Refugio County is on the lower Gulf Coast in the Coastal Prairies region, bounded on the south by San Patricio County, on the west by Bee and Goliad counties, on the north by Victoria and Calhoun counties, and on the east by Aransas County and by Hynes and Copano bays.

The Refugio coastline was charted in 1520. The county was named for Nuestra Señora del Refugio Mission, founded in 1793 at the juncture of the San Antonio and Guadalupe rivers. After a destructive Indian raid in 1794, however, the mission was moved to another site; and in 1795 the mission was moved to a location on the Mission River, at the site of the present town of Refugio. The mission remained in continuous operation until February 7, 1830, when the last services were held.

Anglo-American immigration in the area that is now Refugio County was limited until after 1836. The villa of Refugio, officially established in 1831 around the old Refugio mission, became the center of the Refugio Municipality in 1834. From its inception the Refugio Municipality was troubled by political disputes that were reflected in a controversy over what the area should be called. The name was briefly changed to Wexford (after the Irish county from which many of the new settlers had come), but that name was not accepted by many of the area’s residents and was finally dropped. In general, although by no means always, the Irish tended to support the federalists in their war against the Mexican government, while most local Tejanos favored the centralists. On March 14, 1836, at the battle of Refugio, a greatly outnumbered Texian force under Amon B. King and William Ward held off a division of the Mexican army led by Gen. José de Urrea. Although most of Ward’s men escaped, all of King’s contingent were either killed or captured. King, and the remnants of his force, were summarily executed in the Goliad Massacre on March 16.

After independence Refugio was organized as one of the thirteen original counties of the Republic of Texas, with the town of Refugio as the county seat. By the time of the Civil War, the original Refugio County area had been reduced by Goliad County in 1841; Calhoun, San Patricio, and Victoria counties in 1846; and awards to Bee County in 1857 and to Nueces County in 1858.

In the 1850s considerable interest was shown in navigation, and Refugians fostered both the Corpus Christi Navigation Company and the San Antonio River Navigation Company. Observer James Murray Doughty captured the prevailing spirit of fastidious progress as he described the county in the 1850s: “Refugio has 3 drygoods stores, 2 public hotels, 1 private boarding house, 3 churches, 2 schools, 2 physicians, 1 dentist and 1 lawyer, and no drinking shops and no paupers.”

The Civil War had a dramatic impact upon the county’s economy. In 1856 the total property value of the county was $1,329,313; by 1866 the total had dropped to $481,630. The cattle industry, the mainstay of the economy, suffered during the war. By 1868 the town of Refugio had been reduced to a few private homes, a dilapidated concrete courthouse, a hotel, the McCambell Brothers store, and a wooden Masonic building. During the 1870s, many of the Mexican Americans in the county were driven out through violence or through intimidating threats against their lives. After a local white rancher and his wife were murdered in 1874, white vigilante groups terrorized the Mexican-American population.

Refugio County lost much of its coastland during the 1870s when the county was divided after a political dispute between coastal and inland residents. Refugio had served as the county seat since 1836, but the Constitution of 1869 officially designated St. Mary’s the county seat. The records, however, stayed in Refugio. On March 15, 1871, the legislature changed the county seat to Rockport. The records were temporarily moved, but the older settlers in the region objected so strongly that on April 18, 1871, the legislature established Aransas County with its county seat at Rockport.

The new century brought rapid and dramatic changes to Refugio County. In 1905 the St. Louis, Brownsville and Mexico Railway was built through the county, opening the area to development. The economy was also stimulated after 1920 by discoveries of natural gas and petroleum.

Refugio County was one of the first areas in the United States to raise an entire regiment of volunteers before America entered World War II. In May 1940, American Legionnaires in Refugio County took action intended to alert Americans to the Nazi threat. In a public statement announcing the formation of a home guard unit, the Legionnaires declared: “If the United States will not put itself in a state of preparedness, then Refugio County will as a protest and as an example.” Responding to the call, the men of the county enlisted in such large numbers that a regimental structure was required. Reflecting the Irish roots of many of the men, the unit was named the Royal Irish Regiment of Refugio County. The group adopted a uniform that included khaki trousers and shirt, a khaki overseas cap piped in “shamrock” green, a web belt, and a black tie. Each man paid for his own uniform. The companies met each week on Tuesday and Thursday nights for drills until December 1940, when the unit was incorporated into the Texas Defense Guard.

(The information above is excerpted from the Handbook of Texas, an encyclopedia published by the Texas State Historical Association. The Handbook can be accessed online at www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online. Copies of the two-volume set may be obtained by contacting the TSHA at 512-232-1513.)