Starr County
Project participants have identified key locations in the Rio Grande Valley that played significant roles in the Civil War history and place these on a physical map/brochure. Each of these locations are associated with an audio podcast that will explain the site’s significance and share interesting details about the action that took place there. These podcasts are accessible on this website and are accessible via cell phones through QR codes and by dialing (956) 847-3002.
The John Vale/Noah Cox House, located in Roma’s Historic District, served as both a home and business location for John Heinrik Vale and Noah Cox, who were deeply embroiled in Civil War activities in Roma. Vale, a Swedish immigrant, had come to America in 1840 seeking adventure. During the Mexican American War, Vale volunteered for Zachary Taylor’s Army of Occupation and was encamped in Camargo. He chose to remain in the region, marrying a woman from Ciudad Mier in Tamaulipas and taking up residence across the Rio Grande in Roma. In 1853 he built a two-story home on the town’s main plaza. Three years later he sold the house to Cox, a representative of the New Orleans firm of Stadeker & Mecklinburger & Cox, who continued to use the house as both a residence and mercantile center. In addition to his mercantile operations during the Civil War, Cox also served in the Confederate Texas Cavalry. For his part, Vale engaged heavily in the lucrative cotton trade that funneled through the city of Roma during the Civil War, doing business with Joseph Kleiber, a key player in Confederate business operations on the Gulf of Mexico.
Born in 1824 to an aristocratic family with a large land grant in South Texas, Juan Cortina saw his property and those of his neighbors threatened by the U.S. acquisition of Texas. Cortina recruited an army that could fight on both sides of the new border. In what became known as the First Cortina War, he and his army took control of Brownsville. Following negotiations with Mexican authorities, Cortina retreated but issued a proclamation asserting the rights of Mexicans and Tejanos, and demanded punishment of anyone who violated those rights. Tensions arose between Cortina and the Texas Rangers. In December 1859, the Rangers, led by John S. “Rip” Ford, and Major Samuel P. Heitzelman, pursued Cortina’s army. In a battle in Rio Grande City, Cortina was defeated, losing sixty men. He and his surviving followers retreated into Mexico after attempting to capture the steamboat Ranchero, owned by Cortina's hated enemies Mifflin Kenedy and Richard King. With the outbreak of the U.S. Civil War in May 1861, Cortina’s army invaded the town of Zapata and was defeated by Confederate officer Col. Santos Benavides. Regarded by Anglos as an outlaw, he is remembered by many in the Valley as a heroic figure who fought for the rights of Hispanic people. Cortina became involved in Mexico’s own civil war against the French, later serving as governor of Tamaulipas and commander of the Mexican Army of the North. He died in Mexico, exiled from his family's land grant, in 1894.
In 1850, Richard King, Mifflin Kenedy, and two others formed a steamboat company to carry cargo on the Rio Grande. The company achieved almost total control of the shipping along the Rio Grande River during the 1850s until 1874 when the company was dissolved. The Mifflin Kenedy Warehouse, where the company stored cotton and other goods, is a last reminder of this era that included the Civil War. The Mifflin Kenedy warehouse was built in 1854, near the steamboat landing on Water Street, Rio Grande City which later became an official Confederate port of entry, customhouse and major terminus of the cotton route to Mexico. The cotton bales would arrive at river ports such as Rio Grande City in wagons and oxcarts, were warehoused, and then ferried to Mexican river ports and transported to neutral ships in the Gulf of Mexico. The ships would bring back leather, clothing, blankets, guns, ammunition, and medical supplies. In 1864 the 1st U.S. Texas Cavalry reoccupied Ringgold Barracks and seized the cotton that was stored in this warehouse.
This stop on the Rio Grande Valley Civil War Trail takes us to Starr County and the city cemetery in Rio Grande City. In the same year that the territory north of the Rio Grande was grafted onto the United States by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Rio Grande City residents Henry Clay Davis and Hilaria Davis donated land for a city cemetery. Burials at the site began soon afterward. Davis, a Mexican War veteran, and his wife, Hilaria de la Garza-Davis, are buried in the center of the cemetery. The cemetery remained in operation through and after the Civil War and houses the graves of multiple Civil War veterans as well as other notables from that era.
Two blocks from Roma’s steamboat landing site is this two-story stuccoed sandstone structure built in 1853 by city’s first lawyer, Edward R. Hord. Born in Virginia, Hord arrived at the Rio Grande Valley in 1846 with a volunteer regiment in the Mexican American War. During the 1850s he served as acting attorney for the Mexican heirs of Spanish land grants (porciones) in the area in suits against the U.S. He represented Starr County in the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Texas legislatures (1851–56) and was elected a delegate to the Secession Convention of 1861 from Starr County. Although he declined an immediate commission in the Texas militia, he had, by 1863, gained the rank of colonel in John S. “Rip” Ford's Confederate Cavalry of the West. During this time, his office/home served as his military headquarters. Decades later the property was bought by Dr. Mario Ramirez, who, in the 1930s, converted it into a hospital and residence.
