EYE-OPENING PROFILE OF BROWNSVILLE'S "FOUNDER"

(All through elementary, high school, and even in college, local students and residents have been told that Charles Stillman was the "founder" of Brownsville. In reality, Stillman was a ruthless businessman who exploited the conditions after the war to grab – often times illegally – title to communal lands owned by the town of Matamoros and by land-grant families on the north side of the river.  The following is a fastidiously documented nutshell account of how he became the richest man in Texas with the help of the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Army and his own private militia. We've looked for this book at the city libraries without success. We wonder why.)

From John Mason Hart's

"Empire and Revolution,"
University of California Press
2002
Pp. 22-23

Charles Stillman came to prominence in Southern Texas during the Mexican-American War, when he landed a contract to take supplies up the Rio Grande to the Gulf of Mexico and deliver them to the army of General Zachary Taylor that resulted in the capture of Monterrey. Stillman's dealings in 1848., at the end of the war, reflected a ruthless character that American entrepreneurs exhibited all too often in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

After the war the Americans controlled the north banks of the Rio Grande. Before the war, however, the city government of Matamoros had exercised its power of eminent domain by denouncing farm land on the north side of the river in order to enlarge on the communal properties needed by its citizens. The denunciation procedure was commonplace for growing cities and towns, and the land was annexed despite the protests of the original owners of the land in question, the Cavazos family of Texas, members of the Matamoros elite who supported the Americans during the war.

Following the American victory Stillman purchased the ejido, or village farmlands, of Matamoros from Sabas Cavazos. Spanish and Mexican law held community properties as inalienable, and the purchase was legally invalid, but the land was on the north side of the Rio Grande and therefore subject to the judgment of Texas courts. Those decisions went against the Mexicans.

Stillman created the Brownsville Town Company and began selling lots for as much as $1,500 each. He quickly attracted some 2,000 settlers. Stilman and Simon Belden, his associate, sold the bulk of the properties and then quickly sold the remainder of the site to E. Basse and Robert H. Hord for a handsome profit of $35,000. In doing so Stillman escaped complex and expensive battles in the Texas courts over who legally owned Brownsville.

Basse and Hord moved rapidly to gain the support of the Texas state government for their Brownsville claim. In 1850 the state legislature incorporated the City of Brownsville and recorded its opinion of any Mexican claims to the property regardless of nay Mexican claims to the property, regardless of law.

"All the right, title, and interest of the state of Texas in and to all the land included within said tract, that was owned by the town of Matamros on the 19th day of December, 1836, shall be and is hereby relinquished to the corporation of Brownsville, and their successors in office, in trust for the use and benefit of said city provided this act shall not impair private rights.

Stillman also bought vast properties on the north side of the river for himself and his associates Richard King and Mifflin Kenedy. Each man got title to hundreds of thousands of acres of hotly disputed land. Portions of these purchases became the famous Kendy and King ranches. Stillman, King and Kenedy fought to validate their ranch land acquisitions. from the 1850s to the mid 1870s their controversial claims to these properties were backed up by the Texas Rangers, the U.S. Army and their own private armies. For years their militias fought the Mexicans who confiscated cattle and burned ranches in retaliation for their displacement. The titles were still in dispute in Texas courtrooms at the end of the twentieth Century.