Poteet

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the town of Poteet, down in Atascosa County. Now, every town's got a beginning, and Poteet's starts back in the 1880s with one man and a mercantile store. Francis Marion Poteet — born in 1833 — was a blacksmith, a farmer, and a merchant, which is to say he was the kind of fellow who couldn't sit still long enough to just be one thing.

He set up his store northeast of where we're standing right now, and before long he was doing something that would echo a whole lot further than he probably imagined: he started providing mail service to his customers. Now think about that for a second. You ride out to get your flour and your nails, and while you're at it, you pick up your mail.

People started calling the whole area by the name of the man running the place. That's just how it went. Poteet.

The name stuck. Before 1900, Francis Marion Poteet sold his business to a man named Henry T. Mumme, born in 1870.

And here's where the story shifts gears, because Mumme didn't just keep the lights on — he built something. He and his wife Ida, born in 1869, made a decision in 1910 that changed everything: they donated four hundred acres of land for a brand new townsite. Four hundred acres.

That's not a gesture, that's a commitment. Since the area had already been going by the name Poteet on account of that early mail service, the new town was named in honor of Francis Marion Poteet himself — the man who'd long since sold out and moved on, but whose name had never left. Mumme moved his store to the new townsite in 1911, and he wasn't done yet.

He drilled the town's first artesian water well, and he's credited with introducing the cultivation of strawberries right here in this patch of South Texas. Now, that artesian water, together with the sandy soil of the region — and the marker is careful to put those two things together — proved ideal for growing the berries. Just the right water, just the right ground.

The rest, as they say, wrote itself. Poteet became known statewide for its superior quality strawberries, earned the nickname the Strawberry Capital of Texas, and the town grew steadily after 1910, with schools, churches, homes, and businesses taking root right alongside those berry patches. By 1926, the town was incorporated.

Francis Marion Poteet passed in 1907, before the new townsite was even platted. He never saw the town that bore his name. But Henry T.

Mumme, who lived until 1947, and Ida, who lived until 1942 — they saw all of it. They built all of it. And somewhere underneath the sandy soil of Atascosa County, there's still artesian water rising up, doing exactly what it's always done.

What the marker says

The town of Poteet traces its history to the 1880s, when Francis Marion Poteet (1833-1907) established a mercantile store northeast of this area. A blacksmith and farmer as well as a merchant, Poteet began providing mail service to his customers. Poteet sold his business to Henry T. Mumme (1870-1947) before 1900. Mumme continued to offer postal service at the store, and in 1910 he and his wife Ida (1869-1942) donated 400 acres of land for a new townsite. Since the area had been referred to as Poteet as a result of the early mail service, the new town was named in honor of Francis Marion Poteet. Mumme moved his store to the new townsite in 1911. Mumme drilled the town's first artesian water well and is credited with introducing the cultivation of strawberries here. The artesian water, together with the sandy soil of the region, proved ideal for growing the berries. Known statewide for its superior quality strawberries, Poteet has been nicknamed the "Strawberry Capital of Texas." The town grew steadily after 1910, with the establishment of schools, churches, homes, and businesses. It was incorporated in 1926. (1989)