Mathis, T. H., House
612 Church St., Rockport, TXThomas H. Mathis was born on July 14, 1834, in Stewart County, Tennessee. He received his early education in country schools of Tennessee and Kentucky and at the age of nineteen, he entered the school of Dr. J.T. Mathis in Southern Arkansas. He remained there for two sessions and then taught school for a year before he went to Bethel College, where he finished his education in 1857.
After a short career in teaching, he moved to Southwest Texas in 1859 and became a businessman engaged in trade in Mexico. Mathis temporarily opened a school in Gonzales in 1861 and in the summer of the same year, he moved to Victoria, Mathis speculated in tobacco in the early part of the war and accumulated large profits. In 1862, he acted as a supplier for the Confederate troops of the Trans-Mississippi Department. In the fall of 1862, Mathis joined Duff's regiment, Company E, and fought for the Confederacy until the close of the Civil War.
After the Civil War, Mathis returned to private business and moved to Aransas Bay at the site of the present town of Rockport. Mathis was a highly successful businessman whose interests included large-scale ranching and agriculture holdings in Wharton, San Patricio, and Aransas counties. Between 1872 and 1879, T. H. Mathis was a part of the Coleman, Mathis, and Fulton Pasture Company, a large-scale Texas ranching enterprise that continued for more than fifty years and, at its peak, controlled over 150,000 acres. In addition to holdings in real estate and shipping, Mathis encouraged the development of communications in Southeast Texas and engaged in road and bridge building. He was president and principal stockholder in the National Bank of Rockport.
Mathis was an outstanding citizen of South Texas and the town of Mathis in San Patricio County was named for him.
Listed in National Register of Historic Places in 1971.
The National Register of Historic Places is the official list of the Nation’s historic places worthy of preservation. Authorized by the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places is part of a national program to coordinate and support public and private efforts to identify, evaluate, and protect America’s historic and archeological resources.