Corpus Christi, 1861-1865

The plaque gives Major A. M. Hobby one sentence, the charge that cleared the Federal howitzer from the bluff. He was in his mid-twenties. Alfred Marmaduke Hobby came to Texas from Georgia by way of Florida, ran a store at St. Mary's of Aransas, and in 1859 won the legislative seat that Henry Kinney vacated. He voted for secession, raised the troops that became the Eighth Texas Infantry in May 1862, and after the war went into business in Galveston. He wrote a life of David G. Burnet and died in Silver City, New Mexico, in 1881.

What the plaque says

Corpus Christi, 1861-1865 Near here on August 16 and 18, 1862, three Confederate artillery pieces held off four attacking Federal ships during the Civil War bombardment of Corpus Christi. The blockading squadron of Lieutenant J.W. Kittredge, U.S.N., had harrassed the southern coastal trade inside the offshore islands since February. It had gained control of Aransas Bay in July, halting water traffic in the shallow bays, and entered Corpus Christi Bay August 12. Women and children were evacuated during a forty-eight hour truce and the Confederates threw up breastworks for the artillery on the night of August 15. On August 16, the Federal ships and Confederate shore battery exchanged hundreds of shells before the Federals withdrew. The Federal ships returned August 18, landing sailors and a howitzer north of the Confederate battery. The sailors dragged the howitzer within range of the battery and began firing. Confederate infantry, led by Major A.M. Hobby, charged the Federal position. Captain James A. Ware's cavalry joined the assault, forcing the Federals to withdraw. A month later Kittredge was captured south of here at Flour Bluff while ashore with a detail. On November 17, 1863, Federal troops under General Nathaniel P. Banks captured Mustang Island to the east and held it seven months. By this time Confederate troops had been withdrawn from south Texas, making it possible for soldiers from the Federal garrison to visit Corpus Christi at will. They frequently returned to camp loaded with lumber torn from frame buildings, other objects of plunder, and on occasion, Union sympathizers. These depredations, a bitterly cold winter in 1863-1864, and a scarcity of food resulted in an exodus of local people. There was little left in Corpus Christi when the war ended. A memorial to Texans who served in the Confederacy. (1963)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.5 mi
  Corpus Christi's bayfront memorial to Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, the Tejano singer from this city, killed in 1995 at twenty-three, visited by about thirty thousand people a year.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 0.5 mi
  Philip Johnson's 1972 museum on the Corpus Christi bayfront, joined in 2006 by Ricardo Legorreta's Miller Wing, holding more than 2,000 works mostly from Texas and the Americas.
• Texas State Aquarium — 0.7 mi
  A nonprofit aquarium on the tip of Corpus Christi Beach built around the Gulf and the Caribbean, with the largest coastal wildlife rescue center in Texas behind the exhibits.
• USS Lexington Museum on the Bay — 0.8 mi
  An Essex-class carrier of 1943 moored off North Beach, the Blue Ghost that Tokyo Rose kept reporting sunk, and the Navy's training carrier for nearly three decades after.

More markers nearby

• Sidbury-Savage House — steps away
• Irishtown — 0.2 mi
• McCampell House — 0.2 mi
• Jalufka-Govatos House — 0.3 mi