The Mercer Family on Mustang Island
Port Aransas, Nueces County, Texas
Marker Inscription
THE MERCER FAMILY ON MUSTANG ISLAND ROBERT AINSWORTH MERCER (1799-1875) ARRIVED ON MUSTANG ISLAND CA. 1855. AFTER STARTING A SMALL SETTLEMENT, MERCER WAS APPOINTED NUECES COUNTY’S WRECK MASTER, WITH OVERSIGHT OF THE DISPOSITION OF VESSELS LOST CROSSING ARANSAS PASS. HIS SONS, JOHN (1840-1896) AND EDWARD (NED) (1842-?), SERVED AS ARANSAS PASS BAR PILOTS. IN 1880, JOHN BECAME THE FIRST KEEPER OF THE ARANSAS LIFE SAVING STATION, WHICH LATER BECAME THE U.S. COAST GUARD STATION THAT CONTINUES TODAY. THE ACTIVITIES OF THE MERCER FAMILY WERE DOCUMENTED IN EXHAUSTIVE JOURNALS FROM 1866 THROUGH 1877 AND THESE TEXTS WERE PRESERVED BY SUCCESSIVE MERCER DESCENDANTS, RECOGNIZING THE FAMILY’S INFLUENCE ON THE AREA’S HISTORY. 175 YEARS OF TEXAS INDEPENDENCE * 1836-2011
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Around 1855 Robert Ainsworth Mercer settled on Mustang Island and was appointed Nueces County's wreck master, overseeing the fate of ships lost while crossing the treacherous Aransas Pass. His sons served as bar pilots guiding vessels through the pass, and in 1880 John Mercer became the first keeper of the Aransas Life Saving Station—forerunner of the Coast Guard station still operating today. The family's meticulous journals from 1866 to 1877, preserved by their descendants, became a rare record of daily coastal life.
Why it matters
The Mercers embody the maritime settlers who made America's dangerous Gulf inlets navigable, turning shipwreck salvage and lifesaving into an enduring federal safety mission.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Robert Ainsworth Mercer
- · John Mercer
- · Edward (Ned) Mercer
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Mc Lester Family Cemetery
Rockport, TX
Tucked among hackberry, mesquite, and live oak on Texas's Coastal Bend, this family burying ground dates to the turn of the twentieth century, when Charles H. McLester—an engineer on the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad—and his wife Eliza inherited the land in 1903. The McLesters were among the vegetable farmers of the nearby Sparks Colony, and the first grave, dug in 1909, held their thirteen-year-old son Bennie. Generations of educators, city officials, and veterans followed, and descendants still tend the plot.
Site of West Portland
Portland, TX
After the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railroad reached this area in the 1880s, a 1908 land deal handed 14,000 acres to an Iowa promoter who mounted a huge advertising campaign, drawing trainloads of prospective buyers—mostly from Kansas—to settle West Portland. Mexican migrant workers cleared the mesquite and farmers worked the rich black soil, building a school that doubled as a community center and, in 1922, a cooperative cotton gin that became the heart of the district. The school consolidated with Taft in 1939, but descendants of the original settlers still own much of the land.
Chamberlain Cemetery
Kingsville, TX
At the turn of the 20th century, King Ranch owner Henrietta King and neighboring ranchers backed the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway to move cattle to market, and the new railroad town of Kingsville rose around its headquarters. In 1908 a cemetery association bought forty acres and opened Chamberlain Cemetery the next year, naming it for Henrietta's father, pioneer minister Hiram Chamberlain. It became the resting place of Henrietta and Captain King, railroad visionary Uriah Lott, and other builders of South Texas.
Clark Cemetery
Port Lavaca, TX
This burial ground served the Clark family of the vanished Chocolate community, named for nearby Chocolate Creek where Sylvanus Hatch and his brother Joseph settled in 1846. Residents raised cattle and horses, farmed, and worshipped at St. Paul's-on-the-Prairie, whose building also housed the school. In the mid-1850s John Clark arrived and built stock pens known as Clark's Station along the Indianola Railroad, letting area farmers ship crops and cattle to market; he deeded this cemetery in 1899.