B'VILLE OBSTINATE IN GLORIFYING SLAVE CATCHERS AND SLAVERS. $1/2 MILLION TO MOVE SHACK. AND THE SLAVE QUARTERS?

By Juan Montoya

5) Consideration and ACTION to Authorize a Contract with Dodson House Moving, LLC in the amount of $404,256.59 for moving the Neale House, Contract No. 064-26-EPMO-CP, with an estimated term of six (6) to eight (8) weeks or until completion of work. (Enterprise Project Management Office)

Well, the city is up to its bad ol' habit of spending your money on dilapidated buildings again just as it did with that of the former city "founder," Charles Stillman who used legal chicanery with his lawyer friend Samuel Belden to steal the land from its original Tejano land-grant holders. 

We still don't know how much in taxpayers' money it took to move and reconstruct that structure and to totally rebuild his Laureles Ranch House. 

Even though descendants of the Stillman family reportedly pitched in to pay for some of the charges, the bulk of the cost was borne by the taxpayers of the city. The result was a palatial ranch house that looks nothing like the original structure. 

And Tuesday, were it not for questions about the exorbitant  $404,256.59 cost by commissioner Bryan Martinez, Pedro Cardenas and Gustavo de Leon, the commission was ready to approve the contract for the removal from Texas Southmost College property to Linear Park of the William Neale carcass and make it a a neighbor to the Stillman Laureles Ranch House. That $404,256.59, by the way, equals to eight times the median income of Brownsville families, who are being asked to fund the moving of the house of a racist with whom they have no relationship.

The commissioners voted to table the item and bring it back in three weeks after getting more detailed information on the specific costs.

The moving of the Neale House to Linear Park establishes a de facto Brownsville Slavers Plantation Row and the cost cited above doesn't even include restoration and other costs.

Back in 2023, the city announced that it had set aside $190,000 to move the house and restore its foundation and roof for the dilapidated Neale House belonging to a former Brownsville mayor who was an officer in the confederacy and who supported slavery and gained a reputation for being a hunter of runaway slaves who escaped into Mexico.

It, too, is a rotting hulk of old timber that has undergone countless "renovations" as the city's Art League museum, the American Legion Hall and canteen, and now occupies a space in a dead-end street in front of a section of the border wall built by the Department of Homeland Security against the wishes of the now-defunct University of Texas-Brownsville-Texas Southmost College    

 The only difference between the descendants of Charles Stillman and the William Neale is that now the latter's occupy positions of power and politics which will allow the citizens again to carry the financial load of glorifying their family's "legacy." 

John Cowen is now the city's mayor and the Cowens – Phil, Ralph, etc. – wear the "heritage" of their ancestors on their sleeve. During his campaign, mayor Cowen wrote that "two of my ancestors, William Neale and John S. Ford, served as Mayors of Brownsville in the mid-1800s during the early formation of our city. We are proud of their service and other members of my family that have served in various elected positions."

But idols have been found to have their feet of clay. Neale, for example, made a lucrative living chasing runaway slaves into Mexico and returning them to their owners. His dubious claim to fame is  outlined in "The Twin Cities of the Border," by Lt. W. H. Charfield written in 1893.

According to Chatfield, Neale was "constantly called upon by the owners of slaves who had escaped to assist them in recovering their 'property'" – the runaway slaves – who he claimed  "in most cases, however, they were glad to return, when their masters followed them to their lairs: and offered to take take them back to the "Old Cabin Home." Oh, yeah, sure.

It is also worth noting that his son, William Peter Neale, was one of the men that Juan Nepomuceno "Cheno" Cortina, had on his hit list when he and 75 followers took over Brownsville in September 1859. 

According to a Cortina pronunciamento, the younger Neale had wantonly killed innocent Mexicans and walked around free with impunity.  When Cortina's raiders found him that September 1859, he was sleeping at his father's home, who was the the city's mayor, and took a bullet through a window when he woke suddenly to the sound of gunfire and sat bolt upright in his bed. What remains of the original building is now the Neale House.

And John "Rip" Ford, who was also served as mayor, was an officer in the Confederate States of America and  – as a member of the so-called Circle of the Golden Knights secessionists – attempted to establish a separate republic made up of sections of seized northern Mexican states where southern sympathizers could go and slavery would be legal. He said the new republic would then establish an extradition treaty with Texas that would allow them to return runaway slaves to their masters.

If the city is true to form, it's going to sink cash into making the slummy-looking carcass of the building look like the Taj Mahal just as they did with the carcass of Charles Stillman's love crib – another slave owner – Laureles Ranch "house."

(That's the 1860 Census of Cameron and Hidalgo counties at right showing Stillman "owned" a female slave.)

In fact, other studies have pegged the entire cost of moving and restoration of what's left of the Neale house closer to $900,000 and the city's planning department had recommended three places where it could be moved, including the space finally chosen in the Linear Park where his fellow slaver Stillman's ranch house now stands.

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 1836. In other words, he had allegiance to Mexico. (He switched allegiances as often as a working girl her skivvies.).

When the federal troops occupied Brownsville during the Civil War – 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, and took an oath to the USA after the war (another change of undies.) He served two times 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 have ridden that tired historical nag into the ground 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 claimed 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, however, credits his ancestor with signing a truce six months later with two union generals to "end the war." 

Wasn't some guy named Ulysses S. Grant and some other guy named Robert E. Lee involved in signing some kind of document at a place called the Appomattox Court House, in Virginia that ended the Civil War?

Now, after regaining a seat on the city commission, former commissioner Nurith Galonsky – who championed the Neale House restoration – is back for more. In fact, during Tuesday's meeting, Galonsky made the motion to approve the $404,000 just to move it. Cowen, although he claims to be a direct descendant of the first Brownsville mayor, seconded the motion, however inappropriate it might have been. Wouldn't you take a free half a million to glorify your family name compliments of the taxpayers in one of the nation's poorest communities with a 30 percent poverty rate?

If the city stays true to form in its history of  moving and restoration of historical buildings, the house will probably be converted to some fantasized version that is nothing like the original structure. The Neale House served as the canteen for the American Legion where vets told lies and drank the night away.

Look at how the city got the Stillman shack and – after pouring thousands into the restoration – how it looks now. The same will probably happen to the Neal structure, which is literally rotting where it stands.

We have glorified the men who stole the land from their rightful owners (Stillman and Belden) by naming one a founder and restoring his ranch whore house, the other by naming a bike and hike trail  after him. This, ironically, on the very land they stole and where descendants of their dispossessed victims still live.

And now we are set to spend 404,000 just to brace it and move the house (and eventually close to $1 million to fully restore it) to praise the memory of a traitor to his country, a man who profited by denying human beings their freedom for money, and making him out to be a spiritual and historical pillar of our community.

Let the rotting structure, treason, white supremacy, slavery, and the confederacy and robber barons stay where they belong: in their pestilence and the dust bin of history.