Old Bayview Cemetery - Disasters

Disasters

The Old Bayview Cemetery's website lists several large scale events that apparently contributed occupants. The Mexican-American War is the first and most obvious since the Cemetery was established for soldiers who died during the initial occupation.

Corpus Christi was the site of small scale Civil War action. Historian Eugenia Reynolds Briscoe gives a fairly detailed account of this, beginning with the tightening of the Federal naval blockade in January 1862. Corpus Christi was central to commerce with Mexico that the Union needed to stop. Under Lt. S. W. Kittredge Union forces took Port Aransas and Mustang Island in July, using the yacht Corypheus and steamship Sachem. Able to enter Corpus Christi Bay, these ships shelled the city during attempts to take it. The struggle moved back and forth for the remainder of the war with the federals now loosening and now regaining their grip, holding Mustang Island, while engaging in actions in Corpus Christi and Flour Bluff to the southeast and on Mustang Island. Federal troops now and then entered the city, a few times landing and fighting the Confederates in what's now downtown Corpus Christi. Kittredge appears an ineffective commander, especially considering that he was captured by the Confederates and replaced by Lt. T. F. Wade, and operations appear to have remained indecisive. The Confederacy progressively weakened as communications and commerce broke down while its armies suffered defeats in the eastern theater. Corpus Christi endured increasing shortages and constant anxiety between confrontations.

Not mentioned on the site are conflicts of Anglo and Hispanic settlers with Indians, usually Comanche or Tonkawa, and raids by outlaw gangs. These small scale incidents are mentioned, more or less in passing, in memoirs and histories but their losses added up. Casualties of these fights, excluding Indians and the outlaws who seem to have been left where slain or hanged and buried wherever expedient, were interred at the city cemetery; an example is Texas Ranger Captain Michael E. van Buren, who died in 1851 as a result of wounds suffered during a fight with Indians.

There were two major outbreaks of yellow fever, in 1854 and 1867. Doctors could do little since neither its cause nor transmission were understood. Sources say measures against its spread consisted of burning victims' bedclothes and placing burning tar buckets about town. In the first outbreak about a third of the town's then 700 inhabitants perished and in the second 300 of a population of 1000.

Hurricanes struck Corpus Christi in October 1871 and again in September 1874. They are recorded as causing considerable damage although casualties are not enumerated.