Name: Beeville, Texas
Address: Beeville, TX

The Bee Behind Beeville Was a Man RoadyGoat

Here is the honest story behind the name, and it will surprise you. Beeville is not named for the honeybee. The town, and the whole county around it, were named for a man whose last name happened to be Bee. Barnard Elliott Bee Senior was a South Carolina lawyer who came to Texas right after the battle of San Jacinto and threw himself into the young Republic. He served as secretary of the treasury, then secretary of war, and later secretary of state, holding three of the most important jobs in the new nation of Texas. When the Texas Legislature carved out a new county in eighteen fifty-seven, they honored him by calling it Bee County, and the county seat took the name Beeville. So every time you see a cartoon honeybee on a sign around here, remember it is really a nod to a statesman, not the stinger. That said, the town has fully embraced its buzzing mascot, and honestly, who could blame them. It is one of the friendliest name mix-ups in all of South Texas.

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A Bee Named Stonewall Jackson RoadyGoat

The man Beeville honors had a son who put four words into the history books that almost every American has heard. Barnard Elliott Bee Junior, son of the Barnard Bee this county is named for, grew up in a prominent Charleston family and became a soldier. On a July morning in eighteen sixty-one, in the very first major battle of the Civil War near a Virginia creek called Bull Run, Bee Junior looked across the smoke at a fellow general holding his ground and shouted to rally his own wavering men. He said, there is Jackson standing like a stone wall. That is the moment Thomas Jackson became Stonewall Jackson, a nickname that stuck for the rest of American memory. Historians still argue over whether Bee meant it as pure praise or as frustration that Jackson would not advance, and we may never fully know, because Bee was mortally wounded that same day and died soon after. So the family name stamped on this South Texas town is tied, by blood, to one of the most famous nicknames in the country. A small-town name with a very long reach.

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The Honeybee Dance That Gives Directions RoadyGoat

Since the name of this town keeps pointing us at bees, here is a genuinely amazing bit of science about the real honeybee, offered purely as a fun tangent and not as the origin of the name. A honeybee that finds a great patch of flowers flies home and gives her hivemates turn-by-turn directions by dancing. It is called the waggle dance. She runs in a straight line while wiggling her body, then loops back in a figure eight, over and over. The direction she waggles, measured against straight up on the honeycomb, tells the other bees the angle to fly relative to the sun. And the length of that waggling run tells them how far. A longer waggle means a longer flight. An Austrian scientist named Karl von Frisch cracked this code and won a Nobel Prize for it in nineteen seventy-three. Think about that. A creature the size of your fingernail, with a brain smaller than a grain of rice, is running a working map-and-compass system on the dance floor. Next time you roll through a town named Beeville, you will know the little dancers behind the mascot are far smarter than they look.

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Beeville on the Poesta

1834

Long before Mexico granted land (1834) on Poesta Creek to the first settlers, Anne Burke and James Heffernan, savage Indians roamed this valley at will. Their colony, although successful at first, soon met disaster. In 1836 James Heffernan, his brother John, and John Ryan, who had planned to join Texas patriots at Goliad, were planting a crop in a field at this site when they were massacred by Comanches. Also killed was James' family, in his picket house upcreek. Bee County was organized in 1858 and named for Col. Barnard E. Bee, a Republic of Texas statesman. Soon after, choice of a county seat came into hot dispute. A site seven miles east, on Medio Creek, was chosen for "Beeville". But ten months later, voters made the 150-acre donation of Anne Burke "O'Carroll permanent county seat, on the banks on the Poesta. The new town, first called "Maryville" for Mary Heffernan (relative of those killed in 1836) was soon renamed Beeville. In its first decade, it had two stores, one saloon, and a blacksmith shop. First courthouse was built for $750 on west side of present square, 1860. First railroad came through, 1866, and a larger courthouse was soon built. After it burned, the present one was erected in 1913. (1967)

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Barnard Elliott Bee, Sr.