Atop a river bluff from which two nations are visible, army engineers in 1848 established Camp Ringgold. After the U.S.-Mexican War, the Mexican government was forced to give up its claims to territory in Texas and the Southwest. Acting upon Mexican requests, the U.S. Army built forts along the Rio Grande from Brownsville to Eagle Pass. Camp Ringgold, later Ringgold Barracks, was named for Major Samuel Ringgold, who was killed at the battle of Palo Alto in 1846. Nearby stood the settlement of Rancho Davis, later renamed Rio Grande City. During the Civil War, Ringgold changed hands several times, starting in 1861when it was occupied by Confederate forces. Late in 1863, Union troops re-entered the Rio Grande Valley and seized the camp, only for it to be seized again by rebels led by Colonels John S. “Rip” Ford and Santos Benavides. Because of their efforts, the post stayed in Confederate hands until the end of the war. After 1865, the post was renamed Fort Ringgold and was updated with permanent brick buildings. African-American troops, including Civil War U.S. Colored Troops and later segregated African-American U.S. regulars (the so-called “Buffalo Soldiers”) were quartered here until the early twentieth century, protecting border communities from border unrest. As in Brownsville in 1906, black soldiers at Ringgold endured prejudice and discrimination that led to an outbreak of racial violence in 1899. In 1944, the army closed the historic fort when they sent the 124th Cavalry to Burma during World War II.
At the heart of historic Fort Ringgold stands the original Commandant’s Quarters. The house dates to the 1850’s. During the Civil War the house saw Union and Confederate troops alternately abandon and then re-occupy the post. From its south-facing front porch, soldiers watched steamboats coming up the Rio Grande, and surveyed the distant Mexican landscape beyond it. Today, low trees mark the original bluff along the river, which shifted away many years ago. One famous guest was Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee, the U.S. Army officer who later became the Confederate general. He visited Ringgold Barracks in 1856 for court-martial duty, and again in 1860, while dealing with the aftermath of Juan Cortina’s raid at La Bolsa Bend. In the field Lee usually preferred to sleep in his tent, however, as a guest of the post commandant, he may have shared quarters in this house, giving rise to its popular name, “Robert E. Lee House”. The house is currently occupied by the “Robert E. Lee House Museum.”
Situated at the farthest inland point for steamboat navigation on the Rio Grande, the city of Roma became a major center in the movement of cotton from the interior of Texas during the Civil War. Bales of cotton were transferred from wagons to boats in the town center and then shipped down the officially neutral river to the Mexican port of Bagdad where it was legally exported to manufacturers in Europe. This trade was crucial in financing the Confederate war effort. After the war, Roma continued to be a river trading center until the 1880s, when lowered river levels prevented commercial navigation and the city fell into obscurity. Because of this economic downturn, however, much of the historic architecture has been preserved, including numerous sites that were important during the Civil War era. One such structure is the Rodriguez House in the Wharf Area at the corner of Juarez and Portscheller Streets. During the Civil War, this building served as a warehouse for the cotton traffic moving down the river. Nearby, in the Plaza Area, is the Leocadia Garcia House which was built by Swedish immigrant John Vale, the upper floor of which was a residence and the lower floor a mercantile business during the Civil War era. At the other end of the Plaza is Our Lady of Refuge Roman Catholic Church, which was built during the mid-1850s and was the spiritual center for the town during the tumultuous period when Roma played such a key role in the Civil War struggle. The Roma Historic District was enrolled in the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1993.
USCT United States Colored Troops
Early in 1863, Abraham Lincoln observed: “The colored population is the great available yet unavailed of force for restoring the Union.” Two months later the War Department issued General Order #143 which sanctioned the creation of the United States Colored Troops (USCT).Three regiments of the USCT entered the Rio Grande Valley in the fall of 1864. Encamped at Brazos Santiago, a detachment of the 62nd Infantry fought Confederates at the Battle of Palmito Ranch on May 13, 1865. Two weeks later, on May 30, the 62nd, along with other U.S. Army units, moved into Brownsville. By May 1865, nearly 16,000 USCT veterans of the 25th Corps arrived at Brazos Santiago from City Point, Virginia, and were quickly dispersed to Forts Brown at Brownsville, Ringgold Barracks at Rio Grande City, Fort McIntosh at Laredo, and Fort Duncan at Eagle Pass, as well as to smaller posts where they were assigned to prevent former Confederates from establishing their defeated government and army in Mexico. Later, the USCT, along with their successors the "buffalo soldiers"—as they were called by Plains Indians—patrolled the border to stop ongoing violence in Mexico from spilling into the United States, and to discourage bandits and Indians from attacking civilian communities. The black soldiers made a fine adjustment to the hot desert terrain and diverse culture of the Valley, as explained by Sergeant Major Thomas Boswell of the 116th: "If our regiment stays here any length of time we will all speak Spanish, as we are learning very fast." The last USCT regiment, the 117th U.S. Colored Infantry, left the Rio Grande in July 1867.