Jackson County, C. S. A.

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Jackson County, Texas, in the time of the Confederacy. Let me set the scene for you.

It is 1861, and the people of Jackson County put the question to a vote. The count comes back: one hundred forty-seven for secession, seventy-seven against. The county had spoken, and from that point forward, it threw itself into the war with everything it had.

And it had quite a bit. Beef and cotton, for starters. Jackson County helped supply the South with both.

But that was just the beginning of what this stretch of Texas was quietly doing to keep a war effort alive. There were salt beds near Cox's Creek, and those beds got put to work. There was a plant sitting between Port Lavaca and Texana, rendering hides and tallow.

And then there was the Navidad mine, pulling lead. They call it a lost mine now, which ought to make you curious about what exactly became of it. The marker doesn't say, and neither will I.

But while the mine was producing, that lead was going somewhere useful. Back home, families were molding it into bullets and sending those bullets to the fighting men. The same families were weaving, sewing, and knitting clothes to send right along with them.

You get a picture of a county that was not sitting idle. Now here is where the story gets a little more complicated, and a little more dangerous. The coastline was blockaded, but Jackson County found a way around that too.

Couriers ran a line that skirted the blockade coast all the way from the mouth of Caney Creek down to Brownsville. That is a long, careful, risky ride, hugging the edges of enemy reach. And to keep those enemy ships from coming ashore in the first place, a home guard worked the shoreline.

They kept the ships off. Mostly. But here is the image the marker leaves you with, and it is something.

A Confederate gunboat, chased out of Lavaca Bay, didn't make it far. It sank in the Navidad River. Somewhere beneath those waters, a gunboat still rests, right there in Jackson County, which gave everything it could to a cause, and in the end, watched one of its own ships go down in its own backyard.

What the marker says

In 1861, voted for secession 147 to 77. With its beef and cotton, helped supply South. Furnished salt from beds near Cox's Creek; hides and tallow from a plant between Port Lavaca and Texana; lead from Navidad mine (now a "lost mine"). Homefolk molded bullets and sent to fighting men, along with clothes woven, sewed or knitted by the family. Couriers operated along a line that skirted blockade coast from mouth of Caney Creek to Brownsville. Home guard kept enemy ships off the shores. A Confederate gunboat, chased from Lavaca Bay, sank in the Navidad.