Duval
County is located in south central Texas and is bordered by Webb,
LaSalle, McMullen, Live Oak, Jim Wells, Brooks and Jim Hogg counties.
The county seat is San Diego and it is the biggest town,
population wise, in the Duval County. One of the earlier
habitants of Duval County were the Venado Indians which are part of the
hunters and gathers of the Coahuiltecan tribe that were in the area
during the 1700s. The Coahuiltecan's were forced to move from
the area with competing tribes of Apache and Commanche Indians as well
as by the Spanish who moved into the area for exploration.
Julián Flores and his son, Ventura, obtained the deeds to the San Diego
de Arriba and San Diego de Abajo grants in 1812 from the Spanish
government which totaled eighty leagues. Ventrua sold a
portion of land from San Diego Creek to Pablo Pérez in 1848 where Pérez
established Perezville which would later be called San Diego.
A road was built from Corpus Christi to Laredo in 1848 by
Henry Lawrence Kinney and William Leslie Cazneau which went through San
Diego.
"In 1858
the Texas legislature formed Duval County, which originally embraced
1,887 square miles, from parts of Nueces, Live Oak, and Starr counties.
County organization did not occur until eighteen years later. The
county was named for
Burr
H. Duval, who fought in the Texas Revolution and was killed
in the Goliad Massacre.
qqv Duval County has
always been somewhat off the beaten track of development" (Handbook of
Texas Online, Duval County, Texas).
A church was built in 1867 by Father Claude Jaillet, which was the only
church between Corpus Christi and the Rio Grande in which one could
worship. Duval County evovled into a place that would be
considered "wild and dangerous place" since Alberto Garza, an outlaw,
and sity of his men operated horse-stealing and cattle skinning in 1873
(Handbook of Texas Online, Duval County, Texas). In April
1878, Indians from Apache, Lipan, Kickapoo, and Seminole pillaged
ranches and murdered people on their way through Webb and Duval
counties. This event was known as the "Great Raid of '78" and
were never apprehended.
"A
legend of more recent vintage holds that Francisco
(Pancho) Villa may have buried two saddlebags of silver in
the area. The county was finally organized in 1876, and San Diego was
selected as the county seat. James O.
Luby, the first county judge, dominated Duval County
politics for most of the next three decades. When Luby defected from
the Democratic to the Republican party,
he almost singlehandedly made the GOP an important factor in Duval
County politics. The battles between the Botas
and Guaraches ("boots" and "sandals," or Republicans and
Democrats) were often ferocious" (Handbook of Texas Online, Duval
County, Texas).
Luby was also known for moving to the area after the Civil War to start
sheep ranching with Walter W. Meek. Sr. When the railroad was
built in Duval County and into Webb County, the sheep business started
to boom due to the Texas Mexican Railraod that helped move animals and
other trade items to the area. Sheep ranching was very big in
Duval County until a "mysterious plauge" killed the sheep (Handbook of
Texas Online, Duval County, Texas). President Grover
Cleveland elimated a tariff on imported wool which caused the sheep
ranching industry to snowball in the area.
Corruption was widely known in Duval County and part of that history is
captured by Martin Donell Kohout in his artcle from The Handbook of
Texas Online and is below:
"In the
late nineteenth century Anglos made up less than 10 percent of the
county's population but controlled most of the county's trade and
politics. Ironically, it was an Anglo, a former cowhand and
schoolteacher named Archer Parr,
who turned this imbalance to his advantage by soliciting the Mexican Americans, whom his fellow
Anglo politicians had traditionally ignored. These people, many of whom
were desperately poor, gave up their political autonomy in exchange for
county jobs and occasional cash disbursements of questionable legality
from the county treasury. This arrangement, which one Duval County
official called "frankly corrupt but fully benevolent," allowed Parr,
and later his son George B. Parrqv, a free hand
in running the affairs of the county, and became a way of life there.
Parr was elected to the Duval County Commissioners Court in 1898, but
he did not become the dominant figure in local politics until the
assassination of the Duval County Democratic chieftain John Cleary in
1907. By the time Parr was elected to the state Senate in 1914, his
control over the affairs of the county was virtually absolute. Yet his
power did not go unchallenged. Duval County lost a portion of its land,
including the town of Hebbronville, when Jim Hogg County was formed in
1913. Shortly thereafter, Parr made two additional attempts to divide
Duval County.
Through the establishment of Pat Dunn and Lanham counties he apparently
hoped to increase the patronage jobs and tax revenue at his disposal,
but he was foiled both times. Between 1912 and 1918 Ed C. Lasaterqv,
a wealthy South Texas rancher, and C. W. Robinson, the Duval County
Democratic chairman, both attempted to bring Parr down, but neither
succeeded. In 1918 D. W. Glasscock, with the support of Governor William P. Hobby and the Texas
Rangersqv, came close to ending Parr's political
career. But Parr ultimately prevailed after his fellow senators decided
not to examine too closely the irregularities that had characterized
Parr's dubious electoral victory over Glasscock. The Parrs
found it expedient to keep the people of Duval County dependent on
their largesse, and so placed little emphasis on the state of education
in the county. Duval County's 25.3 percent illiteracy rate in 1930 was
the sixth highest in the state. Oil was discovered in the county in
1905, but not until a wildcat well came in near Freer in October 1928
did a full-scale oil boom occur.
By 1938 Duval County ranked third among the state's 254 counties in oil
production, and by 1940 the population of the county reached an
all-time high of 20,565. At that time, however, fewer than 7 percent of
residents over the age of twenty-five had completed high school. George
Parr, the "Duke of Duval," and his cronies became more deeply
entrenched than ever, despite his imprisonment in 1936 for tax evasion.
Duval County's reputation for political corruption peaked with Lyndon B. Johnson's election to the
United States Senate in 1948. The famous Box 13, which gave Johnson his
eighty-seven-vote victory, was actually in Jim Wells County, but the
manipulation of the returns was almost certainly directed by Parr. In
the 1900 presidential election Duval County went Republican, but since
that time, thanks largely to the efficiency of the Parr machine and the
customary tendency of Hispanics to vote for Democrats, the county has
delivered majorities to the Democratic
party on the order of 94 percent in 1916, 98 percent in
1932, 95 percent in 1936, 96 percent in 1940, 95 percent in 1944, 97
percent in 1948, and 93 percent in 1964. In fact, only once between
1916 and 1972 did the Democratic candidate receive less than 74 percent
of the vote in Duval County; that year, 1956, a mere 68 percent voted
Democratic. Even after the demise of the Parr machine in 1975 Democrats
continued to dominate. In the 1988 and 1992 presidential elections 82
percent of the county's voters cast ballots for the Democratic
candidate" (Handbook of Texas Online, Duval County, Texas).
For more information about the history of Duval County, please check
out the articles in the
County
History Section and the rest of the article by
Kohout
on the Handbook of
Texas Online site.
