Henry Lawrence Kinney

Before he sold Corpus Christi lots, Kinney had already watched a land boom collapse. Born in Pennsylvania in 1814, he followed his father to Illinois after his mother died in 1835 and, with his brother, speculated in land around Peru. The panic of 1837 and 1838 ruined the venture, and the brothers fled the state. Kinney turned up in Texas in 1838, near what became Brownsville, already calling himself Colonel, a title the Handbook of Texas cannot tie to any military service. He started over on the coast with the same business, land and credit.

What the plaque says

Henry Lawrence Kinney Known as the founder of Corpus Christi, Pennsylvania native Henry Lawrence Kinney (1814-1861) was trained to become a merchant by his father, Simon Kinney. He helped lay out the town of Peru, Illinois, and eventually made his way to this part of Texas in 1838. The trading post he established in 1839 on a bluff overlooking Corpus Christi Bay opened the way for settlement of the town of Corpus Christi. Much of Kinney's initial trade was in smuggled goods for Mexican Federalists. General Zachary Taylor's choice of Kinney's outpost as a camp site for his army helped to multiply profits rapidly. Kinney served as Quartermaster when the troops moved to the Rio Grande in 1846. A successful politician as well, Col. Kinney, as he was known, represented his district in the state legislature at various times from 1846 until 1861. He eventually came to own most of the land that now makes up Nueces County, selling town lots in Corpus Christi to many of the soldiers in Taylor's army. Not always a success, Kinney organized the "Lone Star Fair" in 1851 to attract settlers. The enterprise failed, as did later attempts to control part of Nicaragua. Henry Lawrence Kinney died in Matamoros, Mexico, and is buried there in an unmarked grave. (1986)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.8 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 — 1.2 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 — 1.4 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 — 1.6 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

• Captain Enrique Villarreal and Rincon del Oso Land Grant — steps away
• Antonio E. Garcia — steps away
• Site of Cheston L. Heath School — 0.2 mi
• LULAC — 0.2 mi