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In January 1984, the Irish Cultural House, Inc. was named to receive and renovate the McCampbell House at a location, which corresponds to the former center of "Old Irish Town" in Corpus Christi. Since that time, the Irish Culutral House, Inc. has grown in membership and interest. The House, located at Heritage Park, is decorated in period furnishings and houses the Bishop Drury Chapel and Monsignor Higgins Irish research library. The Irish Cultural House, Inc. promotes Irish-American tradition and culture to all area citizens.
Irish in South Texas
Natives of Ireland were among the first settlers in Spanish-ruled Texas, and the story of the Irish in Texas is in many ways coincident with the founding of the republic and the development of the state.
James Hewetson and James Power, along with John McMullen and James McGloin, were the first Irishmen to receive empresario contracts from Mexico, successfully settling the areas now comprising Refugio and San Patricio counties. Hewetson accompanied Stephen F. Austin to Texas on his first trip in 1821, and many Irishmen were counted in Austins Old Three Hundred. De Leons colony at Victoria also included several Irish families, and it should be noted that all of these contracts, except that to McMullen and McGloin, called for the settlement of Mexican as well as Irish families, specifically Catholics.
Empresarios James McGloin and James McMullen founded San Patricio in 1829 after they received permission from the Mexican government on August 16, 1828 to settle 200 Irish Catholics in Texas. Surveyor William ODocharty had laid out a townsite four leagues square, called Villa De San Patricio de Hibernia in honor of Irelands patron saint.
When the Texas Legislature demarked San Patricio County on March 17, 1836, San Patricio was designated the county seat. In the 1880s San Patricio had several churches, schools, cotton gins, a gristmill, and a population of 200. St. Josephs Convent, a school for girls, and St. Pauls Academy for boys were established in 1876.
During the days of the republic the two colonies were on the frontier that saw the worst possible hardships for settlers. In the Texas Revolution such Irishmen as Francis Moore, Jr., John Joseph Linn, Thomas William Ward and the four empresarios named above all played important roles. James Power used his influence to seat Sam Houston at the Convention of 1836.
Eleven Irishmen died at the battle of the Alamo and fourteen were among those with James W. Fannin, Jr. at the Goliad Massacre. Appropriately, Refugio and San Patricio counties were among the first established in Texas after the revolution; the date was March 17, 1836, Saint Patricks Day.
The descendants of generations who had long fought and died for their civic and religious liberties, the Irish were quicker than most to recognize incursions upon their rights and to defend against them. In 1980 572,732 Texans described themselves as of Irish descent. The Irish were third among those claiming European ancestry, following English and German.
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