, a place called Corpus Christi. "Colonel" H.L. Kinney had been busy writing letters to Washington touting Corpus Christi as the ideal location for an army encampment. At that time Corpus Christi was a small town of less than 100 people with a trading post where goods were sold to Mexican smugglers. One officer described it as "the most murderous, thieving, God-forsaken hole in the Lone Star State or out of it." By early autumn of 1845, Taylor's "Army of Occupation" numbered 4,000. The usual assortment of "camp followers" came in their wake, and the population of Corpus Christi jumped from 100 to 2,000, not counting the soldiers. |
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![Mifflin Kenedy
Mifflin Kenedy was an early rancher and businessman in South Texas. He and Richard King were business partners in a several different businesses including a steamboat company, a ranch and the railroad.
A pioneer rancher and entrepreneur in South Texas, Mifflin Kenedy was a partner of Richard M. King, founder of the King Ranch. As a youth he sailed as a cabin boy, and as a young man worked on riverboat steamers in Ohio, Missouri, and Mississippi as well as Florida where he first met Richard King.
Kenedy and King became partners in several business ventures. In 1850, they formed a steamship company that continued during the Civil War until it was dissolved in 1874. Kenedy began raising sheep on a ranch in Hidalgo County, but losses forced him to sell the enterprise. In 1860 he and King became full partners in the Santa Gertrudis Ranch in South Texas until 1868 when he sold his share to King.
[“KENEDY, MIFFLIN” The Handbook of Texas Online. http://www.tsha,utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/]](javascript:JSWindowOpener('zoom.php?picture=http://www.ccmuseumedres.com/userpictures/html_page_image.136.1.jpg',630,450))
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