Nuecestown Cemetery
Corpus Christi, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This burial ground served the original residents of the Nuecestown community. The settlement was established in 1852 by Col. Henry Lawrence Kinney (b. 1814) who owned a trading post at Corpus Christi, 13.5 miles southeast. Originally called "The Motts" because of a grove of large trees, it was later named for the nearby Nueces River. Land was deeded to the settlers by the H.L. Kinney Estate for use as a public cemetery. The earliest known grave is that of Elizabeth Beynon who died in Nuecestown on December 4, 1854, at the age of four. Her parents Benjamin and Elizabeth B. Beynon died the following year and are also buried here. Two citizens interred at this site, William Ball (1831-1897) and George Frank (1834-1904), were kidnapped by bandits in an 1875 raid on the community. Both men managed to escape their captors and returned to Nuecestown. Other graves include those of six confederate veterans of the civil war, one world War I veteran, and one victim of the 1919 hurricane. Nuecestown was once the site of a Stagecoach Inn, public ferry, meat packing plant, cotton gin, post office, school, general store, churches, and blacksmith shop, but only the cemetery remains.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
This cemetery is nearly all that remains of Nuecestown, a community established in 1852 by trader Col. Henry Lawrence Kinney on land he later deeded to settlers. First called "The Motts" for its grove of trees, the town once held a stagecoach inn, ferry, meat-packing plant, cotton gin, school, and churches. Its graves—Confederate veterans, a World War I soldier, a 1919 hurricane victim, and men kidnapped in an 1875 raid—trace the full arc of a frontier settlement that has otherwise vanished.
Why it matters
The burial ground is the last witness to a lost Texas coastal town, preserving the story of settlement, conflict, and everyday life along the Nueces frontier.
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Related people
- · Henry Lawrence Kinney
Related events
- · 1875 Nuecestown raid
- · 1919 hurricane
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Nuecestown Schoolhouse
Corpus Christi, TX
Nuecestown grew up along the Nueces River after Colonel Henry Lawrence Kinney's 1839 trading post seeded the settlement that became Corpus Christi. Its public school, established before 1885, was among the county's largest by 1893, and this one-room building — raised after two earlier schoolhouses burned — accommodated every grade under a single hipped roof. When district officials closed the school in 1913, its students moved to nearby Calallen, and the schoolhouse survived as one of the settlement's last relics.
Nuecestown Raid
Corpus Christi, TX
On March 26, 1875, amid Reconstruction-era tensions between Anglo settlers and Mexicans along the Nueces River, a band of raiders attacked farms and marched captives toward Nuecestown. When they reached Thomas and Mary Noakes's general store, they wounded a customer and burned the building, though the family escaped by hiding in defensive trenches and fleeing to the river. The raid ignited waves of retaliatory violence in which many innocent Mexicans were killed, and it took Texas Rangers to restore order to the Nueces Strip.
Nuecestown (4 Miles North)
Corpus Christi, TX
Henry L. Kinney, founder of Corpus Christi, laid out Nuecestown in 1852 at the first ferry crossing on the Nueces River, luring English and German immigrants with cheap land and cattle. Nicknamed "The Motts" for its clumps of trees, the town gained a hotel, a packery, and one of the county's earliest cotton gins, and after the Civil War became a rendezvous for cattle drovers pointing longhorns north. On Good Friday 1875 raiders plundered and burned much of the settlement; when the railroad bypassed it around 1905, Nuecestown withered, and its post office closed in 1927.
Angelita (Littlest Angel)
Odem, TX
Angelita was one of several rural communities that sprang up in San Patricio County after the Civil War, its 1880s schoolhouse serving as the heart of local life. When the St. Louis, Brownsville, and Mexico Railroad arrived in 1904, a town was platted and its depot became a shipping point for cattle and crops. But when the post office and school moved to nearby Odem in 1916, Angelita dwindled and finally disappeared.