Mifflin Kenedy: The Quaker Boatman Behind Laureles and La Parra

Who was Mifflin Kenedy?

Mifflin Kenedy is easiest to find in history books as Richard King's partner, but his own record is large enough to stand alone. Born in 1818 to Quaker parents in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, he spent two decades on rivers, ran a steamboat company with King, built the 242,000-acre Laureles Ranch, and later put together La Parra, a fenced ranch of roughly 400,000 acres in what is now Kenedy County.

The spelling matters. It is Kenedy with a single n in the middle, and that is the form on the county and town named for him. Many web pages and starter lists get this wrong.

Early life and the river years

According to the Wikipedia biography of Kenedy, he attended schools in Chester County and a Quaker boarding school run by Jonathan Gause, and began teaching at fifteen. In April 1834 he sailed as a cabin boy on the Star of Philadelphia, bound for Calcutta, and was back home in January 1836. That year he started as a clerk on river steamers.

Over the next several years he served as clerk and sometimes acting captain on the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers, then on the Champion along the Chattahoochee and Apalachicola rivers from 1842 to 1846. It was in that Florida trade that he met a young pilot named Richard King.

The Mexican War and the King, Kenedy partnership

In 1846 Kenedy helped Major John Saunders secure boats for the army on the Rio Grande. He took the Corvette to New Orleans, enlisted as a master for the war, and moved troops and supplies, including General Zachary Taylor's soldiers, up the river to Camargo, which they reached on August 8, 1846. After the war he traded in Mexico with partners and ran a pack train to Monterrey, according to a family-history biography of Kenedy.

In 1850 he formed M. Kenedy and Company with King (the Wikipedia biography of Richard King covers the same partnership from King's side), James O'Donnell and Charles Stillman, running steamers from Brownsville. By the start of the Civil War the firm owned as many as 26 boats. It also moved cotton to the border, including Confederate cotton, which foreign ships then carried to Europe past the Union blockade. The partnership dissolved in 1874, when railroads had made the steamboats uncompetitive.

Sheep, then cattle: how Kenedy learned ranching

His first try at ranching went badly. Around 1854 he brought Merino sheep from Pennsylvania, with a flock of about 10,000 near El Sal del Rey in Hidalgo County. The family biography says part of the flock was lost to fire and drowning on the way to Texas, and Wikipedia reports that 75 percent of the herd was lost before he sold the rest to John McClain in 1856.

In 1860 he became a full partner with King in the Santa Gertrudis Ranch, running cattle, sheep, goats and mules between the Nueces and the Rio Grande. When the partners parted, the work of rounding up and dividing the animals took 13 months. In 1868 Kenedy sold his share and bought the Laureles Ranch, about 22 miles from Corpus Christi.

Laureles, La Parra and the railroads

Laureles grew to 242,000 acres. The buyers in 1882 were a Kansas City group, Underwood, Clark and Company, which became the Texas Land and Cattle Company; one source calls it a Scottish syndicate, so sources differ on the description. The same year Kenedy bought 400,000 acres in Cameron County, now Kenedy County, named it La Parra, and fenced it with posts from Louisiana. He also organized the Kenedy Pasture Company, which Wikipedia says held about 765,000 acres.

In 1876 Kenedy and King invested in Lott's Corpus Christi, San Diego and Rio Grande Gauge Railroad, running from Corpus Christi to Laredo. In 1885 Kenedy supplied money and credit for the San Antonio and Aransas Pass Railway, which the family biography says reached about 700 miles.

Family, death and legacy

On April 16, 1852, Kenedy married Petra Vela de Vidal in Mier, Mexico. She was a widow with six children, and the couple had six more. Petra died in 1885. Kenedy died of a sudden heart attack in Corpus Christi on March 14, 1895, and he and Petra are buried in Brownsville. His son John G. Kenedy bought out the other heirs and led the Kenedy Pasture Company.

Kenedy County and the town of Kenedy bear his name, and he entered the Hall of Great Westerners in 1960. His granddaughter Sarita Kenedy East became well known in the region. The Kenedy Ranch Museum of South Texas preserves the family story.

Learn more about Kenedy and the Texas ranching story

The Handbook of Texas carries an entry on Kenedy, and the 2007 book Petra's Legacy by Jane Clements Monday and Frances Brannen Vick looks at the family and its ranching empire. For the broader subject, browse the farm.FM ranching section or read a farm.FM story about South Texas ranch history.