"Natham Blum installed 1st TVs in Bay City, Palacios" By Katherine Pollard Carter

   What’s wrong with your car radio?” Nathan Blum, owner of Radio Center on Nichols Avenue, asked his distraught customer.  “It cuts off if I go over a bump or around a corner or up a hill or down a hill and it’s too full of static to understand a program,” the customer wailed.

Memories of the family home at Rotherwood

Rotherwood    Mary L. White was born in 1815 in Knoxville, Tenn., whence she came with her father, the late B.J. White, to Texana, Jackson County, Texas in 1830.     Mr. White settled first with his family on the Navidad.     In 1833 she was married to Colonel Robert H.

Tidehaven was early Tres Palacios River port

   Tres Palacios, also known as Tidehaven, was a port community on the Tres Palacios River south of Hawley and near what is now Farm Road 459, thirteen miles southwest of Bay City in western Matagorda County.

Pumphrey Burnett credited with founding Tidehaven

   Pumphrey Burnett (Pumphry or Pumpry Burnet), partner of Albert L. Sojourner as one of Stephen F. Austin’s Old Three Hundred families, was born around 1796 to Plenander and Elizabeth Burnett.

Englishman 1st to settle on lower Caney

   Sargent, on FM 457, five miles northwest of the Gulf of Mexico and 24 miles southeast of Bay City in the eastern corner of Matagorda County, was named for George Sargent, an Englishman who immigrated to Texas from Cornwall, England, in 1834.

Kenner Prairie once farming community

   Kenner, also known as Kenner Prairie, was between Live Oak and Caney creeks 25 miles northeast of Matagorda and four miles southwest of Sargent in southeastern Matagorda County.

Israel and Abe Ditch Family

Almost since the founding of Bay City in 1894, the Ditch name was synonymous with excellence in dry goods and men’s and women’s furnishings.      The Ditch brothers, Israel and Abe, opened one of the first stores in Bay City which was located at the corner of Avenue G and Seventh Street.

Palacios museum features seawall exhibit

Palacios, Texas    The City by the Sea Museum’s new temporary exhibit, “Shifting Shorelines: The Construction and Impact of the Palacios Seawall” is on view beginning July 20th and will run through September 9th.     Seawalls are tools that coastal communities use to combat flooding and erosion.

Markham Methodists active since town’s early days

   Methodism came to Matagorda County as early as 1851. At that time a church was built in the town of Matagorda, on the gulf coast. This building was destroyed by a tornado in 1854.     No doubt that this church planted the seeds of early Methodism in Matagorda County.