Texas Coastal Bend Collection

History

The Irish immigration in the early 1830s coincided with the Texas Revolution in 1836 and launched the land-hungry Irish toward an immense accumulation of what was then considered worthless land. When the cattle industry boomed post-Civil War the influx of freed slaves coupled with the established Mexican ranching traditions and the unique climate of the coastal bend created vast ranches that supported an unusually isolated lifestyle lasting into the 1960s.

In many ways, the earliest Irish colonists came to personify the Texas myth of empire, stoicism, and survival. Their ranches were almost exclusively populated with Black and Mexican cowhands and this tripartite culture's connection to the land is the source of a valuable wisdom that we seek to preserve and pass on through our future website.

The TCBC website will be the repository for 10,000 photographs, 800 hours of audio interviews, four books, maps, videos, family papers, genealogies, and so on. While most of the assets will exist in their raw form we will selectively create short thematic pieces to illustrate the breadth of knowledge held in our material. Our website will seek to serve two constituencies; the academic researcher as well as the layman with an interest in cultural history.