Soy de Duval

Members of the Uniques included, b ack row from left, Loreto Garcia Tovar, Smocker Gravis, Felipe Bodet, Tomas Collins, Arturo D. Garcia, Jose M. Tovar and Fidel Perez. In front  row are Avelino Garcia Tovar, Alfredo Ridder and Dario G. Garcia. (Photo contributed by Eliseo Cadena) All was not murder, mayhem, or politics in early Duval County. In August 1887, a group of men got together to form a baseball club in San Diego, and they immediately flexed their muscle by issuing a challenge to Corpus Christi for a game. The team’s name was the San Diego Uniques. The challenge game against Corpus Christi’s Mysterious Nine was held on Sept. 29, 1887 near the Tex-Mex depot. An early cool norther and an occasional cloud did not keep fans away, as most of the town’s citizens came out to see game. The first pitch sailed towards home plate at half past noon. The Uniques wore dark blue uniforms with red stockings and a large “U” on their chests. Suiting up for the San Diego nine included Av...

________________________________________________________________ Thought you might be interested in this exhibit opening at the Alamo. Just as a footnote, Mexican Americans that have their roots in Duval County were technically never “Tejanos”. They were first Nuevo Santanderinos and then Tamaulipecos. They did not become “Texans” until after the Mexican American War of 1845 when Mexico ceded the area to the United States.   ________________________________________________________________ Due largely to popular culture from a bygone era, the Battle of the Alamo is often depicted as a racial conflict between Anglos and Hispanics.   But, of course, the truth is more revealing. This spring the story of the Alamo siege and battle is cast in a new light.   For the first time, visitors can examine the role of Tejanos in defending the Alamo and helping to forge not only a nation but a unique cultural identity. Standing Their Ground: Tejano...

In 1888, Fiesta–it was not yet called Pan de Campo–began on May 5 and ran for 10 days until May 15.   Don Nasario Pena was in charge of the fiesta planning activities. Fever about the upcoming fiesta began as early as March. The fiesta featured musicians from Mexico; marches by the gun club; a baseball tournament with teams from San Diego, Corpus Christi, and other towns; horse racing; and wheel barrel and sack races. The fiesta in San Diego always attracted large crowds. The five-gun matches of American Blue Rock traps were a three-day event sanctioned by the National Association of Rifles. Baseball games were expected between the San Diego Uniques and Stars and visiting teams. The Uniques issued a challenge to Corpus Christi teams to come to fiesta for one to three matches any day during fiesta. The entry fee was $25 per team. Nightly concerts were planned with a group and a theatrical troupe from Monterrey providing the entertainment. Lone Star Brewery of San Antonio donated thr...

  Last week I had the opportunity to go to San Diego to judge a UIL journalism contest. During some free time, I drove around town and ran across this building which is undergoing renovations. For sometime I have been under the assumption that this was the first courthouse of Duval County, but frankly I do not recall how I formed that opinion. On December 11, 1876 the newly elected commissioners court appointed Precinct 1 Commissioner Frank R. Gravis as a committee of one to work with N. G. Collins to approach Manuel Ancira of San Diego to rent his building to use for a courthouse for 12 months. I’m not sure where this building was located. In an 1885 Sanborn Fire Map of San Diego, the building pictured above is located next to a Grocery, dry goods and hardware store and warehouse on the corner of Victoria and Theodore. As a boy I remember that Toribio Guerra had a small store down the street on Theodore. I wonder if the warehouse was owned Guerra, who in 1884 built a la...

As 1888, got underway, Walter Meek wrote to his fiancé in Ohio that Duval County paid 50 cents for a dead bobcat and “sometimes in winter we kill two to three a day.”  Dead wildcats were not the only carcasses found.  Jeffreys, the Corpus Christi paper’s correspondent in San Diego, found a dead cat at one of the plazas, a dead dog on a street, two dead calves and a dead chicken at the other plaza. In the first week of 1888, there was a lot going on.   There was a train accident between Collins and San Diego.   The train’s conductor directed passengers to jump and no one was hurt.   Also, that week, Mr. Niland finished painting the courthouse and jail, but still had much of painting to do in town.   The circus was in town with 20 acts.   Before it pulled up stakes, the circus took considerable of the town’s money. The District Court session was in San Diego during the second week of January.   County Attorney Charles L. Coyner was filling in for D...

Texans have tried on at least three occasions to prohibit the sale of alcohol. In each case, it has not met with much success, especially in Duval County. The first of these attempts took place in 1887, and the topic of prohibition was very much at the center of conversation in Duval County politics. Before1887, each county in Texas had the Constitutional authority to decide if it would allow the sale of alcohol or not. In 1887, however, the United Friends of Temperance and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union persuaded the legislature to call an election to decide whether the state should be dry or if it should continue to be wet. Those that wanted to prohibit alcohol feared that minorities, such as Duval County’s Mexican Americans, would vote strongly against prohibition and could defeat the proposal statewide. While the state did not schedule the prohibition election until Aug. 4, 1887, politicking got started early. In April, the state’s leading newspaper opposed to prohibition–t...