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 inhabitants 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 evolved 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 Railroad that
helped move animals and other trade
items to the area. Sheep
ranching was very big in Duval County
until a "mysterious plague" killed the
sheep (Handbook of Texas Online, Duval
County, Texas). President Grover
Cleveland eliminated 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.
