but was familiar with the area because
of his travels. At the height of the storm
he expected it to reduce in strength;
he turned his craft toward land and
crashed onto the shoals of a Gulf of
Mexico barrier island.
The Singer family escaped to safety, and
after some deliberation, determined they
had crashed onto what is now referred to
as South Padre Island. The sails and lumber taken from the wrecked ship provided
shelter for the beachcombing family. They
survived by growing vegetables, which Johanna sold in Port Isabel by rowing across
the Laguna Madre to Port Isabel and by
raising cattle. The cattle were probably the
descendants of the herd left on the land by
its former owners. The Singers would eventually brand about 1500 head a year.
In 1851, using inheritance money probably left to her by the death of a close family
member in New Orleans, Mrs. Singer purchased the land they had squatted on since
the shipwreck. The Singers named their
ranch “Las Cruces” and produced a family
of six more children. To help supplement
their farm and ranching endeavors John
was made the “Salvage Master” for their island paradise. This title guaranteed him the
right to salvage any craft which happened
to crash onto the island. Salvage, cattle
ranching and Johanna’s heritance made the
Singers very wealthy people.
The winds of war caught up with the Singers in 1861 when local Confederate authorities requested they leave Las Cruces because John was a Yankee sympathizer and
considered a security risk. He and Johanna re-located across the bay to Flour Bluff,
south of Corpus Christi, where they spent
the duration of the war. Some of their children moved to Indianola, Calhoun County,
where they could be near Edgar’s family.
Before leaving Padre Island, John was supposed to have buried a very large sum of
money, ($80,000 19th century value) and
jewels on “money hill.” He buried his fortune “4 feet deep” in the sand to keep it
from falling into Confederate hands. He
knew where he buried it because there were
two trees he would use as landmarks upon
his return to the island.
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After Johanna’s death in 1866 he left
Texas. According to a 2010 story written by Murphy Givens and published in
the Corpus Christi Caller, Singer headed
for Honduras where he was arrested and
charged with being a pirate. He escaped
Honduras, and possibly a hang man’s
noose, and returned to Corpus Christi
to gather up his family and take them
to New Orleans, probably to be near Johanna’s family. John twice took his oldest son, Alexander, back to the family
homestead on Padre Island to search for
his “buried treasure.” Wind and erosion
caused by the Gulf of Mexico changed
the lay of the land, sweeping away key
landmarks including the two trees which
indicated where he had buried his treasure. He returned to New Orleans pen-
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