| Kleberg and nearby counties were the scene of a little known drama in North American
history. In 1568, English privateer John Hawkins suffered grave damage to his fleet in a raid on a Spanish coastal
town in Central America. One of his ships sank, and the others were so badly damaged that there was not room aboard
for the entire crew to make the trip back to England. The ever-resourceful Hawkins put 114 sailors ashore just
south of the mouth of the Rio Grande. Most of the castaways were lost to history, but David Ingram, Richard Brown
and Richard Twide walked first to Canada and then to the Atlantic coast, where they were picked up in October 1569
by a French ship and returned to England. |
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Kleberg County was created from Nueces
County in 1913 and organized in that same year. It was named for Robert Justice Kleberg, an 1880 graduate of the
University of Virginia, lawyer, friend of Capt. Richard King, and founder of the 825,000 acre King Ranch. After
King's death in 1885, his widow, Henrietta King, asked Robert Kleberg to help run the ranch of her. Kleberg married
Alice Gertrudis King, youngest daughter of Henrietta and Richard King. Their son, Robert Justice Kleberg Jr., managed
the ranch after his father's death in 1933 until his own death in 1974.
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The town of Kingsville was really
the creation of Henrietta King. anticipating a railroad to Brownsville, just after the turn of the century, she
designated a large piece of the ranch near the headquarters as incentive for rail construction. In 1903, when the
St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railroad was built along that line, the town of Kingsville was surveyed and laid
out by the King Ranch surveyor. Lots were sold, and eventually the town became a cattle-shipping point, railroad
repair facility and university town. Transcribed and Submitted to
Genealogy Trails by K. Torp
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Cities
and towns: Kingsville
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Unincorporated Towns
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Riviera
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Loyola Beach
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Ricardo
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Vattmann
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ONLINE DATA
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Mockingbird
State Bird
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