Nicholas Bluntzer

Bluntzer is listed as a Confederate at the last battle of the war, Palmito Ranch, and the other side of that field matters. On May 13, 1865, more than a month after Lee's surrender, Colonel Theodore Barrett's force of about 500 met Colonel John Ford's Confederates and Colonel Santos Benavides's Tejano regiment near Brownsville. Union ranks included the 62nd United States Colored Infantry, which held a line, the 34th Indiana and dismounted Texans of the 2nd Texas Cavalry, United States. Ford drove them back; the Federals lost 115 captured and about thirty killed or wounded.

What the plaque says

Nicholas Bluntzer (October 29, 1835-September 5, 1901) A native of the French province of Alsace, Nicholas Bluntzer came to Texas at age nine with his parents and other Alsatian families led by colonizer Henri Castro. The Bluntzer family settled in DeWitt County, in an area along Coleto Creek which would become the town of Meyersville. In 1856-57 Bluntzer served as a scout in a punitive expedition led by Col. Robert E. Lee against Comanche Indians in West Texas. In 1858 he married Justina Peters. Later, as a member of the Confederate army, he participated in the last battle of the Civil War at Palmito Ranch in May 1865. After the war Bluntzer became an influential rancher, acquiring large tracts of land in Nueces and other counties. He also invested in Corpus Christi real estate. He established a large cotton-growing operation near this site in the 1890s. A settlement grew up in the area and was named Bluntzer. Upon his death in 1901, he was buried in a San Patricio Cemetery. The Bluntzer home not far from this site remained in the family until 1961, when it was bequeathed to the Sisters of the Incarnate Word and Blessed Sacrament. Nicholas Bluntzer was posthumously inducted into the South Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1967. (1967)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lipantitlán State Historic Site — 4.4 mi
  Five undeveloped acres on the Nueces named for the Lipan Apaches who camped here, where Mexico built an earth-and-rail fort that Texans took early in the Revolution.
• Lake Corpus Christi State Park — 12 mi
  A lake park in the South Texas brush country above Mathis, on a reservoir of the Nueces, with a Civilian Conservation Corps refectory and more than 200 bird species.
• Texas State Aquarium — 25 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.
• Art Museum of South Texas — 25 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.

More markers nearby

• Casa Blanca Land Grant — 0.7 mi
• Santa Margarita Crossing — 2.0 mi
• San Patricio de Hibernia — 3.1 mi
• San Patricio County — 3.1 mi