The Ranchero

Maltby was an editor with a soldier's streak. In 1857 he resigned as mayor of Corpus Christi to lead a company he raised there into William Walker's filibuster army in Nicaragua. In 1861 he sat for Nueces County in the Secession Convention, then founded the American Flag at Brownsville as a Confederate paper for foreign readers. The Ranchero kept moving: Santa Margarita in 1863, Matamoros in 1865, Brownsville from 1866. In 1870 it merged with the Rio Grande Democrat as the Democrat and Ranchero, which ran until 1880. The cause it served was slavery.

What the plaque says

The Ranchero The Ranchero was a newspaper published in Corpus Christi and elsewhere in south Texas during and after the Civil War. The publication's editors were ardent supporters of the Confederacy and they later used the newspaper to express their opposition to federal military rule in Texas during the period of Reconstruction. The publisher of the Ranchero was Henry Alonzo Maltby (1830-1906), who arrived in Corpus Christi in 1852 as a circus promoter. Maltby settled in the city and became a highly respected member of the community, serving as district surveyor, deputy county clerk, deputy sheriff and mayor. When the Nueces Valley ceased publication in 1858, Maltby seized the opportunity to begin his own newspaper the following year; his brother, William (1837-1880), joined Henry in Corpus Christi to aid in the venture. The four-page weekly, originally published in a building at the corner of Water and Lawrence Streets, included a register of area cattle brands, as well as editorials, poetry and recipes. A yearly subscription cost $3.00. By 1861 the Maltby brothers were committed secessionists, but the resulting Civil War caused periodic disruptions in the newspaper's publication. William was captured by Union soldiers while defending Mustang Island, and Henry fled with his press and type first to Santa Margarita, in northern Nueces County, and later to Matamoros, Mexico and then to Brownsville, where he continued to publish the Ranchero. In federally occupied Brownsville, the Ranchero was suppressed for a time by order of Col. Ranald Mackenzie because of its controversial editorials. Maltby sold the Ranchero in 1870, the same year that Federal occupation of Texas ended and the state was readmitted into the Union. 175 Years of Texas Independence * 1836-2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Mirador de la Flor — 0.2 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 — 1.1 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 — 1.3 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 — 1.4 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

• Old St. Patrick's Church — steps away
• 1941 Corpus Christi Seawall — steps away
• Gutzon Borglum and the Corpus Christi Bayfront — steps away
• Site of Kinney's Trading Post — steps away