BROWNSVILLE SPENDS $190K TO MOVE SLAVER NEALE'S HOUSE

Two workmen drape the Neale House in a black plastic tarp to stop its continued deterioration as they get ready to move the former runaway slave hunter's house to the Linear park to join fellow slave owner Charles Stillman's love shack at the site. (Courtesy Photo)

Special to El Rrun-Rrun

The City of Brownsville – in keeping with glorifying known racists like Robert E. Lee and slave owner Charles Stillman and and his lawyer Samuel Belden – who used legal chicanery with his lawyer friend Samuel Belden to steal the land from its land-grant holders – now intends to use $190,000 to move a house and restore it for William Neale.

Neale's claim to fame was that he was a former mayor and an officer in the confederacy who supported slavery and gained a notoriety for being a good hunter of runaway slaves who escaped into Mexico. The house dates back to 1850, his ancestors claim.

William Neale arrived in Matamoros in 1834 and began a stage route from the landing at Puerto Bagdad, Tamaulipas, where ocean-going ships had to unload freight and passengers, to the river port of Matamoros. 

When Zachary Taylor defeated the Mexican army under Gen. Pedro Ampudia in May 1846 , his stages or "hacks" were used to remove the Mexican wounded after the Battle of Palo Alto. 

Neale and his family were part of the frantic congestion of civilians and fleeing Mexican soldiers trying to cross the Rio Grande after the defeat of Mexican troops at the Battle of Resaca de la Palma. In other words, he had allegiance to Mexico. He switched allegiances as often as a working girl her skivvies.

During his years on the Mexican border Neale made money locating runaway slaves (referred to as "property") from upstate Texas and the confederate states, and when steamboats began going directly to Matamoros, Neale discontinued his Bagdad stage line and established a mercantile business at a steamboat landing twenty-five miles upriver from Brownsville at Nealeville (also called Santa Maria).

In "The Twin Cities of the Border," Lt. W. H. Charfield wrote in 1893 that Neale discussed his slave catching with some pride and said that Neale sought them in their "lairs" like beasts and fancied that the recaptured slaves were somehow grateful to Neale for returning them to their master and to bondage in their "Old Cabin Home." 

(Stillman, by the way, is listed as one of only seven slave owners in the Cameron County 1850 Census. Click on graphic to enlarge.)

When the federal troops occupied Brownsville – Neale, a second lieutenant in the Third Texas Infantry Regiment for the Confederacy in 1863 – returned to Matamoros to live. He finally settled in Brownsville in 1865 after the Union prevailed, took an oath to the USA, (another change of undies) and then went on to serve as mayor from 1858–59, and then again from 1866 to 1869. 

He died in Brownsville on April 6, 1896, and his home was given to the Brownsville Art League in 1950 and was moved to a location south of the United States Customs House. 

The Cowens – Neale's descendants – have glorified in their ancestor and embellished the settler narrative  even more. 

In a Brownsville Herald article some years ago, Philip Cowen, a former Brownsville Independent School District board member, also claims to be a direct descendant to John "Rip" Ford, one of the confederacy's "heroes" and champions of slavery. 

He credits his ancestor as the founder of the murderous Texas Rangers, whose indiscriminate genocide of Mexicans and Mexican-American citizens in South Texas has long been covered up in Texas history.

"Cowen also lauds another of his ancestors, his other great great grandfather John Rip Ford, for starting the Texas Rangers, thrashing the yankees at Palmito Hill in what is hailed as the last battle of the Civil War even though the rebel surrender had happened more than a month earlier.

If the city's continues its methods and practice of spending $100,000s to "restore" these buildings, we can rest assured that the hulk of the house will suddenly be made into a mansion instead of the rotting carcasses they were. Take gander at what happened to Stillman's Laurel Ranch whorehouse after it's glorification by the City of Brownsville.