1836

Statesman, soldier and ambassador, Barnard Elliot Bee, Sr., was a significant figure during Texas’ years as a republic (1836-45). He was born in South Carolina to federal judge, Thomas Bee, and Susannah (Bulline) Bee. In 1809, he married Ann Wragg Fayssoux, with whom he had five daughters and two sons. Bee studied law, but never practiced, instead serving as a Colonel on the staff of South Carolina Governor James Hamilton. Bee moved his family to Texas in 1836, joining the Republic of Texas Army, which he served for several months until ordered to examine the coast to ascertain proper sites for the erection of forts. He left the army to become the Republic of Texas’ first Secretary of the Treasury. The next year, Bee became the Republic’s Secretary of War and in 1839, he was appointed as Minister Plenipotentiary to Mexico. As a diplomat, he sought Mexico’s recognition of Texas Independence, though the proposal was rejected. Later that year, Bee became Minister Plenipotentiary to the United States; in that role, he negotiated with Daniel Webster and settled the 1843 treaty by which the U.S. recognized Texas. Bee also entered into talks with Spain, negotiating free trade between Texas and Cuba. Barnard Bee retired from public life to Brazoria. Because of his expansionist view of Texas, he returned to South Carolina after the 1845 annexation, where he lived in Pendleton until his death. One of Col. Bee’s sons, Hamilton P. Bee, was instrumental in the naming of Bee County (est. 1857) after his father. Today, Barnard E. Bee, Sr.’s legacy continues to impact Texas through his diplomatic and military contributions. Both Bee County and Beeville, Texas honor him with their names.

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Beeville Post Office

1917

The first post office was established in Beeville in 1859, the year after the town's founding. The 1918 building was the first Beeville post office constructed on Federal property - previous locations were county- or privately-owned. The building is a significant example of small town post office designs produced by the U.S. Treasury Department in the early twentieth century. Soon after construction began, a tragic incident occurred with great legal implications. J.P. Hermes and Robert B. Brown, both contracted to remove excavated dirt from the foundation, were hostile towards each other, and Brown began carrying a gun to the worksite for protection. On May 7, 1917, before a crowd of witnesses, Hermes threatened Brown with a knife, and Brown pulled out his pistol and shot and killed Hermes then walked to the courthouse and turned himself in. Brown was found guilty of homicide, but the case was later appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In an opinion delivered by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, the court ruled that Brown had acted in self defense, thus establishing the right to use lethal force when facing a lethal attack. The 1918 post office is a one-story brick and limestone building with a raised basement. The design features Classical Revival style architecture and symmetrical facades. The primary entrance includes a pedimented portico on four Doric columns and a recessed doorway topped by a semicircular fanlight. The flat roof includes a cast stone stringcourse and brick parapet with regularly-spaced wooden balustrades. In 1961 a compatible wing was added to the north and west sides of the original floor plan. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2009

