b'O nehundredandninety-nineyearsago, Richardo u rh i s t o r yKing was born in New York, New York, to the poorest of the poorest Irish immigrants to the United States. More than 20 years before Irelands devastating Pota-to Famine, the mass fungal infection that destroyed the countrys staple food crop, the Kings were part of a great wave of immigrants seeking a better life in the New World. At age nine, Richard was indentured into an apprenticeship with a New York jeweleran arrangement akin to white slavery that many immi-grant families chose when they could not afford to feed all of their children.Two years in, sparked by the sense of adventure that was calling him away from the urban jungle that was the only home he knew, 11-year-old Richard King stowed away on a steamship that would take him to Mobile, Alabama. Upon his discovery by the ships crew, he was taken in as family and put to work on the boat. By age 16, Richard was trained and working as a steamboat pilot on the rivers feeding into the Gulf of Mexico. Throughout his storied and historic life, Richard King never publicly spoke of his New York family, and there is no historical record to this day of their fate or descendants. Opposite: Robert Justus Kleberg, II (Sr.), and his wife Alice Gertrudis King Kleberg, the second couple While serving at the end of the Second Seminole War in Florida, King metto lead the Santa Gertrudis Ranch. Above: The famed Running W brand (origins unknown) etched the man who would become his mentor and lifelong business partner, Mif- on ranch landscape with 1853, the year of its founding. Below: Captain Richard King and his wife flin Kenedy, a son of Irish immigrants living in Pennsylvania, his fore-bear- Henrietta, who founded the ranch. Bottom: The original Main House on Santa Gertrudis Creek.ers arriving in Maryland with Lord Baltimore himself. Seven years his senior, Kenedy descended from the same Irish lineage as King, albeit on the opposite end of the socio-economic scale. Their partnership and all they would endure and accomplish over their lives are the boldest statements of the promise that America represents to the rest of the worldthen, and now.At the end of the war, the barely 18-year-old Richard King went to work op-erating commercial steamboats on rivers in Florida and Georgia, working the same waters as Mifflin Kenedy, who was hired in 1846 to pilot the U.S. Army steamboat Corvette from his hometown of Pittsburgh to New Orleans, in sup-port of the Mexican-American War. Kenedy was recruited into the U.S. Army under command of General Zachary Taylor to transport goods and war sup-plies shipped into Brazos Santiago Harbor, at the mouth of the Rio Grande, up river to outposts as far north as Camargo, Tamaulipas, where the Rio San Juan from Mexico meets the Rio Grande.Kenedy quickly convinced him to join in the war effort as a private pilot under contract to the Armythe pivotal event when 21-year-old Richard King would arrive in South Texas for the first time and would begin to earn the kind of income that would eventually enable him to shape numerous, very significant slices of history, for centuries and generations to come. After the War with Mexico ended in early 1848, Kenedy was discharged from the Army and he, Richard King and two additional partners formed M. Kenedy & Co., a virtual monopoly operating steamboats on the Rio Grande.King used his profits from the steamboat business to purchase land in Browns-ville and throughout Cameron County, which then extended almost a hundred miles north of where it does today. In 1852, a most significant year in his career as a land investor, King purchased a fraudulent deed to the southern half of Padre Island. Severely burned with much of his business profits stolen, King learned the hard lesson of employing only the very best legal counsel in all real estate matters, from that day forward.In May of 1852, King discovered the wild, hot South Texas prairie from which his own name would become famous around the world for the industry he would invent in America. Corpus Christis founder, Henry Lawrence Kinney, known as the hustler of the wilderness, was hosting the Lone Star Fairthe very first Texas state fairin celebration of the citys incorporation, and to TheCoastalBend.com THE COASTAL BEND GUIDE75'