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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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