DUANE
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, the land along the Rio Grande has a way of collecting names the way a river collects silt — layer after layer, each one telling you something about who was standing on it and when. This particular stretch of Cameron County has worn three names in its time: Rancho San Tomas first, then San Tomas Plantation, and today most folks just call it the Rabb Plantation.
But don't let that casual 'today' fool you. We're talking about 20,353 acres — running north from the banks of the Rio Grande all the way to the Arroyo Colorado. That is not a piece of land that accumulates its history quietly.
It accumulates it the way South Texas accumulates heat — slow, total, and with serious intent. The story really picks up steam in 1885, when a man named Mifflin Kenedy conveyed San Tomas to his stepdaughter, Maria Vicenta Starck. Now, land passing through family hands on the border was nothing unusual.
What came next, though, set this place on a different course entirely. In 1892, Frank Rabb married Maria Vicenta's daughter, Lillian. And that same year — not a year later, not a decade down the road, but that same year — Maria Vicenta transferred a half undivided interest in San Tomas to her new son-in-law.
You want to talk about a wedding gift. The Rabb and Starck families didn't stop there. Also in 1892, they built a house.
But not just any house — a Queen Anne style house, Victorian architecture rising up out of the mesquite and river mud of the Rio Grande Valley. Now think about what that meant. The whole tradition along the border had been sprawling Southwest ranchos, what the marker calls the Border Brick tradition — sturdy, practical, built for the land rather than for impressing anyone.
And here come the Rabbs and Starcks putting up the only example of its type in all of Cameron County. That house was a statement. It said: the entrepreneurs and political elite of South Texas at the end of the 19th century have arrived, they intend to stay, and they would like a porch with some architectural ambition, thank you very much.
Of course, a working plantation isn't just a fine house. San Tomas had outbuildings — a foreman's house, a stable, workers' buildings, even a brick outhouse, which, if you have never considered what it means to build an outhouse out of brick, suggests a level of commitment to permanence that most people reserve for courthouses. Many of those buildings have since disappeared, as working buildings tend to do when the work changes.
But the land itself kept working. Frank Rabb took a page from his neighbors over at the Bruley Plantation and started experimenting — irrigation systems, agricultural crops, new livestock breeds, all of it tested against the particular stubbornness of the South Texas climate. Not everything took.
That's the nature of experimenting. But enough did that historians credit these beginnings with helping propel the agricultural boom that came roaring into the early 20th century across this whole region. So the next time someone marvels at the Rio Grande Valley's agricultural output, somewhere in that long chain of cause and effect is Frank Rabb, standing in a field, wondering if this particular crop or that particular breed might just be the one.
Frank Rabb died in 1932. The land around the house passed first to his estate and then to his second wife, Margaret McCormick Rabb. And then the land kept changing hands, the way land does when it has outlasted the people who shaped it.
In the 1970s, the acreage around the house was conveyed to the National Audubon Society, and it became a sanctuary — wildlife reclaiming the edges of a place that had spent a century being bent to human purposes. Then in 2010, the house itself was conveyed to the Gorgas Science Foundation. The Texas Historical Commission recorded it as a landmark in 2012.
Three names, 20,353 acres, one improbable Queen Anne house standing at the end of the 19th century like it was daring the mesquite to say something. The Rio Grande Valley has seen a lot of ambition wash through it. Some of it built things that lasted.
What the marker says
Today, commonly referred to as the Rabb Plantation, this was originally known as Rancho San Tomas and, then, San Tomas Plantation. It encompassed 20,353 acres stretching north from the banks of the Rio Grande to the Arroyo Colorado. In 1885, Mifflin Kenedy conveyed San Tomas to his stepdaughter, Maria Vicenta Starck. In 1892, after the marriage of Frank Rabb to her daughter, Lillian, Maria Vicenta Starck transferred 1/2 undivided interest in San Tomas to Frank Rabb. That same year, the Rabb and Starck families built a Queen Anne style house that served as the working headquarters of the plantation. It represented the living style and upward mobility of the entrepreneurs and political elite of south Texas at the end of the 19th century. Its Victorian architecture signified a shift from the sprawling Southwest ranchos and "Border Brick" tradition, and is the only example of its type in Cameron County. The Rabb Plantation encompassed numerous outbuildings, including a brick outhouse, foreman's house, stable and workers' buildings. Many of these buildings have disappeared. At San Tomas, Rabb followed the lead of the neighboring Bruley Plantation and experimented with irrigation systems, agricultural crops and new livestock breeds, trying to adapt them to the south Texas climate. These beginnings helped propel the agricultural boom that emerged in the early 20th century. Frank Rabb died in 1932 and the land around the house passed to his estate, and then to his second wife, Margaret McCormick Rabb. In the 1970s, the acreage around the house was conveyed to the National Audubon Society and established as a sanctuary for wildlife. In 2010, the house was conveyed to the Gorgas Science Foundation. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 2012