Corpus Christi History by Murphy Givens

The woman who saved the Alamo

Clara Driscoll saved the Alamo a century ago. She set up a foundation to fund the Driscoll Children's Hospital half a century ago. She was an author, politician, banker, cattlewoman. She was at home in elite social circles in New York, and could curse like a cowhand on the family ranch. She was a woman for all seasons.
   It's fitting that the Daughters of the Republic of Texas are holding their 110th convention in Corpus Christi this week. The last time the organization met here, in 1932, it was at Clara's invitation when the Corpus Christi chapter was formed.
   Clara Driscoll was born at St. Mary's in 1881, the daughter of Robert Driscoll and Julia Fox Driscoll. When she was a toddler, the Driscolls were staying at Congdon's boarding house in Rockport, where boarders taught the dark-eyed, red-haired little Clara to curtsey and chant, "I'm the black-eyed beauty, the belle of Rockport."
   Grandfather killed by a drunk
   Hers was a pioneer family. Her grandfather, Daniel O'Driscoll, a sergeant in the U.S. Army at Fort Jessup, La., left - deserted, some accounts say - to take part in the Texas Revolution. He fought at San Jacinto and afterwards settled around Refugio, where he became a county official. He was killed in an argument with a drunk at a Fourth of July celebration in Refugio.
   Clara's father Robert and his brother Jeremiah fought in the Civil War. After the war they began to add land and cattle to what their father had left them. Robert, it was said, got his first cow in a trade for a pocket knife. Their cattle empire was split after Jeremiah's death.
   Before Clara was 10, Robert bought the Palo Alto ranch in Nueces County, 22 miles from Corpus Christi near today's Driscoll. Like other Confederate veterans, Robert acquired more rank as he got older. He had been an enlisted man in the war, but he was known as "Colonel Driscoll."
   The colonel added to his holdings, buying the 53,000 acre Sweeden ranch, the La Gloria ranch in Duval County, the Los Machos ranch near Alice, and a ranch in Bee county that he named the Clara Ranch after his daughter.
   Chasing coyotes
   Young Clara grew up at Palo Alto Ranch, where one of the family's favorite activities was a South Texas version of fox-hunting. They kept a pack of greyhounds for chasing long-legged coyotes, which can run the pants off any fox.
   By the early 1890s Clara and her brother Robert were away at school. She went to Peebles and Thompson's in New York, and then to a French convent near Paris, the Chateau Dieudonne. Robert went to Georgetown and Princeton, where he got into trouble and was reprimanded by the school president, Woodrow Wilson.
   Before the end of the century, the mother, Julia Fox Driscoll, living in London for her health, took Clara and Robert Jr. on a round-the-world trip. They spent a summer in India and visited most of the countries of Europe. Clara sent travel dispatches to the San Antonio and Corpus Christi papers, writing under the nom de plume "A Texas Girl."
   Julia became ill and died in London on May 23, 1899. Clara and Robert brought her body back to be buried in San Antonio.
   Shortly after this, the 22-year-old Clara wrote a letter to the Corpus Christi Caller and the San Antonio Express describing the plight of the Alamo, which was up for sale. She spearheaded what must have seemed a hopeless campaign to save the old Mission of San Antonio de Valero.
   This is the first of two columns. Part two will appear in this space tomorrow.
   Murphy Givens can be reached by phone at 886-4315 or by e-mail at givensm@caller.com.
   In 1903, the owners of the Alamo made a deal with a New York syndicate to sell the adjacent grounds and demolish the mission to prepare the site for a hotel. Clara began a statewide campaign to raise the $75,000 the owners were asking for the property. Only $7,500 was raised by the deadline. Miss Driscoll signed personal notes (on her father's letterhead) for the remainder.
   In 1904, her book "Girl of La Gloria," a fictional romance story, was published. The following year, the Texas Legislature reimbursed Clara for the money she put up to save the Alamo.
   That same year, she published a collection of short stories titled, "In the Shadow of the Alamo." One story describes the Alamo - "Out of the chaos of crumbling stone, rusting iron, fading colors, and dfanced carvings stands one picturesque editfice, grim, sinister, silent, marked by the scars of battle and stained with the blood of brave souls who fought and died in its defense. It is the shrine of Texas independence and glory...."
   In 1906, she married a former legislator from Uvalde, Henry Hulme Sevier, a native of Tennessee. They moved to New York, where he became the financial editor of the New York Sun. She wrote a musical - "Mexicalla" - that opened in the Schubert brothers' Lyric Theater. Te director revised Clara's authentic Texas language to make it more suitable for New York audiences. It was not a success.
   In 1910, the family ranch, Palo Alto, 78,000 acres were sold to land companies to sell for farmland. Her father, Robert Driscoll Sr. - a former Confederate veteran who returned to Texas to begin ranching - died in 1914. Clara and Hal returned to Texas, locating in Austin. Sevier founded the Austin American. Clara began building her showplace home, Laguna Gloria. It was finally complete 10 years later at a cost of more than $100,000.
   During World War I, in 1918, she was a bandage-roller and canteen hostess for the Red Cross. Austin? She was elected to the Democratic National Committee in 1928, and would remain politically active for the rest of her life.
   Conclusion.
   This is the first of two columns. Part two will appear in this space tomorrow.
  
  
  
  

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