CITY, STILLMANS, WILL MOVE CHARLES' RANCH HOUSE HERE

By Juan Montoya
It was in the early 1850s.
These were the days before Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy and Charles Stillman had acquired their vast riches made from running the Union blockade with Confederate cotton.
King and Kenedy were mere river boat pilots in the employ of Stillman, who had acquired a modest fortune as a merchant in northern Mexico selling dry goods for his father in Connecticut.
When King and Kenedy proposed to buy a large area of land south of Corpus Christi, Stillman backed them financially and they bought a large section of the grant Rincón de los Laureles, "Corner of the Laurels," named so by the original grantees José Pérez Rey and María José Pérez Rey who named it probably after the groves of mountain laurels that grow there.
That original piece of land land would later become the King Ranch. Although King and Kenedy eventually dissolved their partnership, by the middle of the twentieth century, the Laureles Ranch was the largest of the four divisions of the King Ranch, extending north from the shores of Baffin Bay to the Nueces county line and totaling more than 250,000 acres.
In the early days of the partnership between King and Kenedy, Stillman built a ranch house there. That eventually became the main ranch home where some of the Kleberg and King children were born. A two-story structure, it featured a fireplace and double hung windows as well as a large porch overhung by the roof that served as the floor for the second story.
And even though many associate the old Henry Miller Home on Washington St. with the Stillmans, the home was actually rented to the family by Miller, who later sold the house to Manuel Trevino de los Santos Coy, the Mexican Consul to Brownsville. It was here that Treviño and Porfirio Dias plotted to overthrown Sebastian Lerdo de Tejada, the president of Mexico who succeeded Benito Juarez after he died.
Charles Stillman died in 1875, and the Trevino family, in 1958, after 100 years, sold it to Chauncey Stillman, great-grandson of Charles Stillman. The Stillmans paid for its restoration and donated it to the Brownsville Historical Association.
Just recently, learning that the Alonso Building would be acquired by the Catholic Diocese of Brownsville and probably would be inaccessible to the public, the family bought it and donated it nto the BHA, which now uses it for its offices.
But the family never forgot the ranch house that Stillman built at Los Laureles, the the original plot of land that became the King Ranch.
Historically, said Priscilla Rodriguez, Executive Director, Brownsville Historical Association, the building is an original example of 1850 ranch architecture. Even though it is more than 150 years old and has been buffeted by countless hurricanes and the vestiges of time and weather, it is still a sturdy structure that deserves to be restored and preserved for future generation of Brownsville children to see, she said.
"Historically, it is older than many of the homes in Brownsville," Rodriguez said.
Now, in a collaborative effort between the City of Brownsville, the BHA and private donations, the Stillman Ranch House will be brought to the city where the founder of Brownsville lived and made his fortune.  The approximate cost to move the home will total some $65,000.
It has not been an easy trip, and the final leg will be done by a house mover from Corpus Christi that specializes in moving historical structures. The home is now located west of San Patricio, in San Patricio County, some 165 miles away.
Brownsville Comprehensive Planning Manager Ramiro Gonzalez said the move will take place within the next few month, hopefully in time for the annual Charro Days Stillman family reunion. The restoration, however, will take place over the next two or three years.
He said the family wanted to have a large plot of land to place the house in a ranch-style setting, but the unavailability of land owned by the city did not include such a large tract of real estate. Instead, he said the city offered to place the home in a corner of land next to the historical Cueto Building on Madison and 14th St. now being rented for parking.
"It's going to take some time and money to restore the ranch house," he said. "But for now we are just trying to get it here."
The home, which had been on King Ranch property, has been moved around the Coastal Bend partly as a result of disputes between some descendants of the King family. It was moved from the Laureles section of the ranch and now is under the control of the Corpus Christi Heritage Association. It has been sitting on a plot of land near Round Lake west of San Patricio for decades until members of the organization learned that some of Stillman's descendants still lived in Brownsville.
After a representative of the family acquired the house, it was then donated to the city and the BHA. Now, after 150 years, the house that Charles built, is coming home.