John Valentine Singer

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From Padre Balli to the preacher By Murphy Givens Wednesday, February 10, 2010 CORPUS CHRISTI — In 1804, a priest established a ranch on Isla de Corpus Christi. Padre Jose Nicolas Balli got a grant from the Spanish crown for 51,000 acres, a third of the island, which cost him about $40. He got the price down from $50 by pointing out there was no freshwater on the island. Padre Balli’s brother, Juan Jose Balli, had land grants around San Salvador Tel Tule, the salt deposits that covered parts of what would later be Willacy, Hidalgo and Kenedy counties. Other Ballis had vast tracts along the Rio Grande. Padre Balli established Rancho de la Santa Cruz 27 miles from the southern tip. Buildings and corrals were built of driftwood. Balli stayed close to his parish in Matamoros and left running the ranch to his brother’s son, Juan Jose Balli II. The Ballis had 1,000 cattle on the island by 1811; the island began to be called Padre Balli’s island. The padre died in 1829. His nephew ran the ranch for another 15 years, leaving after a hurricane hit on Aug. 4, 1844. In 1847, John V. Singer shipwrecked on the island. Singer was the older brother of Merritt Singer, who invented the Singer sewing machine. John, his wife and two kids were sailing to the mouth of the Rio Grande on the “Alice Sadell” when they were caught in a storm and washed ashore on Padre Balli’s Island. The Singers turned into a Robinson Crusoe family. They grew vegetables, ran cattle, and searched the beaches for salvage. The Singer homestead was on the site of Balli’s old ranch. In 1851, Mrs. Singer (Johanna Shaw, of a wealthy Louisiana family) bought part of the island from Balli heirs (the ownership of the island has long been in dispute). The Singers renamed the ranch Las Cruces. Army Maj. William Chapman and his wife Helen visited the Singers. Helen Chapman wrote (in “Letters from Brownsville”) that they went in a boat and “carried a table, dishes, meat, sugar and tea ... We found Mr. Singer waiting with a little kind of handcart to which was harnessed a little old donkey . . . Their house had been built by joint labor of their hands and all their furniture consisted of wood thrown upon the shore. The children are beautiful and perfectly healthy. The wife is a great, strong, muscular looking, good humored woman; she helps him regularly with his outdoor work.” John was much older than his wife; Helen Chapman noted he had already had one family and was starting another (John and Johanna would have six children on the island). Singer had left the family home in New York to follow the sea. On a visit to New York City, he ran into his brother Merritt, who said he had an idea for making a sewing machine, but needed $500; John gave him the money. John later got a shipment at Brownsville, a Singer sewing machine, perhaps the first to reach Texas. By 1860, Merritt’s firm was selling sewing machines around the world. He informed John that he would get $150,000 in return for the $500 loan. Not that John Singer needed it. The 1860 census showed him to be wealthy, with property valued at $110,000, a substantial sum then. With the outbreak of the Civil War, Texas officials invited Singer to move off the island. They considered him, a Yankee, a security risk living close to Brazos Santiago Pass. Singer buried a cache of jewelry, gold and silver worth $60,000 to $80,000 in a stone jar, between two scrubby live oaks, on the ranch. The family moved to Flour Bluff, where other Union sympathizers were sitting out the war. Federal troops garrisoned on Mustang Island ranged down the islands, foraging for wood to build winter huts. They tore down the Singer ranch buildings and slaughtered Singer’s cattle. When the war ended, Singer went to reclaim his treasure, but storms had changed the landscape. After Johanna died in 1866 and another hurricane in 1867 covered the ranch with sand, John gave up and left for Honduras. He died in Mississippi at an advanced age. About the time the Singers left, another family moved in. At the beginning of the war, a Baptist preacher from Alabama, Carey Curry, and family settled 17 miles below Corpus Christi Pass. Preacher Curry had two sons, Joe and Uriah (“Coot”) and two daughters with husbands and families. Their place was called the Curry Settlement or “The Settlement.” The book “Padre Island” said Carey Curry was known for being resourceful: “Not a piece of machinery was in the Settlement, not a manufactured tool, yet Mr. Curry made flues, mixing the mortar of sand and lime, contrived homemade implements, and even made his own ox-carts.” The family grew vegetables and found that the island often provided what was needed. One Curry story told of a shipwrecked man who thought he was dying. Walking on the beach, he found a bottle. It was filled with castor oil. He drank it — kill or cure. He soon recovered. After the war, a Yankee teacher named Lively taught school at the Settlement. One of the Curry children said, “Mr. Lively, I want to see your belly . . . ’cause Grandpa says it’s blue.” Other families lived around the Settlement, including the Woods, Dinns, Griffins, Lynes and Chapas. In 1874, a beef packing house was built next to a channel at Corpus Christi Pass. This part of the pass became known as Packery Channel. Men at the Settlement worked at the packing house. After it closed and Pat Dunn began his ranch, families at the Settlement drifted away. The Curry family held on until near the end of the 19th Century. In 1931, a Brownsville man found a site 27 miles up from the lower end of Padre. Buried in sand were pieces of timber held together with ship’s hardware. He found a box stuffed with 1802 Spanish doubloons, Belgian coins, Army sword handles, bullets from muzzleloading guns. It was supposed that this was the site of Padre Balli’s Santa Cruz Ranch and John Singer’s Las Cruces Ranch. They called it the Lost City. Murphy Givens is the retired Viewpoints Editor of the Caller-Times. E-mail:givens.murphy@gmail.com.

angelbaby4111 originally shared this on 17 Nov 2013

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