History of My Hometown: Floresville

The town of Floresville was settled by a Canary Island immigrant, Don Fracisco Flores de Abrago. He established a ranch headquarters six miles northwest of the present site of Floresville in the eighteenth century. In 1833 the center of the town included the Flores home, a chapel, and a graveyard. The community of Floresville was called Lodi, at first, it served as as the Wilson County seat from 1867 to March 1871. Then it served as the seat from July 1871 to 1873. Floresville picked the name, from the Flores family it included the part of the communtiy known as Lodi. In the early 1870’s they surveyed a townsite. A prominent citizen, Andrew G. Pickett, who owned a ranch with irrigation systems, started raising peanuts. Floresville got a post office in 1872. In November 1873, Floresville was again elected or voted to be the county seat. In the 1870’s Floresville’s Academy offered several levels of education. And by 1885 Floresville had two hotels, several stores, and a weekly paper called the “Floresville Chronicle”, two steam cotton gin gristmills, and a population of four hundred people. Floresville was incorporated in 1890, when the population was reported to have 1,500 people. Floresville had a five-teacher school, which was in operation by 1896, when it had an enrollment of 206 students. Floresville continued to grow as we entered the twenieth century. The growth was supported by both the cotton and livestock industries. By 1910 Floresville had two banks and a population of 1,800 people. Peanuts were the cash crop in Floresville and the surrounding region, in 1915 and in later years Floresville was nicknamed the “Peanut Capital of Texas”. The town grew steadily between 1930 and 2000, and it has 342 businesses. The town is a makret for peanuts and other small grain. Floresville is known best for it’s annual Peanut Festival, which was established in 1938. It is usually held on the second weeked of October.
The plans for the first Peanut Festival was July 29, 1938, this was to celebrate the farming and harvesting of the peanut crop. The name given at first was designated as the “Floresville Peanut Pow Wow”, it was soon changed to the Peanut Festival. The Peanut Festival constists of a parade, carnival, and other such things like food booths, and arts and crafts booths. Every year students in the senior class are picked or elected on by the Peanut Festival Board for the court. They are picked on their achievements in school and also by what their parents do the for the school, for example I got in the court because my mother was the vice president of the athletic booster club, and I also was honor student so that little achievement helped me out a whole lot. The Peanut Festival is a lot of fun with all the events they have going on.
The Wilson County Courthouse was built in 1873, it was one large room thirty feet by sixty feet and it also had two small offices in the rear of the building. Ten years after it was built it burned down, the records were all saved though(Truxaw, Sheree PAC Student). A new courthouse was built in 1883 on the public square a block from the old courthouse. Colonel Pickett’s son A.G Pickett Jr. donated land to pay the new courthouse(Truxaw, Sheree). Two famous movies were filmed in Floresville, “The Sugerland Express”, filmed in 1973, and “Battle Creek Brawl”, which was filmed in 1980, in the courthouse bell tower(Truxaw, Sheree). My grandfather’s friend’s daughter works in the new courthouse under Judge Marvin Queeny as his secretary, and she told me it is still an old small town country courthouse, when I asked her how it was working in this historical building, she also told me the doors were always open to the courthouse, but now I think they keep them closed, because they had an Air Conditioning unit put in so the doors are closed now.
The Wilson County Jailhouse was built in 1887 at a cost of $14,000 dollars. This building is a two story building made out of white limestone. The front of the first floor and the entire second floor is where the sheriff and his family resided in. The rest of the building, were where the jail cells were. The jailhouse is inactive and it is a museum. The cell blocks still are the same they were when it was built, and it is still in the same spot it was built. I asked my grandfather, William Koenning how long it has been inactive, and he told me he didn’t remember the exact year, but he was still in High School when it was still in active condition, and he graduated from high school in 1958. I couldn’t find any information on the exact year that it became inactive, but I think it was in the 1970’s. There is a lot of history behind this jailhouse, but it is not enough information to write a full article on it. Even the people who work at the museum didn’t have enough information for a article. This project was fun to work on, I have learned a good amount of historical information, that I haven’t heard before. I suggest everybody learn a little about the history of there hometown.
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