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Medical Quackery

1836

Postponing death, relieving pain, and making money are the principal motives undergirding medical quackery. Most human beings will do almost anything to prolong their existence or to relieve the suffering of disease. Some will do almost anything to exploit these desires by selling what they claim are pain-killing remedies or life-prolonging nostrums. During the days of the Republic of Texas , Texas newspapers regularly advertised Burnham's Drops, Lin's Balm of China, Connel's Pain Extractor, Christie's Galvanic Belt, and many other alleged panaceas. "Thousands are daily quacked , out of comfort, out of temper, out of health, out of money, out of liberty, out of their senses, and finally into their graves," declared one Texan. Humbuggery abounded. The vast territory of Texas made it impossible for trained doctors to serve all families, and there was no convincing evidence that trained doctors provided remedies that were any better than the cheaper nostrums offered by entrepreneurial quacks. Saddlebags easily held pills, or bottles of tonics that often contained large amounts of alcohol and, in some cases, morphine. By the time of the Civil War , ads in the Galveston Weekly News touted Hostetter's Stomach Bitters; or Dr. Leroy's French Specific for All Affections of the Urinary Organs, and those Affections Only; or Daly's Aromatic Valley Whiskey for Medicinal Purposes; or Brown's Bronchial Troches; or Sanford's Family Blood Purifying Pills; or Old Sachem Bitters and Wigwam Tonic. Texans imbibed gallons of the tonics and ate tons of the pills, as ads for these and other nostrums appeared again and again in newspapers throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. Indian Medicine shows were popular throughout the South for more than a generation, and during the 1880s Charlie Bigelow, a Bee County farmer, staged one of the greatest of all of these. He sold vast quantities of Kickapoo Indian Sagwa as a tonic for indigestion, constipation, rheumatism, and almost any other symptom or disease. His traveling show included Indian dances, trapeze artists, trained dogs, fancy shooting, and a mock Indian marriage ceremony. Those enjoying the free show usually thanked Bigelow's troupe by purchasing a one-dollar bottle of the tonic. William Radam, an Austin gardener, was another popular medical huckster in Texas. His solution, first offered in 1887, exploited a popular belief that germs caused all diseases; his mixture supposedly exterminated these germs. Exclaimed Radam, "I treated all my patients with the same medicine, just as in my garden I would treat all weeds alike." Radam made so much money that he left his Austin gardens for a New York City mansion overlooking Central Park. During the twentieth century, Texans spent thousands of dollars in support of three of America's most prominent quacks: John R. Brinkley , Norman Baker, and Harry M. Hoxsey. In 1919, Brinkley acquired a license to practice medicine in Texas. He eventually became famous as the "goat-gland doctor," a self-labeled specialist in sexual rejuvenation. Hundreds of patients flocked to Del Rio to receive "goat-gland" transplants and thereby sustain Brinkley's millionaire manner of living. In Laredo, Norman Baker lured patients to his hospital with boasts of cancer sure-cures and, in Dallas, Harry Hoxsey for twenty-five years offered similar cures to desperate patients. Fears about the practices and fees of professional doctors; hopes for miracle cures, everlasting life, and cosmetic perfection; and the appeals of fanciful showmen and advertising tycoons who know how to exploit these fears and hopes all sustain medical quackery. Today's television ads focus especially on the elderly and those with chronic diseases, daily urging them to waste their money for nutritional supplements, wrinkle creams, and other scientifically unproven substances. In the 1980s Americans probably wasted more than $10 billion annually on such quack nostrums.

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Beeville, TX

1858

Beeville, the county seat of Bee County, is on Poesta Creek at the intersection of U.S. Highways 181 and 59 in central Bee County. The site of the community was settled by the Burke, Carroll, and Heffernan families in the 1830s. Several of the settlers were killed by Indians during the early years of the settlement. When Bee County was organized in 1858, the county seat was founded at a site on the east bank of Medio Creek seven miles east of the current site of the community. This first county seat was known as Beeville-on-the-Medio. This location proved inconvenient, and in 1859 Ann Burke Carroll, Patrick Carroll, and Patrick Burke donated land for a townsite at the current location of Beeville. The first name for the new community was Maryville, after a member of the Heffernan family who had survived the Indian massacre. Eight months later the county commissioners changed the name to Beeville, and for some time the court's minutes referred to Beeville-on-the-Medio and Beeville-on-the-Poesta. In 1857 G. B. McCollom operated an inn in the new community. George W. McClanahan opened the first store, and a post office was established in 1859. In 1860 the first courthouse was erected and the Beeville Masonic Lodge built a second story for its meetings. The community contributed a company of men to the Confederate Army during the Civil War . In 1878 a second courthouse was built, which burned down in 1911. A third, brick building was erected in 1912 and was subsequently remodeled in 1942 and 1948-50. The first jail was built in 1874; a second was built in 1893 and renovated in 1979. Beeville's growth was spurred by the arrival of two railroads in the 1880s. In 1880 the community was still small, with an estimated 300 inhabitants, two general stores, two hotels, a gin and gristmill, and a blacksmith shop. In 1886 the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway built through the community, connecting it with Corpus Christi and San Antonio, and in 1889 this railroad was joined by the Gulf, Western Texas and Pacific, building southwest from Victoria. These railways were later acquired by the Southern Pacific, which ceased local operations in the 1970s. By 1890 Beeville had an estimated 1,000 inhabitants. William O. McCurdy launched the first newspaper, the Beeville Bee , in 1886, and the Picayune joined it in 1890. The two papers were combined to form the Bee-Picayune in 1928. Beeville incorporated for the first time in 1890, but the corporation was dissolved the following year. In 1900 the population had grown to 2,311. The town received electricity and municipal water in 1903 and sewerage in 1910. Beeville was incorporated for the second time in 1908, with a mayor-aldermanic government. Residents opted for a commission government in 1912, then changed to a council-manager government in 1951. The town continued to grow during the early decades of the twentieth century. In 1920 the population reached 3,062, and the following year the streets were paved. The discovery of oil and gas in the county in 1929 led to the building of several large office buildings in Beeville; the Union Producing Company had its district offices there from 1930 until the 1970s. Between 1920 and 1930 the population increased by more than 60 percent, reaching 4,806. In spite of the boost given the local economy by the oil industry, Beeville was hard hit by the Great Depression in the 1930s. A WPA office was opened in the community, and government-funded projects improved city streets. The population grew to 6,789 in 1940, the year the Beeville Chamber of Commerce was chartered. During World War II Beeville benefited from the construction of the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Chase Field, which eventually became the Naval Air Station, Beeville . The base trained naval aviators from 1943 through 1946, then was temporarily deactivated. In response to the demands of the Korean War the field was reopened in 1952 and continued to train pilots until its closing in 1992. The

