|
HISTORY OF CORSICANA, TEXAS
Corsicana was established in 1848 to serve as the
county seat of newly-established Navarro County. José
Antonio Navarro,qv
a hero of the Texas Revolutionqv
after whom the county was named, was given the honor
of naming the new town; he suggested Corsicana after
the island of Corsica, the birthplace of his parents.
David R. Mitchell, an early area settler, donated 100
acres for a townsite, and with the assistance of Thomas
I. Smith, platted the land and began selling lots. The
new town was centered near a log tavern built in 1847
and owned and operated by Rev. Hampton McKinney. The
first courthouse, a two-room log structure, was constructed
in 1849, and served as a church, meeting hall and civic
center until a new frame building was constructed in
1853. The first school, taught by Mack Elliot and a
man named Lafoon, opened in the old courthouse in 1847,
and a short time later the Corsicana Female Literary
Instituteqv began
operating. Within a few years of the town's founding,
a large number of mercantile establishments opened on
and around the courthouse square, and new brick courthouse-a
symbol of the town's growing prosperity-was erected
in 1858. The first newspaper, the Prairie Blade,
was founded in 1855; it was replaced by the Express
in 1857, which in turn was replaced by the Observer
on the eve of the Civil War.qv
By 1850 Corsicana's population had already grown to
some 1,200, 300 of whom were reportedly black slaves.
Not surprisingly given the town's large number of slaveholders,
Corsicanans supported Breckinridge over the Fusionist
slate of candidates in the presidential election of
1860; and in February 1861, when had the election was
held on the secession issue, the vote was almost unanimous,
213 in favor and only three opposed. At outbreak of
the war in April 1861 townspeople held a mass demonstration
on the courthouse square in favor of the Confederacy,
and appeals were made for volunteers to serve in the
Confederate Army in Virginia. The first company, the
"Navarro Rifles" commanded by Capt. Clinton
M. Winkler,qv was
organized in August 1861; four additional companies
were organized in the town by 1863. After the war Union
soldiers, commanded by Capt. R. A. Chaffee, occupied
the town. Corsicana, however, witnessed little of the
bitter strife experienced by many Texas towns during
Reconstruction:qv
Chaffee enlisted a number of former slaves as policeman,
but avoided provoking the townspeople, and at one juncture
even came out in support of former Confederate officer
C. M. Winkler who had caned a Union soldier after the
man had insulted him. The town's economy suffered a
serious setback during the war and the early Reconstruction
years, but by the beginning of 1870s business had begun
to recover. In 1871 the town's first bank opened, operated
by two men named Adams and Leonard, and in 1874 Union
troops finally were withdrawn.
The greatest spur to the town's development, however,
came in November 1871 with the completion of the Houston
and Texas Central Railroad. The coming of the railroad
brought numerous settlers and new merchants, among them
the Sanger Brothers,qv
the Padgitts and others, who established stores near
the new depot on East Collin Street. The construction
of the Texas and St. Louis Railway (later the Cotton
Belt) in 1880 prompted further commercial development,
and by the mid-eighties Corsicana had become the leading
trading and shipping center for a large area of the
northern blacklands. In 1872 the town was incorporated
with a mayoral form of government, and in 1880 a public
school system was organized. The decade of the eighties
also saw the establishment of a city fire department,
a municipal water works, the installation of the first
telephone system, and the construction of the State
Orphans Home and the Odd Fellows Orphans Home. By 1885
Corsicana had a population of approximately 5,000, three
Presbyterian, a Catholic, a Baptist, and three Methodist
churches, as well as three blacks churches, an oil factory,
a gristmill, two banks, and four weekly newspapers-the
Courier, the Observer, the Messenger,
and the Journal; principal products included
cotton, grain, wool, and hides.
By the early 1890s the rapidly expanding city had
outgrown its water supply, and the following year civic
leaders formed the Corsicana Water Development Company
with the aim of tapping a shallow artesian well in the
area. Drilling began in the spring of 1894; but instead
of water, the company hit a large pocket of oil and
gas. The find-the first significant discovery of oil
west of the Mississippi River-led to Texas's first oil
boom: within a short time nearly every lot in the town
and in the surrounding area was under lease, and wells
were being drilled within the city limits: five in 1896,
and fifty-seven the following year. The first oil refinery
in the state was built in 1897, and by 1898 there were
287 producing wells in the Corsicana field.qv
The oil find attracted numerous oil men from the East,
among them Edwy R. Brown,qv
H. C. Folger, W. C. Proctor, C. N. Payne, and J. S.
Cullinan,qv founder
of the Cullinan Oil Company, which later evolved into
the Magnolia Oil Company. The discovery of oil transformed
Corsicana from a regional agricultural shipping town
to an important oil and industrial center, spawning
a number of allied businesses, including the Johnston-Akins-Rittersbacher
shops (later known as American Well Prospecting Company),
producer of the newly-invented rotary drilling bits.
