Ingleside On The Bay

Ingleside is on Corpus Christi Bay on the jutting arm of land known as Ingleside Point at the eastern tip of San Patricio County. Developments of the community have been known as Old Ingleside, Inwood, Ingleside Cove, Ingleside-on-the-Bay, Palomas, Cove City, and Cove, among others. The community began in 1854 when settler George C. Hatch purchased land on both sides of the bayou. He subsequently acquired more than 3,800 acres of land and sold acreage to Walter Ingalls, Henry Nold, James Aware, John Pollard, John W. Vineyard , and other settlers, who built homes on the bayou and at Ingleside Cove. Tradition credits John Vineyard with naming Ingleside ("Fireside") for his ancestral home in Scotland. In 1855 George and Marcellus Turner settled in the area, and in 1857 Marcellus obtained a grant for the area's first post office. Hatch and Youngs L. Coleman operated a local store. Henry Nold II qv operated the Ingleside Male and Female Academy, sometimes referred to as the Nold Academy, from 1857 until the school building was destroyed by Union soldiers in 1862. Farming and ranching were the community's principal sources of income. Hatch introduced grape culture to the area, and his son John G. Hatch developed a flourishing business in the 1880s, which lasted until the vines were killed by a blight in the 1930s. Steamships plied the waters between Corpus Christi and Ingleside, carrying trade goods and stopping at Indianola.