8/16/1828: Irish colony founded in South Texas

[Craig Tx]

On this day in 1828, John McMullen and James McGloin received a contract from the Mexican government authorizing the two to introduce 200 families to an assigned territory along the left bank of the Nueces River.

The Irish-born empresarios went to New York in the summer of 1829 to recruit colonists, principally new Irish immigrants. They accompanied the first group of Irish colonists from New York to Texas on the Albion and the New Packet in October 1829. In October 1831 the colonists laid out a town on the east bank of the Nueces, which they called San Patricio de Hibernia (St. Patrick of Ireland). The original contract was considered suspended by the Law of April 6, 1830, but in 1834 the empresarios secured a four-year extension, and by the outbreak of the Texas Revolution a total of eighty-four titles had been issued.