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Dougherty, James Robert

1895

James Robert Dougherty, attorney, oilman, and philanthropist, the son of Robert and Rachel (Sullivan) Dougherty, was born in San Patricio, Texas, on August 27, 1871. He was certified to teach at the age of sixteen and took a position in Webb County. Two years later he enrolled at Saint Louis University, after which he attended the University of Texas in Austin. He studied law in the offices of Lon C. Hill and James B. Wells and was admitted to the bar on March 4, 1895. He went to Beeville to practice law, and later his brother, J. Chris Dougherty, joined him to form the law firm of Dougherty and Dougherty. James Dougherty helped to establish the legal precedent of private ownership of minerals in the beds of nonnavigable rivers. He dealt in livestock all his life. He developed a silver mine in Durango, Mexico, in 1916. He was instrumental in discovering a number of South Texas oilfields, including the Tom O'Conner, Greta, Pettus, Flour Bluff, Refugio, Dougherty, and several others. With Dr. W. E. Hewit, he formed the oil company of Hewit and Dougherty, which operated over a wide area of South and West Texas. Dougherty spoke Spanish fluently and was a student of Latin, Greek, and French. He furnished capital to a publishing company in New York for translations from Latin and Greek. He was elected first lieutenant by a company of volunteers during the Spanish-American War. He married Genevieve Tarlton on April 24, 1911, and they had four children. He was a member of the board of regents of Texas A&I University at Kingsville for ten years and a member of the boards of regents of Incarnate Word and Our Lady of the Lake colleges in San Antonio. A decade before his death, he and his wife established the Dougherty Foundation as an aid to youths for obtaining an education. Dougherty was a Catholic and a fourth-degree Knight of Columbus. He was made a knight of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (1947) and of the Order of Malta (1948), as well as of the Equestrian Order of the Holy Sepulchre (1948). In 1937 the Doughertys donated $12,000 to finance the construction of a new St. Joseph's School in Beeville. Later they built the James R. Dougherty, Jr., Recreation Center in memory of their son, who was killed in action during World War II . Dougherty died on July 8, 1950, in Corpus Christi and was buried in Beeville.

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Beeville, Texas

Music in Beeville

Songs About Beeville

Artists From Beeville

Rivers & Roads in Song near Beeville

History of Beeville

The Bee Behind Beeville Was a Man RoadyGoat

A Bee Named Stonewall Jackson RoadyGoat

The Honeybee Dance That Gives Directions RoadyGoat

Beeville on the Poesta

Barnard Elliott Bee, Sr.

Beeville Post Office

Medical Quackery

Beeville, TX

Dougherty, James Robert

Everything Near Beeville