Brownsville marks bicentennial of Stillman's birth
The city will celebrate the bicentennial birthday today of the late Charles Stillman, the man known as the founder of Brownsville and as a riverboat captain said to love the Rio Grande too much to ever leave it.
The event will be held at the Amigoland Convention Center and will include food, musical performances and fireworks. Tickets cost $20 per person or $200 for a table of 10. All proceeds will go to paying for the celebration.
“He left his legacy here, he left his footprint,” Brownsville Mayor Pat M. Ahumada Jr. said of Stillman. “This is the man who has given us our identity as Brownsvillians because he had the vision to create the city.”
Stillman Middle School also will hold a ceremony today to commemorate Stillman’s birthday. During the ceremony, students and Brownsville residents will bury a time capsule that will be unearthed at the bicentennial anniversary of the city in 2053.
According to records provided by the Stillman Museum in Brownsville – located in Stillman’s restored 1850 home — the riverboat captain and successful entrepreneur was born Nov. 4, 1810, in Wethersfield, Conn., where he spent his early years and received a minimal education but excelled in mathematics. His father, Francis Stillman, owned ships that traded on the Gulf Coast and Mexico.
At 16, he left New England on one of his father’s ships, and a year later he was in charge of a general merchandise store in Durango, Mexico. It was in the Sierra Madres that he learned the Spanish language and Mexican customs.
He later arrived at the Brazos de Santiago port from New Orleans with his father. He was in charge of distributing merchandise and was so effective that he stayed in Matamoros, where he would receive and handle goods his father shipped to him, according to documents provided by the museum.
He made huge profits by supplying the ranches and mines of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon and Coahuila, and he became a respected merchant in Matamoros. When Fort Brown was built at the beginning of the U.S-Mexican War, Stillman took the opportunity to create a ferry business to Matamoros, which became an immediate success.
After the U.S.-Mexican War, he formed a partnership in 1848 to purchase more than 4,600 acres and founded the new town of Brownsville. He was instrumental in the creation of the Episcopal Church of the Advent. He married, and two of his six children were born in Brownsville.
There was contest as to who owned the deed to the land on which the city was founded, and hence who founded Brownsville. One fight went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Stillman’s favor.
In that time, Brownsville continued to grow.
“I am really happy that Brownsville is recognizing its founder,” said Rhiannon Cizon, the assistant director of the Brownsville Historical Association. There were a lot of frontier towns that did not last past the 50-year mark, and to be able to celebrate the 200th birthday of Charles Stillman is a testimony to Brownsville’s will to survive.”
