Glad you could join me in discovering more about this area of Texas in southern Bexar County, where the modern City of Somerset is located, and northern Atascosa County, the home of “Old Somerset.” I started looking for ancestors some years back and found so many new relatives and friends as a result. Some of my findings include…
NATIVE AMERICANS
Native Americans have been in this area for 1000s of years. The Lipan and Pastia were among the largest groups in the 1700s when Spanish settlement at the Presidio de San Fernando (the Fort at San Fernando or San Antonio today) began. In the 1730s Mission San Jose began building and working to be self sufficient and teaching the native people in the area about faith, farming, ranching. San Jose’s ranch, where the mission’s cattle, horses, and other stock were raised, covered a general area from the Mission on the San Antonio River to about Lytle to Jourdanton and back. Its headquarters, on the Atascosa River, was called the Rancho Atascoso. Here Pastia Indian families lived and raised the stock for the mission. Those Pastias were our first Texas “cowboys” herding longhorns across our area of Somerset, too, as it was part of Mission San Jose’s larger ranching area.
EUROPEAN SETTLERS SOUTH OF THE MEDINA RIVER
Into the early 1800s, the mission’s ranch was broken up and divided among several land holders that included the Navarro and Garza families. As Texas became a republic in 1836, the land south of the Medina River was gifted to those men who had fought for Texas liberty. Most never lived here but sold land to those who eventually did.
Over the next decades the local families of Herrera, Garza, Rodrigues, and Martinez saw those of the Kerr, Applewhite, Kinney, and McCluskey, settle in as neighbors. Small communities grew. Some prospered. Some did not. A few of their names a remain with us as communities, schools, or roads, one or two are “ghost towns”: Lytle, Atascosa, Seeger, Senior, Oak Island, Wildman, Von Ormy, Old Somerset, Bexar, Benton, Amphion, Ditto, Rossville, and more.
THE FIRST TOWN OF SOMERSET
The current City of Somerset did not exist in 1908. It was farm and ranchland near the bustling community of Bexar, about 1 mile west at Benton City and Kenney Roads. It was there because of the wealth produced from Kenney the coal mines. This economic opportunity was too much to resist in that first Somerset community where the Medina Baptist Church had relocated in 1867. In a short time those businesses moved to Bexar community leaving the first town of Somerset deserted.
BEXAR COMMUNITY, THE SECOND SOMERSET
That thriving community of Bexar, begun in the 1880s with its three general stores, three churches (the Baptist Church from Old Somerset, St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, and the Methodist Church), a cotton gin, blacksmith shop, cantinas and dance hall, doctor’s home/office, and a rather large school within 35 years lost everything to the Artesian Belt Railroad’s new town a mile to the east.
THE THIRD SOMERSET AND ITS OIL PLAY
In 1908, enterprising farmers learned of the approaching railroad and made a deal the owner did not refuse: stop here on our newly purchased 50 acres and we will pay you take our produce to town. By 1908, the New Townsite Company, began selling lots and by 1912, oil was discovered. The rapidly growing New Townsite Company never really kept that name as everyone called it the new Somerset. Nearly 500 people had moved here and hundreds more oil workers were bringing wealth from the newly discovered Somerset Pool, the largest shallow field of oil in the world, at that time. As the booming years in Eagle Ford Shale play came to an end, by the mid 1930s the excitement for Somerset’s oil boom was over. Oil was still being pumped as Somerset folk re-focused on their daily, dependable town businesses and agriculture production: cattle, fruit and vegetables, and flowers.
SOMERSET BECOMES A REAL CITY
In 1970, the idea for an incorporated city, free from the threat of San Antonio’s ETJ (Extra Territorial Jurisdiction) provided residents with the will to vote the City of Somerset into existence. April 2, 1971, saw the election of the first Mayor and Aldermen. The rest is modern history.
DON’T FORGET SOMERSET ISD
Our Somerset ISD’s centennial celebration is on its way, too. The first graduating class was 1923-1924. The school was organized and built in the 2 years before that…get ready to help plan and to celebrate this special milestone in Somerset’s story!