Galveston: A History of the Island

Chapter 8

8 IT DIDN'T TAKE long for Samuel May Williams to grab his share of the spoils of war. Williams and his business partner, Thomas McKinney, had furnished nearly $100,000 in goods and services to Sam Houston's anny. The Republic of Texas was flat broke: there was no way it could repay this debt directly, but there were many ways the government could express its appreciation. One of them was to tum over Galveston Island to Williams and his associates. The transaction was suitably complicated, a Byzantine maze of secret deals and moves that traced back to the Monclova legislature. Monclova!-the very name rang with corruption. Michel B. Menard, a French-Canadian trader and one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence, came up with the genesis of the plot in 1833. Since the Monclova legislature reserved land grants at Galveston for Mexican-born citizens, Menard got one of his clients, Juan Seguin, to apply for rights to the eastern end of the Island. Seguin, the military commander who buried the ashes of the men killed at the Alamo, was political chief of San Antonio during the Monclova land grab, and agreed to act as a front for his patron, Menard. Seguin transferred the grant-4,600 acres-to Menard, who transferred it to his friend, Thomas McKinney. After the Battle of San Jacinto, Williams, McKinney, Menard, and several others fonned an establishment called the Galveston City Company and petitioned the Republic of Texas for confinnation of the Monclova claim. It was granted in December 1836, supposedly in exchange 72 Gary Cartwright for a payment of $50,000 in cash or merchandise. One of the partners in the Galveston City Company, who was also a land agent for the Republic, acknowledged receipt of a payment that never took place-and the government accepted his acknowledgment. In fact, the entire transaction was carried off without any money changing hands. One of the surveyors hired by the Galveston City Company was a bright and ambitious young man named Gail Borden, who had also served under Stephen F. Austin. Borden was an eccentric inventor who rode around town on a pet bull, but he was also a man of admirable conscience, interested in matters of public health and morality. Borden was destined to leave a permanent mark on Galveston , one more honorable and far more humanitarian than the legacy of Sam Williams and his associates. Using the models of Philadelphia and New York, Borden laid out the city in a gridiron pattern. Avenues running parallel to the bay and the Gulf were labeled in alphabetical order, starting with a swampy bayside wagon trail that he called Avenue Aand extending to Avenue Q a few blocks from the Gulf beach. Cross streets were numbered, beginning with Eighth Street, which ran along the mud flats at the eastern end of the Island, and extending to Fifty-Fifth Street, at the far western reaches of the Galveston City Company's claim. In the early years of the city's development, most Galvestonians lived on the bay side of town, south of Avenue J and east of ThirtyFifth Street. Later the names of some of the avenues were made more elegant. Avenue B, for example, became the Strand, named after London's famed street. Avenue J was renamed Broadway. Until Avenue A was filled in and renamed Front Street, buildings on the Strand backed up to the bay and merchants shipped and received goods out of their back doors. Still later the promoters of the Galveston City Company realized that Borden had been too generous in laying out lots and ordered additional streets cut through. These supplementary streets were given names like Avenue MV2 or Avenue PV2. For seventy-five years the Galveston City Company controlled growth and municipal planning on the Island, and manipulated city politics in whatever direction seemed most profitable. Galveston in the late 1830s wasn't something an entrepreneur would care to advertise in a full-color brochure. It was a low, flat, incredibly desolate stretch of sand that flooded with every violent GALVESTON 73 tide and was virtually useless for agriculture. The Island was solitary and monotonous-it reminded one traveler of the marshes and lagoons of the Mississippi-and it was a hotbed of disease and pestilence. The beaches were pristine, firm, and blindingly white; but the harbor was as dreary as a West...