In 1900 Corsicana had grown to 9,313 inhabitants, with
three banks, twelve newspapers, eight hotels, forty-nine
retail stores, a cotton mill, thirty-two doctors, and
thirty-five saloons. The presence of the latter was
a cause of great concern to many Corsicanans and led
to a growing temperance movement in the city that culminated
in the passage of prohibition law in November 1904.
The closing of the saloons had some short-term benefits,
but bootleggers rapidly filled the gap, serving the
needs of the legions of oilfield workers.
The oil boom brought a new wave of prosperity to the
town. A new courthouse-the one still in use in 1990-was
completed in 1905, and in 1917 the Corsicana Chamber
of Commerce was founded. The decades after 1900 also
saw significant improvements in transportation. The
Corsicana Transit Company converted from mule-drawn
cars to electric trolleys in 1902; in 1912 the Trinity
and Brazos completed a line between Corsicana and Houston;
and in 1913 the Texas Electric Railroad instituted hourly
service to and from Dallas. In 1923 a second, even larger
oil deposit, the Powell oilfield, was discovered, unleashing
a new oil boom. Within a few months Corsicana's population
swelled to unprecedented heights; some estimates placed
the number of residents as high as 28,000 during the
peak months of the oil frenzy. New construction transformed
the face of the city, and street lights were installed
for the first time to control the increased traffic.
During the height of the Powell field boom 550 wells
in and around the city produced an estimated 354,000
barrels per day. As the boom subsided, the population
dropped-to 11,300 in 1925-but it rebounded at the end
of the decade, reaching 15,202 in 1930. With the onset
of the Great Depression in the early 1930s many Corsicanans
found themselves out of work. The number of rated businesses
declined from a high of 780 in 1931 to 500 in 1936.
Particularly hard hit was the cotton wholesale and processing
industry, which suffered from the combined effects of
falling prices and the boll weevil.qv
The oil industry helped to mitigate the worst effects
of the depression, however, and by the end of the decade
the Corsicana economy was already beginning to show
signs of a rebound. On the eve of World War IIqv
Corsicana had five banks, a daily newspaper (the Daily
Sun), three movie theaters, three hospitals, three
hotels, a cotton mill, a refinery, and two oil pumping
stations. The reported population in 1940 was 17,500,
of whom 77% were white and 23% black. Corsicana grew
again during the war. In 1942 Air Activities of Texas
opened a large flight training center where thousands
of pilots received basic training, and in 1942 Bethlehem
Steel took over the American Well Prospecting Plant,
expanding the production of rotary drills.
Corsicana's leading industries during the 1950s included
the Texas-Miller Products Company, a leading producer
of hats; the Oil City Iron Works; the Wolfe Brand Company,
producer of chili and tamales; several textile plants;
the Bethlehem Supply Company; and the Collin Street
Bakery,qv a leading
producer of fruitcakes. The latter, founded at the end
of the nineteenth century by German immigrant August
Weidmann and William Thomas McElwee, developed into
one of Corsicana's best known industries, shipping their
DeLuxe fruitcakes to all fifty states and 195 countries
around the world. The oil business, however, continued
to form the mainstay of the town's economy. Huge oil
profits fostered great wealth in Corsicana, and during
the early 1950s there were said to be at least twenty-one
millionaires in the town; the per capita income-$1,222
in 1953-was claimed to be the highest of any Texas city.
In 1956 a new oilfield was discovered in East Corsicana,
and within months 500 wells-nearly one in every backyard-had
been drilled.
Since that time Corsicana has experienced steady,
if not spectacular, growth. The population reached 20,750
in 1965 and 25,189 in 1991. The number of businesses
saw a sharp drop, from 550 in 1965 to 394 in the mid-1970s,
but the number rebounded, and in 1991 the town reported
485 businesses. The leading industries in 1991 included
oil and gas extraction, meat packing, fruit and vegetable
canning, the printing of business forms, and manufacture
of prepared foods, furniture, chemical and rubber products,
and oil field machinery.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Corsicana Chamber of Commerce, Facts
about Corsicana, Texas (Corsicana: Stokes Printing,
1935). C. L. Jester, Short History of Navarro County
and Corsicana (Austin: University of Texas Library,
1943). Annie Carpenter Love, History of Navarro County
(Dallas: Southwestern, 1933). Marker Files, Texas Historical
Commission, Austin. Carl Mirus, "A Short History
of the Corsicana Shallow Oil Field," Navarro
County Scroll, 1956. William Polk Murchison, Corsicana
in Civil War and Reconstruction Days (University
of Texas Bulletin 2546, December 8, 1925). William Polk
Murchison, The Early History of Corsicana (University
of Texas Bulletin 2746, December 8, 1927). Wyvonne Putman,
comp., Navarro County History (5 vols., Quanah,
Texas: Nortex, 1975-84). Alva Taylor, History and
Photographs of Corsicana and Navarro County (Corsicana,
Texas, 1959; rev. ed., Navarro County History and
Photographs, Corsicana, 1962). Vertical Files, Barker
Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin.
Christopher Long
- Recommended citation:
- "CORSICANA, TX." The Handbook of
Texas Online. <http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/CC/hec5.html>
|
